Magic and Tagging

Last week I was at the mall trying without success to find a new pair of running shoes I liked for under $100. I got hungry and hit the food court to get some food. As usual, me being me, some of it landed on my necktie so I went to the loo to rinse it off and for some reason noticed the graffiti on a toilet seat. People tag buildings, railways, and billboards with graffiti to mark their territory, express themselves, and boast about achievements, but a toilet? What was this person thinking?

Being into occult lore and mythology I was reminded of the idea of true names, the mystical names that describe who we are. An ancient law of magic states "The name of a thing is the thing and has the power of the thing." So, your name is more than a moniker, it is YOU. Inscribe your name on the object and it stands in for you, it is a copy of you that can be at a different location. What happens to you happens to the object and what happens to the object happens to you. You and the inanimate object share one soul until your name is removed from it.

In magic, this is often used to make a spell affect a specific person. Want to make more money? Carve your name in a green candle to magically connect yourself to fertility and wealth. Want to improve your health? Carve your name into an orange candle. Want someone to love you? Carve that person's name into a red apple and eat it, magically taking that person into you. Magic works through association and symbolism. Focus on the symbol and your belief can make it real.

Many cultures around the world have developed traditions around the magical power of names. Among Jews, when a number of children have died in a family the next that is born is not given a name, but is called "Alter" (Yiddish: אלטער, literally 'old'), or Alterke (diminutive), so that the Angel of Death, not knowing the name of the child, will not be able to take the child’s life away. When a child protected this way reaches adulthood, he is finally given a permanent name, often the name of a revered Patriarch or prophet.

Angerona, a Gallo-Roman goddess, kept the true name of Rome a secret to protect the city, and many monsters in folklore such as the Nix of Scandinavia or the Boggart of English folklore could be defeated by using their proper name. Rumpelstiltskin was so angry he fell through a hole in Earth to be swallowed up after his name was revealed.

So, you're either asking what this has to do with tagging or you know where I'm going. There was a name carved into a toilet seat. The name was a symbolic form of the person who wrote it, the spiritual face of the tagger. A toilet. The tagger was essentially saying to anyone who walked into that bathroom "Please, do number one and number two in my mouth. I want you to, really." In a public restroom. Taggers are unknowingly casting a spell to attract crap into their lives, asking the world to take a dump on them. To me, this shows stunningly poor self esteem. Why would someone want their name associated with a toilet even if they don't believe the symbol has any power? Maybe, if society could raise the self-esteem of gang members they would want their names associated with something more positive. If not, could letting them know what they symbolically did at least makes toilets less tempting targets for graffiti? Hmm…