Beauty, Inspiration, Magic, Spellbound, Enchantment, Serenity, Silence, Intimacy, Amazement

Self-taught architect Luis Barragán (1902-1988), whose colorful work was described as poetic, once "apologized for not having done justice to the concepts of beauty, inspiration, magic, spellbound, enchantment, serenity, silence, intimacy, and amazement" (Dwell, May 2009).

Alchemy

“Spoken words are silver, unspoken words are gold.”
—Leo Tolstoy, War & Peace, 1869; translated by Anthony Briggs, 2005. (p. 491)
(via DJMisc)

Leaving Unsaid the Obvious

"A friend not only tells the truth, but leaves unsaid the obvious at an opportune moment."
—Jayne Harnett-Hargrove

Magic Need Not Be Spoken

"I did not speak of magic; it need not be spoken to occur."
—Gregory G. Bolich, 12 Magic Wands

Magical Teardrops

Tauba Auerbach's "Listen/Silent" anagram reminds us of a poem by Thomas Moore:

When to sad Music silent you listen,
And tears on those eyelids tremble like dew,
Oh, then there dwells in those eyes as they glisten
A sweet holy charm that mirth never knew.

We like the idea of teardrops being a magical potion, glistening with enchantment of a shadowy (mirthless) yet sacred nature.

In the Mouth of the White Squirrel

"But he found no word beneath the tongue of the reindeer, no magical word in the mouth of the white squirrel, not even so much as the beginning of a word."
—The Writings of Lafcadio Hearn, 1922

Mum's the Word in Wales

"We are not told what is the magical word in Wales."
—E. Sidney Hartland, "The Indian Origin of Popular Tales," The Academy, Jan. 30, 1892

Wordless Magic

How can one express "what language is incapable of putting into words?" Does relinquishing logical language foster unity with all living things? The Theatre of the Absurd has an innate distrust of language, preferring wordless communication through "shapes, light, movement and gesture." The aim is "to create a ritual-like, mythological, archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to the world of dreams."

Silence as a Word of Great Power

Thomas Merton, the celebrated Trappist monk, suggested that "The contemplative waits in silence and when he is 'answered,' it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by this silence itself suddenly, inexplicably, revealing itself to him as a word of great power" (Contemplative Prayer, qtd. in Spiritual Gardening by Pegg Streep).

Silent Magicians

Do silent magicians use magic words?

In Polynesian mythology, Tama is Maui's guardian and silent teacher of magic: "You found the shores of Tama, the silent magician who gave you gifts of the underworld and secrets of the hidden realsm." —James W. Barnes, Sea Songs, 2004

(Here's an Icelandic film, "The Silent Magician." Here's deaf entertainer Morton A. Feldman, The Silent Magician.)

Spells Without Words

A Book Without Words: A Fable of Medieval Magic involves a tome of spells that appears to consist of blank pages. Having compiled our own atlas of blank maps, we find the concept enchanting!

Allow Silence

Speak a magic word from your heart. And if, when the magic moment arrives, no sound escapes your lips, then let silence be louder than words. “The delight that we unveil always seems to come down to this: I have a feeling in my heart and now, without any words—abracadabra: You have that feeling in your heart.”* That’s what magic is—a kind of communion, an imparting of a transcendent experience from one who is initiated to those who assemble around him. And some of these shared, transcendent experiences are just too magical for words.

*George Alistair Sanger, quoted in The Art of Digital Music: 56 Visionary Artists and Insiders Reveal Their Creative Secrets by David Battino (2005)

Sigh

The music of a sigh, the magician of a momentary joy.
—F.G., “British Poetry: the Drama,” The British Controversialist and Literary Magazine (1862)

The most profound meaning of a sigh is invariably absent from dictionaries. A sigh is an invocation. It is an audible expression of a deep yearning for someone or something beyond one’s reach. A sigh is an aspiration in both senses of the word: an exhalation of breath and a heartfelt wish. A sigh typically trails off into a deep silence, just as in meditation the intention carried by a sutra is allowed to germinate in the wordless void.

In Irish lore we find the fairy name sigh or sidh (pronounced “shee”), originating from the blast of wind sidhe that carries the vital spirit (comparable to the magician siddha and magic siddhi of Hindu belief).*

For Laplander shamen, a profound sigh seems to carry across the threshold to the otherworld to signal an awakening of oracular powers:

After some preparatory ceremonies, the magician falls senseless and motionless, as if the soul had really abandoned the body. After a lapse of twenty-four hours, the soul returning, the apparently inanimate body awakens as if out of the profound sleep, and utters a deep-drawn sigh, as if emerging from death to life. Thus brought to himself, the magician answers questions put to him, and, to remove all doubt in regard to the character of his responses, he names and describes the places where he has been, with minute circumstances well known to the interrogator.
—John Campbell Colquhoun, An History of Magic, Witchcraft, and Animal Magnetism (1851)

In “Ej Haj,” the Hungarian fairy tale by Zsuzsanna Palkó, the titular magician’s name not only sounds like but also means “a sigh.”† The word haj is possibly related to Xai, a Vogul shaman’s “invocation to the supernatural at ritual ceremonies.”† In the tale “János Teddneki,” the King of Devils is named “Hájháj,”† like a double sigh.

A double sigh conjures a magician in this exemplary passage:

A deep sigh escaped his parched lips, and that sigh was echoed by another. He looked up, and standing beside him, in the hush of solemn midnight, he beheld Grimwald the Magician!
—E.B. Clarke, “A Legend of Charlemagne,” The American Monthly Magazine (1837)

A sigh accomplishes a magical effect in this passage:

Jack Starhouse could make [cats] dance wild dances, leaping about upon their hind legs and casting themselves from side to side. This he did by strange sighs and whistlings and hissings.
—Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (2004)

Sometimes, an intricate incantation is expressed through sighs:

He raised his arms, holding them out to her. ‘Kum [kunka] yali, kum buba tambe,’ and more magic words, said so quickly, they sounded like whispers and sighs. The young woman lifted one foot on the air. Then the other. She flew clumsily at first, with the child now held tightly in her arms. Then she felt the magic, the African mystery. Say she rose as free as a bird. As light as a feather.
—Virginia Hamilton, The People Could Fly (1985)

In the following passage, a sigh surrounds a magician like a spectral aura as he explains the limits of his art:

The shadow of a sigh penetrated the wall. “I am a magician indeed, with knowledge of every spell yet devised, the sleight of runes, incantations, designs, exorcisms, talismans. I am Master Mathematician, the first since Phandaal, yet I can do nothing to your brain without destroying your intelligence, your personality, your soul—for I am no god. A god may will things to existence; I must rely on magic, the spells which vibrate and twist space.”
—Jack Vance, The Dying Earth (1982)

* Abram Smythe Palmer, Folk-Etymology (1882)
† Linda Degh, Folktales and Society (1989)

[Special thanks to Gordon Meyer, for inspiration!]