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What Makes Good Spells?

To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,alt.paranormal.spells.hexes.magic,alt.religion.wicca,alt.witchcraft,alt.lucky.w
From: catherine yronwode 
Subject: Re: What Makes Good Spells? (was Spell assistance ...)
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 03:30:34 GMT

Sentient wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 24 Jun 2002 04:43:02 GMT, blackman99
>  wrote:
> 
> >50020623 VII
> >
> >"varunica" :
> >> It is not complicated to do a good spell. To make a great spell
> >> is to just say one, out loud, using the first words coming to
> >> mind, from the necessity of the situation. The powers will
> >> understand.
> >
> >which are 'the powers'? do they have names? do they require
> >things? to be appeased, consistently support my magic, etc.?
> >if all that is required is to say things, then why are all
> >these powders and wands and knives and stuff used? do they
> >help at all?
> >
> >>Using rhyme is prefered to tie the intelligence of it, to
> >>create an entity just by the very words of it.
> >
> >oh so THAT's why rhymes are good? I've never heard a real
> >substantiation of rhymed incantation except as support for
> >the perpetuation of a particular culture's magical style
> >(e.g. Euros, chiefly Brit?).
> 
> Irish in particular, very good for getting cows out of bogs. Even T S
> Eliot wrote about that.
> 
> The Zhouyi uses much rhyme you know.
> 
> I could string together a substantiation of rhymed incantation,
> interesting point, but I'm not sure you're worth it. I may do it
> anyway, some time.

Oh, do it for me, then, willya? I mean. seriously, you are in Great
Britain and probably know a lot more about Germano-British and
Celto-Nordic cross-culturalism than i do. 

From here, in the USA, it seems that the spell-rhymes come to me from
German sources, e.g. Hohman's Pow Wows (filled with rhymes! which are
similar in structure to rhymes found in the German in Grimm's fairy
tales) and also via Celtic revivalists, including pseudo-Aradian (but
not realio-trulio Italian) Wiccans and Neo-Pagans. 

In hoodoo, the other main stream of American magic, which arose in a
culture surely gifted at impromtu rhyming (from blues to R&B to
rock'n'roll to rap), there is little or no rhyming in spell-work.
Instead, one hears improvisations of what i would call a
pseudo-King-Jamesian sort, like Biblical proof-texting gone afield,
like  -- and this is an analogy for Brits who may be unfamiliar with the
style -- a Baptist preacher "tuning" (performing cadenced, semi-musical
preaching) in the key of G. If you are not familiar with the style,
think think Martin Luther King Junior, think Jesse Jackson, both from
that denomination. 

Just a magical culture-watcher... eager for news from the other shore. 

cat yronwode 

Hoodoo in Theory and Practice -- http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoo.html

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