Abracadabra

(See also our earlier post about abracadabra.)

A Cosmic Abracadabra

“A flawless sapphire, star-bright, a cosmic abracadabra...” —Lisa Rosenblatt

An Abracadabra Talisman followup

Our magician friend and home-hacking expert Gordon shares a lovely photo response to our previous post about the abracadabra talisman. Our favorite detail in the photo is the ironic "Do Not Duplicate" message on the key next to the talisman. By the way, Gordon inspired and co-authored our latest book on magic, JINX Companion.

An Abracadabra Talisman

This Wills's cigarette card from the 1920's shows an abracadabra talisman. It's number 13 of a series on lucky charms.

A Substitute for Abracadabra

We reveal a substitute for "abracadabra," worthy of fairy tales, in our outpost at Twitter.

Chimay (Instead of Abracadabra)

In the delightful Swedish short film Istället för abrakadabra ("Instead of Abracadabra"), by Patrik Eklund, the alternative magic word is chimay. The film is available in HD via iTunes.

(Thanks, Gordon!)

The Fairy Origin of Abracadabra

Our article tracing the magic word abracadabra back to fairy origins is now available for free reading over at Witches & Pagans.

Abracadabra

(Photo by SFDenverLV)

A Left-Handed Magic Word

Magician and tech wizard Gordon Meyer shares the fact that abracadabra is "one of the few 'one-handed passwords' that technologists such as myself collect. That is, it can be typed entirely with the left hand on a qwerty keyboard."

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Speaking of abracadabra, don't miss our article "The Abracadabra of Faery" in the Aug. 2009 issue of Witches & Pagans magazine. Here's the introduction:

Delving through dusty old tomes in search of ancient expressions of enchantment, I noticed that one command in particular seemed to trace directly back to Faery. I was searching for subtle, mysterious, transformative words, whose vibrations seemed to transcend the laws of physics. One such mystical word proved time and time again to be the name of a great lady Faery. Small wonder that her name has endured as the best-known and best-loved magic word in recorded history.

Her name is that spine-tingling thing that gives you goose bumps. It’s the instant of a wish coming true. It’s opening your eyes and seeing that the workaday world has transformed into something holy. It’s that moment of clarity when everything suddenly “clicks,” and you see that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. These clicks and ticks can trigger a resounding chime, signaling the fullness of time. And yet it is that very same chime of the clock that can disintegrate a dream. Energy builds and builds to a breaking point. Then it diminishes. This is the cosmic process of creation and destruction, of waxing and waning, reflected by great Faery name Abracadabra. The Lady Abracadabra’s name is pure dazzle, and it has never lost its spark over the centuries. Nor has it lost connection to its Faery roots, even in “generic” form — in 1933, Neil Bell referred to “an invocation as remote from reality as the abracadabra of faery.”

Cadabra

[He talked] such a curious, gentle, primeval cadabra that it drew her toward some violent unknown whirlpool and made her hum and shake.
—Barbara Trapido, Temples of Delight (1990)

Cadabra is that flash when your mind is blown, like a hit of a powerful drug—“Sniff, cadabra,” as novelist Rachel Timms puts it. The word has an aura of necromancy to it, with its similarity to cadaver. It has all the impact of the longer word abracadabra, but without any dilly-dallying—it goes straight for the punch.

Scholar William Isaacs explains that cadabra can be broken up into two root words: “Ca translates to ‘as.’ Dabra is the first person of the verb daber, ‘to speak’” (Dialogue: The Art Of Thinking Together, 1999). So cadabra means “as I speak,” equivalent to “upon my command."

Ahbahrahkahdevarahhanevee

The first part of this Kabbalistic phrase recalls the syllables of "abracadabra." Ahbahrahkahdevarahhanevee "is a phrase that declares to the All, including the spiritual hierarchies and elementals, that the identity of the speaker, the words or acts that follow, or the very life of the speaker subsequent to the utterance, is not of the mundane, but wholly dedicated to the 'Great Work,' to use a common phrase of western magical tradition" (Jerry Blair, The Tree of the Nevee, 2002).

One Word: That's Magic

Professional magician John W. LeBlanc notes that there are “untold numbers of anecdotes told by professional performers who found that just changing one, single word made an enormous difference in the response of the audience to a performance piece. One word. That’s magic.”

As in the fables of old, “It’s in the words that the magic is—‘Abracadabra,’ ‘Open Sesame,’ and the rest—but the magic words in one story aren’t magical in the next. It seems . . . that the real magic is to understand which words work, and when, and for what” (John Barth, The Tidewater Tales, 1987).

Abracadabra

There are profound truths in that old cliché of a magician pulling a rabbit out of an empty hat with the magic word abracadabra. Almost everyone recognizes the image. But what relatively few people know is that our stereotypical magician is speaking an ancient Hebrew phrase that means “I will create with words.”[1] He is making something out of nothing, echoing that famous line from Genesis: “Let there be light, and there was light.” Only in this case, the magician’s venue being already equipped with light, the magic is applied toward the creation of rabbits—and perhaps a sensational flash of supplementary illumination, in the form of fire.

The magic word, whether it be abracadabra or another at the magician’s disposal, resonates with the audience because there is an instinctive understanding that words are powerful, creative forces. “The word has always held an ancient enchantment for humans,” says scholar Ted Andrews. “It hints of journeys into unseen and unmapped domains.”[2] No wonder it has been said that “all magic is in a word.”[3]

[1] David Aaron, Endless Light: The Ancient Path of Kabbalah (1998)
[2] Simplified Qabala Magic (2003)
[3] Alphonse Louis Constant (Eliphas Levi), The Key of the Mysteries (1861)