Abracadabra

"Abra-abracadabra
I wanna reach out and grab ya"

That damn song by the Steve Miller Band. An earworm that started immediately I saw the word for this week’s blog. In all sorts of ways, how did they get away with lyrics like that? It almost turned into a brainworm, if there is such a word, when I started to look up the origins of the song and how Eminem got involved in 2024.

But I went for a cup of tea and when I got back it was to the second century CE and the first known mention of the word in a book called Liber Medicinalis (sometimes known as De Medicina Praecepta Saluberrima) by Serenus Sammonicus, physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla, who in chapter 52 prescribed that malaria sufferers wear an amulet containing Abracadabra written in the form of a triangle that acted like a funnel and drove the sickness out of the body.

It’s considered unlikely that Sammonicus came up with the word himself and it could be from a phrase in Aramaic that means "I create like the word". The historian Don Skemer suggests that it might originate from the Hebrew phrase ha brachah dabarah (name of the blessed), said to be a magical phrase. There are quite a few other theories as to the word’s origin however, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘no documentation has been found to support any of the various conjectures’.

Abracadabra was still used as a cure into the 18th century, for there is a book by Daniel Defoe entitled 'Journal of the Plague Year', which lamented the use of such charms:

People deceiv’d; and this was in wearing Charms, Philters, Exorcisms, Amulets, and I know not what Preparations, to fortify the Body with them against the Plague; as if the Plague was but a kind of a Possession of an evil Spirit; and that it was to be kept off with Crossings, Signs of the Zodiac, Papers tied up with so many Knots; and certain Words, or Figures written on them, as particularly the Word Abracadabra, form’d in Triangle, or Pyramid…

And nowadays, or at least from the early 19th century, the word has been used by magicians of the show business type. The exact origins are unclear, but the use of the word Abracadabra likely started in the early 1800s. Some early references point to the first theatrical usage in a performance in 1812 in Rochester, NY, by dramatist and author William Thomas Moncrieff. This was a stage play written by Moncrieff, where the word was used as an example of a word magicians would utter.

Apparently magicians misdirect audience attention in two basic ways. One leads the audience to look away for a fleeting moment, so that they don't detect some sleight or move.

The other approach re-frames the audience's perception, distracting them into thinking that an extraneous factor has much to do with the accomplishment of the feat when it really has no bearing on the effect at all. Such as shouting Abracadabra at a crucial moment in the trick.

I’ve been to quite a few magic performances over the years and it seems to me that the use of such words as abracadabra have died away. Contemporary professional magicians consider the word too cheesy or clichéd for serious performances. When the word does appear today, it is typically reserved for children's entertainment, self-aware comedy, or pop-culture references rather than serious modern magic acts.

I told my friend
that I was writing a poem
just for her
she asked what it was called
I said

ABRACADABRA

and she disappeared

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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