evaporates as we awake." They establish a sacred space where miracles can occur. And of course they trigger transformations. "'Magic words' . . . immediately lead to action and transform reality." Medieval conjurors first began using exotic words to "give their performances an air of authentic secret knowledge."24 Whether they employed pseudo-Latin phrases, nonsense syllables, or esoteric terms from religious antiquity, these magicians were doing far more than merely adding a bit of enigmatic audio to their visuals. They were enhancing their specific illusions with a universal mystery: language as an instrument of creation. Ancient-sounding words project an aura of tradition, of "'old wisdom' handed down through generations." It's little wonder that the archetypical depiction of a magician involves the utterance of antiquated words, in addition to the grand gestures that impart a larger-than-life dimension to his activities.27 And because archaic magic words necessarily predate a magician's own life, they point to the existence of a "transcendent" realm28 beyond the logic and laws of our ordinary world. The world of the past is always mysterious to those too young to recall it. We can also assume that people are more likely to accept the amazing if it is associated with a context other than their own. It is no accident that fantastic tales are often introduced as having happened "once upon a time" or "long ago and far away." "[I]t does not matter whether this archaism is genuine or fake" as long as members of the audience experience themselves "as participating in something extended far beyond their own life."29 "Knowledge of such special words and languages enables the magician to communicate with [and activate] elements belonging to [sacred] space." 0 And when the magician intones such words he transforms any parlor, theatre, municipal arena -- or even the whiskey-stained surface of a rickety card table -- into a sacred space primed for the extraordinary. There are profound truths in that old cliché of a magician pulling a rabbit out of an empty hat with the magic word abracadabra. Almost everyone recognizes the image. But what relatively few people know is that our stereotypical magician is speaking an ancient Hebrew phrase that means 22 Anaïs Nin, Fire: From 'A Journal of Love': The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934- 1937 (1995) 2 Anthony Olszewski, "When Baraka Blows His Horn" (2004) 24 Paul Kriwaczek, In Search of Zarathustra: The First Prophet and the Ideas That Changed the World (200 ) 25 Needless to say, a magician's patter can serve to distract, for "We get mesmer- ized by magic words" (Dale Mathers, An Introduction to Meaning and Purpose in Analytical Psychology [2002]). 26 Jesper Sorensen, Magical Rituals and Conceptual Blending 27 HiddenRealms.net (2002) 28 Jesper Sorensen, Magical Rituals and Conceptual Blending 29 Ibid. 0 Ibid.