Word and Voice

We have already discussed the Myth’s notion that the process of creation — that is, the actualization of certain potentials — is carried out by conscious activity, and is therefore described as “naming “. In other words, to say that something came into being and that something received a Name are, from the Myth’s point of view, one and the same.

However, the creative Word, Logos — is not merely a means by which being arises and is sustained; it is also a way in which the components of manifested reality interact with one another. Indeed, to give something a Name does not simply mark that Something off from everything that is Not-it; it is also a way of indicating its “place” within the totality of objects, its hierarchical position — that is, of mapping it.

From this point of view, speech, as a form of manifestation of the Logoi, in the most abstract sense, is a reflection of the cosmos itself, the order of things, the structure of reality in the multiplicity of relations within it.

It is not surprising that the Magic of the Word occupies such an important place in the structure of the Way. Galdr in the North, mantrayana in the East, the “barbarous names” of Thelema, Catholic liturgical verses — all of these are ways of expressing meanings, Logoi, which structure reality and determine the proper character of the relations within it. We have also discussed the important role the Myth assigns to “spoken acts” — curses or blessings — which likewise change the structure of reality.

It is clear that, in the broadest sense, the whole structure of the cosmos can be expressed as Verse, Incantation, Mantra, Name. Accordingly, an understanding of this Universal Name is equivalent to a vision of the entire structure of the cosmos as such. It is in this sense that “the Word was God,” or “the six-syllable mantra is Avalokiteshvara himself.”

Considering reality as an aggregate of words, speech — that is, a flow of the Logoi — one can see that, in fact, “things exist only as names.” Such a vision, on the one hand, opens the possibility of changing reality through creative speech, and on the other robs existing objects of importance and solidity that social myths usually attribute to them.

In fact, it is precisely “speech” — that is, the flow of the Logoi — that grants integrity and dynamic continuity to the cosmos, joining separate states of reality and perceptual acts into ordered sequences.

And just as the flow of “inner speech” — thoughts — gives coherence and structure to the “daytime” mind, the proper flow of creative speech holds the greatest creative (or destructive) power. By using speech correctly in incantations, mantras, and vis, the Magus shapes both the macrocosm and the psychocosm, and downplaying this component is as ineffective as downplaying “being” and “action.”