The first mention of Abracadabra

The first mention of the famous charm Abracadabra, which so often appears engraved on Gnostic gems, occurs in a Latin medical poem written by Serenus Sammonicus who lived in the third century and is said to have bequeathed his library consisting of sixty-two thousand volumes to the Emperor Gordian the Younger.

The poem recommends this mystic word, or name, as a sovereign remedy for the “demitertian” fever, if it were written on a piece of paper and suspended by a linen thread from the neck of the patient.

To have its full efficacy the word should be written as many times as there are letters in it, but taking away one letter each time, so that the inscription assumed the form of an inverted cone.

It is interesting to note that De Foe, writing in the seventeenth century of the Great Plague in London (1665), alludes to this strange talisman as still in use.

Treating of the curious prophylactics employed at that time, he reproaches those who employed such methods, and acted “as if the plague was not the hand of God, but a kind of 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, as particularly the word Abracadabra formed in triangle or pyramid, thus:

A B R A C A D A B R A

A B R A C A D A B R

A B R A C A D A B

A B R A C A D A

A B R A C A D

A B R A C A

A B R A C

A B R A

A B R

A B

A

George Frederick Kunz, The magic of jewels and charms, J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1915.

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