Anyone opening a Greek magical papyrus or a curse tablet for the first time is struck by long sequences of words that belong to no known language: ablanathanalba, akrammachamarei, sesengenbarpharanges. Scholars call them voces magicae, «magical voices», or with a Greek expression onomata barbara, «barbarian names». Alongside them there is an older and more famous group of formulas, the Ephesia grammata, the «Ephesian letters». Understanding what they were helps us enter the deep logic of ancient magic.
The Ephesia grammata
Ancient sources hand down a small group of six words, with some variants: askion, kataskion, lix, tetrax, damnameneus, aision. The name comes from the tradition that they were written on the statue of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the most venerated sanctuaries of the Greek world. Whether they really appeared on the statue is not documented, but the link with Ephesus was already a commonplace for ancient authors.
The Ephesia grammata are not a late invention. They already appear in the classical period: a small lead tablet found at Phalasarna, on Crete, and dated to the fourth century BC, contains a text in hexameters that uses them as a protective formula. Plutarch reports that the magi advised those tormented by spirits to recite them; other authors mention them as words spoken to ward off evil or to be carried in writing on the body.
Attempts to interpret them were made already in antiquity. Some grammarians and Christian authors proposed allegorical meanings: askion as darkness, kataskion as light, lix as earth, tetrax as the year with its four seasons, damnameneus as the sun, aision as truth. These readings are interesting as a history of interpretation, but there is no proof that they correspond to the original sense.
The voces magicae of the papyri
In the imperial age the repertoire expands enormously. The papyri and the magical gems show several families of words:
- foreign divine names, often of Hebrew origin: Iao, Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloai;
- distorted Egyptian names, such as epithets of Osiris or Ra transcribed into Greek;
- constructed words, such as Abrasax or Abraxas;
- palindromes, which read the same in both directions;
- series of vowels, arranged according to precise patterns.
Abrasax and the number 365
The most famous case is Abrasax. In Greek every letter also had a numerical value, and the sum of the letters of ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ gives exactly 365:
Α Β Ρ Α Σ Α Ξ
1 + 2 + 100 + 1 + 200 + 1 + 60 = 365
The number of days in the year turned the name into an image of cosmic time. The procedure, called isopsephy, was used for other names too; the same value is obtained with Meithras in a certain Greek spelling, and the comparison was already noticed in antiquity. The name often appears on gems next to the figure of the Anguipede, the god with a cock's head and serpent legs.
Palindromes and word figures
Ablanathanalba is a perfect palindrome, and the same is true of many other formulas. In the papyri these words were often written in the shape of a triangle, removing one letter on each line, or in the shape of a wing or a cluster. The decreasing pattern went with the idea that evil, like the word, should shrink until it vanished. The same principle survived for a long time: the famous word abracadabra is first attested in a late Latin work attributed to Quintus Serenus Sammonicus, arranged precisely as a triangle.
The chant of the vowels
The seven Greek vowels, α ε η ι ο υ ω, had a special role. They were related to the seven planets and to the heavenly spheres. In the papyri there are long sequences of repeated and permuted vowels, sometimes with the instruction to pronounce them facing a specific cardinal point. In all likelihood this was a real ritual chant, in which sound itself was regarded as an echo of cosmic harmony in the Pythagorean tradition.
Why incomprehensible words?
The question is legitimate. The ancients' answers are instructive. The philosopher Iamblichus, in his treatise on the mysteries, argues that «barbarian» names must not be translated, because their power lies in the original sound and not in the conceptual meaning. The Corpus Hermeticum likewise states that the Egyptian language loses its energy when rendered into Greek. The underlying idea is that there is a language of the gods, older than human languages, and that ritual consists in speaking it.
From a historical point of view, these words also worked as markers of otherness: they signalled that the speaker was moving outside everyday language, into a sacred space.
In short
- The Ephesia grammata are six ancient words linked to Artemis of Ephesus, attested as early as the fourth century BC.
- The voces magicae of the papyri include foreign divine names, constructed words, palindromes and vowel sequences.
- Abrasax equals 365 in the Greek numerical system and symbolizes the cosmic year.
- Triangle formulas, from which abracadabra also derives, expressed the idea of making evil vanish.
- For Iamblichus and the Hermetists, the value of these names lay in their sound and not in translation.
