I just finished reading a rather entertaining book, and it reminded me of a word I had not heard in some time: goety. No doubt now I will have dozens of links from weird occult websites, wondering what spells I am about to write out. Or else sites from the holier side, adjuring me.

The fascinating thing to me, of course, is that so many things we see as different had the same root — the basics of mathematics, the principle of zero or the concept of bases, somehow becoming a root of alchemy and numerology. The very fact of writing became prosthetic memory and thence the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The ghosts and demons of the misunderstood world became elaborate and frankly silly rituals that led to the deaths of thousands. The act that we do everywhere around the world, of blogging, the child of a mysterious art that once was deemed powerful and dangerous.

Goety

When summoning demons, a grammar’s required,
A grimoire, a ponderous tome of desires.
Arsenic, candlelight, horsehair and fires,
Upside-down symbols and unholy choirs.

The cerements, synapses, salts and surprises,
The deal signed in blood with fine printed clauses,
The pyxes, ciboria, the desecrate losses,
Impertinent heresies, thumbing of noses.

The grammar, the numbers, the deep structured cadence
All echoes grimmer and deeper acquaintance:
That grammar and glamour were once the same radix,
A fear of high language confusing plebeians.

For weavers of spellwords were once naught but poets,
Summoning demons though they might not know it:
When conjuring shades or religions, their souls writ
Political speeches and potboiler spirits.

By these lights, each writerly pen is a chalice
Filled with the ink of heretical magic.
Our mistrust of language runs deep through our practice,
For Words were the mystery, chanting and tragic.