Incantation by Word: Folkloric and Mythological Origins of Suggestion and Its Further Modifications in Rhetoric and Poetics

Abstract

“A word can heal, a word can kill.” This maxim expresses admiration for the possibilities of the word, which can influence not only thinking, but also the sphere of the subconscious. In particular, in the archaic era, it was believed that spells, incantations and curses (charms) can bind or destroy evil forces. In the folklore of many peoples and in the literature of the most ancient civilizations, we find vivid examples of this kind of creativity based on suggestion. It is possible that it was in this lyrical form that the artistic word as such was born. However, similar moments are found both in the ancient epic, and in the most modern works of literature and art, and in the utilitarian rhetorical word - gossip, justice, advertising, politics, etc., which often appeal not only to the voice of reason, but also to the sphere of emotions, hints, manipulation. All this is united by a common attitude to suggestion, which lies in the deep foundations of human communication. This term comes from Indian culture, where spiritual practices are associated with the concept of “Brahma's sleep:” God–Creator of the world sleeps and sees us and our world in a dream; hence the Sanskrit term व्यञ्जन (vyanjana) – the power translated by the English as a suggestion. A suggestion is perceived by the brain uncritically, and logic often only reinforces the emotional impulse. Ways of suggestion include psychological mechanisms that have not yet been fully explored. But suggestion is one of the fundamental factors of culture. Primitive thinking in general was pre-logical, imaginative and emotional; the ability to think logically was formed in the area of the left hemisphere of the brain in the process of evolution. But the psychological mechanisms that turn a cloud into a dragon, a Lamb into an abusive Wolf, or Ukraine into a malicious aggressor against Russia continue to live in the minds of our contemporaries, taking on the appearance of a folkloric literary, artistic, sacred, legal or journalistic text, like the mythological Proteus. It is characteristic that modern psychology uses the method of affirmation, which clearly resembles the techniques of verbal magic; neuro-linguistic programming is spreading – coding of the psyche, etc. But all this requires some kind of integration in the counterpoint of religious-philosophical, ethical-moral, social-ethical and artistic-aesthetic searches of humanity, which can be carried out from the point of view of a culturologist. Verbal incantation magic is not localized in the realm of ancient folklore, but has had modifications in various spheres of culture over the millennia.

However, if the actual archaic verbal magic, the experience of ancient rhetoric from persuasion of the interlocutor or the techniques of creating an artistic image in poetry are studied with due completeness, then the use of techniques of suggestion in modern mass culture is covered very unevenly: Areas such as advertising have been thoroughly studied, but suggestion in the sphere of politics, after all, is significantly less. In this exploration, incantation magic appears for the first time as the object of a systematic genealogical analysis aimed at revealing the evolution and transformation of the charms genre over time. Special attention is paid to radical changes in the European worldview paradigm. Thus, the adoption of Christianity led to a change in the view on the creative power of the word, which was understood no longer as the power of a magician, but as a Divine Revelation, a force that created the spiritual and material worlds. The establishment of the church on the deification of man stimulated preaching, the purpose of which was to convince sinful man to regain the image of God corrupted by sin; the sermon – one of the central genres of the Middle Ages – inherits a profound attitude towards changing reality and human consciousness; the condition for this is μετάνοια – “change of mind”, joining God’s plan. But the anthropocentrism of the Renaissance and the revival of interest in pagan occultism, as the Christian ideal eroded, increasingly took on the character of a tool for “transformation of the earthly world” and was increasingly used in the field of political propaganda. And these incantatory improvisations continue to function implicitly in our political culture today. It is characteristic that in secular religions such as communism or fascism there is a conspiratorial interest in magic (“Ahnenerbe” – special collections in the libraries of the Soviet Union). In fact, in the consciousness of a modern person, the apparent confidence in the power of logic and faith in science strangely coexists with a subconscious attitude to emotional competition, zombification of the interlocutor, verbal sparring in the spirit of “black rhetoric”, with propaganda and advertising of an unheard-of intensity and scale, etc. And, it seems, the number of gullible people is not decreasing at all, on the contrary. But at the same time, the erosion of these aspirations is gaining strength.

The suggestion acquires a resonant projection in the perspective of the paradigm of the titanic “restructuring of the world” that European consciousness put forward in the Modern era, and which often degenerates into elementary lies and manipulation, which is determined by the destruction of moral foundations and the neo-pagan worldview of the era, globalization and unheard-of scale migrations, competition, destruction and mixing of various religious and cultural traditions.

I hope that further research will stimulate a deeper understanding of the problem.