The Language Of Magic

The Languages of Magic

• Introduces key ideas in linguistics and semiotics to reveal how magic works • Reveals how to apply effective communication techniques to your magical practice • Includes case studies of magical schools, such as Hermetic magic, sigil magic, Thelema, the Church of Satan, Chaos Magic, and the Temple of Set In this illuminating and deeply informative guide, practicing magician Toby Chappell takes readers on a journey into the heart of what it means to transform reality by exploring what magic is. He explains that operative magic works because it is communication. The practitioner of magic is communicating with the unmanifest to align the outside world with their inner transformations, desires, and needs. Drawing on linguistics and the analytical techniques of semiotics, the author explores how we perceive and affect the world by treating it like a partner in communication. He shows how this notion of magical communication appears in ancient practice, looking specifically at Hermetic magic and the spells of Greek magical papyri, sigil magic, Enochian magic, and runes. He explains the symbol-building necessary to effectively transform your inner and outer reality with magical speech, signs, and sigils. The author examines the languages of magic in modern New Thought practices, and he also looks at magical communication in several modern and postmodern schools of magic, including Thelema and the teachings of Aleister Crowley, Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, the Church of Satan, Chaos Magic, and the Temple of Set. Revealing how to apply techniques of effective communication to the magical realm, the author allows you to deepen your understanding of magical practice and, ultimately, perform magic with greater success.

Coral Gardens and Their Magic: The language of magic and gardening

The Magic of Language and the Language of Magic

The core concept of this thesis is that of a “magical universal language”, an idea I’ve encountered in a vast variety of sources. While I do not draw definitive conclusions about the meanings and implications of this idea, I try to trace the complex connections between our concepts of magic and language. To that end, I develop a definition of language (and all expressive acts) as forms of magic, and a definition of magic as relation, communication, communion, and connection between the Self and the Other. I essentially understand both language and magic as acts which are able to bridge the abysses between dichotomies and form dialogic reciprocal relationships between them, especially the dichotomy of Self and the Other, of Word and World. Crucially, such acts include human language but are not limited to it. A more poetic way of putting this is that both language and magic are expressions of Love, which transcends “Self” and “Other”. I reference a wide array of sources ranging from fiction and myth to academic and scientific authors in order to explore a few key points relating to this essential idea. The first is simply that there are deep, complex connections between magic, language, and all acts of expression, connection, communication, and relation. The second is that the magical power of human language can be abused (like all power), because our capacity for abstraction has a shadow side that tends to separate us from the world and all we perceive as “The Other”. The third is that the stories and myths we tell about magic suggest a worldview in which all of existence is expressive, in which there is no real “Other” because all is interconnected and united through relation, communication, and communion; in other words, through Love. From this perspective, human language is simply a specialized and abstracted form of existence’s infinite expressiveness: the “magical universal language” shared by all beings. Thus, I argue that this worldview refutes the foundational ideology of our civilization (which positions humanity as hierarchically dominant above all else) and implies an ethical, loving engagement with all of existence.