Posts Tagged ‘epithet’

Shemhamphorasch

Apr
5

The Shemhamphorasch (a corruption of Hebrew שם המפורש Shem ha-Mephorash) is an epithet for a 216-letter name of a God derived by medieval kabbalists from the Book of Exodus, by reading the letters of three verses in a specific order. The name is composed of 72 groups of three letters, each of these triplets being the name of an angel or intelligence.

In speech and writing the term Shemhamphorasch is normally substituted for the actual 72-letter name for brevity, and, as with the epithet Tetragrammaton, to avoid desecrating the actual name.

Spelling variants include Shemhamforash, Shemhamphorae, Shemhamphorash, Shemahamphorasch, Shemhamphoresh, Shem ha-Mephoresh, Shem ha-Mephorash, Shemhamphoresch.