ב"ה

HEBREW ALPHANUMERICS ׁ(גימטריא)
VS. NUMEROLOGY


I asked the following of someone whose intelligence I respect a great deal:

Question: I'd like to know if the following makes any sense to you. I'm asking you specifically for a number of reasons. You're both linguistically and mathematically gifted. You're not Jewish and you don't speak Hebrew fluently, but you are not disinclined toward Jews and do not dismiss Jewish learning out-of-hand. Finally, though you are prepared to consider matters that are considered "spiritual", rather than purely rational, you do not go so far off the beam as to become some sort of New Age kook. You understand the difference between the super-rational and the irrational, even though at first hearing they often sound very much the same to those steeped in rationalism and the former often degenerates into the latter in the minds and hearts of those not prepared morally to deal with the super-rational.

As background let me say that the Hebrew preposition כמו (pronounced c'mo) means 'as', 'like'' 'such as', 'as though'. It is shortened to the letter כ' (caf) when used as a conjunctive prefix, but the meaning is retained. Now, an ambiguity occurs when the letter כ' is the first letter in a radical. Is it merely functioning as a consonant that is the first letter in a radical? Is it functioning as a prefix? Is it functioning as an abbreviation of the word כמו, which is both a conjunctive and a preposition? I contend that we cannot know which function it serves, because it is serving all these functions concomitantly, but we can choose to relate to it as one or more or all of these functions.

The word for 'dog' in Hebrew is כלב, pronounced celev (I am wont to transliterate כּ' as a hard 'c', and not a 'k', as this letter better corresponds to the Hebrew כּ', which, as you can clearly see it is a mirror image of. I reserve the letter 'k' for transliteration of Hebrew letter ק'). The Hebrew word for 'heart' is לב, pronounced 'lev', (that this is the etymon of the word 'love' should be eminently clear). It has been said that the word כלב (celev) should be understood as meaning 'like a heart', a description of a dog's nature.

More background: In the passage below, which is an excerpt from a communication with an etymologist; I have employed the age old method of calculating Hebrew values called מספר קטן מספרי (Integral Reduced Value), as explicated on this site: http://www.inner.org/gematria/fourways.htm

Quoting myself: "You are clearly correct that כ(מו)לב, ce(mo)lev, is the etymon of the word lupus and its variant lobo. And yes, it is now commonly agreed upon that canis lupus, the grey wolf, is the primeval wild dog. But, why did the כ' drop off altogether? Why the 'b' to 'p' shift in the case of lupus? And where did the ס' sound in lupus come from?

I wondered if there was a way of deriving the word dog from כלב (celev) directly arithmetically.

Here it is: the letter כ' (caf), equaling 20, is 2 X 10. The letter ב', beit, of course is two. The letters כ' and ב' share the same reduced value (מספר קטן), i.e., two. The letter ל' (pronounced lamed), equaling 30, is 3 X 10. Therefore, its reduced value is 3. So, 2 [the גימטריא (gematria) of ב']+2 (the reduced value of כ')=4. That gives us the ד' (dalet) sound in dog. The reduced value of ל' (lamed) is three, as I said. That gives is the ל' (gimmel) sound in dog. The word dog transliterated into Hebrew has the same value, seven, as the integral reduced value of the word כלב (celev), the reduced values of the כ' and the ל' being 2 and 3 respectively and the actual value of ב' being 2.

I am not attempting to treat the vowel sounds in either the word dog or כלב. I do not think the vowels should be ignored. I just don't know what to do about them at this juncture, as the 'ô' dog does not correspond exactly to any of the vowels in Hebrew.

In order to educe the noun 'dog' from 'כלב' I had to employ מספר קטן מספרי (integral reduced value), which is necessarily dependent upon מספר קטן (modulus 9 or reduced value). Most assuredly, there is the need to employ מספר הכרחי (absolute value) and מספר סדורי (ordinal value) when analyzing the etymology of other words as well and, in all probability, a combination of them.


How do you respond to this? Does it seem to make sense? Is it intelligible? Does anything in it make you say: "Yes!" or at least "Maybe"? Be honest.

D2

The response I received was:

I'm no expert on any of this. But I have never encountered a form of 'numerology' which made sense to me. You asked me to be honest.

My explanation:

Numerology comes from other cultures' attempts to mimic the study of גימטריא (Hebrew alphanumerics) using their own alphabets and classical mathematics. It never worked. It couldn't work for more reasons than I can list and elucidate, even in brief, in the space of an e-mail. I have discussed many of these reasons in the bodies of a number of my works. Only using Hebrew techniques of reckoning numbers to analyze the Hebrew alphabet flies. Did you notice the fact that when computing integral reduced values the same value will be arrived at regardless of whether it is the absolute values, the ordinal values, or the reduced values that are being counted, as stated on the site I cited above? This is true for all of the letters including the אותיות סופיות (the final forms of those letters that have final forms, to wit: ך', ם', ן', ף', ץ'). This in itself is fantastic.

The word "numerology" should never have been applied to גימטריא (Hebrew alphanumerical analysis). It is one of the banes of my existence, as someone from the (very) old school of Hebrew alphanumerics that this has occurred. The appellation "numerology" was applied to attract wide public attention to the study when the New Agey stuff started to catch on like wildfire and the greenbacks started to get tossed around big time. Hebrew alphanumerics was never meant for the masses and most assuredly never intended to be used for commercial purposes. It is not a commodity. The making it into a commodity by watering it down to the point that it sounds just esoteric enough for the masses to revel in it, to my profoundest sorrow, has occurred on a widespread basis in recent times and the inevitable has occurred - those who might otherwise be able to do the real thing are turned off to it because it looks like snake oil.

If it were not called "numerology" would it smell any sweeter?

At this point I really do not know whether to take comfort in all those sayings about truth not being accepted initially being de rigueur and all those occurrences of people who shifted paradigms being taken for nut jobs or whether I really am just a half-crazy, and rather pathetic, fool wasting my time. It sure looks like it could fall either way at this point. Luckily for me, my ego has been battered to the point where I don't care all that much if I am deluded and I plod on anyway. If what I'm doing has value, others will enjoy it some day. If it is just my own delusion, then it is as good a way as any to keep myself busy and out of peoples' way. Considering these matters is as good a way to spend an incarnation as any I suppose.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com