The Blackberry Walk

This is becoming a series of knocking over idols I once believed in. The curse is, that having now named it a series, there may well be no more. Alas. Enchantment is a popular phrase today within spiritual circles. Mention enchantment, and images of Middle Earth, of praeternatural sparkling, and of nature's true beauty arise within us, as if we've never before seen the world for how it is. People claim something has been lost. Maybe it's song? The word itself, 'Enchantment', is to add a chant to the world, to bathe the world in music, to add melody, harmony, and rhythm to matter. But did matter miss these qualities? The scientific worldview, however much I've maligned that vision on this blog, does imbue the world with meaning, telos, rhythm, quality, and sound. The boffins may not believe in Newton today, but the average man on the street does. The 'folk cosmology' in which he lives consists of Newton's billiard balls, Darwin's growth and mutation of all things from that which is smallest, and Freud's unactualised passions in need actualisation. Within these science-derived beliefs, there is plenty of enchantment to be had. There is a sense of order between the billiard balls of matter, each knocking the next with perfect success like a clock, at times the stillness of a garden, and at times the awe of a volcano; and there is a sense of direction and movement in Darwinism of change and development to ever more complex systems. There is a rhythm, a melody, a harmony in scientism. The scientific worldview is enchanted; it may well be a weaker enchantment to the enchantment of the Romantics, but there is a magic nonetheless. We scorn the DeGrasse Tysons who find beauty in the tinyness of the Earth in the cosmos, and the unlikelihood of man's existence, but there is something of enchantment in being such a small part of the world. Science documentarians are evidently enchanted by this vision. Before I'm met with the accusation, no, I don't support this view of man. Man, I believe, is the centre of creation, the jewel of the cosmos. The collapse of the geocentric model is a travesty. But it isn't enchantment which is the issue with that scientific view. The scientific view is sufficiently enchanted, just like the worldviews preceding it, only the scientific vision is enchanted wrong. But what then of the worldviews of the past, are they enchanted right? Ought a worldview be enchanted? Enchantment can also mean the casting of magic. When we talk about the enchanted world, we could very well be describing a magic spell placed on the world. The world may shine spectrally, but be a deception. If we are enchanting the world by altering our worldview, are we not the wizard casting that deception upon ourselves? There's a kind of vanity picking and choosing the from a buffet of enchantments which enchanted perfume to wear; it isn't to live authentically. And those magic spells can be debilitating. Look to the fruit of a truly enchanted world, and take the primitive. The primitive man, I have read, is afraid of digging holes in the Earth, for fear of digging a hole into the underworld, letting the spirits of the deep stream forth. This is true enchantment. Matter is so enchanted for the primitive that so simple an action as digging a hole is rendered taboo. To him, certain actions are sacral, like venerating a specific holy animal, or a cool looking stone, whilst other actions are taboo, like killing that sacred animal, or perhaps desecrating sacred land. The world to the animist has become nigh untouchable from the fear and enchantment of the material world, an enchantment their culture has placed on their world. There's no development, no mining, no Bronze Age and development of civilisation in such cultures. They're static. And after animism, the same can be said for Romanticism and paganism. I remember reading the libretto of The Immortal Hour, an opera written in the Edwardian era, part of the nascent folk movement of the time. Listen to the Faery Song, a repeating motif within the play. It's always stuck with me, this song, for its ethereal quality, and the discomfort and dis-ease of a more enchanted world of supernatural beings. Fae or elf, the pagan world had this sense of enchantment for the Romanticists, a world where the hills rolled in verdant, and amongst the bushels and shrubs there was more than met the eye. Whether the predecessor cultures the Romanticists idolised felt this, I doubt. Was the mediaeval man enchanted in his understanding of the operations of elves, or for him was it an obvious fact of life, like gravity or evolution is for us. These concepts, they can be stared at, pondered and wondered, but in their run-of-the-mill daily understanding they're taken for granted, not enchanted. Perhaps it's the naval-gazing of staring at and deconstructing the enchantment that enlivens our interest in the enchantments of old. On the comedown, perhaps like the man who drank too much wine the other night and now can't stand the flavour, we become tired of the enchantment we have, and yearn for the flavour of another. The potion could be wearing off in effect, or its effect may be ineffectual for the modern age. To draw some of these strands together then, we've seen how both science and the 're-enchanted world' both offer a mystical view of reality, since they both apply of spell to reality, claiming there to be forces which you can't see operating. There are however different scales of how enchanted a worldview may be, which is often mediated by a sense of the sacred and taboo. And the scientific enchantment is wearing off, and many are looking for a new sense of enchantment to fill that gap. The question I will pose is why enchant at all? In the enchanted state, we project these cosmological superstructures onto the world around us, whether that be evolution or elves, in order to understand it. But these spells pass. It's a bit like hobbies and interests. I remember as a child becoming obsessed with one hobby for a few weeks or a few months, before finding they next greatest thing which was far more interesting to become obsessed over. This jumping to the next best thing, whilst it could be fun, was also a kind of dissatisfaction within me, as if with each new hobby I was trying to find 'the one', but in time each fell flat. Perhaps mankind's enchantments are much the same. The scale and depth of our historical understanding now, able to see into our own past, across the world, and then into their pasts, means we see how each temporal and transient enchantment has been ineffective at scratching that civilisational itch. We look for enchantment in the world, not in the heavens. 'All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full', 'The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing', as Ecclesiastes reads. For the mediaeval villein, it wasn't the enchantment of elves and nature that gave him meaning, but rather the enchantment of what was above. It is heaven which has meaning, and I don't mean this in a Platonic sense, wherein we ought to look up to the forms, but in a teleological sense, wherein the world will be perfected come the eschaton. Before then, matter shouldn't take on any exalted forms, lest it falls into idolatry. The world, as St. Paul says, is the fallen domain of the prince of the power of the air: Satan (Eph. 2:2). God can be found, and has been found, through His good creation, but the wine has soured, and much which is good in the world has become corrupted. It is not through the world and enchantment that the Christian is to find meaning - if anything, such distractions of the world, of the flesh, are temptations - but rather in faithfulness to Christ. Now granted, this faithfulness manifests in how we act in the world, in matter, but it isn't the nature of the enchanted matter in which holiness lies, but in the faithfulness to Christ of the action itself. We are in the world, not of the world; and we can't place our hope in the flesh, nor distracted by the enchantment of the flesh, seeing that as the great issue of our time. I will end on a more reconciliation note however, since I think those who champion re-enchantment do strike an important chord in our time. All so often a position gaining traction contains a partial truth, often obfuscated by the main point being made, and in the case of re-enchantment it's mystery. The mystery of the world, of matter, and of all things. It isn't the imbuing of the countryside with spirits good and ill which imbues it with meaning, but the thought we might not know whether spirits may well be there. It isn't the knowing, but the unknowing; the knowing I don't know. The scientist claims to know all there is about water, but what is water? Just H₂O, a molecule whose qualities can be calculated, or is there a more poetical understanding, a historical understanding, a cultural understanding, which could equally get across what the clear stuff is. The scientific epistemology is a tyrant of us all, and seeing mystery in the world is the coup. Again, it isn't enchantment of a different kind we need, but disenchantment with scientism, a kind of sobriety of vision and thought. A moment of silence from the chanting. Since only when we are sober, and not prideful in our interpretation, can the mystery come forth.