The Magic of Language

How Modernity’s Dark Spell Distorts the Cosmic Order and How We Can Break It

Introduction

In yesterday’s note on the sonnet, I mentioned that writing poetry can sometimes be a frustrating experience for me. I spend an inordinate amount of time refining each word and phrase. If I’m honest, this isn’t limited to poetry—it’s equally true for my essays. While tools like ChatGPT are excellent for correcting errors and proofreading, I refuse to let it write for me. Over the years, I’ve become deeply particular about grammar and word choice.

This is because grammar and enchantment are closely intertwined. In fact, for much of Western history, they were seen as one and the same. Grammar was magic.

The connection between grammar and enchantment lies in their shared etymological and historical roots, highlighting the profound association between language, knowledge, and mystery. The word "grammar" originates from the Greek grammatikē, meaning "the art of letters" or "literary art." By the Middle Ages, grammar encompassed not only the rules of language but also intellectual and mystical knowledge. Among the uneducated, the literacy and learning of the clergy often seemed arcane, even magical, creating a cultural association between grammar and enchantment.

This link is embedded in our language itself. The French word grimoire, meaning "a book of magic spells," stems directly from grammaire, reflecting the perception of books as vessels of transformative power. Similarly, the English word "spell" carries a dual meaning: both the act of forming words and the casting of magical incantations. This underscores the belief that language can shape reality. Even the word "enchant" derives from the Latin incantare, meaning "to sing or chant upon," emphasizing the mystical force of spoken words. Grammar, as the structure and craft of language, parallels the articulation of spells and incantations. Both reveal the ability of words to enchant, transform, and reshape the world.

I believe this deeply. I believe that the careful structuring and crafting of language has the power to pull the reader into an enchantment that changes how they see the world. I believe it because it has happened to me. I have experienced it firsthand. This shouldn’t be surprising. After all, we are words spoken into existence. Words have the power to create and transform worlds, so why would they not have the power to enchant?

And I believe I am not alone in recognizing this. The powers that be understand it, too. That’s why there’s a war for the dictionary. Whoever controls language controls the power to enchant, reshape, and redefine the world. This isn’t merely a battle over semantics—it’s a battle between Deep Magic and Dark Magic.

Deep Magic vs. Dark Magic

The Deep Magic, as C.S. Lewis described it, is akin to Natural Law. It is the underlying order woven into creation, a truth that exists independently of us, waiting to be discovered and aligned with. To encounter the Deep Magic is to have the film of familiarity peeled away from our eyes, enabling us to see the world as it truly is. This is the enchantment Tolkien attributed to the elves in his The Lord of the Rings—their magic harmonizes with the natural order, drawing out its beauty and wonder. It reveals rather than conceals.

The Dark Magic, in stark contrast, blinds us to this Natural Law. It doesn’t reveal—it distorts. It bends reality to its own image, reshaping language and thought to obscure the truth and enthrone falsehood. Saruman’s magic, in Tolkien’s world, operates this way. It is corrupting, manipulating, and consuming for its own gain. It is what has been called “power-knowledge” by some like Patrick Curry.

This war over language is more than academic. Words create worlds, and the power to define words is the power to define reality itself. It is no coincidence that the redefinition of language often precedes cultural and moral shifts. Whoever commands the dictionary can reshape how we see God, ourselves, and the very fabric of existence.

his distinction is more than metaphorical; it is spiritual warfare. Satan, the father of lies, has always worked to obscure and corrupt the truth of the Word. In Hebrew, his name is nachash (נָחָשׁ), commonly translated as “serpent” but laden with deeper meaning. Some rabbinic traditions connect nachash with enchantment or sorcery, suggesting a being who manipulates and deceives through false realities. The root of nachash (נחש) can mean “to practice divination” or “to whisper,” evoking the image of a deceiver weaving spells to entrap.

This connection is profound. The serpent’s role in Eden was not merely to tempt but to use sorcery to bend creation—to use words to reshape perception and draw Adam and Eve away from the truth of God’s command. “Did God really say?” was not just a question—it was a spell, an attempt to destabilize reality and replace it with a counterfeit vision.

J.R.R. Tolkien illuminates this concept when he distinguishes between the sacred sub-creation of art and the corrupting force of magic. In his essay On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien writes:

“Magic produces, or pretends to produce, an alteration in the Primary World... it is not an art, but a technique; its desire is power in this world, dominion of things and wills.”

Magic, in Tolkien’s view, is not about beauty or truth; it is about control. It seeks to impose the will of the practitioner upon reality, bending creation to their desires rather than submitting to the Creator.

This aligns strikingly with Aleister Crowley’s infamous definition of magic as “the art of bringing about changes in conformity with the will.” Crowley’s vision is one of ultimate self-deification, apotheosis, where the practitioner’s will becomes the highest authority. This is the essence of Dark Magic: the rejection of God’s order in favor of the chaos of self-rule.

The connection between nachash and sorcery underscores this truth. Just as the serpent in Eden sought to replace God’s truth with a counterfeit, so too does modernity’s Dark Magic seek to overthrow the divine order. Crowley’s philosophy is not an aberration but the logical end of a world that denies the Word.

Deep Magic, on the other hand, calls us back to humble submission. It reminds us that true power lies not in domination but in alignment with God’s will, which leads to godly dominion. To follow Deep Magic is to live as stewards of creation, participating in the sacred order rather than attempting to subvert it. It is to speak truth in a world of lies, to create beauty in the midst of brokenness, and to reflect the light of the Word in the shadowlands of this present age.

Cosmic Imagery, Language, and Ethics

This wasn’t something I was always clued into. I didn’t know how grammar and magic worked—that is, until I began reading Lewis, Tolkien, Barfield, and others.

About a year ago, I read Jason Baxter’s The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis. In that book, he makes the case that language contains what he calls “cosmic imagery” or “world picture.” He writes:

“Both language and ethics are connected to our cosmic imagery. Our speech makes up a linguistic microcosm, the medium through which we describe our hopes, fears, dreams, and ambitions, and as such it absorbs and reflects the atmosphere of the world in which it is shaped. …

The uniqueness of language is due, in part, to the ‘world picture’ that serves as the habitat in which the language is born, develops, and adapts. The cosmos gets into the language, like rainwater seeps into subterranean aquifers and regulates the height of the water table.”

At first glance, Baxter’s point may seem abstract, but it can be summed up like this: languages and ethics are born from a culture’s cosmic imagery or world picture. To use an analogy, think of the relationship between these things as being like a womb and child. In the same way that a mother’s womb gives life, nourishment, and body to her child, cosmic imagery does the same with language and ethics. Language takes meaning from cosmic imagery and gives body to it, like a local habitation. A culture’s cosmic imagery is embodied within its languages, which are then used to enact ethics in the world.

Just consider the cosmic imagery of Christianity. This world picture teaches us that the transcendent and immanent Most-High God created the heavens and earth, and then He created man male and female with the capability of being fruitful and multiplying (Gen. 1:27-28). In the story, God gives Adam ethics born from this cosmic imagery to be embodied in the world (Eat from these trees, and not that tree). Adam then repeats this pattern by giving Eve seed, and Eve gives body to the seed by producing offspring. The seed goes out into the world, takes dominion, repeats the pattern, and enacts God-glorifying ethics in the world based on this world picture.

For centuries, the ethics of many countries were shaped by this cosmic imagery. In Medieval Europe and even into the Reformation era, there were sumptuary, blasphemy, and heresy laws. For hundreds of years, America’s ethics reflected this cosmic imagery in that only those who were male and female could be united together in marriage and only male and female could have children. It wasn’t until the rise of modernity that this cosmic imagery was cast off, which has now affected our language and ethics. Grammar is magic.

The Dark Enchantment

What would it look like to inhabit a world shaped by an entirely different cosmic framework?

In many ways, it looks just like the world we live in today.

Consider this: the shift in language and ethics surrounding terms like “birthing persons” and “pregnant people” reflects a profound reimagining of humanity itself. A few years ago, this redefinition manifested in symbolic acts, such as when a United Methodist minister in Missouri concluded a prayer with “amen” and “awoman.” These events are not anomalies but the echoes of a deeper cultural recalibration.

This world venerates pluralism and elevates religious tolerance to its highest virtue, yet paradoxically enforces new sacred boundaries. To speak openly of Jesus Christ often invites scrutiny, while invoking Allah, Brahma, or even the Flying Spaghetti Monster is met with far less resistance. In this reality, the only remaining blasphemy is to challenge the secular orthodoxy that governs public discourse.

What drives this transformation?

The modern project is a deliberate casting off of the old cosmic order, a dismantling of the cathedral of truth that once framed human life. In its place, modernity offers a new cosmic imagery: an androgynous god hovering somewhere above, indifferent to questions of virtue or purpose. This god’s only decree is happiness, and even that is left for individuals to define for themselves. The guiding principle is no longer submission to Natural Law but the exaltation of self-will—becoming a law unto oneself.

As Baxter warns in his writings, a culture can become so detached from its moral foundation that it blinds itself to responsibility, losing its courage in the process. The result is a society trapped within its own language, unable to articulate its reality or confront its failings.

Wendell Berry observed this very phenomenon in 1979, in his critique of an official report on the Three Mile Island Crisis. He found the language of the document deeply disturbing, marked by what he called an “inability to admit what it is talking about.” The report’s authors, Berry argued, had systematically excluded themselves as human beings from the narrative, leaving them incapable of acknowledging—even to one another, let alone the public—that their work involved extreme danger to countless people.

This is the inevitable consequence of a shift in cosmic imagery. Language and ethics are contorted, much like a child in the womb of an unwell mother, shaped by an unhealthy environment. We are living in a world that is being bent and twisted into something unnatural. It is as though we are under a spell, and only the strongest counter-spell can wake us.

Like Puddleglum in The Silver Chair, who defiantly stamps out the enchantment of the Underworld, we need an awakening. The first step is to recognize the spell we’re under, and the second is to recover the courage to break it.

Countering The Dark Enchantment

How can we break this dark enchantment? Can it even be broken?

I believe it can—and so did C.S. Lewis. In The Weight of Glory, he wrote of the need for a powerful counter-spell, one strong enough to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness. He said:

“Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I need the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.”

The breaking of this enchantment begins with faithfulness to what has been entrusted to us: the cosmic imagery, the grammar, and the ethics of Christendom. It is not just about preserving old forms but retrieving what was once vibrant and alive, reclaiming the deep, magical architecture of a world shaped by the Gospel. To counter the spell of modernity, we must recognize the power inherent in language, the magic woven into grammar and words, and the immense capacity of these tools to shape our reality.

The first step is to recognize the times in which we live and recalibrate our loyalties accordingly. Aaron Renn describes this as the “Negative World,” but I think it is darker than even that. We are living in a world bent by dark magic, an enchantment so pervasive that even those who once stood as bastions of truth have been subtly drawn into its web. This is not merely a matter of think tanks, seminaries, or pastors being “winsome”—it is far worse. They have been baptized into the waters of this enchantment. I recently saw a tweet from Patrick Miller, a writer for The Gospel Coalition, advocating for the use of preferred pronouns. The argument was ludicrous, yet it illustrates the extent of the darkness. Here is a man—and an organization—entirely under the spell, and we must not give our loyalties to those who have been enchanted. As I’ve said before, there is a war for the dictionary because language shapes the world. The war for words is the war for reality itself. We must not end up on the wrong side of that war.

The second step is to retrieve the classical world picture. The modern world offers a flattened, hollowed-out vision of reality, and to resist its spell, we must live fully within our own enchanted cosmos. This means loyalty to the story that has been handed down to us and apprenticeship to the great minds who lived and thought within that story. Like Gandalf riding the old paths to the great library of Minas Tirith, we must return to the texts that shaped the ancient imagination. We must immerse ourselves in their glory and their wisdom—Augustine, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, Thomas Aquinas, Dante Alighieri, Gregory of Nyssa. These figures and their works are not relics but tools for re-enchantment, offering us a vision of a world alive with divine order and beauty. It is not enough to read their words; we must read along the beam, letting their vision of reality reshape our own. And this is not a solitary task. Take your family with you, teaching them to see the world through the same enchanted lens, so they too can pass it on.

Dante is particularly important here. As Baxter notes, Lewis regarded Dante’s Paradiso as a counter-spell to modernity, a work that casts the good as weighty and attractive, teaching us to overcome the evil enchantment of secularism. Dante shows us what it means to use art, imagination, and words to resist the flattening of reality and to elevate the beautiful, the true, and the good.

Once we have retrieved this cosmic imagery, the next step is to embody it—to live it. This is not merely an intellectual exercise; it demands full engagement with the world around us. Climb a mountain and let the heavens declare the order of the Celestial Hierarchy. Stand on the shore and let the endless rhythm of the waves whisper of God’s infinite power. Capture these glimpses of glory in paint and poetry, letting them overflow into your conversations and prayers. When you meet a man, shake his hand and ask about his wife and children, presupposing the goodness and naturalness of the family. Call boys “boys” and girls “girls,” and teach your children to do the same. Equip them with the courage to stand against the enchantments of this world, rooted in truth and love.

As we live within this re-enchanted world picture, we cultivate what Douglas Wilson calls the “poetic imagination” in Angels in the Architecture. A poetic imagination trains us to see the world as a cosmos, an ordered and meaningful whole, and equips us to craft counter-spells against the dark enchantments of our age.

Language plays a central role in this work. We should choose our words wisely, because words are magic, and when put together just right, they have the power to shape thought, culture, and action. We should then strive to lift up our language and sacralize it is to resist the ugliness and rootlessness of modernity. This is not an abstract idea; it is woven into human nature. Consider funerals. Beasts do not bury their dead, but humans lift up the lives of the deceased, sacralizing their memory with rituals—lighting candles, saying eulogies, and processing the body through towns. These acts declare the sacredness of life and give weight and beauty to it. Or consider human sexuality. Unlike animals, humans ritualize the sexual union, setting it apart as sacred through acts like lighting candles, playing music, and creating a private space for intimacy. These rituals elevate the act, making it weighty and beautiful.

Why should our language be any different? There is no such thing as a “High English,” but there should be. Our language should aspire to embody a high cosmic imagery, clothed in poetic imagination. Consider the difference between saying, “Her beauty is like that of the heavenly host—enduring and unfathomable in worth, like a star burning in the outermost darkness,” and, “Damn, boo, you’re hot as hell.” The former lifts the imagination heavenward; the latter drags it down. Was it not Adam who first uttered poetry over Eve in the Garden? Human language was created for this purpose—to name, to elevate, to enchant.

There is a reason our culture has been dumbed down—to make us incapable of looking up. Our flattened language reflects a flattened world, a world that has lost its connection to the transcendent. But we can resist this by lifting up our words, our imagination, and our ethics, re-enchanting them with the weight of glory. By doing so, we cast counter-spells against modernity’s dark enchantment and begin to restore what has been lost. This is the work before us. Let us take it up with hope and with courage.

The restoration of language begins with us. Each word we speak, each story we tell, is an act of enchantment—either aligning with the Deep Magic of God’s order or perpetuating the Dark Magic of distortion. The choice is ours, and the stakes are nothing less than the re-enchantment of the world.