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VOICES OF GNOSTICISM EXCERPT:


Gematria & Sacred Geometry.

David Fideler on the Hellenistic DNA of Primal Christianity

The esoteric Greek influences on both early Christianity and Gnosticism, overlooked and
suppressed by orthodoxy. We cover Gematria (the real Bible Code and numerology), sacred
geometry, the Jesus forerunners long before he was conceived, and several other influences of
the higher Hellenized world.
Special Guest-- David Fideler, author of 'Jesus Christ Sun of God'.
This is undoubtedly one of the most important books for any person who takes the Esoterica
seriously.
With high scholarship and fifteen years of thorough research, this book covers grounds that
very few (if any) other truthseekers have even dared to think about.
Topics discussed: --What is Gematria exactly?
It certainly pervades the Gnostic sections of The Bible such as The Gospel of John and The
Pauline Corpus.
And part of the Canonicals as well!
--The true meaning of the infamous number '666' and other seemingly random numbers in
Scripture (153 fishes, the feeding of the 5000 thousand, etc).

--The influence of Sacred Geometry prevalent from ancient Babylonian times to the Gothic
movement in medieval times.
--In the beginning was the Word; but the Greek translation is 'Logos'.
And 'Logos', in its original meaning, does not even mean 'Word'!
Fundies have been running around for centuries talking about the 'Word', and they got it wrong
the whole time. What exactly is a Logos and why the sleight of hand by Orthodoxy? --Not
only is Orpheus the founder of the Mystery Religions, he is more than likely the first prototype
of Jesus (and this was even admitted by certain, Orthodox Church Fathers).
Surprising few of us, music is one of the highest levels of gnosis we will ever experience. –

Why was Gematria championed by the early Gnostics?


--We explore how Gematria reveals that Apollo, Hermes Trismegistos, Abraxas, Mithras, and
other savior gods are too close for comfort parallels to Jesus.
--Why the historical Jesus is fading under the light of modern criticism and can only survive
and be renewed through the Gnostic worldview.
Jim Morrison didn't believe he was like Dionysus...
he believed he WAS Dionysus...

David Fideler’s works are a gravitational reminder that the Greek matrix is just as essential to
the formation of the myriad cults that sprung from the persona of Jesus Christ. His seminal
book, Jesus Christ, Sun of God, the focus of our interview, is perhaps the most complete
exposition ever published on the Hellenistic wing of both Christianity and Gnosticism.

In this excerpt, Fideler explains the overlooked concept of gematria, a sacred form of
mathematics that was prevalent in Pagan, Jewish, Christian and Gnostic circles. Fideler later
explains in our interview about some truly intriguing Greco-Roman ideas and ideals that
shaped embryonic Christianity and Gnosticism-- The reality that Logos was never intended to
mean 'Word' but something far more profound; more on the impact of Plato and Pythagoras on
The Bible; the mythological characters that molded the story of Jesus Christ; the ancient
history of gematria and sacred geometry that to this day has never left western religions; the
major influence of the mysterious Cult of Orpheus and Stoic philosophy, even admitted by the
Church Fathers; and much more!!!

From Voices of Gnosticism Pg. 41:

MC: Could you tell us about gematria?


DF: Gematria is a system of number symbolism that is used in various
world religions and mystical systems, and you find it in ancient Greek,
Hebrew and Arabic; and I believe that there are actually forms of it
present in Vedic mathematics as well. It’s a system where each letter of
the alphabet corresponds with a number, and this allows people to construct
forms of numerical symbolism from names and phrases. And it
might seem foreign to us, but in terms of other languages it was actually
something that was very common, because, for example, in the ancient
Greek culture they had a separate number system, but they didn’t have
a number system like we do, with the Arabic numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
8, 9, 10. Their number system was more compact and cumbersome, and
most numerical operations used combinations of letters, because the
letters of course corresponded to numbers.
Basically, if you were an ancient Greek person and you were going
to add some numbers together, you would do it by using letters for different
numbers, so it’s just the way they thought. And this was used in
many, many different ways. Sometimes it was used just for jokes and
riddles, and there are a lot of inscriptions from the ancient world where
you see this being used. But, for example, certain mystical names, for
example, like the Gnostics divinity Abraxas, or Abrasax, which was associated
with the sun. If you take all the letters that make up this divinity’s
name, it equals 365, the number of days in the solar year, and so
this is one example of how this symbolism was used intentionally.
MC: What are some other examples of gematria that you find in the
canonicals?
DF: Well, one thing that we know from reading ancient writers is that
the early Christian Gnostics used gematria. If you read the works of the
heresy hunters like Irenaeus and Hippolytus—those are really the main
ones, but I think even Tertullian gets into it, he repeats it as a secondary
source—but mainly Irenaeus and Hippolytus, these people who’ve
read about the Gnostics, they talk about how the Gnostics made a big
deal out of the fact the name of Jesus equals the number 888. We also
know about gematria in the New Testament, the number of the beast
being 666. Those triple numbers were important, and there were other
examples as well, but one of the things that I show in my book, Jesus
Christ, Sun of God, is that there is a tremendous amount of documented
usage of gematria from the ancient world, and there are many examples
of divinity associated with the sun that have symbolic numbers that
equals 365. It was really a very widespread practice, and there are a
lot of examples of it, for example from the Greek magical papyri and
things like that.
MC: Why is 888 such an important number, or any triple number?
DF: Well, the way that the Gnostics described it, it seems in terms of
the symbolism that anything that was repeated was seen as being more
significant, was a more potent number, something like that. 888 and
666 are naturally occurring ratios in terms of music, which was one of
the four branches of mathematics in the ancient world, and 666 is the
ratio of the major fifth in music, which is the most powerful musical
ratio. And 888 is the ratio of the whole tone in Pythagorean tuning. So
those are very important musical ratios. But in terms of the 888, the
Gnostics referred to Jesus as the ogdoad, which is a Greek word for
the number eight. For the Gnostics, or at least this group of Gnostics,
it represented a form of spiritual perfection or fullness. Th ey referred
to Jesus as being the fullness of the ogdoad, which represents spiritual
principle. The number six, on the other hand, or 666 represents the
material universe. So 888 represents the spiritual realm, or the realm
of spiritual perfection. In terms of ancient number symbolism, among
the early Christians, you have the idea of the week being made up of
seven days, and eight represents a new cycle of creation. And so those
are some of the explanations that the Gnostics gave for the significance
of Jesus being the ogdoad, and they associated that with 888. It is very
strange when you first realize that Jesus is 888, because for hundreds
of years there’s been all this emphasis on 666, and that being a symbolic
number, and then you discover that Jesus, the central principle of
Christianity, is also attributed a number, just like 666, except it’s 888.
MC: And you even say that even Paul uses gematria.
DF: Well, there are examples of gematria in the New Testament, and
there are examples of gematria in the Pauline writings. One example—
I think it’s in Galatians—Paul talks about how the mosaic law was
given 430 years ago, in the past. The actual dating system is wrong, be-
cause it wasn’t 430 years—I’m not sure exactly what it was, but it wasn’t
that—but the Greek word nomos, or law, has the numerical equivalent
of 430, and so when he says that the law was given 430 years ago, that is
an allusion to gematria. It might just be an inside joke, but he or whoever
wrote it was using gematria. Not all the Pauline epistles of the New
Testament are thought to actually be written by Paul.
There are a couple of absolutely astonishing instances of gematria in
the New Testament, though, and those are examples that I thoroughly
explore in my book. The first one, which is absolutely remarkable, was
discovered by John Michell, and that involves the story which appears
in the 21st chapter of John relating to the miraculous catch of 153 fish
and the unbroken net. As you are well aware, the Gospel of John is the
last of the four canonicals that was written, and this 21st chapter was
probably something that was tacked on to the end of that at some point
as well, so this is something that is later than the other gospels, but it’s
an indisputable example of gematria. Basically, the way that the story
goes is that it was after the death of Jesus, and Peter and some other
disciples decide to get into a boat and go fishing. And so they get into
the boat, and they shove off from shore, and they cast their net, but they
don’t catch anything. And then they see this figure on the shore that
was actually the resurrected Jesus, but they don’t realize this. Th e fellow
on the shore says to them, “Go cast your net on the right side of the
boat.” So they do this and they all of a sudden make a miraculous catch
of fish in their net, and it says that when they counted the fish, there
were exactly 153 fish. At a certain point, after this miraculous catch of
fish, they realize that the figure on the shore was Jesus, and Simon Peter
got out of the boat, and he swam to shore, and the other disciples with
their fish in the net followed him. The thing that is remarkable about
the story is that if you take the numerical equivalent of the Greek word
for fish, which is used in the story, it’s IXTHUS, and that has the number
1224. Th at also happens to be the numerical value of TO DIPTWAN,
which is the net. So “fishes” and “the net” have the same number
which is 1224. And if you take that and divide it by eight, you get 153,
which is the number of fishes in the net. So this number 153 was not
arbitrarily arrived at.
They used that number for a reason, and people had recognized this
at least a century ago, and quite possibly for hundreds of years, but
probably about 30 years ago, or something like that, John Michell was
studying this more carefully. What he discovered is that, not only is 153
one eighth of the Fishes and the net—this was known for some time—
but what he discovered is that the story itself describes a geometrical
diagram. And what you do is you draw some circles, and you set your
compass as the perimeter value of Simon Peter, who is the person who
decided to go fishing. And you draw these circles, which represent the
apostles in a boat, and the diameter of the boat then is 1224, starting
from the initial value of Simon Peter. Casting the net is a geometrical
operation, and getting out of the boat is a geometrical operation. Basically
it draws this diagram with a net, and each one of the lines segments
on the net is 153.
This really was an incredible breakthrough because everyone knew
that gematria had been used in sacred writings and mystical symbolism,
and things like that, but no one really realized that it was connected
with geometrical diagrams. Actually, this had been discovered over 100
years ago, that there were connections between gematria and geometrical
diagrams. That had previously been discovered, but this was an
incredible discovery: that there is actually an underlying geometrical
diagram complete with measures and gematria symbolism which lies
behind and provides the foundation for a New Testament story.
MC: I have also read that the story of the 153 fish goes back to Pythagoras.
Have you heard that too?
DF: Yes, this just clinches the case. There’s the story about Pythagoras
which appears in a couple of the ancient biographies of Pythagoras. Basically
in that story, Pythagoras was going along on the shore and there
were some people who had come in on a boat, and they have caught
some fishes in a net, and Pythagoras said to these people in the boats,
“Well, if I predict the exact number of fish in the net, will you do what
I say?” And, sure enough, Pythagoras predicted the exact number of
fishes in the net. Since Pythagoras was a vegetarian, he told the people
to release the fishes. Th e actual number of fish in the net is not given
in that particular story, but probably if you were a Pythagorean in the
ancient world, you would know that it’s 153 or 256, or something like
that, one of those multiples of 153.
That was a really remarkable discovery, and then I also made a discovery
of a similar diagram that underlies the New Testament story,
and that is the story of the Feeding of the 5000, with loaves and fishes.
Th at is based on the same numerical sequence that the 153 fish in the
net is based on, but it’s arrived at in a different way. It says in the story,
this is in the earliest version of the story, that there were 5000 people
and Jesus and the apostles. And the way you arrive at this is, you take a
square which has 5000 units and then you basically measure the square
and you can do some geometrical operations. All of the elements of the
story then come out of the geometry, and all of the measurements are
exact, and it’s the same numerical code that’s used in the story of the
153 fish in the net. This is thoroughly documented in my book, and
so you have two cases of these miracle stories that appear in the New
Testament and are based on the underlying geometrical diagrams. And
this is something very empirical, and it’s not something you can really
dispute when you see the geometry and how it perfectly matches up
with the story and the text.
Now, the significance of the Feeding of the 5000 is that, with the
story of the 153 fish in the nets, that is from the very latest gospel in
the New Testament—and that 21st chapter was probably added on, so
no one is really sure what the date of that might be. It could be around
the year 150, or 120, or something like that, so that’s fairly late. But the
story of the Feeding of the 5000 is something that appears in all three
of the synoptic gospels, including the Gospel of Mark, which was the
earliest one. So this is a story that goes back, without question, to the
earliest Christian Communities, and it seemed the very earliest source
documents for the New Testament. So it shows that gematria was being
used at a very early date as foundation for creating these spiritual
allegories and teachings.
MC: Even in your book, the authors weren’t doing this as some sort
of code, or as a lark, or anything, it was actually an ancient belief that
geometry and math were the highest concepts before you reach the
spiritual world, right? This is serious stuff .
DF: Right, well, in the Platonic and Pythagorean view, mathematics
and geometry are related to the most essential level of reality, or being.
For the Pythagoreans and later, the study of mathematics was a way of
purifying the soul and your spiritual insight, and things like that. Th e
reason that this was used is that in the ancient world, every aspect of
reality was seen as having a deeper dimension. As well as the outer dimension,
the exoteric, there was the inner dimension, the esoteric, and
every outer manifestation is rooted in a deeper reality, a deeper truth.
Gematria was a way of expressing this truth. The outer story might be
entertaining, but then as someone develops deeper forms of knowledge
and insight, they are able to see that there is also a deeper dimension
to the stories, and that they were basically created to express very profound
symbolic truths.
MC: This is obviously very prevalent in the Kabbalah. Do you think
that the Kabbalah borrowed from the Greeks?

The rest of this interview, as well as other interviews with the greatest experts on Gnosticism
and Early Christianity, can be found in Voices of Gnosticism , available at several retailers and
formats that can be found at our Voices of Gnosticism Homepage. Or you can just download
the audio for this specific interview, Aeon Byte #11--Gematria & Sacred Geometry.

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