M Motas Uaeta Daries Dardares Astaries Dissunapiter Origins: This pseudo-Latin phrase was found in a book on Roman agricul ture by Cato. It was meant to be chanted in cases of a fracture. "[I]t has no meaning for the uninitiated, whereas the powers to which it is addressed are supposed to understand it very well." Common Magician's Applications: Restoration. Mumbo (see mumbo jumbo) In Literature: • "Superstition! From our ancestors, savages, afraid of the dark, of themselves: mumbo words and magic lights to scare away ghosts." -- Tillie Olsen, Tell Me a Riddle (1956) Mumbo Jumbo It might be mumbo jumbo, but mystery and mumbo jumbo are a big part of ritual . . . And if it works, why question it. -- Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit (200 ) Mystique: Mythologist Joseph Campbell suggested that the "magic of art and the art of magic" both derive from a special kind of momentary experience of "reality-beyond-meaning," an experience that can't be put into words: Hence the power of the meaningless syllables, the mumbo jumbo of magic, and the meaningless verbalizations of metaphysics, lyric poetry, and art interpretation. They function evocatively, not referentially; like the beat of a shaman's drum, not like a formula of Einstein. One moment later, and we have classified the experience and may be having utterable thoughts and describable feelings about it -- thoughts and feelings that are in the public domain, and they will be either sentimental or profound, according to our education. But according to our life, we have had, for an instant, a sense of existence: a moment of unevaluated, unimpeded, lyric life -- antecedent to 5 Tore Janson, A Natural History of Latin (2004)