What is “Enchantment”?

The Enchantment Hypothesis

“When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,
a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily,
joyfully, playfully watching me.

Then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible,
oh logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,
clinical, oh, intellectual, cynical.

There are times when all the world's asleep,

the questions run too deep for such a simple man.” -- The Logical Song, Supertramp, 1979

You can tell from that date that this question has gone on quite a long time. Far longer than the 80’s as you can tell from Blake: “Songs of Innocence” vs “Songs of Experience” with lines such as,

““To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.” -- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

And who coined the phrase “The Doors of Perception” from which comes Timothy Leery discussions and the “The Doors.”

In fact, as today’s writers on the Great Reenchantment point out, the Disenchanment goes back centuries, certainly to the end of the Middle Ages and the rise of the (Intellectual) Enlightement, and Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.” He does not say “I Be, therefore I am,” nor does he suggest what he might be after a clout on the head renders him unconscious. Is he NOT, then? I can see you, sir, on the ground.

There are even suggestions, persistent if you look, of the disenchantment in Rome, harking back to THEIR Heroic Age, that of the Illiad, and Greece, from whence they took their culture. Back that far, we recede into the Late Bronze Age, and, while there are sagas of that time – and with digitization, more and more all the time, please look -- yet we can’t be sure of what they MEANT, even if we claim to be sure what they wrote. Which is itself questionable.

Since our entire scope of Western history is “disenchanted” then, perhaps we can look to the places of enchantment, not the times. That is: was Viking Europe enchanted? Was Native America? Is the Kalahari or the far Outback enchanted by dreaming aborigines yet today? Is a Shinto Temple? Is a Rainbow Fest?

What makes “Enchantment”? And I think you’ll find it comes and goes in history regularly, as well as it comes and goes from our wasted childhood, into our latter years. You can be “Enchanted.” You, right now, today.

Maybe you were not like Roger Hodgson, and didn’t start out that way, as both he and I did, the song being an anthem for me in my youth. But you might have. We can all be born that way, or to say another way: enchantment still exists, everywhere, and naturally.

“Alright wise guy,” you may say, “If it’s already here, all around us, why can’t I see it? Why is everybody I know looking for it?”

“Then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible,
oh logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,
clinical, oh, intellectual, cynical.”

The reason this song was popular and such a touchstone is because it reflects the direct experience of millions of people. ...Western, English-speaking people. They are born to enchantment, talking with birds, a relationship with trees, and all the living world around them. That exists and is the baseline. They have to be sent away and educated out of it, by force. This is the theme of thousands of stories, from King Arthur to “The Education of Little Tree” and so on by more thousands today.

What are they educating you TO? Logic. To be “Clinical” that is to say, “Emotionless”, which leads ultimately to a weary cynicism, the antithesis of Enchantment. Now not everyone takes the full road. Just as some aren’t born to magical enchantment, many stop long before reaching the terminus of complete nihilism and atheism, the weary cynicism of Phillip Marlowe and Sam Spade, the “Lost Generation” of WWI. ...Considered the ultimate of Hemingway, or Fonzie, James Dean, and Clint Eastwood, “Cool” in the recent century.

Two things we notice here: no one starts as “Clinical” and is naturally educated, automatically developing into a Natural, “Enchanted” sage. Or not usually. And although we can easily start “enchanted”, once lost it seems no one can get back to it. Otherwise, why not? Hodgeson clearly believes that the Magical enchanted state is the superior one, the one he prefers and aspires to.

And third, as the song, Why does he believe he can’t get back there? The song is entirely in the passive voice: although he dreams of reenchantment, yet it’s unthinkable, unapproachable that he should DO something about it. Anything. You’d think he’d sing about returning to his hometown again, like Steely Dan in “Annandale”. He does not. The door is closed.

This is not as illogical or unusual as you may think. As it happens we have a +5,000 year old mythology about exactly this topic. And while it’s Middle Eastern, we all know it as exclusively and universally “Western”: The Garden of Eden.

What happens in the Garden of Eden, among the many variations and translations we can identify? Just like ourselves or Hodgeson, Adam begins in a “State of Nature”, the natural state of Blake, of the Enlightenment, we came to know as the “Myth of the Noble Savage”, where he talks to birds, names them, and walks each day with God on a mountain of fire. Sound familiar now?

Not to go into the arcana or minutia which would require a dozen more essays, Adam “Falls”. And how does he fall? There are Two Trees (some say) in the Garden. The Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Which does he eat? To get Knowledge, he goes “Off to School”, and is “Sent Away”, to be “Practical”. ...Quite literally. As God forcibly expels them from the Garden, and places an Angel with a flaming sword at the gate so they cannot re-enter. We can get into what that means and why, but the point is, the Fall. The living world is broken, they are separated from God, from Magic, forever. Exactly as Hodges.

And having to what? “Be Practical”, to use intelligence, endless work, blind hardship to make their bread. That is the story. A perfect parallel to “Disenchantment” straight through to 1979. So WHY can Hodgeson not return to his childhood? How does he know and is so certain he can’t? Same thing: the Fall of Man.

Now if you’re Christian this sets up the 3,000 year arc of RE-Connecting to magic and to God, in the form of our kinsman-redeemer. While I’m aware of the wonder of that, this is not that essay. It’s enough to say it’s so important that this fact the very FOUNDATION of Western Religion, of Judaism and Christianity, even to this day. To Christians, as expressed by, say, C.S. Lewis, Christ puts the life and the magic back into life. The life of Adults at least.

For me, that is but a way to say that – UNLIKE – Adam or Hodgeson, we CAN get back. Re-enchantment does exist and it can be done. That’s promising. We’re not just asking the question, alone to ourselves, fumbling in the dark. In fact, from where do we, the modern reader, really get our internal sense of Enchantment or Disenchantment? I’d argue it’s far more from the Enlightenment, from the idea of the “Noble Savage” unaltered from Nature, be he Conan or Tarzan, Sancho Panzo or Natty Bumppo.

This goes back to Rome, “De origine et situ Germanorum” or 12^th century “Hayy ibn Yaqdhan” but for us really goes back to the Enlightenment and the discovery of the New World, where this genre exploded in number and influence, made famous in Rousseau and therefore affecting all Western thought and governance to this day.

That set the stage for us to think about it, but from where does our actual heritage lie? I would argue that it’s all originated from the Orient, since the Age of Spiritualism, 1840-1920, from which remains our modern (although fading) New Age movement.

While the earliest modern borrowing may be more Hindu and via Blatavsky, the Buddha outlined this “re-enchantment” in 500BC, where one can be “logical”, “cynical” and yet re-attain “enlightenment, where again the both the world, and the birds sing. God and man are one, and magic is returned to the world.

Then in the Buddhist story, after the magic comes and the birds drop food in your mouth. Yet after which everything becomes ordinary again.

But it CAN be magical. It CAN be enchanted. We can get back. And others know the Way.

But what is it? I’m setting the stage, but what is it to “Fall” from the Garden, to be Disenchanted, or to “Reenchanted” again? To be “Magical” or non-magical, to be “Mundane”?

Zen Story: A Master was about to offer a teaching to a group of monks. Just then, a bird in a nearby tree began to sing. The Master remained silent until the bird stopped singing.

Or put that previous way, If it’s all around us, why can’t we see it?