Glamour

Glamour refers to an almost hallucinatory fascination. It's a glittering, bewitching charm that beguiles in a thrilling way. How? By conjuring an "illusion of the eye which makes it see things other than they are." Put another way, glamour adds a sparkle of delight or wonder, with no apparent provocation in the beheld objects.

The "necromantic word" glamour grants "the mysterious gift of second sight . . . like the sudden turning on of a factitious light, just as in a theater the effects they call 'transformation' are accomplished by a changing of lights. In glamour the facts remain the same, your appreciation of the facts remains the same; but the significance is entirely changed." The beholder's entire natural world "crystallizes anew" around the glamorous object. "Nothing is quite familiar, all is invested with divine novelty, while . . . the 'spell' lasts. . . . Whether we should say of these momentary special intimations that the veil of enchantment has been thrown over the scene, or that the veil of dull accustomedness has been lifted, may always remain a debatable question. The so-called 'common-sense' view will adhere to the idea of illusion; the idealist, the poet, the artist, may well insist that thus should we always see objects if we saw them clearly and in toto; and I would hazard the theory that it is the perception, more or less perfect, of the subtle super-qualities of all objects of sense which keeps the poet in a divine emulation, tremulous between hope and despair, to make the rest of the world see what he himself quite habitually sees and hears. Whatever thus piques and holds the inner fantastic eye or ear, investing sight and sound with an enhanced wealth of significance to the soul, we may call glamour" (Edith M. Thomas, "Glamour," The Century Magazine, Vol. LI, No. 2, Dec. 1895).

[Don't miss Futility Closet's eye-witness account of a fairy castle in Ireland.]