MAGIC WORDS kids have not a clue as to what the words are or mean, though in English, when they sing Christmas carols or the national anthem or say the pledge of allegiance. What of the "forgive us our trespasses" of the Lord's prayer, when it was understood that cutting across Mrs. Keappock's lawn ranked right up there with murder in what got God really mad. What eight-year-old knew that "plejallegiance" was or what one nation was "invisible"?19 It is this mysterious quality, among other things, that differentiates a Ritual from lower-case rituals like reading the funnies over breakfast or doing the laundry on Sunday. In the same spirit as those magicians who consider the abracadabras of old to be out of touch with modern audiences, religious reform move ments "often make the inaccessibility of sacred language to the laity the rallying point of their program," says Miller. "But that seems to miss the point of what defines sacredness: its inaccessibility. So much of the uncanniness of successful Ritual depends precisely on our not understanding what is said, probably because we think Ritual should be dealing with the mysterious, the incomprehensible, the ineffable." Certainly our magic show Rituals are meant to be uncanny, mysterious, incomprehensible, and ineffable. And strange, enchanting words from vanished languages can be instrumental in achieving these goals. Miller raises a fascinating question: why, he asks, do people feel more urges to get the giggles during Ritualized experiences than in ordinary settings? Miller alludes to settings like religious services, graduation speeches, weddings, and funerals -- events at which most of us have probably observed, or worse yet embodied, that perverse manifestation of involuntary physiology that we laughingly call "the giggles." Anyone who has ever been overtaken by the giggles knows that it's no joke, and Miller takes the phenomenon quite seriously. He notes that "The giggles are not brought on by the mere demand to play a role we are not up to playing, for then we would get the giggles every time we feigned interest in a conversation." He suggests that something distinctly different is at work in Ritualized settings, something that leaves us a little spooked or unsettled. Solemnity virtually dares us not to get the giggles: "More than the willful disobedience in the Garden of Eden, getting the giggles is the profoundest revolt against authority that we have at our disposal, perhaps because it is really not at our disposal but comes unbidden, the very image of unvarnished truth." Also, "Ritual seems to invite us to suffer breaks with total immersion and see the whole pageant as the highly contrived perfor mance it is. The actors for a mere moment are seen as puppets, mechanical, as ciphers, and this vision is loaded with cosmic possibility." And the possibilities are not only cosmic but comic, as we see when we relate Miller's insights to a growing phenomenon in the modern world of magic -- the brilliant melding of humor with illusion. 19 Ibid.