Mystery

At the Secret Art Journal, Gordon Meyer discusses the word "mystery" and how to gift someone with a beautiful reminder of life's unanswerable questions.

Unexplored

"To penetrate as far as possible into the great white area on Dawson's map, south of the Kananaskis Lakes, marked with the magic word 'Unexplored,' that most fascinating and suggestive of all names to any lover of the wilderness."
—Canadian Alpine Journal

Love

Love: "Isn't that the fabled magic word that fixes everything? Isn't that the only word that can't be worn out by its repetition on the covers of a billion greeting cards?" —Dexter Palmer, The Dream of Perpetual Motion (2010)

The Hunt and the Mystery

When Andrew Lovatt kindly praised us for "bringing the excitement and the hunt and mystery back into lexicogaphy," we realized that he had identified the patron saint of our magical dictionary: Artemis, the Roman goddess of the hunt. Thanks, Andrew!

Wild Strawberries

"There is something about the wild strawberries which draws me like a magic spell. There is magic is the French cast of their name [fraises des bois]: strawberries of the woods. There is the magic of memory, the recollection of afternoons when I plucked and ate them."
—"The Point of View," Scribner's Magazine, Volume 67, p. 761

Magic and Literature are the Same Thing

"Oddly, alchemy seems to work with texts in just the same way as it is meant to work with matter . . . Titles, plots, all of the elements which for us make a text what it is give way to an alchemical process perhaps best described as an aura. . . . [M]agic and literature are the same thing. Enchanting, the text is, quite literally enchanted."
—Amy Wygant, The Meanings of Magic (2006)

Spellbound = Aphasic?

Is to be spellbound to experience aphasia?

"She stood silent, motionless, spellbound. Words had lost all meaning."
—Mary Stewart, Unspotted from the World (1897)