A doll’s house and a goat isn’t far off, keep it up
SATANAS DIABOLICA
This is such a pet peeve of mine.
Why are anglo writers obsessed with using latin as some ancient, mystical language? Why would Latin be tied to magic in any way? Do they realize that Latin was spoken all through Europe for millenia and its vulgar form evolved into tons of current languages? Or that people were using latin in churches, courtrooms and universtities all the way up to the 20th century? Latin was an optional in my high school. I took two years.
If random Latin words could do magic all of Europe would have been constantly exploding. Newspapers would be covering the latest magic volcano to pop up in Southern France. World War II movies would include accidental summonings.
Also, for us romance language speakers it sounds vaguely understandable, so the weird things they use for spells sound goofy as hell. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than using fake Latin-sounding made up stuff as in Harry Potter.
It sounds cool.
Now that is an acceptable answer.
If you don’t speak Latin, Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese or French.
Because if you do it mostly sounds like either Sunday mass or an English tourist trying to order a drink by reading from a guidebook.
Nobody speaks any of those languages. They just pretend to when the germanics are around so we think the roman empire is still strong.
Okay, well, if you’re just gonna tell everybody we have to cut you out of the mailing list now.
Latin was the lingua franca for the educated western world for centuries. Texts on alchemy, mysticism, and religion were all written in Latin. Church rituals were performed in Latin.
Most magic in fiction has its roots in the past. What language would be more fitting?
Aramaic
Definitely a better pick, if you’re just gonna piggiback on a language. Still raises a ton of questions, though.
Few people know what Aramaic sounds like. It might be good for books (the Laundry Files uses Enochian, and nobody knows what that sounds like), but for a media with sound Latin checks all the boxes.
No, wait, it was not “lingua franca in the educated western world”, vulgar latin was just… the language a lot of Europe spoke for centuries.
People think of Latin as this highbrow educated thing, because that’s what was left of it after the development of romance languages from vulgar Latin, but Latin was just what normal people used to talk to each other for a long time.
And yes, sure, texts on alchemy, mysticism and religion were written on it.
Also texts on food recipes, tax collection, how the tree from your neighbour’s yard was blocking the sun to your oranges and the rude graffitti in the tables of the pub.
Honestly, I don’t see why the chosen language would have to matter to your fictitious magic system. Surely if you have to say words and words mean things, the language doesn’t affect what the words mean. I tend to like it when people still manage to tap into magical thinking without the crutch of pulling what they think sounds old-timey from somewhere. Neil Gaiman, Jim Henson or Grant Morrison were/are really good at it.
Or, you know, if you’re a meganerd like Tolkien you can always just… make a whole new language for it. That also works.
I’m not talking about vulgar Latin or the romance languages.
For about a millenia and a half, everything that could be considered scholarship was written in Latin. Newton’s Principia Mathematica? Latin. Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium? Latin. Kepler’s Astronomia nova? Latin.
Almost every educated person in the western world learned Latin. That’s how they communicated with their colleagues in other countries - letters written in Latin. That’s why it was a lingua franca.
Yes? I think you may have missed my point in the shuffle.
What I’m saying here is that Latin doesn’t make sense as a mystical, secret language for magic because it was too common. I’m not saying it wasn’t the language of scholars, I’m saying that not only was it the language of scholars, so every treatise on optics or history would have triggered accidental lightning bolts, but it was also a commonly spoken language as well.
Hey, you know what is lingua franca for science while being widely spoken? English.
Does that sound mystical to you?
If English had been a dead language for fifteen hundred years and was only used by people who talk about things only a tiny subset of the population understands?
Yeah, it would seem pretty mystical.
But that’s my point, it hasn’t been, and it wasn’t.
Again, Latin was mandatory in my high school for a year, optional for two more. In the 1990s. It’s still optional, I believe. My parents went to church in Latin as kids.
So no, it doesn’t sound mystical outside the anglosphere, it sounds like crusy old priests, lawyers and boring lessons. Today.
You are very much in the minority as someone who has studied Latin. Very few non-Catholic high schools even offer it, much less make it mandatory.
And sure, Catholic mass was held in Latin back in the day. Personally, I suspect that’s a reason it’s associated with rituals and magic. What is a priest doing, if not invoking mystical powers beyond the understanding of man? What language would someone use to invoke the powers of Satan?
Outside the anglosphere, I have no idea.
“Latin is the lingua franca” is a hilarious phrase
Funny how “lingua franca” doesn’t mean French anymore. English is weird.
I find it both hilarious that English is now the lingua franca of world commerce, and that that’s the term for it in English. It’s fitting, though, since I figure that the way English
ransacksborrows from other languages is both a cause and effect of its success.
Well that’s just the thing though. People (allegedly) used to do loads of magic, now they dont. Makes sense the spells and rituals would be in the language of the time.
Also lots of the books and grimoires we still have access to are in Latin or translated from Latin. So there’s a connection there too.
Wait, are these last couple of comments supposed to be in-universe or in real life? Because it’s confusing either way.
Well, at least abracadabra is Hebrew… In English it’s “i create that which I speak”.
This has always veen my pet peeve as well. Why would demons speak Latin?? Why is it that only the Catholics can see and converse with demons? Could all this be because Catholics made this trash up?
I mean, the original Catholic texts weren’t even written in Latin.
I want to know how much anger and moaning was felt among demons when they got the memo that they were supposed to switch languages now.
“But my entire summoning circle is already engraved in Hebrew! Can we at least do Greek or Aramaic? I already have prints in those!”
“It’s not even the same alphabet! I have to transliterate all my curses now?”Reminds me of the meme about how 2000 years ago a vampire who has never heard of Christ had to figure out why lower case Ts suddenly hurt a lot
Alastair Crowley? Gardener? Eta: The Catholic Church?
Weren’t both of those people English?
Do English people think the Catholic Church is magic? I know they sometimes wear dresses, but their hats are round, not pointy. Completely different thing.
And yeah, they say they are turning wafers into human flesh, but I’ve had the wafers and trust me, they don’t taste like chicken at all.
The perception may come from old writings for medical tinctures and the like including the instruction to “say three Hail Marys”. This wasnt a magic incantation; it was a way to measure time for people who did not have watches.
A few years ago I heard about some folks who found a very ancient recipe to cure MRSA. The strain evolved away from being affected by that recipe in the past and it was abandoned, but this much later that recipe worked on modern strains. Included were the instructions to say five(?) Hail Marys, which translated to “wait five minutes”.
My grandma was a matron and used tricks like those when I was a kid.
You guys keep giving me anecdotes about how the anglosphere mistook common latinsphere practices for mystical ancient spells as a response to my post about how the anglosphere mistakes common latinsphere practices for mystical ancient spells.
I get how it would have become fancy-sounding shorthand to them, I’m saying that using it as pop-culture shorthand for mysticism feels ethnocentric and silly to me.
Oh, it definitely is. As I said elsewhere, for some reason it’s only Catholics who see demons and actually invented ways to deal with them.
I think this is an interesting topic
This comment from an old Reddit post seems to contain some knowledge, imo
https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/1SHtAFS093
As noted in that comment, in reading Goethe’s Faust I remember distinctly that line, ERITUS SICUT DEUS, SCIENTES BONUM ET MALUM.
Something about its oldness, religiosity and simplicity make it magical to me
Romanes eunt domus
People called ‘Romanes’ they go the house?
Domus? Nominative?
I prefer Pig Latin for all the pork
You get free goats when you study latin? Why didn’t I know this?!?
“oh, shit” 😐
I would like to sell my soul in exchange for dominion over the Earth!
"Sorry dude… not with that soul.
Best I can do is assistant manager at the Arby’s down the street. I’ll even throw in some heroin, you’re gonna need it."
