The first of several planned essays on pop, this one took me a lot longer than anticipated, but I expect the next ones will be a little easier.
Garry Mac
Jun 16, 2025
“Abracadabra” is an apotropaic magic word, or a ward of defence, worn on amulets and in use around Rome and its Empire from 2AD. It was beloved of Gnostics and Jewish mystics, before being castigated by Puritans and Daniel Defoe… Later in the 19th Century, its use would split. In mainstream culture, it became known as a word that stage magicians would say at the apex or reveal of a magic trick. At the same time, it was also reclaimed, in the form Abrahadabra, by Crowley and his Thelemite successors.
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Conjecture puts its origin in the Hebrew phrase, “I will create as I speak,” or the Aramaic one, “I create like the word,” but its true origin is unknown. Regardless, we can see its use as a magic ward, and as a magic word that means: “I speak reality into being.”
Joker: Folie á Deux was released to cinemas in October 2024.
I haven’t seen it (I thought the first one was risible), but the broad reception seemed to be boredom, the absolute last emotion you want audiences to feel. And yet, there had been some building excitement for it, especially among gay audiences. The fact that Lady Gaga was playing Harley Quinn and it would be a musical, I think the feeling was that it probably wouldn’t be good, but there was a chance it could be a glorious hot mess, and unintentionally camp folly. The fact that the response was largely “meh” must have given Gaga pause, especially as its release followed ‘brat’ summer.
And yet, Lady Gaga was not about to go chasing the ‘brat’ aura. She already had under her belt some great tunes, pop tunes, the kind her fans and media broadly had been crying out for.
After 5 foot 4 revealed the extent of Gaga’s crisis of faith about the making of Joanne and its subsequent release, her next studio album, Chromatica, was supped to be a return to form, yet it landed awkwardly. A good critical response and some buzz from fans greeted it on release, but it quickly dropped from cultural attention. Maybe it was too soon after Grimes’ Miss Anthropocene dropped. Despite the ongoing… musk that hung around her at the time, Grimes did get a fair amount of press (mostly confused about why she was doing a concept album about a malevolent AI goddess) and the marketing materials were slick and felt like a natural evolution of her style. Gaga’s hyperpop cyberpunk Anime girl aesthetic, on the other hand, felt a little… insincere, maybe?
So, post brat, post Folie á Deux, these new tracks she’d been working on had a lot to live up to. She’d not only need to draw in as big an audience as possible, but she’d also need to keep them watching and listening. With her previous musical output carrying the heavy burden of constant reinvention running parallel to a desire to prove her authenticity, MAYHEM and her daughters needed to land strong. Not everyone was paying attention.
When Disease dropped, then, it was exciting watching the video for the first time. A genuine bop made all the more thrilling by the great visuals of the video, where she pairs a scuzzy, Dragula-esque pop monster vibe to the darkly sexual lyrics and quasi-industrial pop sounds. It was instantly memorable, evoking earlier eras but updating the resolution. Its exquisite, slick production eschews the Loudness War, or even hyperpop, for peaks and troughs and a more timeless feel.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what trends it feels like she’s playing with here; it genuinely feels like she’s attempting to tap into an archetypal kind of “pure” pop, spanning not only her own eras, but also decades of pop (a method she employs throughout the album).
So, personally, I was far more invested in and full of anticipation for the next single, Abracadabra, and I have a feeling that was the case more broadly too. Before seeing the video, I got a second-hand affective experience from J, who messaged to say that he’d been watching it on a loop and cried, that the video was particularly good, full of quasi-Catholic imagery.
Obviously, I had to experience it for myself and, since I was conducting cottage research with M, we watched it together. Since we’re both magicians, we had a vested scholarly interest in a Gaga song named for the most famous magical word in history, anyway. We watched it, and both loved it. I, though, had a near religious experience.
Firstly, the choreography is incredible, a real bravura performance from everyone involved, lots of complex sequences and one flowing, undulating moment that made me audibly gay gasp. The way the song, video, and performance break down at the end is so good that it almost demands you watch the wisely immediately released rehearsal video.
Secondly, as a gay magician, I enjoyed the vision I had of thousands of faguettes chanting along with barbarous words about love and death in nightclubs and stadia across the world.
And lastly, the other two combined with the lyrics made me realise I was watching a legitimate psychopop magical ritual.
In magic, a sigil is (usually) a visual symbol that is a compressed form of desire, something the user wills to happen. It is a spell that is charged and activated by reaching a state of “no-mind” into which the sigil is “fired.” Methods for reaching this state are either inhibitory (meditation, chanting) or excitatory (dancing, fucking, mdma and trance music). It comes to us in its current form through the artist, occultist and mystic, Austin Osman Spare.
It was popularised by the Chaos magical current of the 80s and 90s, then vie Grant Morrison’s Pop Magic!, before becoming the domain of the modern current of slick LA magicians like Jason Louv and Ultraculture.
Grant Morrison themselves worked on the concept during this time, arguably evolving it further than most popular magicians, in the form of the hypersigil. In this form, a sigil is more complex than a simple symbol, instead becoming mobile and self-complexifying. Hypersigils usually take the form of an artwork that has multiple dimensions of space and time over which it can be unfolded.
Narrative fiction is a particularly productive form, and comic books are an excellent delivery substrate for that form. Morrison has written several hypersigillic comics over the years, whose effects are complex and wide-ranging for both the author and the engaged reader; most notable are The Invisibles, The Filth, and Nameless.
Narrative comics aren’t the only vessel for hypersigils, though. Screen work is suitable, since film and TV narratives also unfold over time and can contain complex symbolism; music videos are potentially very useful as hypersigils since they combine complex imagery that unfolds over time with lyricality and music that encourages affective charging through excitatory methods like dancing and singing, not only on the part of the artist but also their audience.
In my opinion, Gaga’s never been the greatest storytelling lyricist in pop, and that’s not a read. It’s not the aspect of pop music that seems to excite her most; her lyrics are often more immediate and embodied, being exclamatory and affective, communicating the feel of the song, and gesturing towards the performative moment of the event or scene the lyrics describe.
Sometimes this acts like a supercondensed viral package by which the song becomes an immediate hit (Bad Romance is probably the strongest example), while other times its attempt to walk the line between sublime and ridiculously camp collapse into a pretentious kind of kitsch (ARTPOP, I’m looking at you; Venus in particular).
She’s arguably closer to Kylie in this regard that Madonna, say (one day I’ll get to my POP PRINCESS MAGICAL SYSTEM). Papa Don’t Preach tells a story, you know? Even if it’s delivered in the form of condensed pop lyrics. Neither of these is inferior, obviously; and all 3 artists mentioned have dabbled in both and other lyrical forms. And also, this isn’t a science, just the opinion and ramblings of a stoned ape. Anyway, Gaga tends to direct us more to the affect of the experience, and in a way that works well with video.
All of which is to explain why I think of Gaga as an evocator.
Evocation in magic is summoning, usually some form of spiritual intelligence, like a god, angel, demon, ghost, or other preternatural or disincarnate being. In an evocation, the magician usually intends to summon the godform into form of some kind, whether to appear in a mirror, or take up incense smoke as a body of sorts. This is opposed to invocation, in which the summoner attempts to enact “possession” by the intelligence.
Abracadabra isn’t just a magical spell, it’s the magical record of a rite, a ritual invocation, for the magical purpose of reconciliation. A hypersigil, containing the rite itself, but also the apparatus by which the spell is transmitted, and virally shared; whose end looks the same as its means: (re)union of Gaga with her fans.
To explain this, allow me to take you through the song’s lyrics, line by line, explaining the evocative words in a somewhat unconscious fashion, as they were revealed to me. I’m going to throw in some (mainly Western Esoteric) magical terminology in here, which I’m not going to explain. If you want knowledge, act like a scholar!
Abracadabra, abracadabra
I speak reality into being
Abracadabra, abracadabra
My words create reality
[Verse 1]
Pay the toll to the angels
Perform the invocation of the 4 quarters
Drawing circles in the clouds
Draw a banishing circle in which the ritual takes place
Keep your mind on the distance
Think about nothing but your Will, the future intent
When the devil turns around
Watch out for temptation on the Royal Road
[Refrain]
Hold me in your heart tonight
Invoke the HGA/augoeides/audience
In the magic of the dark moonlight
Magic is easier in the dark, invoke the Mother Moon
Save me from this empty fight
Help me with my debilitating inner battle
In the game of life
In the illusion of Life, which is but a game
[Pre-Chorus]
Like a poem said by a lady in red
Literally, ‘MAYHEM’ herself, the red woman, Babylon
You hear the last few words of your life
This magic works on the edge, between life and death, excitatory and inhibitory
With a haunting dance, now you’re both in a trance
Use excitatory dance to reach “no mind” or Satori
It’s time to cast your spell on the night
The appointed time is reached, now to cast the Spell of the Chorus
[Chorus]
“Abracadabra, amor-oo-na-na
Abracadabra, morta-oo-ga-ga
Abracadabra, abra-oo-na-na”
Latin phrasing of love and death constructed as a chant
In her tongue she said, “Death or love tonight”
She calls out in Latin
The spell is cast, the question asked: this is my last chance, love me or I die
[Post-Chorus]
Abracadabra, abracadabra
I speak reality into being
Abracadabra, abracadabra
My words create reality
Feel the beat under your feet, the floor’s on fire
In sync, as the ritual peaks, dancing like the fires of Hell are burning your soles
Abracadabra, abracadabra
Ecstasy. Ecstasis.
[Verse 2]
Choose the road on the wеst side
Take the left-hand path, reject status quo. The magic of sexuality and individuality.
As the dust flies, watch it burn
The desert air is hot with magic, spice blowing on the astral place
Don’t waste time on a feeling
Shed your emotion; the cups have no place here, only FLOW
Use your passion, no return
Raise up your Will, the suit of Wands: tool of the magician.
There’s no going back from this – it’s now or never
[Bridge]
Phantom of the dance floor, come to me
MAYHEM, the Scarlet Woman, Gaga’s inner judge, wilfully evoked on the dancefloor to pass judgement (Adjustment)
Sing for me a sinful melody
Dance to the sacred music; not a hymn, but a barbarous chant, embodied beats, the power of Lust/Strength
Ah, ah, ah
AH-br-ah-cAH-dah-br-AH
Ah, ah, ah
AH-brah-cAH-dah-brAH (The whole spell in three syllablic utterances)
At the end of the music video, the backing track breaks down and we see Gaga dressed like Scáthach from American Horror Story: Roanoke, a bloodthirsty immortal witch. Here, she represents primal, unreconstructed Gaga: the rite has undone all prior bindings and constructs, freeing her to tap into her primordial creative self where she might find the raw material for reinvention.
Death or love tonight? Death or love tonight, queens? Abracadabra, then, sees Gaga invoking multiple sides of the Gaga construct, pitting them against each other as Judge and Performer, asking the question, “Do you have what it takes?” The inner battle is reflected in the outer, a plea to her fans: “I hear your appeals, and I see you. Will you take me back into your hearts?”
A binary of red and white, life and desire, the desert full of music, the magic within which they play; Gaga pits these selves against each other in a ballroom battle. She invites her fans to once more hold her in their hearts again, to watch her as she fights. For it’s also a ritual of transmutation, transubstantiation, even. Having searched for innovation and authenticity in the past, she emerges from the ritual like a shaman, not reinvented so much as refreshed, enervated, tapping pure pop affect, enlightened by the knowledge that she has a whole album’s worth of really great songs under her belt, an album so confident in its ability to look both backwards and forwards that it could be a greatest hits.
Wrapped in artifice, in many ways the performance contrarily strips Gaga bare, enervating the spark that created this construct in the first place, this icon, and reignites the powerful current between her and her fans in an act of pure pyschopopmagic.
For the definitive (so far, in my opinion) performance of Abracadabra, check out this link:
Look out for the next in this series – IMMATERIALLY SOPHIE – coming soon!