Abulafia is four things.

First, it is the last name of Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia, the founder of “prophetic Kabbalah”, a school of mysticism that attempts to obtain religious experience by the study and interpretation of Judaic texts. Abulafia was particularly interested in the interplay of language as a tool to obtain revelation:

Letters of the alphabet, numerals, vowel-points, all became symbols of existence to him, and their combinations and permutations, supplementing and explaining one another, possessed for him an illumining power most effectively to be disclosed in a deeper study of the divine names, and especially of the consonants of the Tetragrammaton.

Second, it is a small personal computer used in Umberto Eco’s novel Foucault’s Pendulum. The three protagonists of the book use the computer to generate random links between events, organisations and facts as part of their manufactured conspiracy theory.

Third, it is a random generator wiki, hosting a number of different generators for all sorts of things you might need in a roleplaying game. For example, say your players come across a treasure stash, including a sword, and you want to spice things up. You could consult the swords table and find out it’s actually:

A bloodstained saber that has a blade of steel with a hilt wrapped in steel wire. The pommel is in the shape of a clenched fist. The basket is composed of several interweaving thick wires. There is no scabbard present.

Or perhaps it’s actually:

A tarnished khopesh that has a blade of steel with a hilt wrapped in black calfskin. The pommel consists only of a lanyard ring. The round quillions protrude about two inches on either side, then turn sharply downward for about 5 inches. There is a scabbard of steel, painted with shiny charcoal enamel.

You get the idea.

Fourth, Abulafia is the name I’ve also given to my random thing generator, created entirely in javascript and hosted on 1klb. You can find links to my custom generators below. Feel free to make some things, and hit refresh to see some more.

Current generators: