“Fortunate indeed is the child who never gives up the original impulse to bring forth from silence words which not only name and give meaning to the unknown, but which, in their wondrous way, take on, like the child itself, a life of their own.” Richard Lewis, “The Wind of the Marigold,” Parabola Magazine, Vol. VIII, No. 3, 1983
Here’s what came to me spontaneously as I pondered and inscribed the blessings of yesterday onto the pages of my Gratitude Journal, which is part of my early daily awakening ritual:
All of us are built for the work we are divinely designed to do. And from the vantage point of time, we can look back and see that we were obstructed in just such a way that by overcoming the obstacles that were put on our path we were more likely to cultivate the capacities –– and awaken to the necessity –– of discovering and developing our greater reasons for being. For no matter how desolate and devoid of value we may feel in any given moment, we are each a chosen child with something to bring forth that is of value to us all.
I grew up feeling like a half-wit and a bad-seed –– perhaps because I came as a messenger from Beyond –– before there was much receptivity to that in the culture. From early on, I cloistered myself in words, the only reliable resource and steady companion I felt myself to have. And they opened themselves up to me like oyster shells, revealing many of the pearls of wisdom and confounding contra-dictions that ripple through the English language constantly.
What came from playing with English obsessively was what I now consider to be my personal Grass Menagerie –– to borrow a title from Tennessee Williams. And it’s a fitting one given that leaves (and buds) of grass played a major role in igKnighting my explorations and innumerable verbal exaltations.
But when I first began to suspect a larger significance in all that I was encountering in letters and words, I thought I must be making it up as a compensatory fantasy to assuage my shaky self-esteem. Only later did I discover that I’d steadily intuited and assembled something of interest and value to others that is resonant with what the ancients of the East and West all knew about the Power of Words and the potent influence of their symbols and sounds.
No doubt because I grew up feeling so deficient and of only mediocre intellect, I was grateful to be led to share my WordMagical recognitions with others in simple ways that enable us all to see our own innate brilliance and wisdom echoed and reflected back to us in ordinary words –– and the resonant symbols/cymbals that compose them –– when viewed at closer range instead of tripped over lightly.
Before I chimed-in, in 2010 with my first YouTube video, The Secret Spells of the English Language, only two words were widely seen to speak for themselves. They were dis-ease and his story. What my WordMagical material demonstrates is that such ‘telling’ words are everywhere and impossible to avoid –– but only to overlook or underhear:
For one may more readily outrun the shadows that one casts beneath the Sun/Son,
than the telling rePercussions of the omnipresent anagram and pun.[1]
Words are constantly playing with each other –– and with us when we try to ignore their congruence and believe we can dictate their meaning to them. Yet, when we catch them in the act, they can in-form us deeply of what we know we know innately and by heart. A simple example is the correlation between EARTH and HEART and the many philosophical implications contained in this linguistic synchronicity.
Words are eager to pour their secrets and mysteries into our HEARTS. And they invite and entice us to contemplate what their congruence might indicate about our own nature and the nature of reality.
It is through a type of wordplay that is not mere silliness but is literally ‘wise-child’s play’ that we experience the light and d’light of unexpected epiphanies (which I define as a ‘sudden recognition of the obvious’). For such wordplay can actually make us smarter, wiser, more literate, witty, compassionate and aware because it can awaken us out of the trance words cast upon our consciousness through incessant word spells.’
For instance, two years ago, my then ten-year-old grandson casually pointed out to me that the word word, when turned around spells d-r-o-w.’ ‘Yes?’ I asked with no sense of where he was going with this. ‘That’s the beginning of drowsy,’ he said, ‘And that’s how we feel when we read words in bed.’ How had I previously missed this, I wondered!
Needless to say, I was delighted with him. And it reminded me of the familiar hypnotic induction, ‘You’re feeling drowsy and your eye lids are getting heavy.’ Not till my grandson pointed it out did I realize that it all begins with The Word turned backwords –– which helps unwind the mind into a deeper, less accessible level of awareness.
These days, I’m endeavoring to pour out the vast treasury of what I’ve discovered and created through a lifetime of magical wordplay into a variety of forms. Among many other things, I have some extraordinary verses from my mostly-unpublished faerieography, The wRites of Passion of Philomela Nightingale: A Faerie’s Tale[2]. And each of these longer pieces deserve their own beautifully illustrated Golden Book for the wise child within us all.
Wait till you see and hear the exquisite verbal imagery I have conjured co-creatively with Spirit as a remedy for my own sometimes sagging spirits. The dreams and visions of what I’d like to share with you all –– in a variety of forms –– and leave behind as a legacy when my tenure on this dimension expires, are quite beautiful and do-able … with a little help from my friends and supporters.
If you are a regular visitor to my YouTube channel, you will have seen that I’ve recently shared a number of brief, animated poetic vignettes, which are available to all without charge. Just the other day, however, the animator in Indonesia with whom I am currently working, made it possible for visitors to contribute directly on my channel to help allay the cost of these fairly pricey offerings. With the support of those who enjoy them, I will be able to create a whole lot more.
Last year, with a small bequest from a kind aunt, I was able to hire an animator and a voice actor –– both from Turkey –– to illustrate and articulate what is perhaps my most unusual verse, eSoterica by Laurel Airica: The Definitive Exegesis on the Letter S in Verse. This piece entertains the philosophical conundrum[3] related to the Serpent and Satan, Saints and Sinners –– all of which emanate from the Letter S, the ‘Sourceress of the Alphabet.’ And it resolves this conundrum in the friendly form of a nursery rhyme.
To learn more about it, please look for the trailer to eSoterica on my YouTube channel. And to see the entire (nearly 7-minute) animation, please go to www.Patreon.com/WordMagicGlobal.
For an $11 contribution, you will receive the exclusive URL for eSoterica.
Soon, an animation on the Letter I, entitled The Aye That is Oui, will be available to you, also for your kind donation. And as you’ll see, the ‘I’ is also a lot of fun to play with. For just as we have two eyes on our face, so there are two forms of the Letter I in the Alphabet. And each form represents one of our two primary modes of being: the small, fragmented egoic self, and our Capital Potential as the bridge between Heaven and Earth.
It is through your contributions that I will be able to share ever more of what has evolved over time into what I recently recognized and described to friends as being my ––
HOME-Grown, Grass-Fed
Synergistic Mysti-Linguisticism:
Self-Enlightening WordPlay on Beyond the Leading-Edge!
Today, July 20, 2022, on the occasion of my 7×11th birthday, I’d like to express my gratitude to you all for your kind attention to my wordplay, and for all the sweet and delicious Love and Appreciation you have shared with me so lavishly over the years.
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[1] Excerpt from the ‘Juris-Diction,’ the third chapter in Our Mystic-Linguistic Echo-System, A Terse Discourse in Verse on the Power of the Word. It is a multi-chapter, mostly unpublished dissertation-in-distillation that I wrote many years ago to explain my mystic-linguistic perspective on English.
[2] To view several chapters from wRites of Passion on my YouTube channel, please search for “Mother Nature’s Human Faerie Emissary,’ ‘Dreaming Wide Awake,’ The Essence of Life,’ ‘MetaFortissimo,’ and ‘Speaking Beauty.’
[3] Conundrum: A riddle resolved by a play-on-words.
