In response to the 'magick-magic' debate

[austin_tycho]

I've recently changed my mind about this one too. I've spelled it 'magick' for years, but I read an article that basically said 'in any context in which you use the word, is there really that much chance that someone's going to confuse what you're talking about for stage magic?' So it doesn't really do much in a communication sense to change the spelling. I'm told the reasons for changing it are based in numerology, but I don't know enough numerology for that to be a selling point necessarily.

I'm a bit of a fussbudget when it comes to English, so if all other things are equal (most importantly, you're communicating effectively) I tend to go with more standard 'proper' English when given the choice (as much as I know it- I'm not a grammar freak). I don't expect the same of others and don't pick on them about it because everyone's different, but there are a few rules I follow in my personal BOS that reflect this.

I don't capitalize frivolously... there's a lot of 'and the Love of the Goddess is reflected in the Light that Shines in the Heavens' kind of stuff that makes me smile a little. If I were writing it, I think I'd leave Goddess capitalized and nothing else.

I do capitalize Sun and Moon, since there every star is a sun and there are lots of moons around other planets. And Earth, for that matter, because when I see 'earth' I think of 'dirt', and could imagine ploughing the earth on Mars in the future. :)

I refer to that holiday that just passed as 'Lammas' rather than 'Lughnasadh', since we don't always focus on or even mention Lugh. But then, Oestara is also named for a specific goddess, but seems to have gotten a generic enough sense to it that I don't feel a dichotomy there. Maybe I just like 'Lammas' more because it's easier to spell.

A former member of my group (hi, Sheena!) told me that 'ye' was never an actual spoken word; it may have been spelled 'ye' but people said 'the' so I've ditched 'ye' in my writing too. So stuff like 'Ye Bok of Ye Arte Magickal' makes me break out in a fit of giggles. I know it's Gardner, I don't mean to dis him, it's when some poor soul tries to pronounce it as written.

I also cringe when people try to speak in Olde Englishe and don't make sure that their 'thees' and 'thous' and such all agree, or they switch mid-sentence from 'thee' to 'you' (or 'You'). I'm not sure where I read a bunch of 'thee-thou' stuff to get a sense of how it fits together; I'm embarrassed to say that I think it was Piers Anthony's Blue Adept series.

Just my .02. English, and the sub-sub-subset of (I suppose) Wiccan English is evolving like everything else, and who knows how all this will look 20 years from now.

Comments

[hdan.livejournal.com]

In case you didn't already know about this, the "Ye" vs. "The" thing is because we used to have another letter in our alphabet (the "thorn") that looked sort of like a "Y", and represented the "Th" sound. I think there were very subtle differences in "Thorn" and "Th" pronunciation ("Zathras", "Zathras" - you see the difference now, yes?) that eventually weren't deemed worth the trouble.

Not being in touch with the Wiccan world, except maybe by loose association, I was wondering - do people use capitalization to try and assign character to otherwise character-less nouns? Like how (if you'll forgive the comparison) the Xian Bible always captitalizes "Word", "Him", etc. to indicate not just any "word" or "him"? I've always wondered if Hebrew or Greek has a special honorific word modifier that would justify this practice. Maybe after I learn Sumerian, I should try something actually useful. :-) For natively English texts, I guess the Emphasis through Capitalization is just a Cultural Thing now.

[mielikki.livejournal.com]

I am not exactly sure why Wiccans tend to capitalize like that. I'd bet some of it is for characterization (re. 'Moon' discussion above) but at the same time, I get the impression that a lot of it is just to make it look cooler. I mean, I've seen 'Universe' capitalized, for instance. There's not much of a pattern so I can't explain it any other way.