Repetition of words

[oaken]

I noticed in the Picatrix for talisman making that you’d be instructed to recite a prayer when making one, and these prayers often consisted of repeated words, probably nonsense words. Hermetic texts did this too, a lot of times a lot of vowels together. I suspect this was to help with religious fervour but on the printed page it looks like howling. 

In the era before widespread clocks and watches, incantations also served as one of the few available methods of time keeping.