Writer As Magician
May 26, 2010
I recently finished reading Rick Riordan's The Red Pyramid, which is a new kids book about Egyptian gods. (I liked it. Probably not as much as the Percy Jackson novels, but it was fun, and showed my total lack of knowledge of Egyptian mythology).
There were a couple things in it I thought y'all would appreciate:
"The Egyptian word shesh means scribe or writer, but it can also mean magician. This is because magic, at its most basic, turns words into reality. You will create a scroll. Using your own magic, you will send power into the words on paper. When spoken, the words will unleash the magic."
And:
"Remember, you are not creating the knife itself. You are summoning it from Ma'at--the creative power of the universe. Hieroglyphs are the code we use. That's why they are called Divine Words. The more powerful the magician, the easier it becomes to control the language."
And:
"No matter what our specialty, each magician's greatest hope is to become a speaker of the Divine Words--to know the language of creation so well that we can fashion reality simply by speaking, not even using a scroll."
What say you?
posted by Mark Terry at 6:32 AM
2 Comments:
There is something magical about words which is probably what attracted me to them. I can't recall who said, in essence, that writing is something like mental telepathy in that the writer, via words, is placing his or her thoughts in the mind of the reader.
I saw that once when I wrote a comic book script with my usual elaborate descriptions, including an alien creature of my own design. When I saw the artist's drawings I was shocked. They depicted faithfully what I had seen in my mind, but could not have drawn. It was amazing. We know this is what is supposed to happen, and hope it does, but I had never had such startling proof.
We are under the wings of Ma'at.
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