Reduce each letter to a single digit before adding (400 → 4, 300 → 3), or reduce the finished total; the two routes agree often but not always. בראשית: 2+2+1+3+1+4 = 13 → 4, and the full 913 → 9+1+3 = 13 → 4.
Meaning
The small value is a word's signature rather than its weight: it collapses any word into one of nine digits, which is what makes comparison across a whole lexicon possible and what later Western numerology borrowed from the Kabbalists. The digit is then read against the sephiroth, so that 1 is Kether and 9 Yesod — a mapping the handlists use freely and the Zohar does not set out.