I’ll preface this by saying this is the first forum I’ve ever joined so apologies if I use the wrong terms or if my format is hard to read.
Back to the post!
Is using ancient writing in spellwork and sigils any more or less powerful than using your native language? For instance if you were to do a working using Egyptian magick or calling out an Egyptian god would it be better to use hieroglyphs or to use your native language? I want to hear what everyone thinks!
Generally, it’s ideal to use your native tongue.
The reason is, it helps you focus on your intention and better emotionally engage with that intent. If you can do that and enjoy the psycho-theatrical effect of another language though, there’s no reason you can’t, and that enjoyment can also help too, so, it’s a case of swings and roundabouts, to a certain extent.
I see it as more as a sign of respect when calling on gods and maybe a form of amusement for them. Either way I’ve had great results and great fun doing it.
If that doesn’t distract you from your intent, it can be powerful…. But if that doesn’t flow, creates blockage/problems of pronunciation,/problems to memorize etc.. that will not bring you the best conditions to perform magick.
As @Mulberry says, you can also use that as a “barbarous words” and psychodrama. In that scenerio, you wouldn’t care that much about saying things correctly. You would just need to create a flow that allows your intent to be expressed.
I don’t practice for the public. All of my rituals are done in private so there is no theatrics. Also, I don’t like theatrics in magick. It makes it feel cheap. As for being a distraction, Its not to me. I enjoy learning about the old languages and old gods. Most of my workings are done with Mesopotamian gods/demons and I’ve started venturing out into sumerian and Egyptian gods recently though I haven’t called out to them yet. I feel that it brings stronger energy to work with. More ancient, more powerful, and if I was speaking to someone I would want them to at least attempt my native language. As I said, to me it’s a sign of respect among other things.
This is not what I mean - this is not entertainment, and most of us do this in private. It’s s known terminology for an understanding about why ceremonial magick is… ceremony.
What is meant by calling it, psycho-theatrics or psychodrama, is that you are telling a story that elaborates on and enhances the mental and emotional connection to the energy, in lieu of or to have the purpose of, raising that energy to levels where it is enough to effect changes in reality.
So if you do not have theatrics in your ritual, you’re doing it wrong - the theatrics is the entire point of ceremonial magic. Otherwise you could just use low magick, energy working, astral travel etc instead. But you can get creative with those as well.
That’s it, right there. You answered your own question. Whatever it takes for you to feel and to move that energy is all good
For you then, this may indeed be a better way for you to raise the energy needed. For others, the native tongue is better, and that doesn’t mean anything about whether either is “more powerful”.
Magick is highly personal - and the best way to find out is to just try it and keep what works for you, and don’t worry if others do it differently.
In my personal experience, the further a language is from my mother tongue, the better it works for magick, but probably that’s just a quirk of myself.
When I was getting into Hermetic Kabbalah, neccessarily it involves plenty of Hebrew. I only had cursory contact with either Jews or Hebrew.
As I kept at my workings I also started learning Hebrew and that considerably helped in using the words effectively.
So I would recommend - if you want to use a language that is not known to you, you should at least understand the meanings of the things you are saying fairly well, the better your command of that language becomes, the more context of the phrases you use in magick you understand, and the more internalised the meaning, structure, alphabet and logic of that language becomes within you, the better it becomes as a tool.
If you use it only in ritual context and develop a good grasp on it, or if you have some difficult experiences around the alternative languages (such as your native, or latin etc.) you could use for practice, I would say it can be more effective than the alternatives, but requires extra effort.
Ah that’s a very misleading term if you don’t know what it means. Thank you for the info. Its appreciated. I have some tools that I use and I usually have to hand draw sigils (I’m terrible at art) but I don’t think I would have considered it to fall under that definition. That’s why I joined though. To learn.
I personally like to draw from the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots: you’ve got a healthy lexicon of root words and phrases (often duo- or monosyllabic) that make for easy sigilization and impact; plus, you got these roots that are used by one of the largest language families on the planet, with billions of people daily feeding into some of these roots through common, everyday speech. The lexicon itself is tentative, and nothing proven, so you e given yourself an out, and an excuse to be as vague or as specific as you need to be down whatever you’re trying to manifest.