About Shematria

This calculator became a possibility when the gematria ciphers of the Bible and the Book of the Law were re-discovered in 2015 by Bethsheba Ashe.

The name 'Shematria' is a contraction of the words "Shem" and "Gematria", and in hebrew the word שמטריה Shematria means "that Umbrella.

Back in 2015, after finding the ciphers for the Bible and the Book of the Law, Shematria was no more than a twinkle in my eye, as I worked on the verses of the Bible and Liber Al vel Legis, trying to understand the scribal methodologies of their writers. I'd began to write about the Hermetic & Magical appropriation of the Merkabah tradition and I was doing all the calculations in my head, because there wasn't a gematria calculator that was coded with the ciphers. I found programs that promised to be programmable, but weren't really, or just didn't work on my desktop. This meant that research into the formal system of gematria proceeded quite slowly, until I saw that I would need a bespoke calculator to make any great strides in the subject.

My programming skills were seriously rusty - (I'm talking Commodore 64 Basic, LOGO, & CorelScript rusty), so at first I looked around to see if I could interest a coder in the project. I’m not really good at waiting around for things to happen though, so it wasn’t very long before I decided to take on the project myself.  

www.shematria.com

  In 2016 I began to learn the Python Programming language, and I used it to code my first calculator script. From thereon in I began to learn how to make an online version of the calculator I was using at home. In April 2018, I signed up for a free account with pythonanywhere.com and got going on the design of the calculator, and soon after Shematria went live for the first time.

Shematria Gematria Calculator with Ducks

  The Shematria database began as a Gematria correspondence to the Strong’s concordance. I created a program to give every word in the concordance a gematria value. Soon after that I began to fill the database with the results of my calculations, and accepted calculations from fellow gematraists working with the ciphers. As I was working on deciphering calculations with the Bible, I realized how convenient it would be if a gematria Bible was available on the same page as the calculator. 

  Shematria began to take on a more familiar design after I stumbled across Mobirise; an html editor that made making webpages and forms easier. It was so easy that the calculator went through multiple designs before I settled on what I wanted. This one featured Leah Hirsig, the Scarlet Woman of Aleister Crowley.

Shematria and the Leah Hersig cover


  Since those early days, Shematria has added; a Notariqon tool; a gematria reference to the Book of the Law; and a scratchpad; a Galay script meme maker; and links to learning tools, videos and articles on gematria. I have also published an accompanying 'how-to' and 'history' book: 'Behold! The Art and Practice of Gematria.'  

Shematria
Behold! The Art and Practice of Gematria

 
Gematria in biblical times was a formal system of early mathematics.
That means it had known rules and conventions, like our system of math does today.
It's is a beautiful and ancient art that is a crucial key to biblical exegesis and occult symbolism.

Research into the formal system of gematria has taken me thousands of hours, but I've found the story of how hieroglyphics were first deciphered to be personally inspiring. The knowledge of the hieroglyphs was unfolded and refined in stages as different authors added to our understanding of the writing script. They corrected any errors that had crept in and took the field forward. The story of how biblical gematria was deciphered is also one that unfolds in stages, involving Kabbalistic and Occult authors, Aleister Crowley, myself, modern day students of the art, and academics that study the origins of the alphabet.

  Since August 2019, this calculator has had 1080367 visits. Our understanding of the art and practice of gematria is still unfolding, but if the story of the decipherment of Hieroglyphics is anything to go by, then this work will be further refined over time. This is an excellent and inspiring fact to me, and something I look forward to. After all, the best exegesis of a text flows from the methods actually used by its writer, so these breakthroughs in the decipherment of the Bible promises new vistas finally being opened for biblical studies.

Behold! The Art and Practice of Gematria

Behold! The Art and Practice of Gematria

Behold! The Art and Practice of Gematria will be published at the end of October. It's a crucial book to have if you need to read the bible using the same methodologies as biblical writers, such as gematria, notariqon, temurah, iteration, and acrostic features.

Behold demonstrates a new scientific approach to gematria. I'm a cryptographer and I've spent some years deciphering ancient Hebrew gematria after I noticed it was actually a formal system of mathematics, that was likely as reliable a way of conveying calculations for them as our system of math does for us today! It really was something else than what we've grown to expect from 'gematria', and it's a rather important tool for biblical studies. Besides the obviously important interpretative elements this tool can give you, it's a wonderful way to spot scribal interpolations and even provides a new way to better date texts and biblical events.  It's probably the most significant decipherment since Champollion and Young worked on Hieroglyphics in the 1820's.

Use the discount code - BE20 - which will give 20% off for pre-ordering from Aeon Books, and they tell me they're offering free shipping to the USA too.

Chariot: An Essay on Bereshit and the Merkabah

Chariot: An essay on Bereshit and the Merkabah

Genesis 1-2 is arranged in an alphanumeric order, but it was intended to be read in a linear arrangement!  Unless it is rearranged, the narrative appears to jump around, but once the verses are set in the correct arrangement, the story reads as a cohesive whole and answers all the many questions people have reasonably asked about it over the millennia.

Chariot is a new book that presents the verses of Bereshit as they were intended to be read, and it explains each element of the gematria calculations, verse by verse.  

Few texts are as misunderstood as the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis, and few matters are as secret as the Merkabah. These two things are inherently related, and that relationship is finally revealed this fall in this groundbreaking magnum opus by the creator of Shematria.

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