Jewish Magic and Superstition: Appendix I. The Formation of Magical Names

2. Another method widely employed involved the manipulation of traditionally received divine names or particles of these names: a. by combining them and alternating their component letters, such as ‏יאהדונהי‎, which comprises ‏יהוה אדני‎; b. by combining a name with a word representing an attribute: ‏שקדחזי‎ is ‏שדי חזק‎; the letters here are merely jumbled together; c. by dropping letters from, or adding new ones to such names, like the ‏אני והו‎ mentioned in the Talmud, which some scholars take to be shortened forms of ‏אדני יהוה‎, or the Tetragrammaton plus inserted letters which may explain ‏יכה יוסה‎;3 d. by transposing the letters of these names, e.g. ‏אדני‎ may assume 24 forms: ‏דאני‎, ‏אנדי‎, etc.

Other methods frequently applied were originally created to facilitate the allegorical and mystical interpretation of the Bible. According to the mystical view the entire Torah is made up of holy names which have been so skilfully secreted among the letters of the text that only an expert can ferret them out.4 These systems provided the means of educing new names from the text of the Bible by a series of permutations, combinations and substitutions.

3. The simplest of these methods comprised merely the displacement of the letters of a word, so that the first word of the Bible, ‏בראשית‎, might become ‏שתיברא‎ or ‏אשרבית‎, etc.; letters were lifted out of a text; the words of a text were split up into three-letter units; words were read backwards, etc.

4. NOTARIKON5—originally this was employed as a method of abbreviation, to compose a word from the initial or final letters of several (e.g., ‏שאו מרום עיניכם‎ [Is. 40:20]= ‏שמע‎, or ‏ברא אלהים לעשות‎ [Gen. 2:3]= ‏אמת‎), or to decompose one word into several (e.g., ‏אדם‎ = ‏אדם דוד משיח‎, or ‏אפר דם מרה‎, ‏פרדם‎ = ‏פשט רמן דרוש סוד‎) for purposes of anagogic homiletics. This method was later used to create some of the most important names in the entire mystical catalogue. One of these names,6 guaranteed to protect its user against all weapons, is ‏יהמהיה‎, which on examination turns out to be nothing more than an acrostic of the concluding letters of the first six (Hebrew) words of Ex. 15:11, "Who is like unto Thee among the mighty, O Lord?" The famous

7 Whether so or not in this particular case, the method of joining letters from various verses was widely used. The book Shimmush Tehillim, which assigns magical potencies to the Psalms, created a host of fantastic names from letters chosen more or less at random from each Psalm; for instance, the name that is hidden in Ps. 4 is Yhyh, made up of the final letters of verses 2, 3, g and 6; in Ps. 1 it is Alḥd, which consists of the initials of the first words in verses 1 and 4, the last letter of the last word in verse 3, and the second letter of the sixth word in verse 6. It is likely that there was a method to this madness, but if so it wholly escapes us now. The possibilities of combination were, of course, unlimited. The most celebrated example of this method is the use to which Ex. 14:19-21 was put to form the 72-particle name of God.

5. GEMATRIA8—The letters of the Hebrew alphabet also serve as numerals: ‏א‎ = 1, ‏ב‎ = 2, ‏ג‎ = 3, etc. Gematria was a process of creating equivalences from the numerical values of words, and provided an ingenious method of reading novel and unexpected meanings into a text: ‏רדו‎ (Gen. 42:12) =210 = the years of Egyptian bondage; ‏זנושנתם‎ (Deut. 4:25) =852=the duration of the Jewish state; etc. That Metatron is the demiurge was proved by the fact that numerically both Metatron and Shaddai equal 314. Sometimes only the simple units were employed (‏מספר קטן‎) so that ‏י‎ (10) and ‏ק‎ (100) were counted as 1, ‏כ‎ (20) and ‏ר‎ (200) were 2, etc. By this means it was possible to prove mathematically that God is solely good and the first of all beings, for ‏יהוה‎ = 1(0) + 5 + 6 + 5=17; ‏טוב‎ = 9 + 6 + 2 = 17; and ‏ראשון‎ = 2(00) + 1+ 3(00) + 6 + 5(0) = 17.

This method was very popular and was elaborated in the course of time until it became an exercise in higher mathematics, which no

9 a. simple addition: ‏א‎, ‏ב‎, ‏ג‎ = 1, 2, 3 = 6; b. the sum of the letters plus, for the word: ‏אבג‎ =6 + 1; c. the sum of the letters plus the number of letters in the word: ‏אבג‎ = 6 + 3. Sometimes b. and c. were joined, so that ‏אבג‎ =6 + 1 + 3; d. addition of the values of the names of the letters: ‏א‎ = ‏אלף‎ = 111, ‏ב‎ = ‏בית‎ = 412, etc. Thus "Hear O Israel" is equated with the final "One" of the verse (‏אחד‎ = 111 + 408 + 434 = 953 which is the equivalent of ‏שמע ישראל‎, 410 + 541 + 2 = 953); e. addition of the cardinal numbers: ‏א‎ = ‏אחד‎ =13, ‏ב‎ = ‏שנים‎ =400, ‏ג‎ = ‏שלשה‎ =635, etc. By a combination of d. and e. we get ‏י‎ = ‏יוד‎ = 20 = ‏עשרים‎ =620 = ‏כתר‎, therefore the letter yod represents the "crown" of glory; f. adding the values of all the letters in the alphabet that precede each letter of the word: ‏אהיה‎ = 1 + 15 + 55 + 15 = 86; g. adding the squares of the numerical values: ‏אחד‎ =1 + 64 + 16 = 81. Once the numerical value of a Biblical word or verse, selected as especially significant for one reason or another, was arrived at, any number of words adding up to the same total could be concocted, and by their very obscurity and the "mystery" inherent in their character as epitomes of important Biblical statements could achieve the status of potent magical "names."