This teeming millionth wishes to augment Unca Cecil’s abracadabralicious theory of the origin of that ancient magic spell.
The exquisitely comprehensive Encyclopedia Mythica (pantheon.org) offers the following explanations in its section on Judaic mythology: it could have been “the name of an old disease demon. It could also be derived from the Aramaic avada kedavra, meaning ‘may the thing be destroyed,’ or from ‘abra kadibra’ which is translated as ‘it will be made like it is said.’” These theories, if true, would place the coining of that term long before the invention of Christianity.
Harry Potter and the rest of the Hogwarts crew, by the way, seem to employ the Aramaic theory – in the novels, “avada kedavra” is an evil curse used to utterly control another person’s will.
Having said all that, I’m off to smoke me an abracadoobie.
Not quite. Avada kedavra is the killing curse. The dominating curse is Imperio.
But this is interesting, anyway. I recognized the Latin roots for Imperio and Cruciatus (the third Unforgiveable Curse, which causes pain), but I didn’t know the origin of Avada kedavra. It seems odd, though, that an explicitly destructive spell would have morphed in the public consciousness into a general-purpose magic word, and in fact one usually associated with benign magic.
Great first post, by the way. Welcome, and stick around!
Cry your pardon, sai, you are absolutely right. Must’ve nodded off during Defense Against the Dark Arts. That’s what I get for being too lazy to schlep over to the bookshelf & verify my answer.
Actually, I kinda think the evolution of “avada kedavra” from a destructive spell to a benign one sorta makes sense, historically. According to the tenets of their first best-selling anthology, the ancient Hebrews (Aramaic being, of course, the linguistic precursor to Hebrew) had a serious case of “go forth and smite thine enemies.” I mean, when these folks carried a grudge, they conjured up divine intervention with STYLE: locusts, plagues, murdering little babies, rape, ethnic cleansing, fire, brimstone, city-wide demolition, etc. (And they call it the “good” book!)
Those were darker times, man, darker times. This whole shiny, happy, buy-the-world-a-Coke, “benign magic” philosophy is a much more recent convention. If it were not, then whence the ancient injunction not to “suffer a witch to live”? I mean, look at how gruesome the original versions of most “modern” fairy tales are, and they’ve only had a few HUNDRED years to transmogrify into the sanitized, saccharinized Disney versions we know and love, not a few millennia.
Thanks for the compliment, BTW. sniff I’m touched.
No, I’m saying that Aramaic was not a precursor to Hebrew in any sense whatsoever. Linguistically, they are both members of the West Semitic family, neither one being the ancestor of the other. Socially, Aramaic replaced Hebrew, not the other way around. After the Babylonian Captivity, Hebrew became (and continued to be until 1948) a dead language, used for religious purposes only.
Disclaimer: I have no idea if the following is true or not, but it is local lore where I live.
Prior to the King James Bible, the passage in question was actually “Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live”. However King James and his Missus had two main things in common; a great fear of witchcraft, and chronic sea-sickness.
Now it happens that they were aboard ship, and heading towards the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which has passed from England to Scotland many times over the years.
Unfortunately a storm blew up, and they were held off-shore in heavy seas for three days. This they blamed on scottish witches in Berwick, who were trying to kill them.
And this is why the passage was changed.
Do I believe this? Don’t know. But this is the same town that technically was at war with Russia for 80 years.
Of course it’s “all over the Internet occult/witchcraft sites”. Internet occult/witchcraft sites are full of bullshit.
Douay-Rheims translates the word as “wizard”.
Jerome translates the word as “maleficos”.
The Septuagint has “pharmakous”, which can mean either “poisoner” or “witch”.
The Hebrew word seems, on evidence from cognate words, to have a root meaning of “poisoner”. While it is dangerous to assume that because a word means “poisoner” it cannot also mean “witch” (before modern science, the two notions were much more closely allied than they are now), that is neither here nor there; the point is that King James had nothing to do with it.