What does abracadabra mean?

Nothing that can be securely established. Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek derivations have all been proposed, and the popular I create as I speak reading is a reconstruction rather than an attested phrase. It belongs to a class of late-antique magical words whose authority came from being untranslatable.

How old is abracadabra?

It is first recorded in the third century CE, in a Latin verse medical work attributed to Serenus Sammonicus, which prescribes it for fever. That makes it about eighteen hundred years old as a written charm.

Why is it written in a triangle?

Sympathetic reasoning. Each line drops a letter until only one remains, so the illness is meant to dwindle as the word does. The same shrinking form is used for several other charm words, which suggests the shape mattered more than the specific word.

Was it actually used for the plague?

It was worn during plague outbreaks, though it was written for malarial fever originally: Sammonicus names hemitritaeos, the semi-tertian fever. Daniel Defoe lists it among the papers Londoners hung round their necks in 1665, alongside crosses, planetary signs and Jesuit marks, and he is scathing about all of them. The medieval and early modern church condemned it as a superstitious survival with Gnostic associations.

Talismans · Signs and seals

Abracadabra

Also called: The fever triangle, abracalan

A word written down as a triangle so that the illness would dwindle the way the letters do.

At a glance

First recorded: 3rd century CE, Serenus Sammonicus
Shape: An inverted triangle, eleven lines
Prescribed for: Hemitritaeos, semi-tertian malarial fever
Worn as: Written on linen, hung at the neck
Removal: Thrown backwards into an east-running stream
Now chiefly: A stage magician's word

The charm

Write ABRACADABRA on the first line. On the next, ABRACADABR. On the next, ABRACADAB. Continue, dropping the final letter each time, until only A remains. Eleven lines, an inverted triangle, and a piece of sympathetic reasoning you can see at a glance: as the word wastes, so does the fever.

The instruction survives in the Liber Medicinalis, also known as De Medicina Praecepta, a verse medical work attributed to Quintus Serenus Sammonicus and dated to the early third century. Sammonicus was a physician and scholar attached to the court of Septimius Severus and Caracalla, which places the charm inside imperial medicine rather than at its margins.

The complaint he prescribes it for is named: hemitritaeos, the semi-tertian fever, a recurring and frequently lethal malarial pattern that was endemic across the Roman world. The patient writes the word on linen, hangs it round the neck with flax thread, wears it nine days, and then before sunrise throws it backwards into a stream running eastward.

Where the word comes from

Nobody knows, and the honest answer is worth stating before the theories.

The most-repeated derivation takes it from Aramaic, along the lines of avra kedavra, I create as I speak, though the phrase is reconstructed rather than attested and the reconstruction has been questioned. A Hebrew reading offers ab, ben, ruach ha-kodesh, father, son and holy spirit. A Greek route points at the Gnostic name Abraxas or Abrasax, which appears constantly on late-antique magical gems and whose letters total 365 in Greek numerals.

What is clear is the environment. The third-century Mediterranean was full of magical words that worked precisely because nobody could parse them, and a syllable string with no meaning was regarded as more likely to be a genuine name of power than a sentence anyone could read.

Its long career

The triangle outlived the Roman fever it was written for. It appears in Anglo-Saxon medical texts, in medieval and early modern recipe books, on amulets, and famously in Daniel Defoe's account of the 1665 London plague, where he lists it among the papers people hung round their necks while the city died around them.

It is also the seed of a whole family of shrinking-word charms. ABRACALAN, ABLANATHANALBA and several nonsense strings are written the same way, in a triangle, for the same reason. The form is arguably more important than the word: any string that can be reduced letter by letter will do the same job in the same logic.

How it became a stage word

The move from amulet to entertainment happened gradually as the charm's medical credibility collapsed and its exotic sound survived. By the nineteenth century abracadabra was already the standard literary shorthand for meaningless incantation, and conjurors adopted it as part of a general theatrical vocabulary borrowed from real magic.

That descent is not unusual. Hocus pocus, sim sala bim and the tarot's own reputation all took the same road from practice to performance. The word people now say to produce a rabbit was, for something like fifteen centuries, what you wrote on linen for a child with a fever.

How the fever triangle was written

Serenus Sammonicus gives the fullest instruction and later recipes mostly copy it.

Write ABRACADABRA across the top line.
Drop the last letter on each following line, giving eleven lines and a triangle narrowing to a single A.
Write it on linen, or on parchment or paper in later versions.
Fold it and hang it round the neck on flax thread.
Wear it for nine days.
Before dawn on the ninth day, throw it backwards over the shoulder into a stream flowing east.

The disposal instruction is the interesting part. Throwing it backwards into running water is the standard Roman way of getting rid of something you do not want to look at again, and it turns the charm into a transfer rather than a cure.

What abracadabra belongs with

The written-charm family and the purpose it served.

Questions for reflection

The charm works by looking like what it wants to happen. Where else do you find that reasoning convincing?
Its power came from nobody being able to translate it. What does that say about how authority is granted to words?
A serious medical prescription became a children's word. Which of today's serious things are on that road?

Frequently asked questions

: Nothing that can be securely established. Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek derivations have all been proposed, and the popular I create as I speak reading is a reconstruction rather than an attested phrase. It belongs to a class of late-antique magical words whose authority came from being untranslatable.
: It is first recorded in the third century CE, in a Latin verse medical work attributed to Serenus Sammonicus, which prescribes it for fever. That makes it about eighteen hundred years old as a written charm.
: Sympathetic reasoning. Each line drops a letter until only one remains, so the illness is meant to dwindle as the word does. The same shrinking form is used for several other charm words, which suggests the shape mattered more than the specific word.
: It was worn during plague outbreaks, though it was written for malarial fever originally: Sammonicus names hemitritaeos, the semi-tertian fever. Daniel Defoe lists it among the papers Londoners hung round their necks in 1665, alongside crosses, planetary signs and Jesuit marks, and he is scathing about all of them. The medieval and early modern church condemned it as a superstitious survival with Gnostic associations.
: By losing its medical credibility while keeping its exotic sound. By the nineteenth century it was literary shorthand for meaningless incantation, and stage conjurors adopted it along with the rest of a vocabulary borrowed from real magical practice.

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Соңғы жазбалар

Таро карталарының ежелгі даналығын ашыңыз және рухани саяхатыңыздың құпияларын ашыңыз. Блогымыз - Таро оқуындағы бай символизмді, мағыналарды және практикалық қолданбаларды түсінудің есігі.