Hello friends. So I’m preparing to start producing and reading the audiobook for my book, Psychedelics and the Soul next month, and I wanted to get into the practice of speaking into the microphone and speaking aloud words that are usually, well, just written.
This is also a part of my continual fight against perfectionism, and an opportunity to lean into something that I might not otherwise do. Its also an exercise in exploring how to use my voice in a more intentional way, which as we will see, is something that used to live very close to that liminal, magic domain of the other world.
It’s got me thinking about the power of the human voice, the importance of language, and the magic that can occur when words are spoken out into the world by someone who puts their full conviction behind them.
Our language matters. In countless creation mythologies, language and voice are powers given to humans by the gods. Martín Prechtel says that essentially that the highest form of human language is to create beauty, to praise life, and to do what he calls feeding the holy. Language is the antler of the human mind, the feathers adorning our otherwise unremarkable, monotone forms.
In ancient Ireland, bards and poets were understood to be just as powerful as kings, because they had a mysterious power over words. In the old Celtic world, bardic masters practiced what was called the “black speech,” a poetic mode of speech that blurred the lines between incantation, spell, and poetry. While the primary role of the bard was to recite praises and genealogies of their kings, they also played the role of sacred truth teller.
But even as the power of the bards waned, eventually turning into the more laughable court jester, at heart their role remained the same. With enough wit and satire, a bard could just as easily praise a king as he could denounce him. For anyone with ears to hear it, bardic language was dangerous.
Ancient Scandinavia had their version of this: the scald. Functioning mostly in the same way as the bard, the word scald, related to our word scold, speaks even more clearly to the penetrating power that ancient people heard in spoken words.
In West Africa there is still a living tradition similar to the bard or scald. The griots, or jeli, as they are called locally, are a class of musicians, poets, and storytellers who are living storehouses of oral history. This profession is passed down through families, and is still held in high esteem in many West African countries. The kora player, Toumani Diabate, for instance, is a 70th generation griot. 70 generations. Just let that sink in for a minute.
Rumi supposedly said that we should learn things by heart because they die of cold on the page. That’s another way of saying that language is animate.
Think about the game telephone. What begins as a simple, clear phrase almost inevitably ends up as a twisted, bizarre, and sometimes inflammatory statement nothing like the original thing. The point is that words can and will transform, often against our will, often turning into the very opposite of the thing we intended to communicate in the first place.
Now multiply that telephone game by a million and you have our currently despoiled state of communication by way of social media. But our words still retain just as much power as they’ve always had. We must all choose them wisely.
Another way that words are animate is their ability to carry a multiplicity of meanings. Context, tone, culture, and history all play a part in how a word is received in the ears of the listener. A complex tapestry of interwoven knots begins to form around language, and we can use words to bring people together, or break them apart.
When I think of Celtic or ancient Norse art, specifically their entwining patterns and knotwork, I see them as visual representations of this very same principle of animacy. The Book of Kells, perhaps the most famous artifact of Ireland, takes this to another level, and imbues individual letters with a profound depth of interwoven meaning.
Just a quick reminder that my book, Psychedelics and the Soul: A Mythic Guide to Psychedelic Healing, Depth Psychology, and Cultural Repair, is now available for pre-order! Get your copy here or through my favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s Books.
Pre-orders mean a lot for new authors, and if you’ve been liking what you’re reading on here, please pre-order a copy of my book, coming out this Fall (2024) through North Atlantic Books. Thank you!
When we “give our word,” what exactly are we giving? Pneuma in Greek and Baruch in Hebrew were words that mean life or spirit. They also mean breath. Our breathed words carry parts of our spirit with them once they leave our mouths, and therefore carry consequences with them. When people gave their word, they understood, perhaps better than we can comprehend, that they were putting something deep within themselves on the line. To betray one’s own word was also betraying one’s own spirit and life force.
I find it strange that most people’s biggest fear is public speaking. Not to throw shade on anyone’s phobia, but it is curious to me. Let’s just think about it for a second. Let’s think about the black speech of the bardic poets and their power to topple kings. Let’s think about the animacy that our language is imbued with, and the fact that our words are an expression of our own inner world, and of the soul.
How do we square that with the fact that speaking is also something that terrifies most people? Are we scared of the consequences of our words if we use them carelessly? And isn't it interesting that people are willing to write online what they would never say to someone’s face?
I’d say that instead, most of us are scared of our own power, and therefore afraid to use our voice publicly. But what if orality was actually an essential element in this whole “healing” thing? What if our ability to speak out and speak well was just as important as our inner “self talk”? What if our command of language was actually an ancient artform that all of our ancestors would understand implicitly, and is something that can actually connect us back to this deeper well of human heritage?
In the very beginning to The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, Robert Bly, James Hillman, and Michael Meade - three men whose oracular powers woke me up when I first heard them - wrote, “When poetry is spoken, particularly when the larynx is opened and the voice can come from the midriff, people feel in company, in joy, in community. Depths of grief are reached, and flights of inspiration.”
Last month I was asked to give a toast at my friend’s wedding. Speaking at occasions like this - weddings, funerals, birthdays - is something I take very seriously, and adore, despite the stress of always feeling like I need to have something good to say. Often I don’t, and sometimes there’s nothing good to say about a situation that is simply terrible. But I always choose my words carefully, with the full knowledge that I am weaving something like an incantation or a spell around everyone present, to mark the occasion, and to plant a seed of love or hope for the brave young couple.
Now I’ve heard some awful wedding speeches, and I’m sure you have too. You can feel it in the room, a sort of humiliating shudder that passes from one person to another. Something behind the words just feels off. You can tell a bad speech because people check out. Some begin talking, or simply leave. It’s really not a good look, for anyone involved.
Things like this always leave me scratching my head, wondering how the hell we’ve lost such an essential element of being human. When did we stop using language to create beauty and feel the holy? When did our words become more aligned with economics and data then with oak trees and hailstorms?
English author Robert MacFarlane chronicles this his book, The Lost Words, a self-described “‘book of spells’ that seeks to conjure back the near-lost magic and strangeness of the nature that surrounds us.” In the book, MacFarlane digs up old words with the roots going back thousands of years old, all with the intention to “summon back these words and creatures into our hearts.”
As spreadsheets replace praise-speech, I think we could all use a good dose of the black speech to smack us out of our centuries long stupor.
Thankfully, my friend’s wedding was filled with some of the best toasts I’ve ever heard. I was relieved, because when we speak at an occasion like this, we are being asked to essentially cast a spell of words that ideally blesses the thing, and everyone present. We are asked to give something of ourselves, to give our word, in a way that matters. We are invited to reach for those depths of grief and flights of inspiration that pierce and penetrate people to their core, leaving everyone a bit speechless.
That is what our language is for, isn't it? Otherwise, why say anything at all?
My book, Psychedelics and the Soul: A Mythic Guide to Psychedelic Healing, Depth Psychology, and Cultural Repair, is now available for pre-order! Get your copy here or through my favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s Books.
Please consider sharing and subscribing to this Substack. Its free (for now).
Thanks for reading Depth Medicine! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Did this post inspire you or evoke something in you? Leave a comment here.
And as always, please subscribe and stay in touch!
In Praise of Speech