According to Margaret Starbird’s book, Magdalene’s Lost Legacy: Symbolic Numbers and the Sacred Union in Christianity, in Greek gematria, the sum of the letters in Mariam is 192. This number represents the epitome of four—actually 3 × 4^3. That is significant, for as we have seen, four is the number of Earth, as is reflected in such phrases as “the four corners of the earth” and “the four winds,” and 444 was identified with “flesh and blood”—all the living creatures of the earth, but especially human beings. As we have seen, common expressions like “the four elements,” the “four seasons,” and “four directions” also reflect this concept of four related to physical matter and “mother” earth. In several languages the name of Mary is associated with mother, matter, and material, all of which are related to the Sanskrit matr (Latin: mater, matron; Greek: matrix). In Latin, maritare is “to wed,” a word whose derivations appear in Romance languages and in the English “marry.”

The shape Plato associates with the element earth is the cube, and even (as opposed to odd) integers were considered feminine in the ancient world. Three times the cube of four, that is, 3 × 43 or 3(4 × 4 × 4), equals 192, the gematria of “Mariam.” Because of the associations of the number four with the feminine, “matter,” and “flesh and blood,” the gematria of Mariam reflects the concept of “mother,” and thus all the Mariams in the Gospel story share in this meaning. The name “Mariam” when it appears in the Greek texts of the Gospels with the final letter m thus bears universal connotations of the feminine “container”—the flesh-and-blood vessel or womb of the Mother—through the computation of its gematria.

According to Margaret Starbird’s book, Magdalene’s Lost Legacy: Symbolic Numbers and the Sacred Union in Christianity, Mary Magdalene was the true feminine counterpart of Jesus in their “sacred marriage” of opposite energies. Evidence of her equal status is shown through the popular ancient practice of gematria or assigning numbers to letters. Mary’s epithet was given the number 153: a representation of the archetypal sacred feminine and the vesica pisces (). The vesica pisces in sacred geometry is also known as the the womb or matrix of all other geometric forms. This highly significant symbol is shaped like an almond, egg, or seed and was also associated with the sacred feminine in the ancient world.

Astute readers of John’s Gospel will recognize the number 153 as the number of fishes the disciples caught in the net at Jesus’ redirection. Many believe this “multitude of fishes” to be another symbolic reference to the vesica pisces and its generative or manifestation potential.