Naming

It is said that if you hold the true name of a person, place, or thing then you have power over it. You can find this in different forms of shamanism as well is the best (and worst) scifi/fantasy novels and other kinds of speculative fiction.

I'm reading a novel about the power of holding names - the power of language. One of the characters says "... language is not a simple act of communication ... it is transformative. What you say becomes what you are, and if you say it well, and clearly, and with will, it will transform the landscape around you." He's talking about magic ... but ...

Today I'm working on my midterm paper for Rhetoric and we are asked to discuss our personal theory of communication. I wrote this before I read the words above: Communication is an interaction within an individuals or between two or more individuals which causes a change in thought, emotion, or behavior.

Language is magical and transformative. It will not necessarily create a floating light in a dark room when the electricity goes out - but it will create the light of understanding in the darkness of confusion. Any time you use language - with yourself or with others - you are creating change. Sometimes imperceptible and sometimes its enormous.

It was the magic of language that drew into reading as child. The authors I read created new worlds for me - Jules Verne taught me to love exploration by bringing me deep into the sea and deeper into the earth; Cherry Ames, Nancy Drew, and the Bobbsey Twins faced dangers and solved mysteries that helped others; C.S. Lewis, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jerzy Kozinski, and Elie Wiesel asked me to look even more deeply into my self and my beliefs than I knew I could; I followed Taash and his Jesters to magical lands and stayed there with George MacDonald and JRR Tolkien.

I wanted to learn how to use language to create worlds that would give that same pleasure to others. But first, I needed to learn to hold the names of all things with both power and love. I'm still learning. And one thing I know is that when you hold the name of another - not only do you have power over them - they have power over you.

I have mixed feelings about learning the official (scientific) names of the landscapes around me - I could learn the plants and rocks and grasses and trees - but once I do - I am both expanded and limited. The power of naming is often the power of limits.

The naming that I'm learning now, the vocabulary of this profession, allows me to succeed in school and will help me if I choose to go on for a doctorate ... to teach others the mysteries of signs and symbols, of krisis and kairos, of ethos, logos, and pathos. But, I can also feel it reining in the free ranging of my mind. Good? Bad? Neither - it is what it is. I pay attention and decide when to corral my thoughts and when to allow them to run into the unknown distances.