How much power do names hold

[Gregorius]

Also does my birthname impact anything spiritual?

 

[Ziran]

How much power do names hold?

Words are extremely powerful. All words are names, labels, for what is occurring in the mind.

Also does my birthname impact anything spiritual?

Perhaps. It depends.

Your name, birth-date, and parents names positively identify you and distinguish you from all the others. They are part of your eternal essence and identity. Nothing will ever change them. Eternal < entails > spiritual.

 

[Jackson]

"Names" refers to language more broadly in the ancient Chinese vernacular. The proper question is what power words have.

Ask how much power words have and see if you feel sillier.

 

[Ziran]

Ask how much power words have

Words are extremely powerful.

Nice to see you, how have you been?

 

[Jackson]

Nice to see you, how have you been?

You seem vaguely familiar apart from the presumed Chinese interest. Since I am the subject now, I am mediocre. Amongst other vaugeries, I vaguely plan on moving, I vaguely read old sinology, I am vaguely an occultist, I have a vague appearance.

I suppose it makes more sense than the Confucian conflation of names with realities, but whatever works for the political class I guess; since my name indicates my eternal essence, it can be supposed that I am an eternal gift from god to you all.

 

[Ziran]

I have a vague appearance.

Not to me.

I am mediocre

OK. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Jackson]

Not to me.

Once there was a man of Ch`u selling shields and halberds. In praising his shields he said, "My shields are so solid that nothing can penetrate them." Again, in praising his halberds, he said, "My halberds are so sharp that they can penetrate anything." In response to his words asked, "How about using your halberds to pierce through your shields?"

 

[HoldAll]

Words can have power as long as you don't let numerology near them.

Joke aside, the popular lore is that you have complete power over a spirit once you know its 'true name' which is often conveniently given in the old grimoires or collections of magical texts like the Greek Magical Papyri. Then again, I remember reading somewhere that when a magician asked a spirit its true name it just shrugged and said "I could tell you but you haven't got the voicebox for it."

Personally, I simply refuse to let my birthname impact my spirituality. My last name is as common as muck, and while my first name has a rather cool etymology, in actuality, however, I was named after an uncle my grandma was very fond of but who died young as a result of some really stupid choices, and I won't let his icky karma influence me in any way (he's one of the reasons I'm not exactly wild about ancestor veneration).

And then there's words of power, barbarous names, voces magicae or whatever you call them - the Greek Magical Papyri are rife with them. On paper they just look like gibberish (in fact, the very first translation into English omitted them for this very reason) but once you read them out aloud... they're the special effects of these texts, so to speak.

 

[Yazata]

In Genesis is written that God brought all the beasts of the field and all the birds in the sky before Adam so that he could name them and therefore was given power over them. Notice that the creatures of the waters are not mentioned - maybe the beasts of the field are man's actions, the birds his thoughts but the creatures of the waters his subconscious motives

But names (in my opinion) definitely hold power. Have you never noticed how someone's blabbering across the room is a soundsoup untill you suddenly hear them say your name?
Or maybe that's just my addiction to attention.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

There is a quote from the Graeco-Roman papyrus: "Inferior magic requires tools; superior magic requires only words"

 

[Ziran]

'true name'

... Could be different depending on the native language of the speaker ...

What does the name Jesse mean, truly, in English compared to its original language?

On the other hand, Joy, Hope, Sunny, are all perfectly "true" until they are taken outside of the English language.

"I could tell you but you haven't got the voicebox for it."

See above? Makes sense doesn't it?

What's point of uttering a divine name, if the utterance does not correspond to the correct psychic formation in the mind-and-heart of the speaker? That's not a 'true-name'.

 

[Xenophon]

There was a novel set in Depression-era Oklahoma, The Least One. Part of the tale is how the father, having been saddled with a name he hated, let his boys name themselves. The narrator, getting into adolescence is unable to settle on anything, and is called "Boy." Finally, at the end, having had to man up and deal with some heavy duty s*** (farm related, not the ol' "catharsis through violence" trope) he comes back into the house, "Don't call me 'Boy' no more. I found me my name out there in the snow storm." We never learn what it is, as the book ends there.

I suppose the lesson might be that one has to earn his real name. Another is that one does not divulge it willy-nilly. I have my birth name on my passport due to the law. Use a Chinese name the neighbors can pronounce and given me by my wife. Use a pen name when I (self-)publish anything. Have a name in magick that don't get told. Of the four, only the last strikes me as "me."

There's an Ernest DeSchoening short story that a proper name is a challenge for its wearer, not just a lable slapped on by mom 'n dad to make grampa Svetovid happy his name is carried on.

 

[HoldAll]

Or take Bishop Leadbeater of Theosophical fame: since lead is the metal of Saturnian, you could ascribe all sorts of spiritually significant meanings to his name, and no doubt astrologers would have a field day weaving a negation of Saturnian influences into his birth chart or something like that. The naked truth, however, is probably that one of his forbears was a metalworker who hammered sheets of lead into shape, for example for church roofs. Doubtless an occult author with sufficient imagination could take this to mean that Leadbeater's task in this incarnation was to mould the minds of men (and not sexually molest young boys as he allegedly did, perish the thought).

 

[beardedeldridge]

Names, titles, nick names, descriptions, accomplishments, or failures of a person or entity holds power. That power isn’t removed (but maybe diminished) when you translate it into another language. The more you can describe or identify a being the more you can hone in on it and affect it. Same for people or objects.

I think hold made the point above, the more someone or something identifies with the word/concept the more power you have with it.

example: If someone shit their pants in school, everyone laughed, and that became something that stuck to them in a powerful way and they were never able to move past it completely (in their own mind) then “he who shits his pants” can be used to great effect as part of a spell.

example: Eld is not my name, not my initials, or anything like that. Think of it more like a nickname I gave myself sorta, but I do associate with it (probably even more so since I sign my posts with it) so if someone wanted to effect me then using Eld would help, even more so if you could add my name I go by on a daily basis or any number of titles that are associated with me.

-Eld

 

[HoldAll]

example: If someone shit their pants in school, everyone laughed, and that became something that stuck to them in a powerful way and they were never able to move past it completely (in their own mind) then “he who shits his pants” can be used to great effect as part of a spell.

Haha, we had a publican in our village that was called 'the shitter' because his grandfather once shat himself in public, and there were a few other examples where grandchildren had inherited the nicknames of their forbears. The power of a name can reach across generations, it seems, not only among the aristocracy.

 

[stalkinghyena]

Words can have power as long as you don't let numerology near them.

Why do you say that?
I am keeping your Leadbeaters into "goldsmiths" comment in mind (if you will pardon that, lol!). It just seems to me that a word having power has as much to do with the sympathetic associations as it does to meaning, sound, etc. You don't think numerical equivalency is valid?

but the creatures of the waters his subconscious motives

Interesting notion. And then comes "the rib" which is concealed but then gets to grow into a person who gets a name.

I've always found the Egyptian myth of how Isis tricked Ra into giving her his secret name (ren) which resulted in her becoming Ra as smacking of the flavor of a Zen koan. I do not know if this is vampyric, though, but I have read that the Egyptians were quite fond of plays on words and puns.

 

[HoldAll]

Why do you say that?
I am keeping your Leadbeaters into "goldsmiths" comment in mind (if you will pardon that, lol!). It just seems to me that a word having power has as much to do with the sympathetic associations as it does to meaning, sound, etc. You don't think numerical equivalency is valid?

I just don't like numerology, sorry. I fear it may force me to see connections and meaning where there aren't any, and as I'm so paranoid about deluding myself... no magic numbers for me, thank you. And definitely, if a word rolls of the tongue or sounds cool, it has power, no question.

 

[stalkinghyena]

I just don't like numerology, sorry. I fear it may force me to see connections and meaning where there aren't any, and as I'm so paranoid about deluding myself... no magic numbers for me, thank you. And definitely, if a word rolls of the tongue or sounds cool, it has power, no question.

Yeah, I hear ya. I've been through situations where too much meaning can put a lot of strain on the nervous system. Following numerical-symbol-word patterns can indeed cause acceleration when it's best to take it slowly. Abulafia really warns about this.

 

[Evil]

Names can have power. For example, saying someone's name vs calling someone on purpose has different energy.

 

[Xenophon]

Yeah, I hear ya. I've been through situations where too much meaning can put a lot of strain on the nervous system. Following numerical-symbol-word patterns can indeed cause acceleration when it's best to take it slowly. Abulafia really warns about this.

It becomes insufferable when the numerologist starts "correcting" the name or term being numerized. That is, a name almost fits a hoped-for correspondence, so the numerologist hammers the almost round peg into the slightly off-square hole. Kenneth Grant does this a few times. Dr. Rashad Khalifa "found" so many instances of the Quran being "based on" multiples of the number 19 that he "corrected" the textus receptus and threw out two verses that "didn't fit." Which got him on any number of fundie s*** lists.