The fabulous comedian David Cross, whose comedy decades ago first raised our eyebrow to lowest common denominator political American stupidity, has a great bit where he says “I would like to officially change and substitute 'casting spells and chanting' in place of 'thoughts and prayers'. Hilarious and even more American!
This is not only wonderful and delightful because it draws attention to the fact that language itself is micro magic. When a likely fake Christian politician stands at a podium after a 2nd Amendment related tragedy and utters that eye roll worthy, tired, and empty phrase, “thoughts and prayers,” instead of passing very popular common sense policies to help reduce gun violence, what they are actually doing is a kind of spiritual bypassing substituted for spell-casting, though a spell so worn down, so emptied of intention, that it has become little more than background noise. The words drift out, ritualistically, to soothe and placate, but not to transform a culture into something better.
Imagine if instead of that hollow incantation, they were to admit what it actually is: “We are casting spells and chanting" or "engaging in magical ritual and doing incantations”. Because that is precisely what speech is. Every utterance is an attempt to shape reality through vibration and symbol. To speak is to weave the air with intention. The tragedy of “thoughts and prayers” is not that it is mystical, but that it is virtue signaling stripped of potency, a ritual gone unconscious. The vast majority of stuff in Abrahamic faiths, which at their most water down easily consumable and thus least spiritual, are exoteric, meaning outer, are borrowed and co-opeded, if not outright stolen from older, esoteric, pegan, dreidic, indigenous, deeper esoteric practices.
So to say “casting spells and doing incantations” would be not only to ground it more in nature, and thus real spirituality, but to bring the hidden truth back to the surface: that language has power, and that power can be wielded authentically or cynically. The shamans of old did not speak words lightly; they knew that syllables could open doorways in the mind, that the right phrase in the right moment could heal or destroy. In our society, we have forgotten this, but are surely starting to realize it now due to the increase of harsh rhetoric, even though clichés are still babbled as though they were somehow sufficient.
What would it mean if public officials more deeply understood their words as spells? It would mean that every promise and proclamation would have to be crafted with the care of a magician drawing symbols. It would mean responsibility for the energetic resonance of speech. And perhaps it would mean fewer empty rituals and more beneficial actions that actually change the fabric of the collective psyche for the better. To evolve it instead of devole it.