MAGIC WORDS both thought and feeling; such as can never be communicated by means of empirically verifiable propositions, but only suggested by art. According to Campbell, a magician's "mumbo jumbo" captures the unutterable, indescribable meaning of profound, unclassifiable experiences. Meanings: • Black magic "Cordelia, believing she had restored his soul with some black magic mumbo-jumbo, set him free." -- Diana G. Gallagher, The Casefiles: Volume 2 (2004) "[L]umped in with the worst practitioners of the so-called black mag ic or mumbo jumbo . . ." -- Deirdre Bair, Jung: A Biography (200 ) • Gibberish, incomprehensible language "[T]he path to freedom gets overgrown by brambles of meaningless mum bo jumbo." -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow (1990) "[I]t smacked of impenetrable mumbo jumbo, designed to hoodwink the public." -- Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (2004) "He thoroughly despised the kahins, whose oracles were usually unintelligible mumbo jumbo, and was always very careful to distinguish the Koran from conventional Arabic poetry." -- Karen Armstrong, A History of God (199 ) "[E]soteric and unintelligible mumbo-jumbo . . ." -- R.J. Chambers and G.W. Dean, Chambers on Accounting (2000) • Jargon "[T]ransforming the mumbo jumbo of medieval alchemy into hard science . . ." -- Rick Steves, Florence and Tuscany 2005 (2004) • Language intended to confuse "[A] minor conjuror, a dabbler in fakery and mumbo jumbo . . ." -- Jonathan Stroud, The Amulet of Samarkand (200 ) • Magic spell "My husband is sure that you worked some sort of mumbo-jumbo on me." -- Maxwell Maltz, Psycho Cybernetics (1989) "All that mumbo-jumbo and magic nonsense." -- Brian Jacques, Red- wall (1998) • Magician -- Stephen F. Soitos, The Blues Detective: A Study of African American Detective Fiction (1996) • Mystical incantation -- Lynne McTaggart, The Field (200 ) "[I]t seemed as though Dick were muttering jubilant mumbo-jumbo." -- Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (1965) Flight of the Wild Gander (1951)