Arcane Compost Roundel Medicinal Rag

The abracadabra of ashes and life's return to dirt...incidentally, no one knows the precise origins of the word abracadabra, though the first, surviving written record of the word is within the Latin poem "De Medicina Praecepta," by Roman poet-physician Quintus Serenus Sammonicus (c. 200 A.D.). Sammonicus wrote that in order to get well, a sick person should wear on a string around their neck a piece of paper inscribed as such:

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

The triangular shape blooming into the mystical phrase would, he wrote, act as a funnel to siphon sickness out of the body. Still, there are a number of theories and conjectures as to older origins of the word, including Aramaic, Hebrew, and Chaldean sources. Whatever its magical, medicinal origins, abracadabra is now used primarily as a shorthand way of signifying arcane, mystical gibberish.