I'm guessing we need, among other things, to sing songs ourselves, however badly, to read great works aloud, however softly, to essay works that were just barely accepted for brief periods of time in the early and middle Middle Ages, often called magic. To use the psalms as cantrips, to fight against evil, to actually do what our religions beg us to do. To appreciate antiquity in all its horror and beauty. All that. More. Seek diligently, as you are doing here...
A lot of the feelings of disenchantment come from being told to ignore those things that we know are real, but can't explain with science.
Focus on these things and the enchantment reappears. Trusting our intuition rather than dismissing it as superstition or fantasy.
This can be done anywhere, it doesn´t even require a natural or beautiful surrounding. Though it is easier to do in such settings. The beautiful old architecture and sacred sites are an attempt to manifest the enchantment into the physical.
By focusing on these mysteries we know are real, we help to break the spell that modernity has cast over our minds. The more it is dispelled, the more confidence we have to fight the evil. The heroes may emerge in this frame.
Thank you for inviting us to join in your quest. I hold great hope that, while the magic formula for re-enchantment may forever elude us, we may all be blessed to contribute to, and enjoy the fruits of, this awakening. The landscape before us appears barren at times; I, however, refuse to surrender my being to mind numbing mediocrity. It is my hope that many like minded souls will join in the adventure.
A vital project, without a doubt. I've also noticed this issue with the re-enchantment crowd. There's a lot of talk about it but no one really knows what it means. Maybe its a matter of re-enchanting our children's lives (though I do not have any yet) and through that, the world in a slow manner. Or are there some sort of quests or tasks to accomplish as we adults chip away at the regime of material immanence? I guess we'll see. For my part, re-enchantment is seeming, more and more, to be something that *happens* to me, not that I manufacture myself. Been working on an essay explanation of it for a while, but only in bits. I look forward to this discussion on your part. Like I said, I really do think it's a vital project.
Glad to have you on board. I don't want to call out anyone in the disenchantment crowd because I appreciate what they are trying to do. But yes, there's a certain un-seriousness I find in it. Maybe I see that some are too comfortable staying in a sort of cozy fantasy land with lots of books and cozy pubs and walks in the wood. As great as those things are, they won't save us. One cannot retreat into a warm hobbit hole in the Shire and expect the darkness to go away on its own.
Yes, exactly. I love my old school aesthetics too but it can often become a larp. If enchantment means anything at all, it means it has to be attached to reality, which unfortunately means I can’t live in my own little private Narnia-styled Disneyland-esque artificial “re-enchanted” world, I have to somehow go about this vague, difficult project in the muck of the world as it is. Older, often better men tried to do it in the real world and they failed, or they were too early. While that does mean our efforts will be very difficult, it definitely does not mean that I can just tuck myself in and wait for it to happen. So, agreed. Salvation lies outside the hobbit hole
What happened to the age of hero’s? Hero’s were regulated out of existence. They are too dangerous! All this slaying of dragons. Why don’t we just do business with the dragons and orcs? Enchantment? Only if there is a profit to be made.
An observation: Western philosophy and much of Western Christianity has eliminated the connection between the physical realm and the spiritual, or eliminated the spiritual entirely. We must learn to reconnect with the spiritual and understand its effects on the physical.
Christianity is specifically designed and meant to BE the spiritual realm. However, as well seen, no or few Christians or their priests "believe in that sort of thing." It's too childish, be reasonable, man.
And pointing that when it FIRST appeared the very reason it replaced Pagan gods in Northern and Southern Europe is precisely BECAUSE it was magically kicking their gods all around town and getting things done. --Remember at that first point, the Christians had nothing at all. One Friar walks into the woods. There's no sword or oppression at that point, not 'til many centuries later.
I believe enchantment to be an inner peace that one is able to project to an otherwise cynical, self absorbed and unthinking world. I actually had to Google what the acronym "LARP" stood for. Completely reject that interpretation of the quest. Be real. Be open. Be curious. Be a believer in the potential of goodness and rightness. Let your inner journey and peace be a beacon to those who have lost themselves in the pursuit of "the way the world is".
It's trite to say that modernity is what disenchanted the world, but I would like to delve into that:
The enlightenment, with its putting logic and reason above all things, taught humanity that there was nothing outside of our grasp. Without the unknown and unknowable, there is no mystery beyond humanity that belongs to different beings or different realms. Everything is simply waiting to be discovered by humans, and, once we refine our methods, we will be able to not only discover it but also tame it. This obviates the need for an enchanted world, the fae, the layers of reality overlapping but separate from the material world.
Similarly, the conception of equality has destroyed the notion of the hero. A hero is someone who (most often by way of his blood) stands above all others and does amazing things no one else can do. Once the belief that all humans are equal, have equal potential, or are separated only by their experiences the capacity for heroism becomes anathema. The reenchantment of the world requires a fundamental shift in the attitudes humans take to themselves and their place in the universe. Working backwards, we must do away completely with the nightmare of human equality to allow the hero to reemerge. Then, we must give back to God what is his, accepting as a people what limits humanity and our desires is something fundamental to the reality in which we live.
You might ask people to send in personal accounts of metaphysical experiences. (Many would wish to remain anonymous.) That might help dispel the sense that the physical is all that's real, or philosophical materialism.
A great idea. There is a divide in "re-enchantment" circles over just how much they literally believe in the supernatural, or more specifically at what level they believe the supernatural interacts with us on a regular basis. I want to try to respect all angles with this series but obviously I have my own opinions.
I went to Peru around 2000 and visited near some Incan temples, and I bought some souvenirs, a knife that was a ritual sacrifice replica with a demonic looking face on it.
Something seemed to come back to the United States with me tied to that knife as one day I was sober and started cutting myself and I wasn't in control of my body, I asked "who are you" and it I just heard the name "Shiloh" which years later I thought strange as it seemed to be a reference for Christ in the Bible so I figure it was lying.
I've had a hard time talking about it to anyone as people think I'm just crazy, always was self-conscious about the scars on my arms. Then about 17 years later it appeared to me again on the wall of a restaurant as I was starting to read the Bible and get serious about God; without audibly speaking, in my mind it communicated "I am waiting for you at death." (can't tell anyone about this, and it's isolated me so much).
It looked just like the Aztec wheel image with its tongue sticking out, I was fully sober and hadn't seen anything like that all my life.
It's been 7 years since and I haven't had any other strange experiences like it, I came to the conclusion following Christ broke whatever connection that thing had to me that I had brought back from Peru where real sacrifices used to be made to demons, and one of those demons was carved on that knife as I look down and see those scars and remember all of this is real, and Jesus is greater than all of it.
Disenchantment is a function of the previailing (western) materialistic worldview. The Cartesian position where Nature at large possesses no ‘thinking soul’ at all and is entirely mechanistic has resulted in the physical and biological world becoming inanimate and desacralised, with no intrinsic beauty or purposiveness. If Nature consists solely of matter, all things may legitimately become controlled and exploited for human gain. This attitude explains the profoundly dire siutation we now find ourselves in, and is obviously the antithesis of animism, which still holds sway is some parts of the world.
The process of re-enchantment therefore is the means by which we can come into right relation with the cosmos, by understanding it as both a physical and spiritual phenomenon, where Nature and all things contained therein constitute an ever-unfolding drama of animate, intelligent entities with who we can interact. Western occultism provides the tools by which this may occur - a way of speaking to the cosmos in order to literally en-chant it.
Re-enchantment is a process of sybiosis, and requires active engagement by us. It is an exchange, a covenant, a form of service, a desire for wholeness, union and balance; a alchemical conjunction of matter and spirit, sun and earth, above and below.
Myths therefore are sacred narratives describing the interplay of entities within an ensouled universe; the great cycles of life, death and rebirth are embodied and enacted in the ever-turning orrery of the cosmos. Thus, the cosmic dramas enshrined in myth provide a means to reconnect with the fundamental realities of existence when viewed through a prism of enchantment. Stories of the grail, the wasteland, solar heroes, sacred marriage, a descent into return from the otherworld etc etc are all allegories of in which humans play a key role in sustaining (or breaking) the cosmic order.
But, of course, the process of enchantment must begin with us as individuals: the inner wasteland must be addressed before the outer wasteland is made fecund. Again, this is enshrined in myth and the teachings of the Western Mystery Tradition. To quote Tolkien:
"Faërie... contains many things besides elves and fays... it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all the things that are in it... and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted"
The magic may have gone out of the world, as some say.. But if one lives as if it's still here among us, has it really? I don't think so. Call me a starry eyed optimist, but I believe if that we all choose to believe and act as if the world is still in some senses enchanted, we can bring the magic back! What I'm saying is, go out and be adventurous.Fill your lungs with the fresh life giving air and feel the electricity in your veins. As Nietzsche would say: firmly say "Yes!" to life!
If re-enchantment is possible, it will require reconnecting with the land.
From CS Lewis, in a letter to Arthur Greeves June 22, 1930
"Tolkien once remarked to me that the feeling about home must have been quite different in the days when a family had fed on the produce of the same few miles of country for six generations, and that perhaps this was why they saw nymphs in the fountains and dryads in the woods – they were not mistaken for there was in a sense a real (not metaphorical) connection between them and the countryside. What had been earth and air & later corn, and later still bread, really was in them. We of course who live on a standardised international diet (you may have had Canadian flour, English meat, Scotch oatmeal, African oranges, & Australian wine to day) are really artificial beings and have no connection (save in sentiment) with any place on earth. We are synthetic men, uprooted. The strength of the hills is not ours."
And related to that, watch around the 7:30 mark in this video [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc2Sn30oqak ] It's an interview with an English bloke who managed to establish an off-grid home for himself and his family. At that point in the video, he talks about their spring water source on the land, and then starts going into a theory he has about how the water reconnects him with the land. LIsten to him speak. I think he has managed to re-capture a small bit of enchantment for himself.
The magic has not gone out of the world- the world has built big walls and moats to keep the magic out. Haha- magic is too magic for that. It’s part of the story really - volumes needed to be written to narrate why and how the machine took over.
Meanwhile, I’ve been on the quest all along and am cheered to find you and other fellow travelers. ultimately we are in search of the Grail right? ( which of course is sooo many things.). My horse’s name is Inkling. Did you mention your horse’s name or means of travel yet? ❤️
Crucial questions, all. My instinct is that both the physical world of matter and the soul of man have become disenchanted. I don't know if one caused the other.
One of the ways I have been reaching toward re-enchantment in my own life is through living the Church year. Is it because it because it reminds me of the middle ages? Is it because it grounds me in the natural world? All of the above?
I so look forward to exploring more in this series!
I'm guessing we need, among other things, to sing songs ourselves, however badly, to read great works aloud, however softly, to essay works that were just barely accepted for brief periods of time in the early and middle Middle Ages, often called magic. To use the psalms as cantrips, to fight against evil, to actually do what our religions beg us to do. To appreciate antiquity in all its horror and beauty. All that. More. Seek diligently, as you are doing here...
Well said
A lot of the feelings of disenchantment come from being told to ignore those things that we know are real, but can't explain with science.
Focus on these things and the enchantment reappears. Trusting our intuition rather than dismissing it as superstition or fantasy.
This can be done anywhere, it doesn´t even require a natural or beautiful surrounding. Though it is easier to do in such settings. The beautiful old architecture and sacred sites are an attempt to manifest the enchantment into the physical.
By focusing on these mysteries we know are real, we help to break the spell that modernity has cast over our minds. The more it is dispelled, the more confidence we have to fight the evil. The heroes may emerge in this frame.
Eugene McCarraher makes the case that the world has not been disenchanted, but rather misenchanted.
The false, synthetic values we hold dear - money and success, ease and convenience, mere external appearance - lead us out the world, and not into it.
It seems to me that the path back to true enchantment begins with the most basic and immediate concerns in life:
Growing our own food, raising our own children, caring for our own sick and elderly.
The heroic challenge of our age is to take back responsibility for our lives.
“Today the individual must gradually reconstruct inside himself the civilized universe that is disappearing around him.”
-- Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Thank you for inviting us to join in your quest. I hold great hope that, while the magic formula for re-enchantment may forever elude us, we may all be blessed to contribute to, and enjoy the fruits of, this awakening. The landscape before us appears barren at times; I, however, refuse to surrender my being to mind numbing mediocrity. It is my hope that many like minded souls will join in the adventure.
I think there are more of us than many realize.
A vital project, without a doubt. I've also noticed this issue with the re-enchantment crowd. There's a lot of talk about it but no one really knows what it means. Maybe its a matter of re-enchanting our children's lives (though I do not have any yet) and through that, the world in a slow manner. Or are there some sort of quests or tasks to accomplish as we adults chip away at the regime of material immanence? I guess we'll see. For my part, re-enchantment is seeming, more and more, to be something that *happens* to me, not that I manufacture myself. Been working on an essay explanation of it for a while, but only in bits. I look forward to this discussion on your part. Like I said, I really do think it's a vital project.
Glad to have you on board. I don't want to call out anyone in the disenchantment crowd because I appreciate what they are trying to do. But yes, there's a certain un-seriousness I find in it. Maybe I see that some are too comfortable staying in a sort of cozy fantasy land with lots of books and cozy pubs and walks in the wood. As great as those things are, they won't save us. One cannot retreat into a warm hobbit hole in the Shire and expect the darkness to go away on its own.
Yes, exactly. I love my old school aesthetics too but it can often become a larp. If enchantment means anything at all, it means it has to be attached to reality, which unfortunately means I can’t live in my own little private Narnia-styled Disneyland-esque artificial “re-enchanted” world, I have to somehow go about this vague, difficult project in the muck of the world as it is. Older, often better men tried to do it in the real world and they failed, or they were too early. While that does mean our efforts will be very difficult, it definitely does not mean that I can just tuck myself in and wait for it to happen. So, agreed. Salvation lies outside the hobbit hole
I'm starting to define what it means here:
https://jmackinder.substack.com/p/what-is-enchantment
Though of course that will be one man's opinion. Defining terms is vital.
What happened to the age of hero’s? Hero’s were regulated out of existence. They are too dangerous! All this slaying of dragons. Why don’t we just do business with the dragons and orcs? Enchantment? Only if there is a profit to be made.
An observation: Western philosophy and much of Western Christianity has eliminated the connection between the physical realm and the spiritual, or eliminated the spiritual entirely. We must learn to reconnect with the spiritual and understand its effects on the physical.
Christianity is specifically designed and meant to BE the spiritual realm. However, as well seen, no or few Christians or their priests "believe in that sort of thing." It's too childish, be reasonable, man.
And pointing that when it FIRST appeared the very reason it replaced Pagan gods in Northern and Southern Europe is precisely BECAUSE it was magically kicking their gods all around town and getting things done. --Remember at that first point, the Christians had nothing at all. One Friar walks into the woods. There's no sword or oppression at that point, not 'til many centuries later.
I believe enchantment to be an inner peace that one is able to project to an otherwise cynical, self absorbed and unthinking world. I actually had to Google what the acronym "LARP" stood for. Completely reject that interpretation of the quest. Be real. Be open. Be curious. Be a believer in the potential of goodness and rightness. Let your inner journey and peace be a beacon to those who have lost themselves in the pursuit of "the way the world is".
It's trite to say that modernity is what disenchanted the world, but I would like to delve into that:
The enlightenment, with its putting logic and reason above all things, taught humanity that there was nothing outside of our grasp. Without the unknown and unknowable, there is no mystery beyond humanity that belongs to different beings or different realms. Everything is simply waiting to be discovered by humans, and, once we refine our methods, we will be able to not only discover it but also tame it. This obviates the need for an enchanted world, the fae, the layers of reality overlapping but separate from the material world.
Similarly, the conception of equality has destroyed the notion of the hero. A hero is someone who (most often by way of his blood) stands above all others and does amazing things no one else can do. Once the belief that all humans are equal, have equal potential, or are separated only by their experiences the capacity for heroism becomes anathema. The reenchantment of the world requires a fundamental shift in the attitudes humans take to themselves and their place in the universe. Working backwards, we must do away completely with the nightmare of human equality to allow the hero to reemerge. Then, we must give back to God what is his, accepting as a people what limits humanity and our desires is something fundamental to the reality in which we live.
The Aenian Man idea is a great step towards this.
Yes, the fundamental reality of hierarchy is essential to an enchanted world. The disenchanted is flat and dull and "equitable".
Without inequality/hierarchy, there no good to fight for, and no evil to fight against.
You might ask people to send in personal accounts of metaphysical experiences. (Many would wish to remain anonymous.) That might help dispel the sense that the physical is all that's real, or philosophical materialism.
A great idea. There is a divide in "re-enchantment" circles over just how much they literally believe in the supernatural, or more specifically at what level they believe the supernatural interacts with us on a regular basis. I want to try to respect all angles with this series but obviously I have my own opinions.
I went to Peru around 2000 and visited near some Incan temples, and I bought some souvenirs, a knife that was a ritual sacrifice replica with a demonic looking face on it.
Something seemed to come back to the United States with me tied to that knife as one day I was sober and started cutting myself and I wasn't in control of my body, I asked "who are you" and it I just heard the name "Shiloh" which years later I thought strange as it seemed to be a reference for Christ in the Bible so I figure it was lying.
I've had a hard time talking about it to anyone as people think I'm just crazy, always was self-conscious about the scars on my arms. Then about 17 years later it appeared to me again on the wall of a restaurant as I was starting to read the Bible and get serious about God; without audibly speaking, in my mind it communicated "I am waiting for you at death." (can't tell anyone about this, and it's isolated me so much).
It looked just like the Aztec wheel image with its tongue sticking out, I was fully sober and hadn't seen anything like that all my life.
https://uncyclopedia.com/w/images/thumb/d/d0/Aztec_calendar.jpg/300px-Aztec_calendar.jpg
It's been 7 years since and I haven't had any other strange experiences like it, I came to the conclusion following Christ broke whatever connection that thing had to me that I had brought back from Peru where real sacrifices used to be made to demons, and one of those demons was carved on that knife as I look down and see those scars and remember all of this is real, and Jesus is greater than all of it.
Disenchantment is a function of the previailing (western) materialistic worldview. The Cartesian position where Nature at large possesses no ‘thinking soul’ at all and is entirely mechanistic has resulted in the physical and biological world becoming inanimate and desacralised, with no intrinsic beauty or purposiveness. If Nature consists solely of matter, all things may legitimately become controlled and exploited for human gain. This attitude explains the profoundly dire siutation we now find ourselves in, and is obviously the antithesis of animism, which still holds sway is some parts of the world.
The process of re-enchantment therefore is the means by which we can come into right relation with the cosmos, by understanding it as both a physical and spiritual phenomenon, where Nature and all things contained therein constitute an ever-unfolding drama of animate, intelligent entities with who we can interact. Western occultism provides the tools by which this may occur - a way of speaking to the cosmos in order to literally en-chant it.
Re-enchantment is a process of sybiosis, and requires active engagement by us. It is an exchange, a covenant, a form of service, a desire for wholeness, union and balance; a alchemical conjunction of matter and spirit, sun and earth, above and below.
Myths therefore are sacred narratives describing the interplay of entities within an ensouled universe; the great cycles of life, death and rebirth are embodied and enacted in the ever-turning orrery of the cosmos. Thus, the cosmic dramas enshrined in myth provide a means to reconnect with the fundamental realities of existence when viewed through a prism of enchantment. Stories of the grail, the wasteland, solar heroes, sacred marriage, a descent into return from the otherworld etc etc are all allegories of in which humans play a key role in sustaining (or breaking) the cosmic order.
But, of course, the process of enchantment must begin with us as individuals: the inner wasteland must be addressed before the outer wasteland is made fecund. Again, this is enshrined in myth and the teachings of the Western Mystery Tradition. To quote Tolkien:
"Faërie... contains many things besides elves and fays... it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all the things that are in it... and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted"
The magic may have gone out of the world, as some say.. But if one lives as if it's still here among us, has it really? I don't think so. Call me a starry eyed optimist, but I believe if that we all choose to believe and act as if the world is still in some senses enchanted, we can bring the magic back! What I'm saying is, go out and be adventurous.Fill your lungs with the fresh life giving air and feel the electricity in your veins. As Nietzsche would say: firmly say "Yes!" to life!
If re-enchantment is possible, it will require reconnecting with the land.
From CS Lewis, in a letter to Arthur Greeves June 22, 1930
"Tolkien once remarked to me that the feeling about home must have been quite different in the days when a family had fed on the produce of the same few miles of country for six generations, and that perhaps this was why they saw nymphs in the fountains and dryads in the woods – they were not mistaken for there was in a sense a real (not metaphorical) connection between them and the countryside. What had been earth and air & later corn, and later still bread, really was in them. We of course who live on a standardised international diet (you may have had Canadian flour, English meat, Scotch oatmeal, African oranges, & Australian wine to day) are really artificial beings and have no connection (save in sentiment) with any place on earth. We are synthetic men, uprooted. The strength of the hills is not ours."
And related to that, watch around the 7:30 mark in this video [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc2Sn30oqak ] It's an interview with an English bloke who managed to establish an off-grid home for himself and his family. At that point in the video, he talks about their spring water source on the land, and then starts going into a theory he has about how the water reconnects him with the land. LIsten to him speak. I think he has managed to re-capture a small bit of enchantment for himself.
The magic has not gone out of the world- the world has built big walls and moats to keep the magic out. Haha- magic is too magic for that. It’s part of the story really - volumes needed to be written to narrate why and how the machine took over.
Meanwhile, I’ve been on the quest all along and am cheered to find you and other fellow travelers. ultimately we are in search of the Grail right? ( which of course is sooo many things.). My horse’s name is Inkling. Did you mention your horse’s name or means of travel yet? ❤️
> I have come across very little discussion on what mankind actually needs to do in order to achieve re-enchantment.
Turn off the internet.
Ban all advertising.
Shun irony.
That would be a good start, about 30% of the way there...
Crucial questions, all. My instinct is that both the physical world of matter and the soul of man have become disenchanted. I don't know if one caused the other.
One of the ways I have been reaching toward re-enchantment in my own life is through living the Church year. Is it because it because it reminds me of the middle ages? Is it because it grounds me in the natural world? All of the above?
I so look forward to exploring more in this series!