MAGIC WORDS Magicians' Exalted Words A magician's entire patter could no doubt be described as "magic words." But in this book we dedicate attention to those words spoken with a special reverence for the Mystery -- those enigmatic words and phrases, not usually employed in everyday discourse or conversation, which invoke the powers of creation and destruction when something is to appear out of thin air or to disappear back into the great void. Too often dismissed as "meaningless gibberish," such magic words are, on the contrary, rich in meaning for those initiated into their significance. And unlike computer- generated gibberish, for example -- which typically prompts nothing deeper than shoulder-shrugging or hair-tearing -- the sacred vocabulary of mystery- makers has always affected listeners in profound (if indescribable) ways. The key to this paradoxical resonance of mysterious words among the uninitiated -- those, that is, to whom their meanings are not under stood -- may be that the words' meanings, though obscure to the listener, possess an implicit profundity that is transmitted through its sounds and cadences. "People are struck by something and yet they don't really seem to know what it is," music critic Robert Shelton observes. "That's always been the case with the most acute and exalted poetry. There are lines of Shakespeare like this, in which you don't have to [understand] . . . to be struck by the magic of words."11 Every magician knows that even young children are deeply moved by magic words. This makes sense, when we consider how attuned they are to the magic of words in general: writing teacher Deena Metzger describes a three-year-old pupil who "knew the magic of words; she knew that words could create magic, that they were magic. She knew that they could create worlds, could describe worlds, explore worlds, and also be the bridge between one world and another."12 If magic words can inspire awe even among those who do not un derstand them, then why has a classic, time-tested magic word like abracadabra become "a very tired cliché" to such professional magicians as David Pogue, author of Magic for Dummies?1 Composer and philosopher David Rothenberg suggests a convincing answer: whenever words are tossed out without the proper feeling, they "[take] revenge by becoming hokey as hell."14 Consider this advice from scholar Phillip Cooper: If words are going to be used, they should be meant. Words of power work because the person puts feeling, belief, and imagination into those words. Nonmagic words -- the vocabulary magic word" (Ben Hogan, Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf [1985]). 11 No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (1986) 12 Quoted in Awakening at Midlife by Kathleen A. Brehony (1997) 1 Pogue claims "You could probably think of something funnier and more enter- taining [than abracadabra] without even trying" (Magic for Dummies [1998]). 14 The Book of Music and Nature: An Anthology of Sounds, Words, Thoughts (2001)