Gabbatha

The magic word Gabbatha was a favorite of legendary magician Theodore Annemann, famed editor of the magic newsletter The Jinx. (Annemann closed a great many of his editorials with the word.) Of Aramaic origin, Gabbatha can be translated as "elevation" (in the New Testament, Gabbatha appears as the name for the raised platform of Pilate's judgment seat) and the word can be spoken as an entreaty to exalt or ennoble oneself (similar to the Latin Excelsior, "ever upward"). Another meaning for the word is "open space," which recalls Ali Baba's cave of wonders—the mythologized feminine principle.