MAGIC WORDS mances of magic, whether intoned by the magician or gasped by the amazed audience. Meanings: People soon forget the meaning, but the impression and the passion remain. -- Edmund Burke, "A Letter to Richard Burke, Esq." (179 ) Egyptologists and linguists may be misguided in their quest to interpret cryptic words like aaaa. One compelling theory suggests that the ancient wonderworkers who transcribed the magical scrolls were "hymning and naming a deity whose true nature is inexpressible silence," and their "language [broke] out in abstract vowel chanting and glossolalia ['speaking in tongues']." Facts: The letter a, called alpha in the Greek alphabet, has historically been symbolic of beginnings. Like the famous Sanskrit mantra om, alpha "is the sound that brings into being all of creation."4 In The Greek Qabalah (1999), a study of the alphabetical mysticism and numerology in the ancient world, Kieren Barry explains that alpha "appears frequently in Greek and Coptic magical papyri, not only in conjunction with the other vowels, but also by itself as having special power. In a Christian Coptic spell from about 600 C.E., it is set out in 'wing' formation." For example: AAAAAAA AAAAAA AAAAA AAAA AAA AA A In The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus, Marvin Meyer notes that "In texts of ritual power . . . vowels may be arranged for visual effect" (2005). The alpha state of brainwave activity is that of relaxed awareness, as in daydreaming or meditation. In Literature: • Hans Dieter Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation (1986) Marvin W. Meyer, Ancient Christian Magic (1999) 4 David A. Hulse, New Dimensions for the Cube of Space (2000)