![]() ![]() Some charms involve material objects, and the word charm, originally from the Latin carmen, “song, incantation,” has come to mean also “a physical object that has naturally or magically been imbued with a magical power,” 2 and synonymous with talisman, amulet, and fetish, which are often used interchangeably but have different connotations in light of their differing etymologies. The words of such enchantments are sometimes devoid of literal meaning-cf. 1 Evelyn Poole (Helen McCrory) incanting the Verbis Diablo in Penny Dreadful She gnashed at him her devastating fury and hurled forth images of death in an ecstasy of rage. She put herself into a sinister mood, and with her own evil eye she put a curse on the eye of Talos. On her knees she called them three times in song, three times in prayer. ![]() Then sang songs of incantation, invoked the dæmons of death, the swift hounds of hell that whirl around the air everywhere and fall on living creatures. Verbal magic has been practiced since ancient times e.g., the voces magicæ and ritual lamenting in Greek mageía (μαγεία) and goēteía (γοητεία): spell, which also has linguistic connotations. The word enchant is akin to the Latin incantāre, whence incantation: “The use of a formula of words spoken or chanted to produce a magical effect the utterance of a spell or charm more widely, the use of magical ceremonies or arts magic, sorcery, enchantment” ( OED). A magical result is a sign of magic at work, and those who recognize the signs are witnesses to magic in the world-not by simply mistaking correlation for causation, but by embracing something that is profoundly weird. We might think of enchantment as engineering synchronicity, i.e., acausal, meaningful connections. The magical act seems to cause something to happen that manifests the intentionality of the act (i.e., the reason the act was performed), which we typically call a result although we may not be able to plainly show efficient causality between the act and its consequence (recall Sørensen’s ‘opaque causal mediation’). Technomantic enchantment involves computers to do magic that effects change in the world. Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: To see and give commands to the whole world is almost the same as being everywhere. Where a man’s word goes, and where his power of perception goes, to that point his control and in a sense his physical existence is extended. Functionality of language, as made possible by computers, can hardly be imagined by those who have not experienced it.
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