In the early days of British rule in Ireland, a stick sat in the corner of every classroom. It was called the bata scoir. Whenever a child was caught speaking Irish, the teacher would beat them with that stick. Within a few generations, Irish speakers fell from almost 100% to less than 5%.
Language is both simple and complex. It is a code that reveals our culture, memory, imagination, and much more.
As Rita Mae Brown put it, “Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.”
Words are more than sounds or marks on a page. They are potent spells that shape how we think, feel, and act. They carry the history of our people, the weight of ancestral memory, and the subtle vibrations that can build worlds or destroy them. Language is not neutral—it encodes power, values, and identity. To take away a language is to take away a way of seeing the world, a cosmology, an intimate relationship with land and spirit.
At the same time, to consciously choose our words is to reclaim agency. A single word can soothe or wound, liberate or confine. Whole cultures have been oppressed through the suppression of their tongue, just as individuals can be silenced or given voice depending on the language they are allowed to use. To recognise words as living symbols is to remember that every utterance is an act of creation, an incantation that echoes through the psyche and the collective.
I got carried away writing, I had written 4000 words which is too much for a blog. I decided to separate the 4000 words into four short blogs on the theme of language
Click Here Part Two
Love Alexia X
Alexia Elliott
Therapist, Hypnotherapist & Sacred Alchemy Mentor,
Founder of The Sacred Alchemy School
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