The literal Kabbalah is based on the idea that "every sentence, word and letter [of the Pentateuch- Old Testament in five books] were given by divine inspiration, and that no jot or tittle... must be neglected". With this in mind, Kabbalists have studied the most ancient manuscripts, scouring it superficially, linguistically, formatively and mathematically, in order to bring out of it the deeper meaning of God's word.
There are many ways that Kabbalists have done this, the most notable and easily explainable, are by
Gematria, Notaricon, and Temura. Each of these differs in method, but have the same purpose of finding the divine meaning to the Pentateuch.Other, more obscure methods, which have since become harder to undertake, are based on the 'mistakes' of the original manuscripts. These are not looked upon as mistakes though, but as more complicated and symbolic ways of expressing the information. For example, in some manuscripts, some letters were written larger than others- giving them greater importance and words were misspelled, or spelled in unusual manners. In some cases, 'God' was represented by
a (aleph, A, the first Hebrew letter), i (yod, I, J, Y, the first word of the Tetragrammaton IHVH, Jehovah), shin, Sh- one of the 'mother' letters of the Hebrew alphabet, iiiiiiiiii (ten yods), or any number of other squiggles.Gematria is a method by which the numerical values of the letters of a word or sentence, are added together to form a numerical value for the overall sentence or word. The numerical values of letters can be read from this table:
In Hebrew, some letters have different symbols when they are placed at the termination of a word. These have been represented here by the letter f, although these are not the actual Hebrew letters
Words with the same numerical value are then related to this word. For example, Rabbi Judith Abrams, in regards to Bazak 22 of the Eved Ivri, generates this meaning-
Ekhod (the concept of one) + Ahvah (love) = Jehovah (God)
, A=1 Ch=8 D=4 = 13 
, A=1 H=5 B=2 H=5 =13 
, I=10 H=5 V=6 H=5, =26
So God is both oneness, and love.
This, of course, stretches far beyond the Pentateuch, and can be used to understand the meanings and connections of Hebrew words used today.
Notaricon is a Latin word, and means abbreviation, and this is exactly the method described. It can be used in two forms, by taking the initial or final letters of a sentence to form a word, or forming a sentence from a word by making the letters of the word the initial or final letters of the word. Some examples are thus-
MI IOLH LNV HShMILH "Who shall go up to Heaven?" Deut. 30:12.
MILH "Circumcision"
IHVH "God"
So circumcision was linked with the ability to ascend to heaven.
ADNI MLCh NMN "The lord and faithful king"
AMN "Amen"
AThH GBUR LYLM ADNI "The Lord ever powerful"
AGLA - A Kabbalistic word of power.
Temura is a method by which letters are transposed according to a system of rules. With this method, there are too numerous systems to mention, so only one shall be explored here. Temura is actually a Hebrew word meaning permutations, which gives light to the many methods by which results can be arrived. This is only one way, and seems to be the most sensical.
Using the table below, letters of a word are replaced with the corresponding letters from the other side of the table, so aleph with tau, and chaph with lamed. Note that the letters are written right to left (as in Hebrew) and then left to right below them.
in Hebrew) using Temura equates to
, or Babel, Babylon. In fact, in many of the Bibles today, the word Sheshakh has been replaced with the word Babylon.