The Sorcerer's Companion: A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter (51 page)

Why did a wand and not, say, a feather, become the symbol of magic? What is it about this stick that represents the awesome powers of the magician? The answer, according to some scholars, can be traced back to prehistoric man’s first instrument of power—the cave man’s club. While not particularly “magical,” the club, in the form of a hefty hunk of a tree branch, certainly did endow its user with an extraordinary amount of power he didn’t have without it—power to defend himself, bonk his enemies into oblivion, and put dinner on the table. Indeed, in a confrontation with an enemy, even raising the club in a threatening gesture was recognized as a sign of power. As spears and swords replaced the club as weapons of choice, the theory goes, the club was retired from everyday use but lived on in reduced size and symbolic form. In one version it became a scepter, the king’s or emperor’s wandlike emblem of power; in another, the club took the form of a herald’s staff, investing the bearer with the powers of the king he represented. And, in the hands of a magician, the mini-club took the form of the wand, symbolizing command of the powers of nature and the supernatural. While the wand no longer resembles the club it evolved from, in the wizarding world it continues to function as the most powerful of weapons.

The king’s scepter, like the magician’s wand and the cave man’s club, is an emblem of power
(
photo credit 52.4
)

wizard
is as powerful as the words he knows. Words are the thread by which
spells
are woven and
charms
and
curses
held in place. As stories from around the world attest, there are magic words for most every occasion—to enchant a castle, fly on a carpet, become invisible, or convince a broom to cook dinner and clean up afterward. Naturally, not any words will do. They must be the right words for the task at hand, and as Professor Flitwick wisely counsels his first-year students in Charms class, they must be pronounced with perfect precision. Say it right and it works automatically, like turning on a light. Say it wrong and you may end up with three heads.

Many of the Latin-sounding words taught at Hogwarts mean exactly what they seem to say.
Petrificus totalus
totally petrifies its victim, and
riddikulus
makes a formerly frightening
boggart
look, well, ridiculous. The disarming charm
expelliarmus
is a combination of the Latin
expello
, meaning “to drive out or force out,” and
arma
, meaning “weapons.” And the summoning charm
accio
literally means “to call or summon.” Historically, however, magic words didn’t have to mean anything to be taken seriously. A medieval spell book tells us that the nonsense words
saritap pernisox ottarim
, for example, will open any lock, while
onaim peranties rasonastos
will guide you to buried treasure and
agidem margidem sturgidem
will cure a toothache if said seven times on a Tuesday or a Thursday. Where these particular words came from and why they were believed to work is almost anybody’s guess. Some were no doubt invented by practicing
magicians
to impress their clients. Other magic words, however, seem to have originated thousands of years ago as the names of gods and supernatural beings that were garbled and mistranslated over time, ultimately becoming unrecognizable. Yet even without evident meaning, words were thought to have tremendous power, and could bring into being the intentions of the magician. In fact, the belief that words are the instruments of power is probably as old as language itself, and one of the most ancient of all beliefs is that to say a thing is to make it so.

A string of magic words, especially when pronounced in a ritualistic way, is called an “incantation,” or magic formula, and is often used to cast a spell or charm. In many traditional tribal cultures, incantations were chanted or sung and accompanied by dancing and drumming (the words “chant,” “enchant,” “charm,” and “incantation” all share a Latin root meaning “song” and “to sing”). In classical Greece and Rome,
sorcerers
often cast their spells by wailing or howling the magic words, like a dog baying at the moon. Egyptian magicians of the first century incorporated strange hissing and popping sounds into the recitation of their spells. In certain Hindu and Buddhist traditions, extraordinary powers were often associated with the repetition of special words or phrases called mantras, which were secret and could be learned only from a special teacher or guru. One mantra was said to give the chanter the power to control nature if repeated 200,000 times and to be instantly transported to any place in the universe if repeated a million times.

Abracadabra
, the most familiar of all historical magic words, was thought for centuries to be extremely powerful. It first appears in the book
Res Reconditae (Secret Matters)
by Serenus Sammonicus, a Roman physician who lived in the third century. Serenus recommends
abracadabra
as a cure for tertian fever, a terrible flu-like illness with symptoms that occur every other day. The word can be spoken, but according to Serenus, the treatment is most effective when
abracadabra
is written on a piece of parchment in the form of an inverted triangle and worn around the neck as an
amulet
.

ABRACADABRA

ABRACADAB

ABRACADA

ABRACAD

ABRACA

ABRAC

ABRA

ABR

AB

A

As the word
abracadabra
shrinks, by removing one letter each time the word is written, so, presumably, will the patient’s illness. At the end of nine days the amulet is removed and tossed backward into a river flowing eastward, ending the treatment.

Abracadabra
remained in use as a magic word well into the seventeenth century. In his
Journal of the Plague Year
(1772), the English novelist Daniel Defoe reported that many Londoners tried to protect themselves against the bubonic plague epidemic of 1665 by using “certain words or figures, as particularly the word ‘Abracadabra’ formed in a triangle or pyramid.”

Some of the most potent magic words of the Middle Ages took the form of palindromes—words or phrases that read the same backward as forward. Particularly appealing were words that could be arranged to form a “magic square” in which the words read identically top to bottom, bottom to top, right to left, or left to right. The best known of these, going back at least to the eighth century, is the square formed from the palindromic phrase
sator arepo tenet opera rotas
.

SATOR

AREPO

TENET

OPERA

ROTAS

Again, the meaning of these words is obscure, but according to many spell books, this square possessed at least three remarkable properties: It was a reliable
witch
detector (any witch in the same room with it would be forced to flee); it served as a charm against sorcery and disease; and if written on a wooden plate and kept handy, it worked as a fire extinguisher when hurled into a burning building! Other magic squares, such as those recommended in the spell book
The Sacred Magic of Abremelin the Mage
, offered palindromes like
odac dara arad cado
, which would allow the user to fly “like a vulture” (a different palindrome was offered for those who preferred to fly “like a crow”), and
milon irago lamal ogari nolim
, which would, if inscribed on parchment and held over one’s head, deliver knowledge of all things past, present and future, as whispered into one’s ear by a
demon
.