that this craving might be especially intense in the psyches of those individuals who pursue magic as a career or avocation. As a budding magician's skill in understanding and contriving illusions develops, there is no reason to suppose that his hunger for wonder accordingly diminishes. Perhaps this is why magic catalogs so often promise that the magician will be equally amazed by an illusion. For example, magician Jim Cellini's "Lord of the Rings" routine vows: "You will stand in front of a mirror and amaze even yourself when you perform these moves."11 Likewise, magician Lubor Fiedler's "Blue Crystal" trick promises it "allows you to experience the astonishment yourself, when the crystal surface that you just touched allows coins and cards to sink inside. The visual effect will cause you to question your own eyes."12 Knowledge of procedures may be beguiling to a point, but the very sounds of "magical words, sacred references, and metaphors" can prove "irresistible."1 Everyone can share that primal amazement, gloriously augmented by the reverberations of the right magic words. What is the source of primal amazement? Language has the power to reawaken vestiges of humankind's earliest communication -- our ancient ancestors' savage cries of anger or love. All such cries were commands, "originally bound up with the act" and indeed inseparable to the primitive mind. Much in the way that a small child learns to conjure up a parent from the unseen void of an adjoining room, simply by employing a magic word like "Mama," we can reflect that "The savage called his friend's name, and saw his friend turn and answer; what more natural to conclude than that the name itself in some way compelled an answer?"14 Eons later, words are still magic: Dipped in the wisdom Of our ancestors Words pluck strings reaching far through time15 The word, "having originally formed part of the act, is able to evoke all the concrete emotional contents of the act. Love cries, for instance, which lead up to the sexual act are obviously among the most primitive words; henceforward these and all other words alluding to the act retain a definite emotional charge."16 One needn't look far to observe that those words which reference "the act" are indeed remarkable in their power to arouse, titillate, shock, offend, and even amuse. This primitive vestige is alive in a magician's magic words as well. The audience has an instinctive understanding (inherited from humanity's 11 Denny Haney, DennyMagic.com (2005) 12 Misdirections Magic Shop, Misdirections.com (2005) 1 Martín Prechtel, Long Life, Honey in the Heart (1999). Scholar Thomas Seifrid notes that "every word is in principle a metaphor" (The Word Made Self: Russian Writ- ings On Language, 1860-1930 [2005]). 14 Joy Davidman, Smoke on the Mountain (195 ) 15 Blain Bovee, The Sabian Symbols & Astrological Analysis (2004) 16 Jean Piaget, Language and Thought of the Child (1926)