Quackery with a University Logo: How Bizarre Numerology Offers a Surprisingly Accurate Glimpse of Contemporatory Georgia
While the Georgian Dream systematically dismantles the country’s leading universities, it greenlights degrees in “Astrolinguistics” at Bidzina Ivanishvili’s flagship Kutaisi International University.
by Konstantine Kintsurashvili
As the Georgian Dream-led government continues to hollow out Georgia’s leading universities, it has greenlit two pseudoscientific undergraduate programs at its flagship Kutaisi International University (KIU). Under a government decree, KIU is set to offer bachelor’s degrees in Astrolinguistics–Astroarchaeology and The History of Iberia for the 2026–27 academic year. KIU, a prestige project of Bidzina Ivanishvili whose Cartu Foundation is reportedly set to invest 1 billion euros in the university’s development, boasts of international cooperation with the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and presents itself as an “international center of education, science and technology in Georgia.” Instead, KIU is directing its campus toward academic quackery. A closer look at these two programs leaves little doubt that the promotion of pseudoscience at KIU has the tacit blessing of the university’s billionaire patron.
KIU has published no information about either new program on its website or social media, and it did not respond to my request for program descriptions or syllabi. Yet, a quick Google search for the term “astrolinguistics” turns up a book with the same title by a certain Aliko Tsintsadze, a Doctor of Technical Sciences and head of the NGO “Hematric Heritage of Iberia.” Tsintsadze is also affiliated with the Iberian Cultural Heritage Research Center (ICHRC), headquartered at, you guessed it, Kutaisi International University. The center’s website states that it was established on the initiative of the Government of Georgia.
The ICHRC was inaugurated in October 2025 with much fanfare. KIU’s acting rector, Paata Turava, a German-educated law professor, delivered a ceremonial address at the launch, which was widely covered by pro-government propaganda outlets Imedi, Rustavi 2 and PosTV. In comments to the media, Turava said the center matters because it “introduces interdisciplinary approaches in the humanities,” and “deploys mathematical and computer science methods in its research.”
Taken at face value, all these events sound unobjectionable. Digital humanities is a serious field that uses quantitative tools for data collection and analysis, and Georgia’s particular history is certainly worth studying. The problem is that what Dr. Tsintsadze promotes is not scholarship, but quackery, and it is being legitimized through a public university platform. A question that begs for an answer is why key people behind KIU, including Dr. Turava or the university’s honorary president, Dr. Wolfgang A. Herrmann, tolerate compromising basic principles of rationality. It also comes at a time when all other areas of academia are under direct assault by the authorities.
Aliko Tsintsadze is a self-professed specialist of “Iberian hematria.” Hematria, or more properly, gematria, is a medieval numerological game that claims one can “decode” hidden meanings in texts by assigning letters numerical values. Rooted in Jewish religious traditions and later Kabbalistic interpretations, gematria rests on the idea that assigning numerical values to letters could unveil some esoteric truth about our human condition and society embedded within any text.
Tsintsadze’s website claims that he “was the first in world scholarship to demonstrate that archeoastronomical data and linguistic structure are two different manifestations of the same body of knowledge.” There is, to put it politely, no scientific evidence that such methods reveal anything beyond the interpreter’s imagination. Only Ivanishvili’s direct endorsement explains that Tsintsadze’s venture could have found a home at KIU.
Tsintsadze applies his numerological tricks to various Georgian-language texts, including Rustaveli’s epic poem Knight in the Panther’s Skin. With these explorations, he claims to have discovered a uniquely “Georgian” Kabbalah and gematria, and to have uncovered a “hidden history of the Iberians” encoded in the Georgian language. In other writings, Tsintsadze embraces familiar conspiracies on globalization, the Club of Rome, and the so-called Golden Billion – themes wildly popular in Russia, and even espoused by no less than Vladimir Putin himself.
The Egyptian solar calendar? It could not have been the Egyptians, it was brought by the “people of Aryan (Hurrian-Urartian) origin, whose descendants - the Tsova-Tush - [who] still inhabit the mountainous regions of Georgia.” And it goes on, pulling all sorts of nationalistic affirmation into its convolutions.
To make this package of nonsense ideas sound believable, Tsintsadze name-drops terms such as “cryptography,” “artificial intelligence,” “number theory” and “cybernetics,” and declares the result a new science: “astrolinguistics.” He claims this “discipline” is grounded in an “astro-archaeological tradition” associated with Joseph Norman Lockyer (1836-1920) and in “Chaldean astro-ideas” attributed to Fritz Hommel (1854-1936). None of these scientists have made such claims. (The website also inaccurately cites Hommel as “Franz”.) The story then escalates: “astrolinguistics,” he says, reveals parameters of celestial objects allegedly discovered by ancient Iberian priests, who first coded this astronomical knowledge into the Georgian language, and then into Egyptian pyramids, Mesopotamian ziggurats, and Western European Christian churches.
This urge to “uncover” sacred meaning in Georgia’s past is not unique to Tsintsadze. Since late Soviet times, pseudo-scholarly fantasies, often laced with ethno-chauvinism, theosophy, and outright conspiracy, have circulated widely among parts of Georgia’s literati. Regrettably, some were even amplified by pro-independence leaders, who blended politics with messianic claims about Georgia’s spiritual mission. A key reference point is the tenth-century mystical hymn “Praise and Exaltation of the Georgian Language,” attributed to the monk Ioane Zosime, who lived largely in the Mar Saba monastery near Jerusalem. Arguably shaped by the political theology of the Byzantine world that strived to elevate the status of non-Greek languages in Eastern Christendom, the hymn compares the Georgian language to biblical Lazarus, praising its mystical qualities. In the 1980s, nationalist thinkers, including Zviad Gamsakhurdia, used its symbolism to argue that Georgia had a unique destiny. Even today, the hymn remains a touchstone for those who frame Georgian history in quasi-messianic terms.
Not surprisingly, Praise and Exaltation captivated Mr. Tsintsadze. He has devoted several books to “deciphering” its supposed hidden meanings, culminating in his self-styled magnum titled Astrolinguistics. For anyone curious to get into Tsintsadze’s warped mind, Astrolinguistics is available for purchase, for a steep GEL 150 price tag.
This is where Bidzina Ivanishvili enters Tsintsadze’s story. In June 2024, he purchased Ioane Zosime’s manuscript of Praise from Christie’s and donated it to the National Museum of Georgia, where it is exhibited as of now. Pro-government media turned this into a celebratory media circus, eager to cite Tsintsadze on the importance of Ivanishvili’s generous donation. Then, at the launch of the Iberian Cultural Heritage Research Center at KIU, Aliko Tsintsadze publicly thanked Ivanishvili and his family for their generous support in the opening of the ICHRC.
Ivanishvili has never been shy about indulging in beliefs that are not exactly in the present mainstream. In a recent public interview, he leaned heavily into various conspiratorial tropes; in the past, he has praised a rather dubious group of psychoanalysts. Back in 2011, before the Georgian Dream came to power, a close associate was detained while transporting “healing stones” intended for Ivanishvili’s daughter. His eccentric project of uprooting and relocating centuries-old trees to stock a seaside dendrological park in Shekvetili has generated its own folklore, and – conspiracies.
Against that backdrop, it is hardly surprising that Tsintsadze-style pseudoscience has found an institutional home at KIU, a university built wholly on Ivanishvili’s patronage. Remarkably, KIU is the only university in Georgia whose programs are legally exempt from standard vetting under a 2022 amendment to the Law on Educational Quality Improvement. Normally, all degree programs must be accredited by the National Center for Educational Quality Enhancement (NEQE), a painstaking process that involves months of paperwork, interviews, and reviews by international experts. Those exceptions reflect the political will at the very top to suspend any accountability when it comes to Ivanishvili’s private projects.
Pseudoscience, in the form of state-sanctioned credentials, is waved through, while the Georgian Dream government presses ahead with destructive “reform” of the country’s higher education—a move that Dr. Tsintsadze himself is a vocal supporter. Public universities have been forced to slash student quotas, with hundreds of programs fully eliminated. Ilia State University, one of the country’s strongest research institutions and a consistent leader among Georgian universities in the Times Higher Education league table will be capped at 300 students, a limit that threatens mass layoffs. The International School of Economics (ISET), home to Georgia’s best undergraduate economics program, is slated to admit 40 percent fewer students. Tbilisi State University is expected to lose its long-standing medical program, while many regional universities will be left with a narrow menu: tourism, pedagogy, and veterinary sciences.
Yet at the same time, the Georgian Dream government is enabling new, officially recognized degrees built on numerology that is both too absurd and too simplistic even for a Dan Brown-style airport novel. This is quackery with a university logo. If this reform were truly about quality and modernization, KIU would face the same transparency and scrutiny as every other institution: published syllabi, clear learning outcomes, and rigorous accreditation without legal carve-outs. Until that happens, the message is unmistakable: serious higher education can be subjugated for political reasons, but quackery is protected and even celebrated, as such worldviews resonate with the thinking of the country’s most powerful and least accountable individual.
Really enjoyed this piece, many thanks
another online comment points out that KIU more generally sidesteps the authorization and accreditation process -- and thereby also saves money, that other universities have to pay to the authorities. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CLUp5rasZ/