Abracadabra is amagic word, historically used as anapotropaicincantation onamulets and common today instage magic. The actual origin is unknown, but one of the first appearances of the word was in a second-century work by Roman physicianSerenus Sammonicus.[1]
Abracadabra is of unknown origin, and is first attested in a second-century work of Serenus Sammonicus relating to a cure for a fever.[2]
Some conjectural etymologies are:[3] from a phrase inAramaic that means "I create like the word" (אברא כדברא),[4][5] to etymologies that point to similar words in Latin and Greek such asabraxas[6] or to its similarity to the first four letters of the Greek alphabet (alpha-beta-gamma-delta or ΑΒΓΔ).[7] However, according to theOxford English Dictionary, "no documentation has been found to support any of the various conjectures".[6]
The historian Don Skemer suggests that it might originate from the Hebrew phraseha brachah dabarah (name of the blessed), said to be a magical phrase.[8]
The Aramaic linguist Steve Caruso argues thatAbracadabra can neither be Aramaic nor Hebrew, and suggests that the popularisation of the mistaken etymology is a result of an extended discussion on an early internet message board, which credits rabbiLawrence Kushner with publishing a modern etymology.[9][10]
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The first known mention of the word was in the second century AD in a book calledLiber Medicinalis (sometimes known asDe Medicina Praecepta Saluberrima) bySerenus Sammonicus,[11]physician to theRoman emperorCaracalla, who in chapter 52 prescribed thatmalaria sufferers wear an amulet containingAbracadabra written in the form of a triangle.[12][13]
The power of the amulet, he claimed, makes lethal diseases go away. Other Roman emperors, includingGeta andSeverus Alexander, were followers of the medical teachings of Serenus Sammonicus and may have used the incantation as well.[11]
It was used as amagical formula by theGnostics of thesect of Basilides in invoking the aid of beneficent spirits against disease and misfortune.[14] It is found onAbraxas stones, which were worn as amulets. Subsequently, its use spread beyond the Gnostics.
To use it, when a person was sick and unhealthy they would wear an amulet around their neck that was made up of a piece of parchment inscribed with a triangular formula derived from this. It was believed that when it was written out this way that it acted like a funnel and drove the sickness out of the body.[15]
A Jewish codex from 16th centuryItaly titledEts ha-Da’at (The Tree of Knowledge) and described as a collection of magical spells contains the wordAbracadabra, referring to an amulet. It was described as a "cure from heavens" for "all sorts of fever[s]", consumption, and fire.[16][17]
The Puritan ministerIncrease Mather dismissed the word as bereft of power.Daniel Defoe wrote dismissively about Londoners who posted the word on their doorways to ward off sickness during theGreat Plague of London.[18]
In the early 1800s, the word was used as an example of what magicians would say.[19]Abracadabra is now more commonly used in the performance of stage magic as amagic word at the culmination of a trick.[20]
Aleister Crowley adapted the wordAbracadabra into the wordAbrahadabra inThe Book of the Law, the central sacred text ofThelema.[21][22]
Medieval historian Don Skemer, a specialist in magic and former curator of manuscripts at Princeton University, suggests abracadabra could derive from the Hebrew phrase "ha brachah dabarah," which means "name of the blessed" and was regarded as a magical name.
A 16th century Jewish manuscript from Italy records a version of the abracadabra spell for an amulet to prevent fever
But the word seems to have lost its usefulness as a remedy, and in the early 1800s it appeared in a stage play written by William Thomas Moncrieff, as an example of a word magicians would utter. Its only notable reference in the 20th century may be in the Thelema religion founded in the early 1900s by Aleister Crowley. The occultist often used the word "abrahadabra" in his 1904 Liber Al Vel Legis ("Book of the Law,") saying it was the name of a new age of humanity; and he claimed to have derived it from the numerology system known as Hermetic Qabalah, which induced him to swap out the C of abracadabra for an H.
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