Terango: Magic Words

This poem is from the Inuit tradition and it has a profound affect on me.

In the very earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen—
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody can explain this:
That’s the way it was.

It strikes me a bizarre how many people refer back to an older time as that of great sacredness. There is a feeling that the sacred experience has become enigmatic for us today and yet we are aware that once it merely existed as a part of perception. This perplexing concept that appears in cultures throughout the world seems that it must be based on some historical credibility. It could be argued that it refers to a time before humans had learned to transform their world with any efficiency. Yet the stories in China, India, and Meso-America read the same yet invoke societies that were rich in technology. Therefore the paradigm where sacred was effortless infused in culture does not directly relate to technology but must refer to a general perspective on reality. The Inuit poem speaks of the power that words had as more than descriptive but actually performing the action of creating Being. This I think lies at the heart of the issue.
Today we have a few words that are performative like, "duck" or "fire," but the terms used in religious, or just daily, discourses have lost that power. It seems that the performative power of words has witnessed a demotion that can be salvaged through the simple process of awareness.