Mumbo-Jumbo in Magic

[us4-he2-gal2]

Mumbo-Jumbo

Despite whatever origins it may have relating to the way Africans used to ritually settle their domestic disputes (according to the wiki), the term 'mumbo-jumbo' in modern English references nonsensical speech, or specifically magical rites carried out in a meaningless or unknown language. In the study of magical texts experts have noted that, in order to be efficacious, magical speech must transcend the mundane in some way - speech is seen to hold power when it is distinct from conversational every day language. In order to make their incantations seem persuasive and distinguished from mundane speech, ancient incantation specialists would attempt to make use of language that was archaic, foreign, poetic, orindeed, was mumbo-jumbo. However, it should be noted that in Mesopotamia the latter strategy is fairly rare. Some ten years ago, I summarized an article by Neik Veldhuis (from the volume Mesopotamian Magic (Abusch, van der Toorn 1999)) about use of poetic language in Mesopotamian incantations. Below is the link to that post, and I will quote his discussion on the use of mumbo-jumbo below:

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enenuru.proboards.com/thread/272/poetics-magic-mediation

Distinguished (persuasive) language and Mumbo Jumbo/


Veldhuis: "Magic language is usually distinguished from ordinary language. There are, in principle, three ways to achieve such a distinction. The first is to use a sacred language. The second is to use poetic, heightened language. These two options are, in fact, available for a large variety of purposes where a text must be marked as other than ordinary. Thus, a large proportion of the scholarly works of classical Greece are written in verse. During a long period of European history the same functional place was occupied by Latin, a language only accessibly to the initiated. A third possibility is almost restricted to magic or ritual uses of language, and that is Mumbo-Jumbo. All three possibilities are used in Mesopotamian magic.

We have discussed the poetic use of language in a few Akkadian incantations. Sumerian incantations of the Old Babylonian period are partly directed against the same illnesses, demons, and animals as the Akkadian ones. There is one sphere where the Sumerian is clearly preferred: the ritual incantation meant for purifying ritual ingredients. There is every reason to believe that this has to do with the place these purifying rituals have in society and religion. Mumbo-Jumbo spells are known from all periods and genres of the Mesopotamian incantation literature. Modern discussion of these texts has in the main been limited to the identification of the language from which they are derived. Some are clearly in garbled Sumerian, others seem to be in Hurrian or Elamite, in an unidentified language, or in no language at all."

Veldhuis gives an example of late garbled Sumerian mumbo-jumbo from BAM 514:


17: En2 igi-bar igi-bar-bar igi-bar-ra bar-bar igi-ḫul igi-ḫul-ḫul igi-bar-ra ḫul-ḫul

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In 2009, I had commented: "The author observes that the regular repetition of syllables is a characteristic of mumbo-jumbo, yet even this language isn`t necessarily devoid of meaning as the repeated "igi" relates to eyes or sight, and ḫul to "evil' - other mumbo jumbo is also suggestive of simple yet efficacious messages." Now that I have taken some Sumerian at university, I think a rough translation could be: 'one who looks, one really looking, one who looked, outside/stranger, evil eye, very evil eye, one who looked, very evil'. But that is very provisional (and depends on the belief in the participle in Sumerian).


In 2010, Martin Worthington made an interesting comment about mumbo-jumbo (Worthington JMC 15, 34): "More specifically, dynamics of knowledge and power are a way to understand
mumbo-jumbo incantations. It has been suggested that these should be understood as being in the language of ghosts [Scurlock, Ghosts, 43] and the same idea could be extended to demons. However, exactly the opposite view is tenable: that, as speakers of Babylonian and Assyrian, the demons will hear the incantation and, not understanding it, be frightened by the realisation that the healer knows (or at least can use) a secret language which they are not privy to."



I have recently taken up an interest in 11th century AD Anglo-Saxon magic, the practice is called today Leechcraft. Leech may be supposed to refer to the blood-sucking sort of leech, but actually (according to an etymological dictionary) leech in this sense is from the Old English læce "leech," probably from Old Danish læke, from Proto-Germanic *lekjaz "enchanter, one who speaks magic words; healer, physician". Leech as in a blood sucker was originally a distinct word, but later merged with leech 'healer' by way of folk etymology. In any case, I have been wary or learning about medieval forms of magic because of all the misinformation spread by middle men and new-age publishers. However, if one learns to use academic sources, there turn out to be numerous 1,000 year old manuscripts which exist in specialized libraries and collections which preserve some portion of Anglo-Saxon Leechcraft. For example, 'Bald's Leechbook':

www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?CollID=16&MSID=6548&NStart=120417

At the moment, I only have access to out dated translations online from 1909, some by Felix Grenden (although I have a book of modern translations on the way in the mail currently). According to Grenden's now out-dated scholarship, the following incanttion is meant to address the situation of a horse's sprained foot, and occurs in Anglo-Saxon manuscript MS Harley 585:

"Naborrede, unde uenisti," tribus uicibus; "credidi propter," tribus uicibus. "Alpha et o, initium et finis, crux mihi uita est et tibi mors inimico;" Paternoster.

Although the main language present in these texts is Old English, this particular incantation is in Latin. Scholars in Grenden's day didn't feel obliged to translate Latin, since they assumed anyone with any intelligence would already know Latin, nonetheless, google translates as follows:

"Naborrede, from where you come, "three times" because of the supposed "three times." Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, cross my life and death to the enemy."


There are instances of Anglo-Saxon mumbo-jumbo incantations, this clearly isn't one since it makes a good amount of sense. I thought I'd mention it here since the name invoked, Naborrede, has been suggested by early scholars to be from Berossus and to be an adaptation of the name of Nabonidus, the late Babylonian king. Like foreign language, the names of foreign unfamiliar idols or rulers were held to be powerful or efficacious. I will have to read further into the field, and wait for that book to arrive, before I can determine whether these suggestions have been maintained.