incantation

Etymology

From Middle English incantacioun, from Old French incantation, from Latin incantatio. More at enchant.

noun

1. The act or process of using formulas and/or usually rhyming words, sung or spoken, with occult ceremonies, for the purpose of raising spirits, producing enchantment, or creating other magical results.
   Yarrow is one of the aboriginal English plants, and from time immemorial it has been used in incantations and by witches. Country folk still regard it as one of our most valuable herbs, especially for rheumatism. 1922, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, The Old English Herbals, Longmans, Green and Co.
   new years eve we dropped mushrooms / and danced around the house / making music with everything that we found / incantation replaced resolution 2008, “Red Letter Year”, in Red Letter Year, performed by Ani Difranco
2. A formula of words used as above.
   Then he produced a string of beads, and after placing it over the scratchings he had made on the soil, jerked out some strange incantation in a voice that thickened and quivered with terror. 1912, Elliott O'Donnell, Werwolves
3. (computing, slang) Any esoteric command or procedure.
   The appropriate incantation of route is shown below; the gw keyword tells it that the next argument denotes a gateway. 1998, John Purcell, Robert Kiesling, Linux: The Complete Reference: Book 1, page 412
   There's more than one command incantation to create an AVI. It's all a question of experimenting with the different audio and video codecs. 2005, Kyle Rankin, Linux Multimedia Hacks: Tips & Tools for Taming Images, Audio, and Video
   Servers move from being special snowflakes to being disposable numbers on a list that can be created and destroyed without requiring someone to remember the specific incantation to make it work. 2017, James Pogran, Learning PowerShell DSC, page 11