Blessed Be

“Forget hocus-pocus, abracadabra, and kaboom and begin transforming the world’s ‘Double, double toil and trouble’ with your passionate ‘Blessed be!’” —Sarah Ban Breathnach, Romancing the Ordinary (2002)

Club in a Sack

Club in a sack recalls the fertility rites associated with early magic, the club symbolizing the male reproductive organ, the sack symbolizing the womb, and the two joined in sacred union.

In Literature:

“[The] youngest brother [in the Grimm fairy tale ‘The Magic Table, the Golden Donkey, and the Club in the Sack’] becomes a wood-turner, but his reward, upon completing his apprenticeship, is neither food nor money; instead, it is a ‘club in a sack.’ Whenever the owner of this enchanted object utters these magic words, a club immediately jumps out of the bag and, prancing around, begins to beat mercilessly anyone who happens to be standing nearby.” —Valerie Paradiz, Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales (2005)

By Jingo

Meanings:

Euphemism for the name of God; an oath

“‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘Why not, by Jingo?’” —T.H. White, The Once and Future King (1939)

Surprise

Variations and Incantations:

By gee, by gosh, by jingo

“[H]e whistled the ballad ‘Oh, by gee, by gosh, by jingo’ as though it were a hymn melancholy and noble.” —Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1921)

By jingo by gee by gosh by gum

—e.e. cummings, “next to of course god america i” (1926)

By the living jingo

—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1903)

High jingo!

—Michael Connelly, The Closers (2005)

In Literature:

“By jingo, that would be awful!” —James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

“I shall never forget it; by Jingo, it has served me for a most excellent good joke ever since.” —Fanny Burney, Evelina (1778)

“[B]y Jingo was not my Lolita a child!” —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

“By jingo, I’m kerfoozled!” —Brian Jacques, Lord Brocktree (2001)

Thanks to Olga Volozova, author of The Airy Tales (about the invisible threads that connect all things), for mentioning that she's currently reading our Magic Words: A Dictionary.

Zara

Zara, enchanted by your powerful magic.
—John Lord Campbell, The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England Vol. 4 (1851)

Mystique: Zara recalls Zarathustra (also known as Zoroaster), the ancient Persian prophet.

Meanings: The root of Zara is zar, meaning “gold.”

Origins: Zara is of Persian origin.

In Literature:

“Across the table, he leaned forward and, in a husky whisper, pronounced the magic word: ‘Zara!’” —Jacqueline Park, The Secret Book of Grazia Dei Rossi (1997)

“[I said] a magic word. . . . Her name. Zara [the Queen of Light].”
—Tony Abbott, The Knights of Silversnow (2002)

Locus-Pocus

My locus
My focus
My wand of hocus-pocus.
—Dennis Miller, The Rant Zone (2001)

The word locus means “place,” so locus-pocus conjures a place where magic happens.

This phrase is a variation of the magic phrase hocus pocus.

In Literature:

Julia Oliver, Music of Falling Water (2001)

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