The Tarot's Enchanted Snowman

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(In honor of Gordon Meyer, whose magic spell for bringing a snowman to life appears in Magic Words: A Dictionary.)

Earnestness

"We wait and wait for some formula, some magic word, some initiation to do for us what we must do for ourselves. There is a magic word—earnestness. The Buddha tells us that earnestness is the path of life and heedlessness is the path of death. Be earnest and nothing will resist you, but be earnest for great ends. Why should we speak of the lesser uses of the imagination. The man of vital imagination will be the creator and producer in any line that he undertakes."
—Swami Paramananda, Vedanta Monthly: Message of the East (1922)

Now You See It, Now You Don't

"Perhaps it was just the basic mystery of life . . . Now you see it—now you don't."
—William Burroughs, Cities of the Red Night (1981)

Ramiferous

The Land of Nimbi blog shares the magic word ramiferous, which means "bearing branches." Blogger Christopher Williams notes that "The magic and taboo that surrounds sacred boughs and branches is manifold and longstanding. The joyful giving of a branch of May and the festive hanging of the mistletoe are contemporary vestiges of quite ancient Goddess worship. Beware those bearing splendid branches, for they are most likely not of this world, and thus have the means to bewitch one and to open portals from this world to theirs." Williams cites a beautiful passage from Old Irish mythology, spoken by a strange woman to the hero Bran after he has taken up such a branch.

Tetragrammaton

During the middle ages, sorcerers and alchemists sought God’s true name, imagining it to be the most potent magic word. Literally meaning “the four letters” in Greek, the word Tetragrammaton is comprised of four Hebrew letters (Yod, He, Waw, and He), spelling the unpronounceable name of the Hebrew God.

Christmas

"Christmas! that is the magic word I conjure with."
—David Herbert Lawrence, Lawrence in Love: Letters to Louie Burrows, 1968

Noel

“Noel! Noel! Noel! This magic word resounds on all sides. . . . Of the thousands of canticles which are heard on this famous eve, nine-nine in a hundred begin and end with this word, which is, one may say, their Alpha and Omega, their crown and footstool.”
—The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1862)