I get asked periodically "why abrahadabra" as opposing "abracadabra" and there seems no alternative in cases like this to invoking the ghost of Aleister Crowley who really is the person most responsible for having made this distinction in modern times. Abrahadabra does not ultimately originate with Aleister Crowley, nor from Liber Al vel Legis (Book of the Law) but comes down to us from an obscure reference by one Quintus Severus Sammonicus in the 2nd century A.D. alluding to its talismatic applications as a healing amulet presumably used by the Gnostics. Its actual origins is quite unknown and there are several lines of speculation as to its real meaning, though it is clear that it was at some point picked up by the Hermetic Qabbalists of Medieval Europe and exalted as a magickal word of power. One of the more promising theories regarding its origins is that it may link to the Aramic phrase "abhadda kedhabhra", translated as "disappear like this word", again employed as a spell against disease and illness.
For his part, Aleister Crowley had his own reasons for using the spelling Abrahadabra, in part because the numeration it afforded struck him as better suited to the upcoming "Aeon of Horus". But somewhere in his work he also makes the argument that the word was mistranslated to begin with...that it never should have been spelled Abracadabra at all. Unfortunately I have long since lost track of where exactly he makes this claim and since I have never seen the original word itself nor know anything about how it was actually translated, I cannot attest to the accuracy of this assertion first hand. Like many people, I accepted the updated spelling without much question, primarily because I liked the sound of it better and also because it struck me as a reasonable distinction between stage magic and real magick applications.
Initially the numerological aspects of the word never really meant that much to me personally. That it should add to 418 by a popular system of Hebrew numerology called Aiq Bkr was a curiosity at best and did not have the same impact on me that it did on Aleister Crowley. In truth, I never considered 418 to be an especially remarkable number at all since there are very few numbers that divide into it evenly, yet it is not prime and has no other outstanding qualities I am especially aware of. Crowley had at one point made a big to-do over the fact that it was the result of 22 x 19 wherein 22 was the number of paths on the Tree of Life and 19 was the so-called "number of manifestation". Even this struck me as a skewed logic since there was never any reason given why 19 should be held in such esteem and I was never able to sort it out otherwise. Atu XIX in the Book of Thoth is the Sun Card, but this is hardly ample justification for assigning 19 a status equal to the 22 paths of the Tree of Life itself in my view. Like the word itself, I more or less just accepted its number as an integral part of its property and left it at that. From the very beginning I was more interested in the words' geometry than in its numerology anyway.
Quite a few years later a very peculiar coincidence occured that you will be able to verify for yourselves, once you have all the vital bits and pieces. Most of my work on Abrahadabra had centered upon cross-referencing its known properties with the known properties of other systems such as the Qabbalistic Tree of Life, the I Ching from ancient China, the Pythagorean Tetractys of the Decad and others. Through the study of magickal squares, I had extrapolated a cerain symbol from Abrahadabra that I had come to call the TwinStar. I will delve into its properties more fully at other places but it principally consists of condensing Abrahadabra to the Tetractys itself and then numerating the points along the Tetractys so that they follow the rules of magickal squares insofar as this may be possible when converting squares to triangles. The result of running this count in two directions and then tracing the lines of force which they create gives you the TwinStar symbol, which is a very powerful meditation symbol capable of many kinds of dynamic applications. For some reason it had never occured to me to actually count the "paths" this symbol yields, much as you would count the paths in the Tree of Life. When I finally did count the paths I was truly floored to discover that they numbered exactly 19...the same number as the so-called "number of manifestation".
What this means to me today is that I have my own reasons for accepting that Abrahadabra may in fact be the best possible spelling of this ancient healing word of power and a very good way of distinguishing it from the more childish "Abracadabra" (which is still a fun word in itself). It also means that I have my own reasons for accepting the fact that the number 418 may be a vitally important number afterall as indicating a synchronistic and/or synergistic relationship between the paths of The Tree of Life (22) and the paths of the TwinStar (19). Abrahadabra is typically referred to as the "Word of the Aeon" which I have found laughable in the past because it is an unwitting pun that very few Thelemites are aware of. Abrahadabra has been identified with Abrasax (also Abraxas) who is also considered synonymous with Aeon, both stemming from ancient Gnosticism. Therefor Abrahadabra is not really "the word of the aeon" at all, but more correctly, "the word of Aeon" proper, incidentally linking Ra Hoor Khut to Aeon in a reasonably unmistakeable sort of way. So I have been quietly amused by this and spoken to no one of it really, since it often seems to me that people will discover what they need to discover when the time is right and not before. But now I have some reason to suspect that both things might in fact be true, because I am keenly aware of what a powerful model Abrahadabra has turned out to be and how likely it really is that it may take us a very long time to fully harness its whole potential...perhaps as long as an entire aeon...
Perseverance Furthers
m1thr0s
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