The Ephesian letters:
askion
kataskion
lix
tetrax
damnameneus
aision
…were words of mystery or words of magic, voces magicae, or voces mysteriae, used in “ancient Greece and Rome.”
–Barry J. Blake, Secret Language: Codes, Tricks, Spies, Thieves, and Symbols, 2010, pg. 147.
The word abracadabra first appeared in Quintus Serenus Sammonicus, De medicina praecepta, 2d century AD.
The term may be derived from the Aramaic avra kehdabra, “I will create as I speak.”
–Barry J. Blake, Secret Language: Codes, Tricks, Spies, Thieves, and Symbols, 2010, pg. 146.
“The Kaska people of western Canada, for instance, have the following story (condensed from Teit 1917: 442–3):
“Once there came a great flood, which covered the earth. The people became separated. Some were driven far away. When the flood subsided, people were now widely scattered over the world. When, in their wanderings, they met people from another place, they spoke different languages and could not
understand one another. This is why there are now many different centres of population, many tribes, and many languages. Before the flood there was but one centre, for all the people lived together in one country and spoke one language.”
–Barry J. Blake, Secret Language: Codes, Tricks, Spies, Thieves, and Symbols, 2010, pg.132.
“Discoveries have been made in and around Egypt of amulets containing stones engraved with the name of a spirit or god, Abraxas (earlier Abrasax). The name also appears frequently in curse tablets, often in conjunction with other names of spirits or gods. Abraxas is associated with the Basilideans, followers of Basilides, a religious teacher in early second-century Alexandria.
Basilidean teaching combined ideas from a number of religious traditions including Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity. If one adds the numerical value of the Greek letters of Abraxas or Abrasax (` or `), one obtains the total 365 (1 þ 2 þ 100 þ 1 þ 200 þ 1 þ 60), which corresponds to the 365 orders of spirits recognized in the Basilidean model of the universe (Budge 1978: 208). It also corresponds to the number of days in the solar year, and Abraxas was associated with the sun” (Ogden 1999: 48).
–Barry J. Blake, Secret Language: Codes, Tricks, Spies, Thieves, and Symbols, 2010, pg. 123-4.
Samizdat