Words are Spells

To begin, I am thinking about words, and my love for them, and their power to bring life and deadness to our realities. My journey as an English professor and astrologer has brought me close to the weight of words. Our psychological connection to language is the very foundation of our existence here on earth. People are looking for that one word, uttered from their depths, that would shake their foundation and grant them the freedom (or control) they desire. In my experience, I notice how folks interact with words and use them to define their persona, hide their insecurities, and feed their demons. Students worry about finding the correct language to fulfill a prompt. Astrology clients are concerned with the cosmic word, language to define their astrological body. The foundation of our cosmological and physical manifestations quite literally rests within the word.

Not to make this post to English teacher-y, but I want to define a term that has led me to believe that words are spells (prayers, a beckon to manifestation, a constant definition of desired reality) and that words have a very physical presence when we speak. And it is with this understanding that I teach, I read the astrological charts of others, and I work my own magic. Coming from a “name-it-and-claim-it” Pentecostal church background, I think there is a wealth of information concerning words and manifestation embedded in Black American spiritual discourse already. I want to tease the fact that speaking words is the same as casting energy and calling desired forces into your purview.

The term I want to define is “metalinguistic awareness.” It is the ability to objectify language as a process as well as an artifact. Simplified, we use a different lexicon of words depending on the audience who receives them. We are aware of how we speak, and we change our language according to our audience. Some of us would never speak to a parent the same way we speak to our friends, so we are aware of the impact words have. We indeed have the ability to objectify language, or make words into physical objects that alter reality. Words then become objects that we use, play with, transform, and silence in order to receive the desired result. Language is always evolving (process), but it can be recorded as a historical document (artifact).

 

So, how do we get “words are spells” from metalinguistic awareness? It is the very act of prayers/spell casting/incantations/meditation that our metalinguistic awareness is employed and heightened. We know the prefix “meta” means to “go beyond”- so in metalinguistics we are going beyond linguistics (language). The speaker knows that words are indeed mean more than the words themselves. Spells and prayers are nothing but our ability to speak meta-vibrational patterns into our present narrative and co-create (co-writing with vibrational patterns around you) speaking into the objectified structure of everyday reality. Words are vibrational patterns that have a metaphysical effect on our narrative. Once we realize that we are not stuck in our present situation (we are not disconnected from the words that define our existence nor from the words that other objects radiate), then you can speak the language of higher vibrational patterns to change to present waves. You are now objectifying surrounding vibrational patterns into the objects of language (language as the system we use to give meaning to this earthly experience).  By knowing that words that are structurally defining your energy, we must begin the process of choosing which words we are allowing to define us.

With the kind of upbringing I had, I can’t get away from the bible when it comes to making sense of spirituality (I’ve literally tried running to atheism, agnosticism, and many belief systems, but I’ve settled on a pantheistic version of spiritualism). John 1:1 reads, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The word has the foundation of creation. Logos, information, and the Divine were intertwined with and in each other. There was an original word that sparked consciousness. As Zora Neale Hurston said, “six days of magic spells and mighty words and the world with its elements above and below was made.” We have the power to use words in manifestation because words are the very mechanisms for such actions.

I’d like to pull a card from my lovely Cosmos tarot deck to go with this post. Here is the card I shuffled and chose:

Lmao, of course, the deck would bring up the “Gemini” card for this post. How original… Who else would understand the deep magic of words and lilt-like connectivity than the energy of Geminis, ruled by the planet Mercury (the God-messenger, wing-footed owner of our ability to fix things in our minds mentally only to manifest those thoughts into words)? But, this air sign card makes sense since this post is about words and manifestation. The Gemini twins represent the duality that exists when using your metalinguistic awareness in this realm to create higher vibrations in the spiritual realm. On the card, the man on the left has sparks of light coming from his head: that’s a divine connection to the metaphysical. The man on the right has a strong back and a darker appearance: that’s grounding our words on earth in manifestation and building a solid foundation. We must have both because words lead to materialization. The phrase “words are spells” is just a mystical way of letting you know that your words manifest your own reality.