Beyond Enchantment

The first time I encountered the concept of “Re-Enchantment” was in Timothy Larsen’s wonderful book George MacDonald in the Age of Miracles, which came out in 2018. Six years later, I have just preordered Ross Douthat’s next book Believe, his contribution to the whole “Enchantment” debate. Since reading Larsen’s study, we have also been blessed with contributions by Ian McGilchrist, Charles Taylor, Zachary Porcu, Carlos M.N. Eire, David Bentley Hart, Rod Dreher, and Jordan Peterson.

I’m sure there are several important others which I am now forgetting, and no doubt there will be many more to come. As Jonathan Pageau recently observed, “Everyone and his brother is writing a book about Enchantment.”

No doubt you’ve all been waiting anxiously for my take. Now that I’m back on Substack, I’m glad to offer it. My not-so-hot take is this:

At the end of the day, Disenchantment is just a species of doubt.

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First, I would point out that “Enchantment” is not necessarily a good thing.

Let’s pick on someone who I know can take it: the great Malcolm Guite. No doubt Mr. Guite spoke for many when he said: “I feel one of the things we need most in the West is Re-Enchantment.” I disagree, though.

The term disenchantment was coined by Max Weber in the 19th century to describe a particular sociological phenomenon. He found that men and women in the post industrial West seem to have a diminished religious sensibility. It wasn’t simply that belief wasn’t declined. It was that “religious experiences”—personal encounters with something spiritual, something transcendent, something divine—seemed to be occurring lesson less frequently.

More recently, thinkers coined the term “Re-Enchantment” to describe the opposite phenomenon. Particularly since the mid-2010s, we have seen a dramatic resurgence of belief in supernatural phenomena. This includes both traditional forms of Christianity—particularly Orthodox Christianity and traditionalist Latin-Mass Catholicism—as well as occultism, neopaganism, and Satanism.

Is it better to be a Satanist than a materialist? Not from where I’m standing.

So, there’s “Good Enchantment” and there’s “Bad Enchantment.” We want to encourage one and discourage the other. In other words, it’s not enough to reckon with supernatural phenomena. We also need put that phenomena in the correct metaphysical context.

That, in my humble opinion, is just restating a very old problem—the oldest problem of all: Man’s search for God.

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Second, I would challenge the notion that Enchantment was ever the “default,” or was meant to be.

After the Resurrection of Our Lord, the Apostle Thomas says: “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” Christ gives Thomas the opportunity to do precisely that. Thomas cries, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus replies: “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

On paper, Thomas won the Enchantment lottery. He was he born eighteen centuries before the Industrial Revolution. He belonged to a homogeneous society with a highly developed cultus. He spent three years, day and night, with the God-Man. He saw Jesus turn water into wine, heal the sick, cast out demons, and raise the dead.

What’s more, Christ warned the Apostles about His impending death—but also of His coming Resurrection. “Now I tell you before it comes,” He said, “that when it does come to pass, you may believe that I am He.”

And yet, for all that, Thomas does not believe.

Christ gave another warning to His disciples. “A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign,” He said, “and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” This passage offers us two important lessons. (1) Empirical evidence for supernatural Faith—is not normative. (2) The quest for Enchantment must not become a seeking after signs.

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Folks in the Enchantment camp might point out that they’re not seeking after signs per se. As Mr. Guite put it:

I think the great thing that Lewis and Tolkien offered in particular was a way back into seeing the world . . . In a sense we’re not re-enchanting the world. What we’re doing is we’re un-dis-enchanting ourselves. The world is still as enchanted as ever it was. It’s still kindling with beauty. But we have eyes that see not, ears that hear not, hearts that neither feel nor understand. That’s what Hopkins was saying: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. / It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; / It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil / Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod . . . ?”

This image (sightless eyes, etc.) occurs six times in the Holy Bible. The most famous instance is in Matthew 13, when Christ quotes the Prophet Isaiah: “For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed . . .”

It is also recapitulated in the seventh chapter of the Qur’an: “Indeed, We have destined many jinn and humans for Hell. They have hearts they do not understand with, eyes they do not see with, and ears they do not hear with. They are like cattle. In fact, they are even less guided! Such people are entirely heedless.”

So, again, this hardness of heart—this spiritual blindness—is nothing new. If that’s what Disenchantment is, then Christian, Jewish, and Muslim sources all agree: is the default for most of mankind.

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How, then, do we become Enchanted? How do we regain our spiritual sight? The answer to these question, as to all others, is found in the Beatitudes. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” Jesus says, “for they shall see God” (Matt 5:8).

According to Kierkeaard, purity of heart is to will one thing. He is following Augustine, who wrote in On the Sermon on the Mount: “How foolish, therefore, are those who seek God with these outward eyes, since He is seen with the heart! As it is written elsewhere, ‘And in singleness of heart seek Him’.”

Spiritual sight, then, comes to those who devote their entire selves—mind, body, and soul—to Christ.

In commenting on this passage, St. Moses the Black is careful to point out that such single-mindedness can’t become a dead formalism like that of the Pharisees. He draws a parallel between the Beatitudes and St. Paul’s famous sermon on love:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing

To be pure of heart, then, means to desire one thing: love—love God and love of neighbor. According to Christ, “There is no commandment greater than these.”

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The answer to the whole problem of Disenchantment, then, is to go about the ordinary business of Christianity.

That wouldn’t have surprised MacDonald, Hopkins, Tolkien, or Lewis. It wouldn’t surprise Pageau, Dreher, or Kingsnorth, either.

We see this in the lives of all the great saints and mystics throughout the history of the Church who talked with animals, read men’s souls, and saw angels and demons walking the earth.

The trouble is that, if we accept this truth, we suddenly find ourselves saddled with new responsibilities. Our quest for “Enchantment” can no longer be confined to reading fairy-tales and listening to podcasts (though we should keep doing those things!). Now we also need to go to church. We need to fast. We need to pray. We need to learn to love our enemies. We need to live—and perhaps even die—for God.

That may seem daunting. At times, it can be grueling. Yet, as anyone who has tried to walk that narrow path will tell you, it really is an adventure. The life of every Christian is an epic, a romance, a work of high fantasy.

What’s funny is that you’re not even the hero of your own story. You don’t have to ride cross the dark wood or escape from the witch or slay the dragon. You’re the damsel in distress, looking out the tower, crying:

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! And the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!