Hello Mountaineers, it’s time for the first instalment in The Campfire Compendium!
I thought it would be fun to kick off the Compendium by exploring ways that magiq can work in language.
Language is such an ordinary part of our lives that we tend to take it for granted. Yet, language doesn’t come out of thin air. It’s possible that humans lived without language for over a hundred thousand years. This means that at some point, somebody decided that language was necessary and used their creativity to bring it into the world. We’re lucky enough to know that creativity is the essence of magiq, and so we know that the creators of language, whether it was just one person or many, must have been pretty spectacular magiq users!
If you think about it, we must still be using this kind of magiq all the time. New words and phrases are created every day.
Take modern idioms, for example. You probably use them all the time, even if you don’t think of them that way. I’ve even used a couple in this post.
Some examples are ‘see the light,’ ‘rain cats and dogs,’ ‘a blessing in disguise,’ ‘blood is thicker than water,’ ‘curiosity killed the cat,’ and ‘knock on wood.’ Usually, we don’t literally mean what these phrases say. We use them to get across a bigger idea. But how were they created? Were they once based on some larger, more magimystical system? Were they charms? Hexes? Ancient spells, or maybe superstitions based in fact?
Let’s try to choose some idiomatic phrases and think about their magical origins!
You can describe the magimystic origin of an idiom or saying, or even write a piece of fiction surrounding it.
Here’s one that I thought of, to give you an idea:
Think of the phrase ‘hear it on the grapevine.’ We usually use it to talk about rumours that come to us after being passed along from person to person, for a long time. Originally, though, there must have been a more literal meaning to the phrase.
Someone perhaps used magiq to learn the truth about something through a grapevine. They might have put it up to their ear. Maybe eating the fruit gave them secret knowledge that they never could have recieved, otherwise.
Or perhaps wine was one of the first potions ever created, allowing the imbiber to expand their knowledge of rumours carried on the wind or through the minds of others.
There are countless others to choose from. Don’t be shy. They can be as short as mine, or far more elaborate. Let’s think of as many as possible of the next couple weeks!
than oh boy is that prime time for casting. As a Thornmouth I can’t imagine anything better than a group casting of TOME KINDLING at the guild house with the power of the blue moon behind the magiq, It is literally something else, cannot wait till next May btw.