[yelostar]

Put this in the “What will they come up with next” file.

[yelostar]

Gematria is the ancient practice of coding numbers into letters, often to reveal meanings and connections that are not outwardly apparent. The coding of numeric values to letters/alphabets goes back at least as far as the 8th century BCE.

from myjewishlearning.com (not a link):

This system, developed by practitioners of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), derived from Greek influence and became a tool for interpreting biblical texts.

Currently, Gematria (English alphabet) and numerology are used to break down current events and news stories - to reveal meanings and connections that are not obvious. The idea behind this is that events are scripted, and the numeric component is evidence of the scripting.

To be clear, this is not the same thing as Biblical Gematria - which uses the Hebrew alphabet and is a complete field of its own, complex and heavily mathematical.

The four base Gematria ciphers used are Ordinal, Reverse Ordinal, Reduction and Reverse Reduction. Ordinal counts letters A to Z, A = 1, Z = 26. In Reverse Ordinal, Z = 1, A = 26. The Reduction ciphers use numbers 1-9, then repeat.

This particular story relates whales and aliens, and seems to have a numeric element.