scriv'nings on language & magic & poetry & mantra &&&

some notebook pages where i try to scratch an itch and solve a problem i can't even quite articulate but feels like it needs to go somewhere

Language and magic are close enough bedfellows that they're arguably the same thing. (If you don't believe in magic, or don't know what I'm pointing at with the word here — just insert 'religion' instead and you'll be close enough.)

Sanskrit mantras aren't just prayers to a given god, or statements of devotion to a god — each mantra is that god, the presence of that god shaped into a particular effect.

In the Christian tradition, the Latin language has been heavily important over time. More directly, the hedge Christian tradition (western magic if ya nasty) has always placed a lot of important on both Latin and Greek mantras (spells if ya remain nasty).

The Norse and their runes. The Kabbalistic centrality of the Hebrew alphabet. Daoist talisman-scrolls, with careful calligraphy of powerful characters.

Language is a way of shaping and directing will and life-force, to the point where for most humans in most of history, it was clear that just speaking the right words in the right way could affect the world non-linearly, bending it by illegible cross-systemic means to bring about desired effects.

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A couple things feel true to me here. One of them is that it's possible for entire cultures to create and "charge" certain methods of working with language to a particular effect. From my own experience, this resonates closely with why Sanskrit mantras seem to have pretty powerful effects for me, while Latin and Greek based ones don't so much. My woo-brain has an intuition that they can get charged like a battery, for as long as people and cultures are using the words with awareness and reverence and all that... but that the battery winds down when more energy is being taken than given. And in the western traditions, there's been a lot of taking and very little giving for a long time. The batteries just ain't all that charged.

The Sanskrit ones, on the other hand — they're still alive and actively charged in certain corners of their home culture, and many of them are alive and actively charged in a kind of spiritual diaspora. Eg- I've met people from a dozen different cultures who chant "Om Namah Shivaya" and take it pretty seriously. The charge is still there, both stored and active.

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The other thing that feels true to me, probably the thing that's like, actually more relevant to the type of people who might be reading this (I always bury the relevant stuff down in the third or fourth section of an essay, remember that; if you think one of my essays is boring and dumb, remember that it's actually great and I'm just withholding from you because I want you to stay — it's sweet, in a way, and annoying in many more ways) — the relevant thing is that the process of language magic is obviously incredibly dynamic.

There's nothing specifically special about Sanskrit, or Latin, or Korean or whatever else, as far as their ability to hold and channel energetic charge, or their ability to shape the world. I don't know exactly what factors affect the process, but a couple factors feel relevant and obvious.

Like your tone and stance. There's a reason people tend to go with an arch, official tone when they drop into like, manifesting or willing something into being. Ask someone to do an impromptu ritual or prayer about something important to them, and they'll tend to fall into a bit of a King James Bible voice, or adopt some linguistic patterns reminiscent of an 1885 translation of the Iliad. The instinct there is to use language that they associate with reverence and seriousness. Good instinct. Taoist prayer petitions were written in the same format as government paperwork. — But I think there's a lot of flexibility that could be used here, where if your prayer/mantra is approached with an attitude that isn't just reverence, that's suitable for particular types of asks. Like idk, if I'm focusing my will towards more directness, aggression, energetic goal-seeking vibes... might be good to go a little less KJV and a little more MMA Announcer. A little less Victorian poetics and a little more drill sergeant.

There's also something here about the way that many ancient mantras were taken from even more ancient cultures, texts, songs, etc. A lot of Sanskrit mantras were taken from Upanishads and Vedas, and didn't start getting used as mantras until the authority and resonance of those texts was extremely established and ubiquitous. They were taking words and tones that were already deeply familiar and resonant to a huge number of people, and simply a) recognizing and b) utilizing the resonance that was already there to shape will in the direction of that resonance.

An intuitive example of this is the line from psalms, "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." I've seen and heard — both in real life and in movies — people use these words when they need comfort, when they're afraid, when they need to be steadied and feel some trust that they are held by a higher power. That's not like, an invented mantra or effect. It was already there in the words for a lot of them. And the more it got used for that effect, the more it became possible and intuitive to use it for that effect.

The scattering and profusion of culture makes this more intimidating for recent things — we don't really have a shared culture anymore, we have a thousand algorithmic subcultures, where what's unquestionably famous to one person may never have been heard of by a dozen others, and vice versa. But still — there are some definite shared cultural touchstones that can be used. And we can also just accept that subcultural resonances can be a good starting point, even if they don't have the collective heft of like, a religious text whose sacredness is shared by entire generations of an entire society.

Famous song lyrics that have reverberated through a few decades are probably good, if any have an authentic resonance for you. I might use "The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind / The answer is blowing in the wind" from Bob Dylan to focus some energy and will and magic around... how to describe my sense there? Something like summoning in a receptivity to answers about life that are less literal and direct, more right hemisphere-y, more numinous, more felt-sense than concrete.

Poems that have stood the test of time are also great for this, or long-standing proverbs. Walt Whitman is a solid choice. "I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake." Excellent mantra for discovering your habitual mistakes and blindspots. Or Robert Frost, "The woods are lovely, dark and deep. / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep." It feels like there's something there for a mantra towards fortitude, integrity, and not getting distracted or pulled into mere peace and comfort at the cost of your honor.

This feels a bit more nightmarish to me, but uh, slogans almost certainly are ripe for language magic. That's basically what they're made for, is to stick out and constellate human energy in a memorable way. "Just do it." "Have it your way." "What happens in the hungry ghost realm stays in the hungry ghost realm." ...Some tweaks may be necessary sometimes.

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What am I even talking about at this point?

Energy and will and life force are real, and the ways that they are constituted and constellated affects our behavior and the world (often in non-linear, trans-rational, magical ways).

Language is a powerful method of shaping energy and will and life force towards particular constellations, which always carries the potential to change behaviors and relationships and the world, even in magical ways.

People who take religion and magic seriously have, throughout history, also tended to take language very seriously in this domain.

We who come after them have tended to follow in their footsteps (repeating the same wording, even to the point of sticking with chanting dead languages for millennia), but it's also possible to play with the principles that led them to take those steps in the first place.

So... play with that? Play with it with all the deep seriousness that is inherent in deep play.

(The background of a lot of this, necessary context, is that I've had recent encounters with mantra-based traditions that made very clear to me that there's much more reality and effectiveness to mantra recitation than I had previously assumed or felt, and I'm still kinda figuring out how that fits into my model of reality to be honest.)

Okay, I think that's it. This is just me processing some new realities and trying to jostle my world-model to see where some stuff fits; stuff that I didn't think was real, and am a bit surprised to be needing to make room for in my world-model. Which is exciting!! It's always cool to fit something new into the world-model and see how it changes the way the whole system works, how the parts interact with each other, etc.

So yeah. Big takeaway is that River had some encounters with mantras that jostled his world and clarified some older experiences with language magic — and now he's taking the world-model apart and putting it back together and trying to see where some pieces fit. Which may involve chanting some Walt Whitman poems for awhile. Which is fine. And kind of great, actually.