RCG-I Seasonal Salon Spring Equinox 2005
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Spring Equinox 2005 Salon Home Page Child of the Universe: In Celebration of Spring |
POETRY AND MAGICBy Patricia Monaghan Abracadabra! Hocus-pocus! Shazzam! Even if we have no idea what they mean, we recognize magic when we hear these strange syllables. We can almost see a witch lifting her gnarled hand, throwing a curse across air and space. For even the most mundane among us knows that words are part of magic, a secret mumbo-jumbo used by witches and wizards to conjure their wills. Folklore and literature are full of the magic of words. “Double, double toil and trouble,” Shakespeare’s mysterious women say, “fire burn and cauldron bubble.” (Was the Bard, as some say, repeating a real magic spell, and is that why Macbeth is a cursed play?) The sorcerer Faust, said Shakespeare’s contemporary Christopher Marlow, called forth the devilish Mephistopheles with a magical invocation that began “Welcome, spirits of fire, air, water, and earth.” Arthurian legend tells how the great magician Merlin was undone when his mistress, Vivian, uttered a spell that trapped him forever. And Ali Baba gained access to the secret cave of treasure simply by knowing the magic formula “open, sesame.” Who can work magic who does not know the proper words? The connection of magic with language spans time and place and culture. From ancient Egypt comes the cautionary story of the Book of Thoth, which contained the magical spells of the gods themselves. A man named Nefrekeptah brought the book into our world, using his own magic words to drive off the magical scorpions that protected it; he finally wreaked so much havoc that the book was buried with him. But magic did not require complex written formulae, for even names, the Egyptians believed, were powerful when spoken aloud: the goddess Isis tricked the god Ra into telling her his secret name and, with that single syllable, took his power. Other ancient people had similar beliefs. Here is part of an actual ancient Greek spell, to be used against any threat: “Phobantia, remember, I have been initiated, I went down into the chamber of the Dactyls and saw what was there, the dog, the virgin.” The charm was to be chanted at a crossroads, places sacred to the dark goddess Hecate, and the speaker was instructed to scatter sesame seeds while speaking. The great magicians of Greek literature, Circe and Medea, similarly used incantations to work their wills—to turn men to pigs, to fly away on a dragon chariot. The Greeks called the Celts barbarians, but the two ancient peoples shared a belief in the power of language. Celtic druids were poet-priests. According to Celtic belief, poets understood the power of language so deeply that a carefully crafted poem could change the world. Warts or boils would pop out on the faces of evil-doing kings when they confronted a druid-poet wielding the proper verses. Poetry was not to be taken lightly, for its purpose was to enchant—a word whose magical and poetic roots are both clear. It was not only pagans who believed in the power of words: the Biblical book of Genesis describes how Jehovah created the world through his speech. “Let there be light,” he said, and that was that. “In the beginning was the Word,” John’s Gospel says, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The creators of this long-lasting story, the Hebrews, found power in the word, whether written or spoken; they crafted amulets reading “Sen Sam San” to keep away powerful Lilith from their sleeping children and inscribed incantations on pottery bowls “demon traps,” used rather as we use plates of beer to trap ravaging slugs in our gardens. Today such views seem quaint, even irrational. We tell our children that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me,” though every one of us still nurses a wound where some name punctured our souls. Chanting aloud is no longer part of our daily lives. We do not recite together in school; our children play solitary video games rather than singing old rhymes together as they skip rope. Our world is impoverished, but the power of words is not diminished. Magic still lives in song and poetry. Poetry is an oral art. Although since the invention of writing, poetry has been written down, it begins with the voice. The Inuit people of the arctic recognize this, for they use a single word to indicate “breath” and “poem.” A poem is not a picture but a song; it lives best when spoken, chanted, sung. Reading poetry aloud and reciting it from memory used to be a common pastime in America, and in hip-hop culture such recitation has reemerged with a vibrant, living power. We may argue with the message some rappers convey, but their language shows its power even in our desire to confront it. Songs and incantations hook into our minds so that we cannot help repeating them and, in repeating them, we reinforce their meaning. We live surrounded by magic formulae that remind us what to buy, but we have forgotten the magic words to open our hearts. Earth-centered people must reclaim the voice of magic. We must make songs of the cycle of the year and of our lives; we must chant the names of our reclaimed divinities; we must remember the powers of earth and air, fire and water, that ancient people honored. As we do so, we not only reconnect with their wisdom, we bring that wisdom to life and breath again. Excerpt from introduction of Seasons of the Witch, 3rd edition Copyright @ 2005 by Creatrix Books, LLC ~ All rights reserved |
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