ABRACADABRA

The word abracadabra - in it's earliest
known use - was written in this
 pattern and worn around the neck
 or sewn into clothing in order to cure fever.

In our class on tuesday, we talked about the occult in the history of knowledge.  The discussion really sparked my interest (just as anything I don't know much about piques my curiosity).  Coincidentally, another professor in my religion class a few days ago mentioned something interesting.  He talked about the possible origin of the word abracadabra.  Although there are many different ideas as to where the word came from, many believe that the word originates from the Aramaic for "I will create as I speak" or possibly from the Hebrew words "ab" (Father) "ben" (Son) "ruach hakodesh" (Holy Spirit).  Maybe it as a stretch but we might also interpret the general idea as the Father creating through his Word - "I the Father will create by my Word".  Interesting stuff.  It might change the way you feel about the next children's magic show you see or maybe you will think twice before saying what may have been at one point in time a very sacred phrase.

Scraping Metal

This golden disk found in Peru is an contains
an inscription of a calendar system.

A few months ago they played a special on the Discovery channel about  discoveries of America before Columbus.  After talking about various theories about who were actually the first people to travel to the New World, they came to the conclusion that pretty much everyone discovered America at one point in time.  They finally changed their question from "Who discovered America?" to "Who didn't discover America?".  Well today I am not going to talk about the discovery of America but the making of metal books.  To those of us who are LDS (such as members of our Reinventing Knowledge class here at BYU) metal plate writings might be of special interest because the Book of Mormon was translated from an ancient record engraved on golden plates.  Although engravings on metal plates were at one point thought of as a rare occurrence, recent discoveries have shown more and more examples of this form of information storage.  As you will see in this post, we might pose ourselves a similar question:

"Who didn't write on metal plates?"