Spellcrafting: Spells & Rituals

Abracadabra

Merry meet!

Abracadabra has become known as a word used by stage magicians when performing a trick. In that context it has no real meaning. But long, long ago, it was a mystical word with great healing power.

Some say it comes from Aramaic phrase avra kadavra, meaning“it will be created with my words” or “I will create as I speak.” Another theory is it comes from the Hebrew words Av Ben and Ruach meaning Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

“The oldest mention of the word abracadabra is found in the work De Medicina Praecepta Saluberrima written by Quintus Serenus in the second century,” according to grammarist.com. In it, Serenus instructed the incantation be written on parchment as an inverted pyramid, and that it be worn as an amulet around the neck to prevent disease.

For it to have power, it must be written in the form of an inverted pyramid – or some say an inverted triangle. Each line drops the last letter of the line before. Like this:

ABRACADABRA
ABRACADABR
ABRACADAB
ABRACADA
ABRACAD
ABRACA
ABRAC
ABRA
ABR
AB
A

Or like this:

ABRACADABRA
ABRACADABR
ABRACADAB
ABRACADA
ABRACAD
ABRACA
ABRAC
ABRA
ABR
AB
A

The spell still works today.

Some sources say wearing the charm around your finger or neck for nine days will result in cleansing and healing powers. The dis-ease will recede just as the letters in the word disappeared as you wrote them. Afterwords, the paper was to be thrown into water. Another source instructs you to hold the paper to the part of your body that is afflicted for a few minutes and then to place the paper in the split of a tree, exposed to the elements; that way as the paper with the word fades and dissolves, so will the pain or malady.

In her book, The Modern Witchcraft Spell Book: Your Complete Guide to Crafting and Casting Spells, Skye Alexander calls for burning a blue candle while writing out the spell.

A Sicilian witch I know calls the Abracadabra spell her “get rid of anything” spell, using it for bills, energy vampires and more.

“Manifest the light” is how Clairaudient Spirit Fairie defines Abrahadabra in her YouTube video. She says that whatever you ask for before you say Abrahadabra – not Abracadabra – begins to manifest.

“Abrahadabra is the energy of movement, action, surprise, authority and victory,” she states.

Merry part. And merry meet again.

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About the Author:

Lynn Woike was 50 – divorced and living on her own for the first time – before she consciously began practicing as a self taught solitary witch. She draws on an eclectic mix of old ways she has studied – from her Sicilian and Germanic heritage to Zen and astrology, the fae, Buddhism, Celtic, the Kabbalah, Norse and Native American – pulling from each as she is guided. She practices yoga, reads Tarot and uses Reiki. From the time she was little, she has loved stories, making her job as the editor of two monthly newspapers seem less than the work it is because of the stories she gets to tell. She lives with her large white cat, Pyewacket, in central Connecticut. You can follow her boards on Pinterest, and write to her at woikelynn at gmail dot com.