Thursday, April 2, 2009

Merlin's Backwards Speech


DC Comics magical hero Merlin the Magician employs backwards speech to transform himself into a cannon shell.

Backwards speech figures into several magical incantations, sometimes to encode and conceal the speaker's intention, sometimes to reverse the flow of time. Backwards speech can also indicate wrongdoing, as in this reversal of the magic phrase "alah-kazam":

Mazak Hala is a "wicked incantation" spoken by an old soothsayer with a long white beard and holding a twisted staff in 4 Hundred and 20 Assassins of Emir Abdullah-Harazins by Joseph DeMarco (2004).

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