The Forbidden Tongue
Curse Words, Quantum Language, and the Power of the Witch
Language is not a neutral medium. It is a force-field. A tool of control. A site of revolt. A nervous-system-altering technology of perception, meaning, and power. We are taught to treat it as a mirror of thought, a channel for information—but this is a comforting illusion. Language is spellwork. And the words we are told not to say are often the most potent of all.
The idea that words shape reality is not new. What is new is the way modern thinkers have begun to reframe this ancient intuition using the language of science, psychology, and neurobiology. Robert Anton Wilson, in Quantum Psychology, argued that what we call “reality” is not experienced directly but mediated through “reality-tunnels”—structures of perception shaped largely by language.1 Drawing from Alfred Korzybski’s general semantics, Wilson insists that “the map is not the territory,” and that our linguistic categories distort and confine our experience of the world. To say “this is a tree” is not to grasp the fullness of the tree, but to encode it in a habitual symbol that filters our interaction with it. Language doesn’t just describe—it constructs.
But Wilson went further. Words, he argued, don’t only filter perception—they modulate physiology. Different word structures stimulate different neurochemical responses. A command can raise adrenaline. A slur can trigger trauma. An incantation can induce trance. Language is not conceptual alone—it is somatic. This is the deeper insight: language affects the body, bypassing rational analysis and striking the nervous system like a blow or a caress.
No linguistic form demonstrates this more clearly than the curse word.
Steven Pinker, in The Stuff of Thought, explores the strange power of profanity. Unlike ordinary vocabulary, curse words are not generated through calm, reasoned cognition. Instead, they are routed through the limbic system—the part of the brain responsible for emotion, threat perception, and primal urges.2 To swear is not to communicate in the usual sense; it is to unleash a pre-verbal shockwave. You do not think “fuck” when you stub your toe—it erupts from the gut, like a spasm or a gasp. This is why swearing feels like a form of release: it functions as a neurological pressure valve, discharging tension, pain, or anger in a single, potent sound.
What’s more, the semantic domains of curse words reveal their ancient associations. Pinker notes that the most persistent taboos in human language fall into several key zones: sexual activity and fluids (“fuck,” “cum,” “pussy”), excretion and bodily waste (“shit,” “piss,” “ass”), religious blasphemy (“Goddamn,” “Jesus Christ”), family violation(“motherfucker”), and death or disease (“hell,” “plague,” “cunt”).3 These words are not random; they are drawn from the biological and spiritual thresholds of human experience. They reference what leaks, what dies, what bleeds, what defiles. They are embedded in the zones that ancient cultures marked as sacred and dangerous—places where power crosses into chaos.
In other words, curse words are not “low” language. They are deep language. They cut through polite syntax and evoke the primal. They offend not because they are meaningless, but because they are too meaningful—they carry symbolic charge, visceral energy, cultural taboo. Their prohibition is itself a sign of their potency.
And this brings us to the figure of the witch.
The witch is not merely a woman with herbs or a pointy hat. She is the archetype of forbidden power, and most importantly, forbidden speech. In early modern Europe, witchcraft trials often centered not on cauldrons or pacts with demons, but on the alleged use of words: curses uttered in anger, incantations whispered over fields, invocations of spirits through names. The witch was dangerous because she spoke what must not be spoken. She disrupted the linguistic order, used language not to describe but to command.
This is not a metaphor. In witchcraft, words are treated as acts. A spell is a sequence of speech intended to affect the world. It is performative. It does not refer to reality—it alters it. The boundary between word and deed collapses. A curse isn’t something one “says”—it’s something one does with the tongue. Language becomes operative.
Modern legal and corporate speech has absorbed this power while disguising it. Politicians deploy dog-whistles. Bureaucracies enshrine reality in jargon. Advertisers cast spells with slogans. These are all forms of performative language. But unlike the witch, they wear the mask of neutrality. The witch’s sin is not the use of language to affect the world—it is the unlicensed use of that power. She does not represent the crown, the priesthood, or the brand. She speaks from the margins, and so her words are dangerous.
It is no accident that witches have always been associated with filth, sex, excrement, and blasphemy. Their rites were imagined (and sometimes were) full of nakedness, howling, inverted prayers, and ecstatic utterances. In part, this is projection—a fantasy of the devout about what lies beyond the bounds of order. But it also captures something true: the witch’s speech is unclean in the most literal sense. It is language that transgresses the borders of the permissible, that invokes fluids, forces, and desires that cannot be named in polite company.
George Carlin’s famous monologue “The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” captures the modern version of this linguistic witchcraft. His list—shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits—was not merely a joke. It was an anthropology of the sacred-prohibited. These were the words that TV could not contain, the words that violated the smooth surface of mass media, the words that threatened the spell of civilization. Their censorship revealed not their vulgarity, but their power.
To swear, then, is to invoke the ancient magic of the body. To curse is to channel something raw and real. And to use these words with intent—not merely as habit, but as ritual—is to participate in a very old practice: that of using language as a weapon, a mirror, and a wand.
The modern world, obsessed with civility, euphemism, and linguistic hygiene, fears this power. It creates endless rules around speech. It invents new taboos, reframes old ones, and uses shame to police the borderlands of language. But the forbidden tongue persists. It persists in rap lyrics, protest chants, internet memes, stand-up comedy, whispered gossip, porn, graffiti, and prayer.
Those who would reclaim their power must reclaim their speech. Not merely to shock or offend, but to repossess the body of language: its blood, its sweat, its spit, its scream. The tongue must be unbound.
Because at the heart of all control systems lies a spell: a linguistic enchantment that makes domination seem natural. To break that spell, one must speak wrongly. One must say what should not be said. One must curse, not as insult, but as act of sovereignty.
The witch knew this. So did the mystic, the prophet, the madman, and the poet.
And if you are to speak truth in the age of simulation, you must know it too.
References
Wilson, Robert Anton. Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You and Your World. Falcon Press, 1990.
Pinker, Steven. The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. Penguin Books, 2007.
Ibid., Chapter 7, “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television.”