Sim Sala Bim

Gordon Meyer shares this quotation:

After a full evening send off with Dante's party we couldn't get close to the meaning of 'Sim-Sala-Bim.
—Theo Annemann, The Jinx #67

Here are a few tidbits about sim sala bim from our dictionary of magic words:

These magic words were made popular by the famous professional magician Dante/The Great Jansen. They also served as the name of his famous touring magic show. Professional magician Whit Haydn once used these words in his performances as a tribute to Dante. He explains: “Sim Sala Bim are nonsense syllables from a Danish nursery rhyme. Dante used them in his show, saying they meant ‘A thousand thanks.’ He said that the more applause, the bigger the bow, and the more thanks that the Sim Sala Bim would mean. Soon after moving to L.A. in the seventies, I bought a set of Dante’s rings from Ken Leckvold, who had bought them from Dante’s son. I really enjoyed performing with these rings, and eventually added Dante’s line as a magic word in my rope routine and silk to egg, sort of a tribute thing. I liked the Ali Baba/Aladdin kind of sound of the words.”

Sim salabim is spoken by a Turkish alchemist with magical powers in the early medieval folk play entitled Robyn Hode: A Mummers Play: “I have here a potion, brought from the east. It is called the golden elixir, and with one drop I will revive Robyn Hode with these magic words: ‘Sim Salabim.’ Rise up young man and see how your body can walk and sing.”

Dr. Herbert H. Nehrlich suggests that sim sala bim “is named after Ali Sim-sala-bim, a desert wanderer and—most importantly—a magician.”

Sim sala bim is “the Swedish equivalent of ‘abracadabra,’” and is known in other Scandinavian cultures as well.

After the Second World War, Kalanag, the stage name of professional German magician Helmut Schreiber, “toured the world with his spectacular, colorful illusion show Sim Sala Bim. . . . His show is now in the collection of the popular British magician, Paul Daniels.”

Sim Sala Bim is the name of a card trick by Kolin Tregaskes.

Professional magician Jade uses the magic phrase sim sala bim in Houdin’s Light & Heavy Chest illusion: “A box is easy to carry until—zap!—the magician Jade says the magic words. Suddenly, the box can’t be moved! In the front stage, you are invited to lift Jade’s magic chest. Then, with just the magic words, ‘Sim sala bim,’ Jade makes the chest too heavy to lift.”

Orson Welles uses Sim Sala Bim as magic words in the 1967 film Casino Royale.

A Haunted Language

William Keckler has theory that so many poets explore the Underworld because our language is haunted by the ghosts of other cultures:

Poets tend to get lost in dictionaries more than other writers, I think. . . . Is it a coincidence that the poets who are obsessed with etymologies are often the poets skewed towards the Occult, or spiritual intelligences? . . . One could argue a rational basis for this seemingly irrational drift of thought. Linguistic analysis would say these poets were seeing hauntings within language because they're there. The ghosts of other cultures and their values (spiritual, political, praxeological) are still markers in the cultures which absorb them. Talking heads like the metal head that supposedly spoke oracles.

Simple Faith in a Word

"I speak of magic advisedly, for in a great deal of what has been said and written there is more of simple faith in a word or a vague idea than of real plan."
—Norman Thomas, "The Essential Condition of Economic Planning"

Morocco

"The word explained, linked up, gave significance — that magical word Morocco!"
—Anthony Hope, The Secret of the Tower, 1919

Please

"The word 'please' is a magical word, charged in every letter with some good, charitable, soothing, subduing electricity, whose gentle shocks blesses both the tongue that utters it, and the ear upon which it falls."
—O. P. Fuller, Annual Report of the Board of Education, Volume 33, 1871

Poetry and Context

"The word that is magical in a particular line of poetry may be quite inert in a different sentence; the construction that is merely a bungle in one context may serve a powerful expressive purpose in another."
—Graham Goulden Hough, Style and Stylistics (1969)

Fountain

"The mere word 'fountain' is magical. At sight or sound of it, the Fountains of Youth, Forgetfulness and Immortality are brought to mind. "
—Esther Matson, "The Heart of the Garden," The Craftsman, Vol. 28, 1915