WISDOM

Is.

Was.

Will be.

THE SOUL OF ADAM

Lilith.

MESSENGER

Five.

EYE

Silver.

THE RIVER

The prayerbook.

ISRAEL ALONE

Therefore.

THE BODY

The reward.

DOMINUS

Demonus.

NOTHING

I.

THE DEVIL

Fat — ash.

METATRON

The beard.

The beard.

The beard.

MESSIAH

Snake.

— Nathan of Gaza

THE GARDEN

Shadow.

Stone.

The Brain.

REBEKKA

This.

12.

LIGHT

A mystery.

THE WITNESS

A jewel.

THE TAIL, THE BODY

Woe & woe to you.

HE & HE

This & this.

THE UPPER WORLD

Is all the chariot.

INCENSE

The ark.

613.

THE HEAD

I make you happy.

THE WORLD/THE YEAR/THE SOUL

Evening.

Morning.

Noon.

MOSHE          MOSES


Ehyeh.         I am.

Ehyeh.         I am.

Ehyeh.         I am.

MONEY

the tree.

— "& the king said to Haman: the money will be yours."

FIRST ADAM

Hell is open.

DEATH

903.

AUTHORS' NOTES

GEMATRIA is the general term for a variety of traditional Jewish coding practices used to establish correspondences between words or series of words based on the numerical equivalences of the sums of their letters or the interchange of letters according to a set system. The numerical method — gematria per se — typically took aleph as one, beth as two, etc., through tav (last letter) as 400 — although more complicated methods (e.g., reduction to single digits, etc.) were later introduced. Non-numerical methods included 1. anagram, the rearrangement of the letters of a word to form a new word or word series, as "god" to "dog" in English; 2. notarikon, the derivation of a new word from the initial letters of several others and vice versa, as "god," say, from "garden of delight;" & temura, various systems of letter codes, e.g. the common one in which the first half of the alphabet is placed over the second & letters are substituted betwen the resultant rows, etc., in search of meaningful combinations.

- Harris Lenowitz and Jerome Rothenberg

Copyright © 1977 by Harris Lenowitz and Jerome Rothenberg.

This set of Gematria was first published by Membrane Press (Light and Dust) as a boxed set of cards that could be read in different orders by one or more people. A collage by Eleanor Antin and an anonymous medieval diagram were printed on the backs of the cards, which could be put together as two puzzles. The box is still available from Light and Dust.

This was Rothenberg's first published gematria. He has since continued with the method. A recent collection of his gematria was published by new Directions.

Lenowitz has continued his study of Gematria through his ongoing scholarship, poetry, and plays dealing with Messianic figures such as Jacob Frank.

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