Assist

Hearken, So-and-so, and assist me . . . .
I desire to ask for a little magic.
—a Malay shaman’s spell, Folklore,
Vol. XV (1904), p. 156

As we were celebrating the premiere of “Women in Boxes,” the documentary about magicians’ assistants, we were reminded that the verb assist is a magic word. Indeed, it figures into the incantations of the Gnostic medics, who used the verb in their secret rites for traveling through the “Airs of Mystery.” After reciting a magic prayer in Latin, these mystic doctors beseeched by saying “Assist me, Genii, assist me” (Samael Aun Weor, Occult Medicine and Practical Magic, 2004, p. 102).