Replying to LO28160 --
Dear Organlearners,
Ray Evans Harrell <mcore@nyc.rr.com> writes:
to my
>> Conclusion?
>>
>> Mastery is magic.
>Are you saying that a Master is a Trickster? To what
>end?
Greetings dear Ray,
I do agree that my words can be interpreted in the sense of sorcery,
necromancy and sleigh of hand. But I meant to use it in the sense of so
beautifull and illustrious that it makes one spell bound.
>And although no one loves a good definition more
>than I, if you follow your logic then you should look
>up the root meaning of "silly" which comes from selig.
I respect your love for definitions. Nevertheless, I myself try to avoid
them as I have explained elsewhere. In short, they set a beginning and
thus block an earlier beginning.
I did look up the silly. It comes from the Saxon "gesaelig"=happy. In the
emergence of my mother tongue Afrikaans some 300 years ago this
Saxon="Nederduits" (Low German) had an important role to play together
with High Dutch (Frankonisch). Thus we still have the "saelig", but now as
"salig"=blessed! Is the "logic of language" not a strange thing? The
"gesaelig"=happy eventually became silly in modern English whereas in
Afrikaans it became "salig"=blessed.
Yes, it seems to be that my logic is strange, but I was actually myself
very puzzeld by the "logic of language" by which an earlier proto-Romanic
word became "magikos"=magic in Greek and "magister"=master in Latin. I
wonder what the word would be in Sanskrit. The word "magos" in Greek is
usually translated by wizard. But once again one take care to read it in
the context of the sentence and even paragraph. The word "magos" can also
be used to refer to (a) wise (person).
I suspect this proto-Romanic is much related to the Afrikaans word
"mag"=power. From this word we may make the word "bemagtig"=empowerment.
It seems to me that in the English language this empowerment is often
interpreted as an altruistic handover or patronism. But in Afrikaans the
"bemagtig" is used definitely in the sense of personal mastery.
With care and best wishes,
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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