Torah Codes Tutorial

In this tutorial, we explain what Torah codes are and what they are not. We begin with some basic definitions, the first being for Equidistant Letter Sequence, or ELS for short.

Equidistant Letter Sequences (ELS)

An ELS is a sequence of letters of the text formed by starting with the letter of the first position of the ELS and then skipping the same number of text letters between successive letters of the ELS. The number of letters skipped between successive letters of the ELS is called the skip of the ELS.

To illustrate this, consider the following sentence.

This is the form we use for finding codes and I added letters precisely placed to form a longer example.

Put all letters to upper case, take away the spaces and punction

THISISTHEFORMWEUSEFORFINDINGCODESANDIADDEDLETTERSPRECISELYPLACEDTOFORMALONGEREXAMPLE

Now, start from the F of F ORM, count 10 letters to the O of FOR, count 10 letters to the O of CODES, and count 10 letters to the second D of ADDED to find the skip 10 ELS FOOD

THISISTHEFORMWEUSEFORFINDINGCODESANDIADDEDLETTERSPRECISELYPLACEDTOFORMALONGEREXAMPLE

The Code Cylinder

Next we spiral this string of characters around a cylinder of given size. This cylinder is called the code cylinder.

For our example sentence, we choose a cylinder size of 10 characters. We display the cylinder by cutting the cylinder vertically, opening it up and forming a flat sheet from it. We can then display the result as a table.

THISISTHEF
ORMWEUSEFO
RFINDINGCO
DESANDIADD
EDLETTERSP
RECISELYPL
ACEDTOFORM
ALONGEREXA
MPLEAAAAAA

In this table look at the characters vertically instead of horizontally and see if you can see some additional ELSs. There are ELSs of the key words: order and the name Gary occurring vertically.

THISISTHEF AAAAAA THISISTHEF
ORMWEUSEFO AAAAAA ORMWEUSEFO
RFINDINGCO AAAAAA RFINDINGCO
DESANDIADD AAAAAA DESANDIADD
EDLETTERSP AAAAAA EDLETTERSP
RECISELYPL AAAAAA RECISELYPL
ACEDTOFORM AAAAAA ACEDTOFORM
ALONGEREXA AAAAAA ALONGEREXA
MPLEAAAAAA AAAAAA MPLEAAAAAA

ELSs do not constitute a Torah code and a table containing these three ELSs does not qualify as a code table.

ELS Geometry

Website content by: Professor Robert M. Haralick