Enter, chanting:

I call upon the power of sunny days

Through the power that I channel I sweep the clouds away

My spirit travels to the realm where the air is sweet

Oh spirits grant me true knowledge of how to get to Sesame Street

I call the spirit of play to fill me

I call into being a world that is A-OK

I summon friendly neighbors and I greet them

Oh spirits grant me true knowledge of how to get to Sesame Street

I don’t remember when I started to realize that I have always venerated a long-beaked bird who teaches us the secrets of letters. 

It was some time after I had started a planetary magic practice working with Mercury, and then by way of Mercury the additional syncretized spirits of Hermes, Odin, and Thoth (and some others who came to me in visions).

I came out of my ritual chamber and said to my spouse, “I think Big Bird is an incarnation of Thoth.” And my spouse said, “Well duh.” But I do think there is merit in stating things that are obvious in hindsight but not set into words. 

Big Bird is one of the main Muppets from the children’s educational television show Sesame Street. His character was originally created in 1969. He is a seven foot tall yellow bird with a long beak, and is perpetually six years old. Thoth (to summarize very briefly)  is the Koine Greek name for the Ancient Egyptian god of writing, analysis, wisdom, magic, the moon, and many other subjects, often depicted as a person with the head of a bird with a long beak: an ibis. He is one of a number of beings who are said to have invented writing or given writing to humanity.

I don’t have any sources that suggest Big Bird was inspired directly by Thoth. However, Big Bird was recognized as an ibis by the god Osiris in the 1983 TV special Don’t Eat the Pictures, aka the one where Big Bird helped weigh hearts in the afterlife. And, given my syncretic Big Bird-Thoth practice, visiting the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (where this special was filmed) was an intense spiritual experience. Fortunately, New York City is a great place to cry in public because not only will people leave you alone, they might not even notice. 

If you didn’t know, ibises are also native to North America, and you may be able to see them where you live. The white-faced ibis can be seen on the marshes near my home, and the fist time I spotted one, my reaction was: I know him!!! 

I think Big Bird adds something valuable to Thoth: a child aspect. If Thoth gifts the letters, Big Bird learns them alongside us. He doesn’t already know them: he, along with all the others, is so excited about letters and numbers that he bursts into song. He even notably mistook ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ as a word in and of itself: ab ca deff gee jeckle menop quir stoove wixes. Which sounds very much like a grimoiric incantation to me.

Sesame Street’s own name is plausibly a pop culture magical incantation. It was inspired by the magic words “open sesame”, from the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. In fact, the first Sesame Workshop international co-production localizing Sesame Street for an Arabic-speaking country (Kuwait) was called Iftah Ya Simsim, which is Arabic for open sesame. Sesame might be magical because the seed opens in two parts, sympathetically with the cave door that needed to magically open, or simsim might be a word borrowing that has a kabbalistic meaning. The only sources I have on this one are bad quality, though, so it may as well be because sesame is delicious.

To return to Big Bird-Thoth: It made a lot of sense that writing gods would reach out to me, because I don’t remember a time before I could read. I figured out what letters were before my hands were dextrous enough to hold a crayon. Only as an adult did I learn that this is a condition called hyperlexia, and it is a form of autism. 

So, surprising no one, I became a writing teacher. I have a PhD in writing (Plato’s Phaedrus, which recounts Thoth’s invention of writing, was a required part of the curriculum). I had to re-learn how to like writing after I finished that degree, and periodically since then. Because when I’m staring at a pile of ungraded papers, policies and procedures, meeting notes, my own email inbox…I have been known to say to myself, “Literacy was a mistake.”

It’s at these times I most need to travel to the eternal magical realm of hyperlexia and benevolence, the realm of Sesame Street, and appreciate the gift that letters are.

In various traditions of magic, a magical alphabet is used to inscribe spells, either to demarcate them as “other” or special forms of writing, or because the letters or symbols themselves have power.

But I want to tell you now, the thing I remind myself when I’m tired of my job: every alphabet is a magical alphabet. Writing is itself magical. Scratched symbols representing sounds, concepts, and immense abstraction: this is a precious supernatural gift. Yes, we can use it to bore ourselves to death. But we can also use it to bless, curse, transport ourselves to other realms, learn, expand our minds, and love. My sacred mission, gift, duty, whatever, is to teach it and use it well. And Big Bird-Thoth accompanies me on my path.

May the long-necked bird who teaches letters bless us in the name of: 

ablanathanalba

ala peanut butter sandwiches

ab ca deff gee jeckle menop quir stoove wixes

iftah ya simsim

May it be so.