Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

The Latin Revival

I was bemused to discover that the Pope did something I agree with: he advocates the revival of Latin.  (Link courtesy of my partner Doug.)  For centuries, Latin was an auxiliary language of the Church, scholars, and widely traveled people.  That was incredibly useful and I'm disappointed that people ditched it.  It's a great language, with a lot of history and literature to its credit, and any  widespread auxiliary language is really convenient.

In general, I think the guy is a dick, and we disagree on almost everything.  But in this our paths run together, and I'm an oldschool activist capable of swapping out allies on different issues.
Tags: linguistics, news, spirituality
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  • 24 comments
fayanora

fayanora

November 14 2012, 23:23:32 UTC 8 years ago

Oddly enough, Anton LaVey (founder of the Church of Satan) was in favor of using Latin or other magical languages for rituals. He said Catholic masses in Latin had more magic in them than the English versions. Some of the rituals in his books are in Enochian, which is High Irony for ya. (Enochian being the language of the Angels.)
ysabetwordsmith

Yes...

ysabetwordsmith

November 14 2012, 23:35:54 UTC 8 years ago

Language can have a big impact on ritual. It's why I use multiple languages in some of mine. We had four in our interfaith Samhain ritual: English, Hebrew, Lakota, and Latin.
fayanora

Re: Yes...

fayanora

November 14 2012, 23:37:13 UTC 8 years ago

I use my conlang, Trai'Pahg'Nan'Nog, for parts of rituals.
siege

siege

November 15 2012, 02:00:52 UTC 8 years ago

It's as much about mindset as anything. People associate ancient languages with High Magick (special K and all), and consciously or otherwise put more "oomph" into what they're doing because they get into it more -- like actors who advocate the Method school of acting, which is basically "become the character" so that you truly feel what the character should feel.
ysabetwordsmith

Thoughts

ysabetwordsmith

November 15 2012, 02:29:57 UTC 8 years ago

The effects I've found most salient are:

1) Native languages draw on the collective energy of people who have done a given ritual before. If it was only or primarily practiced in the native, and not in modern vernacular, the native pitch pool will be deeper.

2) Everyone, including deities, tends to respond more favorably to their native language, especially if they're in a place or time where they hear it rarely if at all, or if they don't expect to hear it from someone like you. The results can be quite advantageous. Just saying "Buenas dias" in Mexico will make a lot of the vendors cut their tourist prices in half or more.