“The Story of the Three Non-Existent Princes” and Genesis’s story of Creation show that nonsense sometimes occurs in religious scriptures. No doubt other cases can be found, but these two cases are enough to establish the general point. They also demonstrate that the typology of nonsense opens a new level of rational analysis for comprehending some important religious texts.
Nonsense was once thought to project magical powers. Nonsense is directly connected to the supernatural through the practice of magic. In fact, ancient magicians thought they could alter reality by uttering just the right combinations of nonsense words. They uttered formulaic nonsense words for changing one thing into another, making things appear or disappear, or invoking supernatural beings. Magicians used specific formulas of nonsense prescribed for healing the sick, curing infertility, ensuring good luck, casting spells, defending themselves, and putting curses on enemies. Magicians and almost everyone else shared the belief that mysterious-sounding nonsense words wielded supernatural power.
Nonsense words that could supposedly transform reality by magic have a similar mysterious and exotic sound and appearance in various times and climes. To seem obscure and incomprehensible to everyone, magical nonsense must not resemble any known, familiar languages. Nonsense that supposedly causes magical changes should sound and look foreign to everyone who hears or reads it.
The Greek Magical Papyri are a collection of texts on scrolls that are about two thousand years old. They were discovered in the nineteenth century in the deserts of Egypt. These magical texts consist of incantations, chants, and rituals for attracting love, contacting superior beings, summoning spirits, attaining one’s wishes, and the like. The magical texts were written in Greek following Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt. They were recipes and procedures people used in magical rituals as part of their Greek folk religion. They are also a treasure trove of strange-sounding nonsense that was uttered expressly for various magical purposes.
In the texts, instructions for setting the stage and preparing for the magical procedure are written in Greek. Then, to make the magic happen, the seeker had to utter specific strange-sounding meaningless nonsense words in a specific combination, such as “naine basanaptatou eaptou menophaesme” and “araouazar bamesen kriphi niptoumi.”
Such words and phrases are not part of any known language, and they make no intelligible sense at all to anyone, yet they impressed people as magic, probably in part because they were meaningless nonsense and sounded strange. Most people were persuaded that unintelligible nonsense emitted paranormal powers.
The occult scholar Émile Grillot de Givry collected some magical nonsense words from the Middle Ages. De Givry emphasized that people used to take magical nonsense words very seriously; an example from his Illustrated Anthology of Sorcery, Magic and Alchemy contains this passage:
Tavar alcilo Sedoan acheir,
Nestabo cacay extabor erional,
Anapheta Dinotor Drion Sarao.55
Two miracle plays of the thirteenth century featured strange-sounding magical nonsense. In a miracle play by Ruteboeuf, the sorcerer, Salatin, conjured up the Devil. To do so, the sorcerer uttered bizarre words not belonging to any known language:
Bagabi laca bachabé
Lamac cahi achababé
Almost four centuries later, Rembrandt pictured the same bizarre style of magical nonsense language in his “Dr. Faustus” etching, which is inscribed with the strange words “adam te dageram” and “Amrtet algar algastna.” Such magic words mean nothing and convey no coherent ideas to the mind, yet they are impressive and awe-inspiring because of their dark and mysterious foreign sound and appearance.
Magical nonsense words were sometimes inscribed in certain geometrical arrangements, such as word squares. Magical word squares were known as sacred grids. For example, repetitively uttering the nonsensical words arranged in the figure below was a spell for magical flying.
ROLOR
OBUFO
LUAUL
OFUBO
ROLOR
In medieval Europe people uttered prescribed formulaic nonsense for healing various ailments. For instance, repeating the magical nonsense words “argidam, magidam, sturgidam” three times supposedly cured a toothache. Repeating the nonsense words “adam, bedem, alam, betur, alem, botem” nine times was a popular magical remedy for gastrointestinal disorders.
Nonsensical magical nonsense words often produce their uncanny effects by what is known as reduplication. Words like “ping-pong,” “King Kong,” “flip-flop,” “knick-knack,” “hocus-pocus,” and “mumbo-jumbo” are reduplicatives. Reduplicatives have an engaging word rhythm that can produce a sense of deep supernatural mystery.
Adults may not always believe that odd-sounding nonsense chants can magically alter reality. However, the idea is still alive in popular children’s literature. For example, Andrew Clements’ book Double Trouble in Walla Walla ascribes magical powers to nonsense chants composed entirely of reduplicatives.
In the book, a little girl named Lulu got stuck uttering only reduplicatives. As a result, she inadvertently “opened up a knock ‘em, sock ‘em, wibble-wobble word warp.” Lulu’s strange affliction proved contagious, and soon everyone in her grammar school spoke reduplicative words uncontrollably. The school nurse mended Walla Walla reality by telling everyone to say all the reduplicatives they could think of at once. Together, the students uttered the following nonsensical chant of reduplicatives to close the word warp:
Ticky-tacky
Knick-knack
Koochie-koochie-koo!
Hubba-hubba
Rodger-dodger
Ooey-gooey-goo!
Hugger-mugger
Hob-nob
Pit-a-patter, bon-bon!
Wishy-washy
Squish-squash
Handy-dandy
Mish-mosh!
Funny-sounding and odd-looking words such as reduplicatives produce a peculiar effect on the mind that is somehow suggestive of magic. The Fairy Godmother in Walt Disney’s animated film Cinderella said the reduplicative nonsense words “Wallaka-ballaka, nallaka-wallaka, bippidi-boppidi-boo” to cast a magical spell.
“The Witch Doctor,” a popular song of the mid-1950s, gradually became a standard song for children. In the song, a lovesick man went to a witch doctor for help. The witch doctor taught his lovelorn client a magical chant of nonsensical reduplicatives to cast a spell on his girlfriend.
Zen Buddhism’s koans are mental exercises that pose unanswerable nonsense questions as a path to enlightenment. Unintelligible questions like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” put the mind in overdrive, which is what we would expect from our prior discussion of the mental effects of nonsense questions.
A Zen master takes each individual student’s propensities and needs into account when assigning a particular koan to that student. The student must repeat the koan ceaselessly and become absorbed in it, even though the koan is a nonsense question that is beyond the capacity of logic and rational intellect.