A • Talisman "The next morning a sorcerer's talisman in the form of a small, oddly shaped shell filled with evil smelling ashes and bound with dried sinews was found tied to his door. Well aware that the eyes of the entire village were watching his every action, he took the token and with a great show of contempt tied it to the tail of a large hog. All that day the swine snouted and grubbed for food in the usual noisy way of such an animal, quite unaware of the abracadabra at its rump but in the evening it died." -- John Farrow, Damien the Leper (1954) • Transform "You belong in any position or career that allows you to sort out the jigsaw pieces of problems, then abracadabra them into brilliant solutions -- and permits you to play marbles with jelly beans on your lunch break." -- Linda Goodman, Linda Goodman's Star Signs (1987) • Unity, totality "All is one! Life is a unity! Abracadabra!" -- Bruce Duffy, The World As I Found It (1987) Origins: "It sounds like we need some kind of ancient word of wisdom?" "Abracadabra?" Teabing ventured, his eyes twinkling. -- Dan Brown, The DaVinci Code (200 ) Because abracadabra has been adopted in so many languages without transla tion, there is speculation that it predates the Biblical story of the confusion of languages at the Tower of Babel.40 In spite of exhaustive inquiry, "the origin of Abracadabra is unknown, and most of the attempts made to translate or explain it are not impressive."41 Some scholars have suggested that the word originated with the Chaldeans of the old Babylonian period.42 The so-called "Abracadabra texts" of Babylonia contain mysterious incantations, some derived from other languages such as Old Elamite and subsequently incomprehensible.4 Frequently cited as a possible source is the name Abraxis, the supreme being in Gnosticism, "the source of divine emanations from which all things were created."44 Stones inscribed with abracadabra are called "abraxis stones."45 One scholar of Greek Qabalah, Kieren Barry, suggests that abracadabra is derived from the word Akrankanarba from Greek magical papyri dating from the second century BCE to the fifth century CE.46 Other schol 40 RecipeLand.com 41 Richard Cavendish, The Black Arts (1968) 42 Herman Slater, A Book of Pagan Rituals (1978) 4 Wolfram Von Soden, The Ancient Orient (1994) 44 Constance Victoria Briggs, The Encyclopedia of God: An A-Z Guide to Thoughts, Ideas, and Beliefs About God (200 ) 45 Bob Brier, Ancient Egyptian Magic (1999) 46 The Greek Qabalah: Alphabetical Mysticism and Numerology in the Ancient World (1999)