I have had a few thoughts regarding aspects of a magical language. The first relates to tenses. Past, present, and future tenses are common to most languages, however, another useful tense for a magical language would be a creating/manifesting (intentional) tense. This idea stemmed from thoughts of having a prefix or suffix to denote an intentional (willed) action. I read through a book entitled Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer, by Gregg Braden. The main secret revealed was to word the prayer in a particular way, such as “I pray rain” rather than “I pray for rain”. The first usage is suggested as actively creating, through prayer. I believe it is similar to repetitive thoughts such as “I am searching for such-and-such” as opposed to “I am finding such-and-such”. It is similar to the idea that children should only be given instructions framed in a positive way, never in the negative, such as “stay dry” as opposed to “don’t get wet.”
Another thought relates to the concept relates to grammatical person (in pronouns). English is commonly considered to have three grammatical persons for pronouns: first person (I, we), second person (you), and third person (he, she it, and they). It is suggested that a fourth person pronoun is achieved through the usage of one, such as “one never knows when a crisis will arise” or “people say you shouldn’t do that.” Spanish has two concepts for the English pronoun you, with the second person, tu, being used in informal situations and third person, usted, being used in formal situations. A language such as Quechua has inclusive and exclusive first person plural concepts, with Ñuqanchik signifying “we and you” and Ñuqayku signifying “we and not you”. Some languages have pronouns that can be classified into categories of fourth and fifth person, although there is not clear and agreed process for these divisions. This raises the question: does grammatical person have any benefit to a magical language?
Another question comes to mind of whether or not a reduced / simple set of words is sufficient for a magical language? English is very rich in words allowing great expression of concepts. An example, English distinguishes between fingers and toes (two words, and essential two distinct concepts – toes are not fingers). Spanish uses the same word, dedos, for both fingers and toes, with toes being referred to as dedos de los pies, literally fingers of the feet. In Chinese, concepts are added together to form new concepts, such as pig + meat (pork), cow + meat (beef), and chicken + meat (chicken), which makes for a very logical system for developing new words. It is the concept that is important, so it may be irrelevant whether a single word is used for a concept, or multiple words.
A magical language should produce, or aid, clarity of thought. Therefore, there shouldn’t be words with multiple meanings (although context helps clarify meaning), even if they have different written forms (hair, here, hare). In contrast to this, NLP and hypnosis often make use of ambiguity for trance induction. So this leaves a question: can a magical language be unambiguous and also provide a clear and effective method of trance induction? One answer could be that an inward looking tense could exist, with the inherent property of entering trance, which assumes that a concept of trance exists.
There is a claim that languages aren’t inherently magical. While some people claim that languages such as Hebrew or Enochian are inherently magical, this is problematic, with Hebrew being a natural language with a specific cultural bias, and Enochian being relatively awkward and incomplete, with a grammar that is basically the same as English. While it is true that both find favour in magic, spirituality, and religion, I see nothing that particular indicates that such languages are truly magical, imbued with a magical essence that is far beyond the mundane. The key question is, how can an inherently magical language be created / evoked / invoked?
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