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A mantra is usually thought of as belonging to one tradition at a time. Filed among this atlas's own collection of them, one short word crosses all three Abrahamic faiths, and one much older idea crosses five traditions that rarely agree on anything else.

One Word, Three Faiths

Amen closes Jewish prayer, was carried into Christian worship from its earliest days, and survives in Islamic prayer as amin. Of every mantra recorded here, it is the only one connected to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all at once. Alleluia is close behind, shared by Judaism and Christianity. Maranatha stands apart for a different reason: it is the one Christian prayer word kept in Aramaic, the language Jesus himself spoke, never translated out of it.

The Same Word, Five Different Uses

Kabbalah reaches even further, and the atlas records what happened to it in each place separately rather than folding the differences away. It began as Judaism's own mystical tradition, its central image the sefirot through which the unknowable pours itself into the world. Christian scholars of the Renaissance built a Christian Cabala on the same material, reading it as proof of the Trinity. Hermeticism absorbed that Christian version and fused it with astrology and alchemy into something new again. Each borrowing is recorded with its own account of what changed, so the word is not one idea wearing five faces, it is five different things that all still answer to the same name.

Where To Read More

• AmenJudaism MantrasThe mantra shared by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam at once
• AlleluiaJudaism MantrasShared by two of the three, one step short of Amen's reach
• JudaismAbrahamic (Monotheistic)Where Kabbalah began, before four other traditions took it up
• KabbalahCosmological DisciplinesRecorded as belonging to five traditions, each with a distinct account of what it became