This was the perk poem for the August 7, 2018 Poetry Fishbowl. It was originally hosted by DW user Dialecticdreamer. It came out of the July 3, 2018 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from DW user Zeeth_kyrah. It also fills the "Wise Men" ysquare in my 7-1-18 card for the Winterfest in July Bingo. "Where Symbols Had the Power" So that life might strive toward the stars and expand the mind, a wise and potent spirit created a language for the purpose of uplift and gave it to the universe. Symbalan was easy for most beings to learn and use, with three layers of meanings. The phonemes were written as heiroglyphs, each one representing a word in itself, beginning with a certain sound. The phonemes also spelled words when the hieroglyphs were strung together. There were diacritical marks to show whether a hieroglyph was meant as a word or a letter, and which mystical symbolism applied to it. There were also physical structure marks like underlining and circling to show emphasis and relationships. It was a written language. It was a spoken language. It was a magical language. It was a programming language. It was a true language, made of names more real than matter itself. It could tell stories or recall histories, pilot a starship or cast a spell. Symbalan was the language where symbols had the power to define the things they named.