signsThe nameשדי

Each tradition here has its own account and this record keeps them separate.

In Jewish practice the name on the doorpost is Shaddai, written on the outside of the mezuzah parchment opposite the space between the two passages; it also reads as an acronym for Shomer Daltot Yisrael, Guardian of Israel's doors, and many cases carry just the letter shin for it. The same three letters are built into tefillin: the head-strap's knot forms a dalet, the arm-strap's a yud, and with the shin on the head-box they spell Shaddai. But the practice is contested from inside. Maimonides allows the name on the outside and then condemns what people do with it: those who write the names of angels, other sacred names, verses or forms inside a mezuzah, he writes, are among those who do not have a portion in the world to come — they nullify the commandment, and turn a great commandment about the unity of God's name into a talisman for their own benefit. A bathroom and a small closet get no mezuzah, because the name of God is forbidden there.

Practical Kabbalah, Kabbalah Ma'asit, is the branch that uses divine and angelic names for amulets and incantations. Gershom Scholem's account is that much of its content predates the speculative Kabbalah and does not depend on it, being an accumulation of magical practices from Talmudic times through the Middle Ages. The Talmud and Midrash call the theurgic technique using the Divine Name. In the Hekhalot literature the angels guarding each heavenly level are bound by formulae and seals. The tradition restricts itself: it was held to be permitted only to an elite, and only under conditions that were holy and pure, and most Kabbalists taught that its use is forbidden.

In Islamic practice the amulet usually contains one of God's ninety-nine names, or the names of angels or prophets, or a Qur'anic verse, a pious phrase or an invocation, and has been described as a supercharged prayer. Virtually all Muslim scholars permit a talisman that calls on God or on an intercessor; addressing jinn or demons is prohibited. Ayat al-Kursi, the Throne Verse, al-Baqara 2:255, is the verse most often used: hadith say reciting it turns away devils and fiends, and it is recited before a journey, before sleep, and after every obligatory prayer. Because of that association it is also used against the evil eye. Letter-and-number work, ʿilm al-ḥurūf, combines the letters of one of the ninety-nine names with those of a desired object — the technique called jafr.

In Taoist practice the writing is meant to defeat reading. Fulu are talismanic script written on talismans by Taoist priests. Ge Hong noted in the Baopuzi, by the Eastern Jin, 317–420, that it was already unnecessary for the user to decipher the writing for it to work. Scholars including James Robson and Gil Raz argue the incomprehensibility is central to the talisman's perceived authority; Ge Zhaoguang of Fudan University calls it a deliberate linguistic archaism. The method of writing the characters is passed in secret from a Taoist priest to their disciples. Fulu were taken into forms of Chinese Buddhism and inspired the Japanese ofuda and the Korean bujeok.

Gnostic gems give the oldest surviving objects in this family that carry a name and nothing else. Abrasax, later spelled Abraxas, appears in nearly all the legends on the gems, in the Greek Magical Papyri and in Gnostic texts; the attempts to derive the name from Greek, Hebrew, Coptic or Egyptian have not succeeded. The seven letters may stand for the seven classical planets.

Inference — the four traditions agree on one thing only: the name is not decoration and the object is not the charm. What they disagree about is whether writing a name down is prayer, permitted craft, or an offence against the name itself.