The Age Of Enchantment  

Sometimes you’ve just gotta get away with the pixies to see the real deal of the world. 

There is no doubt that religious sensibility has been in steep decline for decades now in the West. The much studied sociologist Max Weber had effectively predicated this in 1917, with his oft quoted and deeply insightful observation. “The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.”¹

Into this “disenchanted” void marches the ultimate replacement of the enchanted world, which is capitalism.

Anthony Cascardi is among the scholars who argue that Weber was succinct in his analysis that the endgame of the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is the complete loss of spiritual connection with the mysterious and all-encompassing sacred world of our ancestors. And into this “disenchanted” void marches the ultimate replacement of the enchanted world, which is capitalism.² This effective new god, also comes with its very own high temple of finance, to which all worship is now directed. 

Beneath the totem of capitalism, however, there is another more potent and alluring reality which emerges out of the enlightenment and that is ‘individualism’. Few things are more embedded into the modern mindset than the allure of self-sufficiency, where each man effectively becoming his own god.³ Capitalism may well be the altar to which we flock, but our innate prayer is for mastery over all, to be unequaled czars of our own individual heavens. 

Recapturing the age-old wonders of a spirit imbued enchanted world. 

The benefits and progress of modernity are unquestionable, a truly mighty thing. But as with all revolutions, there is the problem of the proverbial baby being tossed out with the bath water. The quest for individuality comes with serious consequences. You would have to be living under a rock somewhere not to realize that for all of its gains, the insatiable appetite of humanity for more of everything material has now led the world precariously close to a point of no return. Our own survival as a species is now questionable, and for many other plants and animals with which we share the planet, tragically the clock has already stopped ticking.

That there are extreme difficulties ahead, especially for our children and future generations, is, it seems to me, beyond doubt. But young people as I have noted elsewhere on this blog are emerging with a new vibrant spirituality which is equal to the challenge. 

For the most part, they are freed from the constraints of religious doctrine, and correctly dubious about the claims of rampant capitalism and individuality. They are also moving in droves beyond soulless and unimaginative atheism. This is the generation who are recapturing the age-old wonders of a spirit imbued enchanted world. 

Towards the close of his huge and celebrated book “The Secular Age,” Charles Taylor expresses similar hope, when he says, “Young people will begin again to explore beyond the boundaries.”⁴ And importantly, “Our age is very far from settling into a comfortable unbelief.”⁵

The use of reason is a magnificent gift to humanity, but it is only one such gift. Who amongst us has not been enthralled in recent decades by the magic of Hogwarts,⁶ or the mystical doings of Hobbits.⁷ These stories appeal to our imaginative creative minds. They contain deep insights about the world that we inhabit, moral tales from which we learn how to live. Such learning is beyond the reach of pure reason alone.

As humans, we encompass mind, body and ‘Spirit.’ Our highest sensibilities are not that of the reasoning mind, but rather, of the ‘creative imaginative Spirit.’ The enchanted world, and our place within it, speaks directly to this higher order of things. Enchantment is back, if indeed it ever left. 

1. Robert A. Yelle, Sovereignty and the Sacred: Secularism and the Political Economy of Religion (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 46. [↩]
2. Anthony J. Cascardi, The Subject Of Modernity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 16-18. [↩]
3. Jacob Taubes From Cult to Culture: Fragments Toward a Critique of Historical Reason, ed. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Amir Engel (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010), 225, 227. [↩]
4. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 2007), 770. [↩]
5. Taylor, A Secular Age, 772. [↩]
6. J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1997.) [↩]
7. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (London: HarperCollins, 1991.) [↩]