It seems there is a bit of a Tolkien theme this week, but if you are going to write a post on how storytelling makes for good spellcasting then I can think of worse places to start.

In this case, we are referring to Saruman’s particular area of magical expertise: Bewitching others with words.

Have you ever been so utterly caught up in a story someone is telling you that you start to lose a sense of your surrounds?

And afterward you feel a little bit stoned, like your brain has been reorganised?

It turns out that’s because it has.

A new study from Princeton University has shown that when someone is speaking and another person is listening, wide regions of both brains synchronize.

So if you tell a story to someone, you are synchronizing their brain to match your own. And the better you tell your story, the higher the synchronization and the better the comprehension.

Leaving aside the horrific implications of these findings when it comes to Fox’s gay-hating, racist pundits and just how many people eagerly hang off their every word, there are some exciting magical applications to this knowledge.

What’s been going through my mind is the traditional emphasis on hearing the Dharma or hearing the Gospel. It turns out there is an observable scientific mechanism for what happens when you consume auditory information in a narrative form. And it was intuitively located and used for spiritual development at least two and a half thousand years ago. (Don’t you just love it when that happens? I do.)

On a more grim note, it also casts new light on exactly how Hitler managed to mobilise a fiercely practical and reasonable population to behave in such an irrational way. He told compelling stories and re-wired their brains.

Let’s split this into two categories; passive/listening and active/speaking; and look at how it can be used in practical magic. Ideally these would form a physical element of a wider enchantment. So you would call in a relevant being to tune or re-sync your various energy bodies (for instance) while you work on your brain. That way everything is in alignment and every component is pointing in the right direction.

Passive storytelling magic

• Lifting depression. Find some positive stories and listen to them. Start at Ted. To be honest, you could finish at Ted. Ted rocks.
• Success. Listen to stories of other people’s success. And I mean listen. Download some Tony Robbins (or whoever) podcasts. Re-shape your brain for winning.
• Confidence. Here is how heroes can help you. Stories of heroes told around the campfire have been synchronizing the brains of children for thousands of years. Pick some good heroes and listen.

Active storytelling magic

This would be anytime you are trying to convince someone of something. It might be to hire you, it might be to have sex with you, it might be to get the person in the call centre to re-connect your broadband.

Let’s take glamour as an example. You probably like yourself. So tell a story that you like (that isn’t about you) to match up your brain with the subject of the spell. This will increase the chances that they will like you as well.

• Be into it. When you speak, speak with conviction. Don’t stop or get all shy when you realise additional people may be listening. This has a tendency to happen if you tell good stories, anyway.
• Be present. You won’t be speaking the whole time. And when your audience responds, visualise yourself listening with every cell of your body. Picture them opening up and absorbing their every sound.
• Make sure it’s a story. Don’t just tell people what you want. Lead them to a conclusion using the power of narrative. You only get the sync-up if it’s a story. (Actually, we don’t strictly know that. But the experiment led to positive results when the information was in narrative form so stick with that for now.)

When someone asks you about your strengths in an interview? Tell them in story form how you learned or overcame something. If your date asks you what kind of books/movies you like, don’t just say you like Asian cinema. Tell them a story about a film festival you went to and how you discovered it and why they appeal to you. (Then shut up. Dates are going well when the other person speaks more.)

So remember. Story-based information is the key to good word-activated enchantment. And once you achieve success you can tell Spock to suck it because you know how to mind-meld without all that inappropriate face touching.