10. “Please”
Source: Your mom
Properties: If this is truly a “magic word” as claimed, it is not a good one. It facilitates the passing of the mashed potatoes at dinner, but not much else.
9. “For the honor of Grayskull, I am She-Ra!”
Source: “She-Ra”
Properties: Requiring a woman to invoke “honor” as the sine qua non for obtaining relevancy and a modicum of authority within Eternia is highly suspect. Her twin brother He-Man, of course, has already harnessed the “power” of Grayskull. Typical.
8. “À la peanut butter sandwiches!”
Source: The Amazing Mumford, “Sesame Street”
Properties: Makes amazing things happen, but rarely quite as planned. Has been known to incite the ire of Cookie Monster by making cookies disappear. (Cookie Monster would prefer to make them disappear via his own methods.)
7. “Hocus pocus alimagocus!”
Source: “Today’s Special”
Properties: Pro — Can make a mannequin come to life to sing and dance for you. Con — Mannequin must eternally wear unfashionably checked Eighties newsboy cap.
6. “We must, we must, we must increase our bust!”
Source: Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret
Properties: This one has some potential, but only when concurrent with the onset of puberty.
5. “Mecca lecca hi, mecca hiney ho!”
Source: Jambi, “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse”
Properties: An ambiguously Orientalist, incorporeal blue genie can grant you one wish per show. What would happen if Pee-Wee wished to free him, like in Aladdin? Would Jambi also sprout a torso and legs?
4. “Light as a feather, stiff as a board”
Source: Preteen girls’ slumber parties
Properties: This is the spell to use when you are tired of convincing your friends that you saw Bloody Mary in the bathroom mirror and your mother won’t let you play with a Ouija board because of that special she saw on 60 Minutes. Anyway, it totally works, you guys; Ashley’s practically floating, and not…heavy…at all.
3. [Nose Twitch]
Source: “Bewitched”
Properties: Samantha Stevens was able to apparate, levitate, and combat her mother’s spell that turned Darrin into a toad all with the same quick twitch of her nose. Clearly it’s a winner. Endora and Dr. Bombay never used this method of magic, but perhaps that’s because only Elizabeth Montgomery could make that face I make when my dog farts look sexy.
2.“Treguna mekoides trecorum satis dee”
Source: Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Properties: If you are lucky enough to retrieve the Star of Astoroth from the Island of Naboombu, you will be rewarded with this spell for substitutiary locomotion. It’s mystic power that’s beyond the wildest notion / It’s so weird, so feared, yet wonderful to see / and will kick those Nazis’ arses right back across the sea. (NB: In the event that spell proves ineffective, at least insist that others refer to you as “Eglantine,” because if that’s not a lovely, criminally underused name, I don’t know what is.)
1. “I wish the goblins would come and take you away, right now.”
Source: Labyrinth
Properties: Ostensibly, this spell will rid you of the responsibility of babysitting your pesky younger sibling forever. More practically and to the point, however, it will summon 1980s glam-rock jodhpur-clad David Bowie into your bedroom. Clearly there is no greater magic.
A+, would summon David Bowie again
Who wouldn’t?
–>*shamelessly wants a version of Sarah’s ballgown from Firefly Path for her wedding dress/subsequent cosplay*
*googles Firefly Path* *doesn’t work for the rest of the day*
![]()
Hnnngh.
*makes inarticulate grabby noises*
I tried to get a quote on one of her Belle-esque wedding designs a few years back, you know, just so I’d know how many kidneys to sell, and got $8,000 as the answer.
Her etsy store in the past has listed some of her gowns at $2,000, though, so…er…75% discount?
I’m so broke but oh god do I want one, is what I’m saying.
Good luck; I tried to summon him MONTHS ago for child care and he never even gave me a courtesy reply. V. unprofessional.
I think effective use of magic word “Please” takes time to develop and most children don’t have it down yet. There are subtle body language and tonal elements just as crucial to the casting of the Please spell as pronouncing Leviosa correctly. Also, it’s not so much a spell for change as it is a spell for influence. Kind of like a +2 to persuade charm on a bard’s harp!
Also, my group of friends did get Light as a Feather to work…I’m not alone (or hallucinating), am I?
Yes. I have been trying to convince my child for many months now that yelling PLEASE! at the top of your lungs is not exactly what we’re going for, here.
A+ attempt, and analogous to the use of SHARE as a command rather than a request (used while forcefully removing something from another’s grubby hands).
One problem is that the please spell is three, possibly four spells with the same trigger word.
“Please” is damn effective. (Someone (an adult) asked me for something on Monday and if she had only said “please” it would have been hers.)
I solemnly swear that my group of friends also got Light As a Feather to work. I can’t remember exactly how the chanting went, but my current theory is that if you have a subject who is sufficiently suggestible as to succumb to extremely amateur hypnosis and/or willing and able to consciously make themselves very rigid, they are indeed much easier to lift despite obviously not having changed weight.
Because really, a sixty-pound or so person divided amongst four or five pairs of hands is five to eight pounds per hand, a not unreasonable amount to lift. People are normally harder to pick up because they tend to flop and put most of their weight on one or two people.
Er, I mean, MAGIC.
THANK YOU! I think we got it to work every time on a couple different girls.
Seriously, thank you for saying something. So glad to know I’m not alone, here.
See comment below, if it’s the same thing I’m thinking of! I think the trick is actually in how it coordinates the lifters, too – you all get in sync with each other so all your momentum goes together and you’re genuinely dividing the weight.
It totally worked for me and my friends. They all agreed to lift me because I was TINY, and it was pretty neat.
Dance, magic, dance.
Pants, magic pants.
Is the “light as a feather, stiff as a board” thing the thing where four of you hold your hands over your friend’s head, and then you can lift them up and fling them into the air with only two fingers each? If so, we got totally obsessed with that when we were at a sleepover when we were about fifteen. Because we were giant swots, we subjected it to the scientific method and tried as many variations as we could think of. We did one where one group of four held their hands over someone’s head, the stepped back and s different group off our lifted them up. The we did it again with the sitting person blindfolded, to see if it mattered whether they knew it was the same team. We spent about two hours on it. Can’t remember our conclusions, though I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if Katherine (biggest swot) had written them up.
Would totally tip you the paypal dollar for this writeup! Please invite me to your next slumber party; will bring my lab notebook.
I want to have gone to your slumber parties, that is an optimal use of social events.
Did you tell a creepy tale of the life’s gruesome and untimely demise before lifting, and did the quality of said tale affect the success? We never got this to work at all, but we were all well built children from a state where dairy is both the foundation of the economy and everyone’s diet.
No, our version was one person on a chair, and then four people make steeples of the index fingers and put the under the person’s underarms and knees and try to lift them. Can’t do it. Then you all put your hands over their head, then try and lift them again. The first time we did it, we through someone at the ceiling and it was pretty scary for all concerned!
I am highly in favour of employing the scientific method on magic, you should get your hands on those notes for further… experiments.
Have you ever read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality? Based on your stated preference, I hypothesize you will (or did) enjoy.
http://hpmor.com
I started, but never finished! Thanks for the reminder!
Bedknobs and Broomsticks is criminally under-rated in my opinion. I still get “Portabello Road” stuck in my head way more than I should, and the marching suits of armor gives me goosebumps every time(also, the effects for it have held up pretty well). I also love how normal looking everyone is in it!
I totally agree. I would watch that movie again right now!
If you want me to cry, play “The Age of Not Believing.”
My mom was mad that I spun the knob of my headboard trying to make the bed fly so many times it never fit back properly. I have no regrets.
My bed didn’t have a bedknob (the headboard wasn’t shaped like that) so I would put a bracelet on the corner and spin it and pretend that was the same.
Treguna mekoides trecorum satis dee
I tried that an embarrassing amount of times when I was a child. I tried a truly embarrassing amount of magic spells in general.
The only embarrassing number of magic spells to try in childhood is “zero”.
I didn’t do that one, but I *did* try to cast the travelling bed spell on a ring that I found on the playground. (Something I could both wear and twist!)
I genuinely and firmly believe that Bowie only “died” so that he can enter all of our dreams as the Goblin King all at once, a power which his mortal shell could only exercise in small doses. And no one can tell me differently.
In all seriousness though, it truly is the greatest magic of all. The magic of the Bulge (TM) and that riding crop, and that voice, singlehandedly awakened my sexuality and made me kinky forevermore.
Come on, you can’t tell me that “just let me rule you and you can have everything that you want. Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave” wasn’t the start of negotiations to the world’s most amazing D/s relationship.
As an open-minded and susceptible little girl with some extremely close female friends I remember being slightly disappointed when I saw labyrinth for the first time and thought, welp, looks like I’m not a lesbian then. David Bowie’s crotch has a lot to answer for.
So very much to answer for.
In my studiousness as a child, I said to myself, “I like this guy, I wonder what else he’s done”… everyone and everything were the answers to that question. I also read several biographies (ate them right up, really, they were very naughty) and many accounts have confirmed that…
It wasn’t a sock. He really was that well-endowed. I believe the words “naked” and “pendulous” were involved.
…I wish to peruse all of these biographies.
i knew that Bloody Mary [x3] was a hoax!
Miss you Jareth. :'(
Oh man, I’d forgotten how much he looked like a Dallas prom queen from 1986 in that scene.
When I turned 7, I had a magician at my party. When she asked for someone to say the magic word, she was looking for “Abracadabra”.
She got “Please!”
Your username complements this story perfectly, A++
If the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse themed Burlesque show I watched is any sort of authority, and I think we both know it is, wishing that Jambi was free not only grants him a torso and legs but also makes him a totally ripped fire dancer that is truly majestic to behold.
Eglantine, Eglantine, oh how divine!
Miss Price and Mary Poppins (and Endora and Samantha) on the Toast on the same day!
(Mary would have talked Eglantine out of giving up witchcraft. Especially just when she was getting good at it!)
Am not sure whether the Bewitched one is supposed to say: “could make that face I make [when my dog farts] look sexy” or “[could make that face I make] when [my dog farts look sexy].”
Am 100% for the sentence either way.
I had to parse that one a few times and prefer version #2.
Not even a specific spell but I have to say something about Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth.
I don’t even know what that thing is, except that book is still too witches.
eta: does it count that I still don’t live in a mansion in Paris with my fourth-grade crush, 17 children and 42 cats?
Anyone else read Dune as a nine-year-old and use the Bene Gesserit litany against fear to get through it when your mother made you play Hot Cross Buns on your cello for your disapproving grandma? Just me? Okay then.
Nooo, but I used the version of Patrick’s rune from A Swiftly Tilting Planet as a mantra a lot?
Yay, someone else did this too! I can still recite most of it.
My husband recites it to my dogs when they get scared. It doesn’t help.
The best thing I learned in my Chaucer course in college was that the modern-day word for “Eglantine” is “Honeysuckle.”
I am reminded of Allie “Hyperbole and a Half” Brosh’s fine dissertation on “Please Stop”. http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/ple…
(Apparently she’s got a new book on the way, though strangely unpromoted.)
Well here it is, my entire childhood laid out in front of me.
A++, with bonus points for your correct* pronunciation of Appalachia.
*hill to die on
I lived in NC for years and spend too much time in the northeast, and I always pronounce “Appalachia” and “Appalachian” wrong for whatever region I happen to be in at the time.
Quite possibly a literal, hill, depending on current location.
Unfortunately, I that last spell does not seem to work if you are the baby sibling.
But I’ll keep trying & report back if I have any success.
I’m wondering if it applies to bosses/co-workers? And, if so, can I get the whole sexual-tension-worthy-foe thing without having to, you know, get them *back* at the end?
I memorised all the spells used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Before exams and things I would mutter to myself prayers to every god I knew of (definitely-fictional ones included), adding in the words from all of the spells I knew at the end. I knew it was nonsense, but it was quite calming.
I hate to tell you, Margaret, but I increased my bust by gaining 60 pounds since high school. Some magic has wicked side effects.
I said it by accident and now I have moobs.
1. Light as a feather, stiff as a board is real and possible and happened and no science-y double speak is going to convince me otherwise. Adolescent girls understand things physics can’t explain.
2. Should I confess to my childhood friends that all the times we “communed with spirits” using a Ouija board, the spirit was actually me subtlety moving the planchette around?
And because I was the designated Secret Keeper of the group, I’d sometimes allude to things I knew and watch them start to work up a cold-sweat at the notion that not only are ghosts real, but they know you’ve got a crush on that grody kid in social studies who always eats his pen caps.
I NEVER ACTUALLY SPILLED THE SECRETS! I mean, I’m not a complete monster. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take a perverse pleasure in exercising that measly bit of power. I always swore up and down I wasn’t moving my fingers that it was the poltergeist. But it was me. Every damn time. God I loved that game. …Yeah, I should probably talk to a therapist about that.
3. Bloody Mary is a walk in the park. Kids in Chicago turned off the lights and said “Candyman” in the bathroom mirror if they wanted to prove they weren’t scaredy cats. On a related note, I am a card carrying member of the Scaredy Cat Alliance because that movie is no goddamn joke.
Also a member of Scaredy Cat Alliance. I won’t even do Bloody Mary. I am a grown woman, and I am STILL freaked out from that time in second grade that these two boys swore up and down that their Bloody Mary stories were real.
The easier way to do that is have an actual boyfriend on a chorus/band exchange, from another state, and then let the thing die a natural death. Bonus: no hiding. Minus: find a boy with a different name from the out of state guy. I had too many Bills in my life for a while.
Quite possibly a literal, hill, depending on current location.
I had to parse that one a few times and prefer version #2.
Ha ha, I love it. He-Man's body mumps were like one of my Barbie's grotesque, permanent, pink and purple eyeshadow: I still liked both toys, but I felt a little sorry for then and wished I could scrape off their unfortunate disfigurements.
I put that book on the top of my list.
Last I checked, it's still coming out in October 2016. But it was originally scheduled for October 2015, then February 2016…so I suspect the quiet nature of its promotion is because it keeps getting pushed forward. They're probably worried that its publication schedule won't stick again. (Publishing person here)
Not when I was a kid, but the Bene Gesserit litany against fear is, as a 26 year old graduate student, a key component of my spiritual practice.