On Translating Magical Texts

Author(s): Alan Kilpatrick

Source: Wicazo Sa Review, Vol. 14, No. 2, Emergent Ideas in Native American Studies (Autumn,
1999), pp. 25-31
Published by: University of Minnesota Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1409548
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 On Translating Magical Texts
Alan Kilpatrick

I am going to offer a few thoughtson translatingmagicaltexts,

whether they areauthoredby Cherokees,Aztecs, or ancient Egyptians.
To begin with, I should state that as formsof humanexpression,
magicaltexts are one of the most resistantto formaltranslationsimply
because they are forms of cryptographythat were never meant to be
decoded. They are secretive documentswritten in a highly specialized
vocabulary,replete with arcaneformsof word play,meantto baffleand
confuse the uninitiated,the layman.In addition, they invoke ideas and
imagesthat are, for the most part,outsideof our normal,ordinaryworld
experience.

PROCESS

I want to focus my attention on translation not as the final product but

as the activity itself. Foreverythingtranspiresfromour firstcrucial,ex-
istentialencounterwith the text: mystified,we ignore it; intrigued,we I
move toward it. If we accept what it seems to promise, then we enter E 25
into a cumulative,dialectic process that may take weeks, months, or
years as we expend time and energy formulatingour ideas, retooling
our interpretivepowers. Over time, we discover the patterns or the
patterns discover us, and we're finally able to say this means "that,"
whatever "that"means.
Before we translators pat ourselves on the back though, I think

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 we have to recognize that whatever success we ultimately enjoy, we
owe to our predecessors.When Griffithand Thompson came to pub-
lish their version of the Leyden Papyrusin 1904 (a compilation of Egyp-
tian magical incantationsrecorded in the demotic script of the third
century A.D.), they were just part of a long traditionof Egyptologists
includingReuvens,Leemans,and Bruge,who had workedon these eso-
teric materialsfor over seventy years.
When Ruiz de Alarc6npublishedhis Tratado de
delasSupersticiones
losNaturales deestaNuevaEspanain 1629 (109 folio pages of Nahua spells
copied by five different sets of hands and then framed by Ruiz
de Alarc6n'sown commentary), his narrativewas made possible by
the illuminatoryefforts of those sixteenth-centurymissionaries,Fray
Sahagunand FrayDuran,who had alreadywrittenour foremostethno-
graphicaccountsof the religion of the Mexica-Aztec.
Finally,I, too, owe a great debt to my forbears.Almost every-
thing we modern scholarsknow about the occult world of the Chero-
kee comes from two primarysources:JamesMooney'sclassic work on
the EasternCherokee, TheSacredFormulas published in
of theCherokees,
1891, and my own late parent'swork on the Western Cherokee, Run
towardtheNightland, publishedin 1967.
Of course, translationis only possible if there exists an equiva-
lent epistomelogicalcategory into which we can wrestle these foreign
words and concepts. Sometimes they fit and sometimes they don't.
Duringthis transactionalprocess, often our ego is the firstcasualtybe-
cause sooner or later we simply have to admit to ourselves or, worse
yet, to someone else that we reallydon'tknow what all the wordsmean.
If we'rehonest, then question markswill appearinterspersedthrough-
out our interlinearnotes.
To their credit, Griffithand Thompson inserted many such ex-
pressionsof puzzlement in the Leyden Papyrus.The hieroglyphic sym-
bols of the griffin,the eye, and the kneeling warrior-did they connote
an evil dreamor something else entirely?
w Is the iztaccihuatlnonan,"whitewoman, my mother,"variouslyin-
voked in Nahua spells to alleviateskin rashesor to staunchblood issu-
ing fromthe mouth, a referenceto the naturalelements of copal or salt
as Ruiz de Alarc6n originally thought, or is it a ritualismfor Huixto-
chihuat, the Salt Goddess herself,who was intimatelyconnected with
the life-giving fluidwater?Who reallyknows?
26 In my own humble effort, TheNightHas a NakedSoul,with the
help of a coterie of full-blood traditionalists,I translatedabout forty
Cherokeemedico-magicaltexts, or idi:gaawe:sdi. There were troublesome
words throughout,such as archaismslike Qwatloya,which from its po-
sition in the text seemed to be an aviandeity of some unknownorigin,
an orphanedbeing now, for no one had invoked its name in over a hun-
dredyears.

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 Sometimes we came across a text that was not in any standard-
ized formatand consisted of only one or two words. In one such case,
the medicine man who originally dictated the formula(a kindly old
curernamedUwodige'Gigage:i or BrownRed)didn'tknow what the words
actuallymeant either. He only knew that the words were old and pow-
erfuland had to be spoken exactly that way.
At a reception, I askeda Mayanepigrapher,renowned for his de-
ciphermentof the hieroglyphics, how hopeful he was that they would
completely unravelthe dynastic chronicles embedded in the inscrip-
tions on the ancient stelae. With temperedoptimism,he estimatedthat
over the next few decades they would get about 75 percent. But then
he glumly added that he didn'tthink they would ever get it all.
Given that we sometimes fail, why do we continue to translate?
Probablybecausethere is a fundamentalhumanpartof us that seeks to-
tality or resolution-the Aristotelianclassicalunity of time and space,
the happy ending if you will. Somehow that live wire left dangling in
the air,the incomplete,fragmentarypartof humanexistence, is trouble-
some to our psyche. Another reason, perhapsmore vital, is that we in-
tuitively know that if we undergo this rigorous, sometimes torturous
intellectualchallenge, we become more empowered by these strange
words fromthis remote place in time.

CONTEXT

Unless we are the author, we often find that the context surround-
ing the creationof the text is missing, sometimesby hundredsof years.
In the face of this uncertainty, how much meaning can we safely
extrapolate?
It is certain that neither the Egyptologists nor Ruiz de Alarc6n,
the FranciscanZealot, believed in the magical traditions that they
sought to unearth. No doubt, if pressed to answer about their own
emotional connection to these ancient religions, Griffith,Thompson,
and Ruizde Alarc6nwould have glibly remarked(along the lines of the E
modern archaeologist, Colin Renfrew):"I study at the temple but I >
don'tworship there."
Should I then be comfortedor confounded by the fact that I was
born into that charmedcircle of believers?Is my situationimprovedby
the fact that, as a child, I knew some of the folk healers whose very
texts I translated?Not only knew them, but in some cases, I was di- B 27
rectly descended from them. Is my situation somehow better because
close relativesof mine still ferventlybelieve in the power of magic and
the threateningspecter of witches?
The ring I wear is both a testament and a contradictionto all of
this. It is a Zuni ring, a curiousturtle, given to me by my mother over
twenty years ago. "Wearit,"she said, "forgood luck and a long life."I

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 still wear it today, although more out of regardfor her than for the be-
liefs behind it. Her life was not particularlylucky or long, but who am I
to say that turtlesdo not have magicalpower?

CONTENT

If translationinvolves not only the "renderingof one languageinto an-

other,"but also "achange to a differentsubstance,form,or appearance:
conversion"(Websters Dictionary,1241), then are we not speaking of a
process similar to magic whose very purpose is to transmute?Surely
the translatoris partmagicianas he or she fashionsnot only equivalent
words or ideas but also concretizes world experiences that link us to-
gether symbolicallyas cognitive humanbeings.
All collections of magic contain divining methods, erotic spells,
protective charms,and purificatoryrites. Yet curiously,despite a con-
stellationof possibilities,all three of these magicaltexts-the Egyptian
papyrus,the Nahua treatise, and my Cherokee idi:gawe:sdi-featurea
spell to inducecatalepsy,sleep paralysis,in a victim:diga:dhli?dhadi:sdi:yi'
(to put them to sleep, one).
The phenomenon of the night terror (waking up in a semi-
conscious state, gripped by fear and unable to move, as if weighed
down by some unseen, menacing force) seems to be a primordialfear,
universallyknown. Who among us has not experienced some form of
this nightmarishstate?
This nocturnalphenomenon is intimately linked in my mind to
the succubus folklore and recalls Nutini and Roberts'recent ethno-
graphicaccounts of the Mexican Tlahuelpuchi, the blood-suckingwitch
who, under a variety of names and shapes, hauntsthe mountainvillages
of Moreliaand Oaxaca, using her extraordinarypowers to anesthetize
and immobilize the sleeping inhabitants and, in this helpless state,
sucks the life force from their children. Thus, as divergentas are their
morphologiesand phonetics,what binds together the pre-Copticpriest
along the Nile, the Aztec ticitl,and the Cherokee dida:hhvwi:sgiis their
access to that intuitive compendiumof human fears and anxieties, as
well as an incurablebelief in the mythology of humanwill.

ATTITUDE

28 B How do the changing intellectual fashionsof the day affect our read-
ing of the text?At one end of the scale, we have Griffithand Thomp-
son, whose translationsexude the authoritarian,clinical tone of the
VictorianAge. Forthem I think the Leyden Papyruswas a static narrative
of a timeless consciousness. So their translationwas an act of restora-
tion or conservation,placing the ancient words back into their correct
order,reinforcinga stable hierarchyof classicalvalues.

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 In Ruiz de Alarc6n, we are confronted by the translatoras de-
constructionist.In his commentaries,he cites "theignoranceor simple-
mindednessof almost all of the Indians"(Coe and Whittaker,63) and
furtherwrites, "Itis not my purpose in this work to conduct a meticu-
lous investigationof [their]customs .... I only aspireto open a path for
the ministersto the Indians,so that both jurisdictionscan easily acquire
a knowledge of this corruption,and so that they can better attempt its
correction,if not its remedy"(Coe and Whittaker,61). Throughouthis
narrative,we hear the mocking righteousness of Ruiz de Alarc6n's
voice, who is there to marginalizeand condemn these indiosfrom the
villages of Morelos and northernGuerreroand to contradictthe wick-
edness of their idolatrousideas.
Finally, in my own work, we encounter the angst and self-
questioning of the scholar who senses that meaning is no longer the
still point in the turningworld;it has become unmooredand floatson a
sea of relativity,suspendednow in the vacuumof cyberspace.Recently,
I attended an ethnohistory conference in Mexico City. One of my old
mentorsfromthe University of California,LosAngeles was there pon-
tificatingabout the Aztec images of the veintana or sacredmonthly cer-
emonies. He demonstratedthroughpainstaking,iconographicanalysis
that these venerableimageshad became ratherstandardizedduringthe
early colonial period. The old exuberancewas in my mentor'svoice,
and it was reassuringto hear that he was able to makethe ancient texts
"speak"once again, as he had so often in the classroom.
His talk, however, was followed by a younger scholar,a genera-
tion removed,who, infusedwith postmodernistangst, invoked Mircea
Eliade's"the opacity of the sacred,"proclaiming texts as intellectual
quicksand, or worst yet, a reflecting, refracting prism by which we
superimposeour own prejudiceson the Other. The chasm, the gap, he
argued, is too great for us in the modern age to intellectually bridge
even with our arsenalof humanstrengths:humilityand patience, imag-
ination, and creativity.Well, there was a great silence in the audience,
as if an enormousexistentialvoid had opened up and swallowed all of
us, leaving in its wake only those deictic pillarsof here and there, re- >
minding us again of the age-old distance between subject and object,
ethnographerand informant,readerand text.
0
N

CONCLUSION u
S 29
I realize that I'vewoven a narrativeof misgivings here. Let me try to a

splice together some contradictorybut frail strandsof optimism. It is

true that there is only a handfulof people on the planet that can really
make sense of these magical texts. Many of these manuscriptslie un-
used or unusable in librariesor museums,under glass captured with
other specimens, to our moderneyes a curiosityat best.

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 If secretiveworldsareso profoundlyalien and difficultto negoti-
ate, why should we waste our time studying them? After all, maybe
magic is, as Freudthought, nothing more than an illusory,compen-
satory fantasy that we share with others on our planet about our es-
sential powerlessness and helplessness over our own life cycles (cf.
Schafer,14).
The best answer comes from examining the process itself, as I
have tried to do here. Forme, the value of studyingmagicaltexts lies in
the fact that they illuminatethat inner-worldphenomenon, the subjec-
tive experience, the psychic realityof dreamsand desiresthat connect
us all as humanbeings.
Besides,occasionally(in contradictionto my youngercolleagues),
intuitively or intellectually,we translatorsknow that we've got these
exaltative,slipperywords right. They resonate in some nascent cavity
of our body or soul, and we know, in that raremoment, that this must
be what was originallyintended so long ago. And it is these small dis-
coveriesthat makethe whole processworthwhileand keep me, at least,
working in this esoteric realmof the humanmind.
Finally,I want to say that I'mpleasedand privilegedto be voicing
these very thoughts within walking distance of the Yale Beinecke Li-
brarythat has been, for over twenty years now, the principalrepository
for my late parent'smanuscriptson Cherokee medicine and magic. It is
my fervent hope that futuregenerationsof scholarswill transcendmy
own concerns,use these invaluabletexts as I have triedto do, and grace
us with new and better translationsof these ancient and mysterious
words.

NOTE

This essaywasoriginallydeliveredat conference, Whitney Humanities Cen-

the 'TranslatingNative American Texts" ter, Yale University, February7, 1998.

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