Continued from Part One.

Machiavelli’s Use of “Gematria”

Machiavelli was superficially acquainted with Gematria, the system by which the Hebrew alphabet is translated into numbers. For example, and as Leo Strauss discerned, Machiavelli makes systematic use of the number 13 (and its multiples) both in The Prince and in The Discourses.[15] It so happens that 13 is the numerical value of the Hebrew word meaning “one”—echad. The “prince” is the one par excellence. The “prince,” from the Latin principi, denotes the “first thing,” the “beginning,” something radically “new.” “A New Prince Must Make Everything New” is the title of chapter 26 of The Discourses, where Machiavelli subtly indicates that a new prince must imitate God. It can hardly be a coincidence that The Prince consists of 26 chapters: 26 is the numerical value of the four Hebrew letters comprising the Tetragrammaton, the Ineffable Name of God[16]

Turn, now, to Chapter 13 of The Prince, the inconspicuous center of the book, and to the very last sentence. Referring to great conquerors and how they “armed and ordered themselves,” Machiavelli confides, “to which orders, I, in all things, consign myself” (italics added). Thus, in language borrowed from religion, Machiavelli confesses his faith: he bows to one god only, the god of power. (In the chapter’s central episode, invlving David and Goliath, the knife replaces God.)

But let us go back to the beginning. In Chapter 1 Machiavelli outlines, with remarkable brevity, 13 different modes by which “principates” are acquired. He completes the treatment of the subject in Chapter 11. The central chapter of this group is of course 6. Accordingly, he there decides to “bring forward the greatest examples of “new principates founded by new princes, men who possessed extraordinary “virtue” (a term used 13 times in this chapter). There he mentions Moses in the same breath, as it were, with three pagan law-givers. One of the pagans is Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome, who murdered his twin-brother Remus in order to be “alone,” a “first thing,” a “new beginning”— a “prince” in the profoundest sense of the term.[17] The discussion is largely symbolic. To be a creator of “new modes and orders” one must destroy or overcome what is nearest and dearest—one’s fraternal loyalties, one’s subordination to ancestral beliefs and moral convictions.

Now ponder what Machiavelli says in The Discourses (I, 9): “Where the act [Romulus’ fratricide] accuses, the effect excuses.” The act of murdering one’s brother accuses only because the denunciation of that act represents the established morality—ordinary morality. But the effect excuses because it inaugurates a new morality—an extraordinary morality. With success, however, the extraordinary eventually becomes the ordinary. And so Machiavelli, a “prince”—a “first thing”—destroys the established religious and aristocratic morality and establishes a secular and democratic morality. Nietzsche’s creator of new values, the ubermensch, is but the descendant of the “Prince.”

Returning to Chapter 6 of The Prince, by linking Romulus and Moses, Machiavelli prompts the reader to recall that both Romulus and Moses were abandoned as infants. This blurring of distinctions between Romulus (who murdered his brother) and Moses (who saved his brother)—this moral leveling, is diabolically methodical. The number 6 represents the six directions (north, east, south, west, up and down), hence the physical world. Also, the world was created in six days. It is doubly revealing, therefore, that exactly in Chapter 6 of The Prince will be found Machiavelli’s first reference to God!

It may now be asked: Why does Machiavelli invert the Decalogue in Chapter 15 and not elsewhere? The number 15 reduces to 6 (1+5). Man was created on the sixth day. Man, in the person of Machiavelli, becomes the creator in Chapter 15. In fact, 15 is the Gematria for another name of God: Yod Hei. Moreover, this is the only chapter of The Prince in which Machiavelli does not use historical examples to convey his radically new political science![18] In this chapter he comes into his own as a new prince, a new first thing, a creator of new values.

To be sure, Chapter 24 also reduces to 6 (2+4). It ends with the statement: “And only those defenses are good, are certain, are durable, which depend on you yourself and on your virtue” (emphasis added). God has no place in the world of men. This is an appropriate transition to Chapter 25 where, as we saw, Machiavelli equates God with chance. The number 25 reduces, of course, to 7 (2+5). To many, the number 7 signifies luck or chance.   (Interestingly, Chapter 7 deals with Cesare Borgia who obtained power by chance and lost it by chance.) To others the number 7 symbolizes completion or perfection, for it was on the seventh day that God rested from His creation.

Although Machiavelli can be adequately understood without Gematria or numerology, his use of the latter is indicative of the great subtlety and painstaking care with which The Prince and The Discourses were composed. But what is perhaps most significant about his use of numerology is this. By employing numbers and numerical sequences to modulate the communication of his revolutionary thoughts, less room was left to chance. Numerology added spice to his new science of politics and therefore made it more tempting to his unknown “collaborators.”

Continued in Part three