The existential perspective on life: Living in an exalted (enchanted) state is paid for by increased alienation and servitude

One of the most misleading aspects of hearing tell of high the experience of spiritual exaltation, is that such high states have been paid-for by servitude: to experience the kind of powerful enchantment that gets written about, extracts a cost in exacerbated mundane living. 

Consider a successful pilgrimage - long and arduous, expensive and tedious travel, and all the organization beforehand. The spiritual high point must be been paid for in advance and upfront. 

Or meditation. Months and years of routine, work, training, tedium; seeking a breakthrough into an "enlightenment" of understanding and bliss - which (unless death follows quickly) is, itself, inevitably a state, dissolving into the mundane again. 

Such is the nature of this mortal life on this world: a trade-off, on unfavourable terms. 

The heights entail extra depths; just as that "holiday of a lifetime" entails a preceding lifetime of daily drudgery. 

At the most fundamental level - the business of staying alive (food, shelter, clothes, defence etc) exacts long hours and heavy responsibilities.  

And there is no way out, no escape - so long as we live this is the equation, the scales are tipped against us. 

We can try not to think about this, can try to pretend it is not so; can distract ourselves, even obliterate our awareness with extreme intoxication - but this is the reality, and it is much, much harder even to ignore this reality than people pretend. 

It is one thing to say that we don't need to think about it, that sensible people just "get on with" the business of life-as-is; or that we change change our perspective to concentrate on the good and re-interpret the bad stiff so as to enjoy it.  

Easy to say, easy to claim! And yet to me the evidence is overwhelming that the existential nature of peoples' actual lives, and the deep and persisting pathologies of actual human society, distinctly undermine such optimistic but facile attempts at re-framing. 

Reality, yes; but not the only reality! 

There is far more to life than this harsh equation, thanks be! 

But it is the start of wisdom to acknowledge this situation as an inescapable, daily - hourly, fact of the human condition. 

Such is the "existential" perspective - the overview of human existence; but such recognition ought to be a starting-point to consider what are its implications for each of us, personally.

Contrary to the atheistic-existentialists of the mid-twentieth century; grasping the existential perspective is not supposed to be the terminus of thinking, nor an excuse for not-thinking. 

From the EP as a baseline; we need to grasp the situation as is; and as fully as possible, as honestly as possible - from our own a inward point of view. 

The aim being to establish what, given the solid-reality of the situation, we would most want; and what possibilities we believe are available. 

Fascinated by "magic"... But only a small bit of it

I have been reading magical fiction and fantasy since discovering Tolkien in 1972, and continued with a (partly academic) study of animism and shamanism in the early 2000s; but I began reading about 20th century magic at the start of 2020. 

In this I was, belatedly, following-up a recommendation by William Wildblood to read The Magical Battle of Britain by Dion Fortune edited by Gareth Knight. 

Since then I have read, and often re-read, scores of such books - nearly-all by Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight, and their close associates.

This; despite that I have near-zero interest in practicing ritual magic of any kind, and even less in participating in the kind of formal, initiating magical group that DF then GK were trained-in and led - this sustained interest in magic is strange, even to me.

Indeed, I soon concluded that this kind of ritual magical society has become nigh impossible nowadays - or, at least, it is now very weak in the pursuit of positive spiritual development, whether of individuals or (even more) of society. 

Clearly, I have got, am getting, significant satisfaction from at least some of this reading. 

But what? I would characterize it as a kind of enchantment that (sometimes) comes over me while I am reading - of a similar nature to that when reading a good fantasy novel, when encountering elves or entering faerie.

However, it is significant that DF and GK were both explicitly self-identified Christian - albeit of a very different kind than me (but then that applies to almost everybody, anyway). 

Even during the active lives of DF, and even more so GK, there were relatively few ritual magicians who considered themselves Christian. 

Nowadays; it seems that those who practice magic are almost all "neo-pagans" of one sort or another; and those that I have encountered express "anything but Christianity" at best, but are mostly (and often vehemently) anti-Christian.

(This opposition usually boils-down-to an opposition to the constraints that Christian churches have placed on sex and sexuality - i.e. they hate what they regard as Christianity "because" they support some aspect of the sexual revolution of which they desire to avail themselves.) 

While several neo-pagan magical writers seem like decent people in themselves, and surely no worse overall than many/most devout Christian church-members; I cannot shake off a solid awareness of a kind of shadow that lies behind, motivates, and tends to corrupt neo-paganism - whether magical or any other kind.

Consequently I have little interest in the present day practitioners of ritual magic - and very seldom find myself "enchanted" by their work -- indeed more often I experience the opposite: a repulsion.

So my conclusion is rather like Sturgeon's Law: probably 99% of Ritual Magic is crap - but then 99% of all actual Christian Churches (including the best) is crap. In this actual world, here-and-now, 100% of most institutions is crap. If we find something that contains even one percent that is good; then we should cleave to that tiny proportion, and set-aside the rest. 

But experiencing such repulsion when sensing the deep motivations of modern people is actually the norm for me. 

And, on the other side, I find the underlying personal character of both Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight to be very appealing and indeed inspiring; even when I regard them as mistaken or on the wrong track in many specifics.

I find that I am less and less impressed by superficial agreements or disagreements with those who I read; more and more my discernments of good and not-good people, seem to be rooted-in (what I infer to be) some much deeper level of character and attitude. 

This is yet another way in which I find myself at odds with traditional, group-based, external-authority-rooted ways of understanding the purpose and meaning of life; and of the Christian Life specifically. 

It seems to me that anybody - including those corrupted, or even of of deeply evil nature - can make public affirmations or rejections of whatever checklist of doctrines or dogmas will get them accepted by some kind of institution or social group. 

This kind of stuff (which is 99% of "religions") is nowadays (it was not always so) just about gatekeeping, boundaries, gang-membership - in short: attempts to increase this-worldly power. 

And therefore it already-is, or soon-becomes, assimilated to the aims and methods of the ruling totalitarian System; which is why in 2026 all institutions (including all churches) are converged or converging with the evil-strategies of atheistic-materialism.  

On the other side; I am both interested and grateful when I encounter a person (alive or dead) whose motivates are genuinely good; and who is working, in his inner life, for positive and spiritual goals.

I believe these to be the truest followers of Jesus; in the sense that such people are much the most likely to desire, accept, and embrace Christ's offer of post-mortal, resurrected eternal life in Heaven.  

And with such rare people, I will take them where I find them and enjoy the experience, and try to learn from it - whether such individuals are located in or out-of the institutions of ritual magic, or elsewhere.    

Our yearning for a life of continual enchantment

The "romantic" search for an escape from the mundane nature of life in this-world - that is, for enchantment - takes many, many forms; and is pursued by different people in widely varying ways. 

A very incomplete list of the themes would include by religions/ spiritualties/ ideologies; through reading, TV and movies; by personal relationships such as intense friendships and sexual relationships; through the appreciation and making of crafts and arts; by meditative, paranormal and supernatural encounters and experiences; via drink and drugs and other derangements; by holidays and travel; pursuit of personal or formal education; from performing drama and music... 

And so on - fully considered, there are only a few people who are not implicitly pursuing the enchanted life. 

All of these methods and others are at-least somewhat effective and may lead to enchantment: for some people, to some extent, and temporarily...

Because with time and the changes in our-selves, all methods and pursuits always lose effect: 

The once-enchanted becomes mundane. 

In other words, in our  failure to become and to stay enchanted; we are here dealing with the ultimate fact of entropy. 

We are up-against the inescapability of entropy in this-world we all inhabit. 

We are up-against this primary creation where all changes, loss is inevitable, and every-thing ends in its death. 

But this-world and primary creation is not all; because (by Jesus Christ) we all have the the opportunity to undergo the transformation of resurrection after death through following Jesus, and move on to the Second Creation that is Heaven: where the state of enchantment is everlasting. 

It is the state of everlasting enchantment in Heaven that Jesus is describing in the Fourth Gospel - when he uses "metaphorical" examples such as water, food and meat - and compared the inevitabilities of their incomplete, temporary, entropic nature in this-life-now; with the eternally present and gratifying fulfilment in the life-to-come:

Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat... but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven... I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever... I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. 

Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you... 

When Jesus says that he brings "life", life-everlasting, eternal-life; people nowadays wrongly interpret this as meaning an offer of (merely) continuing mundane life: the (mere) persistence-forever of life-as-we-now-know-it...

Merely the continuance of this entropic life...

But Heaven comes after resurrection, and resurrection is a transformation by-which not only evil, but also entropy, is eliminated...

Or, to put matters positively; when all the denizens of Heaven have made a permanent commitment to live forever wholly by love of God and divine creation and their fellow resurrected humans (and other resurrected Beings)...

Then this is a situation both of eternal goodness, and also of everlasting enchantment. 

Just as we can now, in this mortal life, know the desire for a wholly good world (without evil); but we cannot attain it. And Christians know that full goodness can only be attained after death and by resurrection...

So also we can know that our yearning for a life of continual and complete enchantment (without entropic change, decline, annihilation) - while impossible to achieve here and now - is attainable.

And/but attainable after our death - and by resurrection. 

The re-enchantment of the world - a matter of direct spiritual contacts

Since the emergence of Romanticism in the late 1700s, the "disenchantment" of our modern world has been a constant cultural theme; and there have been may analyses of its cause; and suggestions concerning the possibilities for re-enchantment. 

I have, over the past half century, read many books and essays on this theme; and I observe that more continue to be published. 

In recent years I have expanded my explorations to include the tradition of Christian ceremonial magic, in particular the works of Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight. Knight, in particular, confronts this issue head-on, especially in his autobiography "I called it magic" (2011) - which describes the (almost) life-long quest for re-enchantment of his life. 

What follows derives from such considerations; and takes the form of notes-to-myself, as a kind of aide memoire concerning a partial crystallization of ideas. 

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In our world, here and now, the proper aim of magical activity is to establish the greatest possible range of loving contacts. 

By which I mean, in particular, direct inter-Being contacts of a spiritual kind. 

By "direct" contacts I mean mind-to-mind - therefore unmediated; not-perceptual, not symbolic nor linguistic.  

By "Beings" I mean any of the primary units of reality - because I regard reality as consisting of eternally existing and developing, Beings: that are alive, purposive, and (to some extent) conscious.

Therefore; re-enchantment is not about abstractions or atmospheres; nor particular qualities of consciousness or thinking. 

Re-enchantment is concrete and specific - like the interpersonal relationships with those we love.  

Re-enchantment is about an expanded awareness-of and interaction-with many Beings of many kinds; and especially awareness of those entities that are (by mainstream modern ideas and ideologies) considered to be imaginary, not to exist, to be unalive/ dead, or not-to-be-Beings/ never-alive.  

Re-enchantment is piecemeal and quantitative; because expanded awareness could include so many contacts with so many Beings of so many kinds. 

Here is an incomplete list of the kind of contacts that constitute re-enchantment.:

Telepathy with living human beings.

So-called dead people - resurrected Men

Pre-mortal spirit humans

Animals, plants, and mineral-beings

Nature spirits

Fairies

Divine beings (including the Holy Ghost)

Planets and stars

The scope of "magical" contacts, is as wide as the nature of Beings. 

To simplify somewhat; these contacts are what is missing from the alienated, materialistic and mundane life of Modern men; and a person who lived in continuous contact with all these kinds of Beings (and other Beings) would be living the "enchanted" life.  

But more needs to be said, and that includes that the contacts be of the right quality; which is to say loving. 

The point is Not (as so often has been sought) to make contact with Beings in order to "use" them to seek power/ wealth/ sex/ status; nor to get information from them; nor to be healed by them; nor to get guidance from them...

If other Beings are regarded as means to an end, any relationship will be dis-enchanted. 

An enchanted relationship cannot be instrumental. 

The "point" of these contacts is the value of loving relationships in and of themselves.

The point of these contacts is expanded awareness.  

However, contacts are not static nor merely contemplative; because contacts are two-way, they are dynamic, developmental. 

Beings in a loving relationship therefore aspire to a active relationship. 

The interaction of Beings - their mutual influencing - is the context of creativity. 

Creation (for an individual) is actively participating in the "web" of his relationships - by this activity he "makes a difference" to divine creation. 

In sum: Contemplation is a passive participation in relationships on one side; however, Creativity is active participation on both sides. 

Re-enchanting the world is thus about restoring and gaining the fullest range of contacts. 

And, for the seeking of loving-contacts to be a meaningful activity in our actual lives (not to be regarded as trivial, nor explained-away in materialistic terms); we need to be able to explain to ourselves how this really happens, and why it is really significant in terms of eternal creation. 

The magic of analogue electronic technology

Similar to, but not the same as, my radio circa 1972

There was a magic to analogue technology, that is objectively absent from the digital. As an obvious example (that many discovered from themselves after many years of denial): an analogue-recorded vinyl LP record captures that which is recorded in a more complete and emotionally-engaging fashion, than does a digitally-recorded CD. 

Similarly, the old dial-tuned radio sets (short wave/ medium wave/ long-wave) had a magical quality about them, for those susceptible to such enchantment - something that was almost independent of whatever was being listened-to. 

An indelible and evocative memory of my early teen years was playing with the switches and dials of my black, vinyl-cased Philips transistor radio with earplug while lying on or in bed, just prior to sleep.

It had to be night; because at night, the atmospheric conditions favoured long-distance transmission of radio signals.  

What I most remember was scanning the short-wave and long-wave bands, seeking foreign voices from unknown places. 

For some reason, I most liked to listen to German speakers; although what I assumed to be Russian was also an exotic attraction - bringing a frisson that "the authorities" would disapprove, and I probably "ought not" to be listening to it*. 

Sometimes, somehow, messages would drift across the Atlantic, and I might hear snatches of American or Canadian accents. 

*Some things don't change, and now the UK blocks digital media from that nation. It was a further advantage of analogue radio that such top-down control could not easily be achieved. 

With short-wave, there was the phenomenon of the signal waxing and waning; so that I would hear a snatch of speaking, then it would fade - and I could almost never find that same source twice. With long-wave there was a steady signal, but a lot of background interference. 

I was also fascinated by the strange sounds, sometimes high pitched and morse-code-like. But I especially liked a low-pitched buzzing that was modulating in its quality; because someone had once told me that one such sound (on the SW frequency) was the planet Jupiter... 

(This was not necessarily completely fanciful.) 

I was forever half listening for this particular sound, and if I found it (or something sufficiently similar) - I would listen for minutes, as if trying to understand what the planet was telling me or "the world".

And, such is the nature of these things that I would always forget where on the dial I had found this Jupiter sound; so I couldn't ever go back again the next night, but would have to start my search afresh.  

Something about the simpler analogue technology made this experience possible - partly because the dodgy quality of the audio created space for the imagination, but partly also because the experience was very direct. 

The signal made hundreds or thousands of miles away, came directly to the little device in my bed - maybe bouncing off the ionosphere en route? - so there was an almost person-to-person quality in the experience.

And the wave movements generated by the person speaking into a microphone were translated into the movements of the diaphragm in my earpiece; again in a very direct fashion. 

I never had a "crystal set" radio of my own, and they were unsuited to bedtime, under blankets, usage - but these were even simpler, more miraculous and magical than my little transistor radio; because they did not even require a battery! 

Somehow, the power of the radio waves, generated so far away, and sleeting through us all, all of the time - was by itself and without an amplifier, enough to move the diaphragm when intercepted by the "diode"! 

It strikes me that all this stuff could be elaborated into a metaphor for what has changed and been lost over the past fifty-plus years - a microcosm of societal and technological change and its effect on the human imagination: but I shall leave that to you!

Note: A few years ago, I got another small analogue radio with a variety of SW bands; but this doesn't seem to work as it once did. Almost everything is drowned in crackles; perhaps due to interference from the many electronic devices, light bulbs, etc. around the house, and indeed everywhere else. Where once we had faint but meaningful voices, we now have a choice between curated and processed digital media, or electromagnetic chaos. 

Further Note: A friend of my father's (a dentist) was a Radio Ham. He had his own radio transmitter in an office at home, and a personal fifty foot aerial outside the house (plus the requisite official permissions needed for these). We visited one afternoon, and he demonstrated the equipment, and how he could converse with other Hams around the world. I found the whole thing intensely exciting, and firmly resolved to do the same myself as soon as could afford the kit. But, of course, never did. 

Coherence, Hope, Enchantment - Father, Son, Holy Ghost

I have found that Rudolf Steiner's insight into the consequences of unbelief (of three kinds) to be powerful and important*. 

In brief: Steiner said that to deny God (be an atheist) was a sickness, to deny Jesus Christ was a calamity, and to deny the Holy Ghost caused spiritual dullness. 

I would rephrase this in positive terms:

To believe in the reality of a personal, loving, creator God; is necessary for us to have a coherent understanding of the human condition in the universe - theism enables reason.

To believe in, and accept, the Great Gift of Jesus Christ (his offer of resurrected, eternal, Heavenly life beyond death) is what enables us to grasp the sustaining strength that comes from Hope. 

(Hope being a necessary virtue in this world which includes entropy-death and evil, as endemic and inescapable.) 

To have direct personal experience of contact with the spiritual person of the Holy Ghost**; is what enables us to know the reality of God and Jesus Christ - rather than merely know-about them. 

Put differently; the Holy Ghost is what enables us to know as real-and-true; those intermittent, and perhaps brief, occasions of enchantment and romance in this mortal life. 

Or, in other words, without the Holy Ghost the work of God and Jesus would just be theories.

The Holy Ghost is what makes the difference between escapist make-believe or fear-driven delusional fantasy on the one hand - and that magical experience which is a foretaste of the Heavenly condition.  

*Note: Steiner's insight is important for Christians to consider, since there is a tendency to conflate the significance of belief in Father, Son and Holy Ghost - as if conversion to one implies all others. But, to my observation, these elements of faith are separable in theory, and often in practice.

**Note: I regard the Holy Ghost as our spiritual experience of the person of the resurrected Jesus Christ. 

Giants and Albion (the British)

Nightmare fuel for kids

I have already posted on the subject of historical Giants in relation to the British Isles - according to some classical authors Giants seem to have been the original (or first recorded) inhabitants of this island. 

I found another piece of evidence that might be taken to support this assumption; in that (according to some notes in John Rateliff's excellent History of The Hobbit) the only two fairy tales that are considered to be probably native to England; are Jack the Giant Killer, and Jack and the Beanstalk (which also has a Giant as the baddie). 

I decided I owed myself a chance to read these stories in their earliest and definitive versions; which I found in Classic Fairy Tales by Iona and Peter Opie. 

My impression of these Jack stories, especially of "the Giant Killer", was of crude and shallow narratives without any detectable trace of that faery enchantment, which is (for me) the only magic really worth reading about.   

The Giants existed only to be stupid, ridiculous, repulsive, and terrifying; their fate only to be tricked, laughed-at, tormented, and slaughtered. 

I conclude that these tales are likely to be exact examples which Tolkien referred as "impoverished chapbook stuff" in one of his letters:

"I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own, not of the quality that I sought, and found in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish, but nothing English, save impoverished chapbook stuff."

The Giant Killer seemed to encourage nothing more virtuous than greed and Schadenfreude; while the Beanstalk Jack larded on some unconvincing moralizing about his later repentance and reform of character.  

All I can say in defence of these un-enchanted and uniquely English Fairy Stories is that I find a similar deficit of enchantment in most other tales from other nations - such a the courtly French stories of Perrault, or the sentimentality of Hans Christian Anderson. 

It is really only the German forest stories of the Brothers' Grimm - such Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White - where I find enchantment of the kind I like...

A sense of faery; that parallel and uncanny, perilous, eerily-beautiful world of magic; just off the path or waiting outside of the woodland clearing. 

"Will power" characterized the spirituality of the religious elite during the era of Medieval consciousness

Religions, as we know them, emerged in the era of Medieval consciousness  - which was a millennia-long transition between the immersive passive un-consciousness of Original Participation and the current alienated Modern consciousness. 

There were (perhaps) two main forms of religion - one for the masses, the other for elite religious specialists. 

The Medieval mass consciousness was based on obedience to the religious institutions; and spiritual participation was made possible by intermediary phenomena; such as symbol, ritual, scripture, song - or social dynamics. 

The Medieval elite consciousness was based upon control of the whole person by "will power"; that is by human will aligned with divine will. 

The basic idea of Medieval era elite consciousness; was that a human being might discover the divine will; and then organized his life around the process of getting his own will into accord with the divine - and the totality of his behaviour into accord with his own divine-aligned will. 

So, the religious life was about prolonged discipline and training (e.g. varieties of initiation); aiming towards conscious goals. 

If successfully, the will was directed at the divine, and mastered all aspects of behaviour; to produce a transformed person (the higher type being described in various terms - holy, enlightened, an adept etc).  

Since the religious elites led the masses - and the obedience of the masses was directed at the religious elites - it was vital that there was sufficient alignment between elite and divine will. 

Usually - in most places, most of the time - there was not sufficient human-divine alignment. 

But sometimes and in some places there was; so it remained a valid ideal; especially in a world where individual consciousness was not much developed in most people. 

This idea of subordinating the whole of life to an elite will (purportedly aligned with the divine will) was "a good thing" insofar as the human will really was aligned with the divine will. 

And also insofar as the Medieval mode of consciousness infused this process of deployment of human will with "the spirit"... 

Because otherwise the whole thing was merely legalism - with all the ambiguities and imprecision intrinsic to the interpretation of language

It is this second aspect of the spirit infusing the human will, that has changed so much in the modern era - such that now the religious elites seldom even claim seriously to to be highly-aligned with divine will. 

Indeed, elite religious authority is usually based upon the same modes as the secular - that is to say institutional legitimacy, laws, rules, guidance understood as normal language (and in practice interpreted in the secular ways that such language is interpreted - e.g. legalistically, by historical and linguistic analysis, quasi-scientifically etc).  

What the modern era is left-with; is therefore the forms of Medieval consciousness, but minus the spontaneous spiritual infusion that used to accompany these forms. 

This, I think, is a reason why the Medieval forms are so badly-disenchanted; and exhibit such a dry, monochrome, dull, "school dinners" atmosphere...

Lacking spiritual infusion, their motivate only feebly, sometimes imperceptibly feebly; and consequently the elite religious specialists become assimilated into mainstream elite social mores: which are currently those of bureaucratic totalitarianism; hence evil; hence anti-Christian. 

(This can explain why the church leaders are the primary conduit for this-worldly and socio-politically-expedient corruption in the major Christian churches.)

And this, in turn, is why so many of the religious elite have turned away from them to immerse in the psychological gratifications - e.g. political spectacle-excitement, media entertainment, self-gratifying pseudo-moralism, therapies and palliatives - of mainstream secular culture. 

"Successful" churches are nowadays enterprises; providing meeting places and organizing holidays, staging events, serving as cafes and theatres, hosting social and health services - and so forth. 

This, then, is our situation. The aim, I presume; if our Christian life is to be strongly-enough motivated to transcend the pervasive pressure of secular society - is for each of us is to seek "enchantment" - i.e. infusion by divine spirit. 

...That same spiritual infusion that Mankind enjoyed in the past - but accepting that this is not possible either by passive immersion or by mediating phenomena. In sum: We need to seek the spirit actively and consciously - or else it will not happen. 

And we need to seek to integrate our-selves not by will power - which is now alienated from the divine. Nor by integration with the unconscious - from which we are detached, and which is anyway not Christian. 

But instead by seeking re-connection with our own partially-divine, eternal, original selves that are currently cut-off and alienated -- both by modern culture; and cut-off also by the forms of Medieval religion without the spirit. 

Because it is our eternal self that is in direct contact with the divine; and which therefore knows when it is aligned with God - and when it is (usually) more or less in a state of disharmony with creation - i.e. sin.  

For us; will power, and the disciplined seeking of conscious goals that characterized elite religious life in the Medieval era of consciousness; needs to be secondary to seeking divine-motivation, and divine-guidance and correction, by this inner-directed seeking consciously to establish direct-contact with our eternal selves.  

This is something new and unprecedented; and therefore difficult - but not so difficult as it may seem. The first step is to recognize what is wanted; then to recognize when it happens...

And the third step is not to expect too much! 

What is needed is sufficient Christian motivation to be able to navigate a Christian life in a hostile world - the ability to discern and the commitment to choose the divine and reject the demonic. 

We do not need, and shall not achieve, permanent and pervasive personal transformation for-the-better! 

We will neither become holy nor enlightened persons (unless we already are these things). 

But what is attainable; is a steady and robust desire to follow Jesus to resurrected eternal life in Heaven.  

Residual spontaneous enchantment that can be elicited by religion, and its dwindling

One conceptualization (derived from Barfield and Steiner) that I have found helpful; is that modern Man is emerging from a situation in which we had a significant (and powerful) residuum of spontaneous enchantment, by which our experience was of participation in the world around us - and when this spontaneous tendency lay dormant until triggered by symbols, rituals, and various "spiritual systems". 

This was the situation of Men in Classical and Medieval times - the times when institutional and formal religions emerged and dominated spiritual life.

But since around the advent of modernity - perhaps starting some 5000 years ago, but becoming dominant something like 2000 years ago in the Industrial Revolution era; we have been incrementally coming-into a situation when the spiritual systems with their symbols, rituals, texts etc are no longer able to evoke that latent enchantment (hence mass atheism) - or only weakly so (hence the feebleness of current religions - see 2020 for confirmation of this feebleness). 

Because formal religions and spiritual systems really did work in the past; then it is usually assumed that they are the only and proper way of evoking enchantment here-and-now...

And then it turns out that they actually don't release our latent capacity for enchantment because that latent capacity to become enchanted by symbol and ritual has dwindled, often to the point of disappearance... 

And Here We Are. 

The usual inferences are:

1. Give up on religion because it doesn't work. 

2. Hold fast to religion, even-though it doesn't work. 

But my inference is that religion - no matter how effective it really was at eliciting the experience of enchantment, in some places and times - was itself only ever a spiritual system, and religion never-was the spirit itself. 

Our task is to go behind religion and seek the spirit directly - with the expectation that strong, convincing, and motivating enchantment - shall reliably arise from such an encounter.

And this requires faith that personal seeking of direct spiritual experience is indeed what God wants from each of us, here-and-now. 

 

What's the use of Jesus here-and-now? Theories about the effect of Jesus on mortal life

What's the use of Jesus in my actual, daily life, here-and-now? 

This question needs an answer that is simple and clear enough to be comprehended and grasped whole - or else it will be ineffectual. 

But also, of course, the answer must be true - not some kind of incoherent answer; nor one that will soon be contradicted by experience because of its implications. 

Furthermore, the answer needs to be one that may - in principle - be endorsed by intuition. It should Not be an answer that depends on "evidence" relating to the validity and interpretation of external authority. 

(...Or else we will enter an "infinite regress" - and one that does not begin with Jesus, but has Jesus at its far, inaccessible, end - where he will never be reached.) 

In other words; we need to know that the answer is true; and we need to know its truth for-ourselves, and from our-selves  so that we personally can take the fullest responsibility for choosing and living-by the answer. 

If it is agreed that Jesus's work was to offer Men the chance of resurrected eternal life in Heaven; then some modern people will regard this as irrelevant to this mortal life...

Either because this finite and temporary mortal life doesn't matter by comparison with eternity...

Or else (more likely) that our post-mortal state and destination, has nothing to do with the practical needs and minutiae of everyday life. 

(i.e. The idea that everlasting life in Heaven would be very nice and all that; but is just pie-in-the-sky - maybe, sometime in the future - when what is needed/wanted is pie on the table, now and for-sure.)

In the past, in the era of church-led Christianity; the everyday implications were set-out in detailed commandments, rules, practices, and (especially) prohibitions - that dictated our lives in all important - and indeed apparently trivial - instances.

The Christian life was a complex and comprehensive instructional blueprint, and Christian living was obedience to its dictates.

I believe that this needs to be replaced - because it manifestly doesn't work, and never really was what Jesus said and did - and people instead require a personal and internally-endorsed understanding of what it means to "follow Jesus". 

That is the nature of the task. When one becomes a Christian - in theory; then instead of looking to one church or another for instructions concerning "what to do next" - this is a personal quest. 

And I feel sure that the quest is not going to be satisfied by any answer that we feel to be drab, materialist, mundane, utilitarian, monochrome, military rations... 

We absolutely require an answer that is as broad and deep as our fullest and most-valued experience of this mortal life, and our most heart-felt aspirations for what we most desire life might ideally become.

And that answer must be the basis for a powerful and robust, inner-generated, personal motivation. 

(Or else, if insufficiently motivated; we will surely succumb to the endemic evil of this world.) 

So that if, like me, you value (insist-upon) that sense of life as being lived at a higher level - a state of awareness of the enchantment of living - then we need to know how the future, post-mortal promises of Jesus shall eventuate in the potential for here-and-now joy, meaning, purpose, and loving-creation. 

 

Word Spells in Christian theology - We absolutely need simplicity and clarity concerning what it is to be a Christian

When "explanations" get complex or highly abstract, they become Word Spells, and people think a question has been answered when they have actually just been lulled to sleep. 

This is perhaps why questions asked of witnesses in court, and their answers, need to be short and simple. 

(But this is misleading if the assumptions behind the questions, the assumptions within-which the questions arise; are wrong.) 

That's perhaps functionally OK... if it works. 

But Word Spells may work only temporarily, or in certain contexts. For instance; the complex and abstract Word Spells of Trinitarianism were not designed to answer questions; but to stop Christians persecuting and killing each other in the early Christology disputes, by employing a kind of hypnosis. 

This, more or less, worked... for a while - until the soothing enchantment was broken by the rise of Islam 

(Which was, I think, substantially rooted in a clear, simple, rational rejection of the literal non-sense of Trinitarian Word Spelling.)  

Other initially successful examples of word-spelling include the crucial areas of the necessity for Jesus Christ, the nature of free-will, and the origins of evil - in a world that is defined as the product of an omnipotent and omniscient God who created everything from nothing. The traditional answers to these questions work insofar as they complexify and abstract; until the problem is lost-sight-of and/or the irrelevance or insufficiency of the answer is lost-sight-of. 

But in Christian theology, the traditional Word Spells clearly do not work anymore, and has not worked for several generations. 

Word-spelling comes with the price that everybody is then asleep or dazed, insofar as they are Christian. 

Since they are deeply and ineradicably confused and disorientated by the abstractness and complexity their theology; Christians are not strongly motivated. they are in a state of permanent uncertainty as to what they are supposed to have as their primary priorities and fundamental convictions and desires.

Therefore Christians have, by default, become passively-assimilated to worldly evil and; and now Christian churches support the Satanic totalitarian agenda - as became explicitly evident in 2020 and since.

Any viable answer must include a refusal and rejection of theological Word Spells; and the inexorable demand for simplicity and clarity concerning what it is to be a Christian, what is entailed by becoming a follower of Jesus. 

A suitable answer must, like any truthful answer, depend on valid assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

But it must also be the kind of short, simple, and concrete answer that would be acceptable in a law court.  

**

Note: This post was developed from a comment I made at Francis Berger's blog.

Three kinds of magic in stories

When magic occurs in stories it has various flavours: here are three of them. 

One is the low magic of "sword and sorcery" stories, and indeed most stories that feature magic - in which magic functions as a technology of power. This ranges widely across spells, and conjurations, summoning of powerful beings, seeing the future, controlling others etc. 

But this is not a very "magical" use of magic - indeed it reduces the magical to the mundane. 

Indeed, such stories are often cynical, reductionist, intended to dis-enchant. 

There are also stories in which magical elements function to indicate a hidden world - the magic enables perception of what would otherwise be imperceptible or hidden: this is the "occult revealing" function of magic. 

Such magic may reveal a world of spirits behind the material world, that "the dead" are alive and can be communicated with, that there are invisible manifestations (such as auras), that telepathy is real - and such like. 

The general impression is that there is more to life than commonly acknowledged, and this can impart an enchanted atmosphere.

The third kind of magic is pure enchantment - and this is (pretty much) how the magic of elves is depicted in The Lord of the Rings. 

There is very little use of magic as a technology - although there is some (the Mirror of Galadriel; and elven swords, cloaks, and ropes for instance). There is also the occult trope, in the hobbits often comment that the world turns-out to contains much more and strange phenomena and entities than the commonplace experiences of the Shire would suggest.   

But the main use of elf magic is related to an atmosphere of enchantment; a different quality of attitude, experience, motivation among elves; a feeling that is both joyous and sad, supremely good and perilous - here-and-now and yet backward looking across vast expanses of time.

 As implied - these uses of magic have somewhat different narrative functions in stories, and presumably different intent. When magic is used as a technology, there may be an element of intending to induce wishful thinking in the reader; but on the whole the magic is just a narrative device, among many. 

When magic is used to indicate occult realities, this may have the intent of indirectly encouraging the reader to take the same attitude to his ordinary life - the story may be encouraging the reader to assume that behind the mundane world is another reality... if only a different attitude were adopted to perceiving it, or particular abilities were available.   

The purpose of pure enchantment in a story is - I take it - religious - in the sense of a whole-world view.

The magic of enchantment in a story carries - to some degree - the implication that "reality" - our life, nature - really is a more wonder-full and inspiring thing than we generally assume. 

Crossing a threshold into a New Age of consciousness at the Millennium - its unexpected fulfilment

I continue to cycle back to consider that the New Age of human consciousness, so eagerly anticipated by "spiritual" people of the late 20th century to be coming-upon Mankind at about the millennium - and by which we would cross a kind of threshold into a qualitatively different relationship with reality... actually happened; yet not-at-all in the manner hoped-for. 

There has been a transformation of consciousness, but it hasn't been of the kind that was so optimistically envisaged. 

People are not more spiritual; alienation, egoism, and awareness of separateness are stronger than ever. There is not a spontaneous sense of oneness, nor of attunement with the universe. 

The change did not make us better people, nor has it made us happier, nor has it led to a kinder human society with diminished suffering. 

Neither do people in general have either a closer relationship with nature, or a closer sense of personal involvement with ultimate reality. 

So much for what didn't happen - but if I believe there was a millennial transformation, then what did happen; and why did it go so wrong? Or at least, so very differently from what was envisaged? 

What happened was pretty much as predicted by Rudolf Steiner and confirmed by Owen Barfield - in that the changes of the past several centuries reached a threshold after which we were each required consciously to choose the basic assumptions on the basis of which we would understand our lives. 

The residues of innate, unconscious, spontaneous spirituality; that had been dwindling for centuries, finally became so weak and feeble that they ceased to operate. The progressive "disenchantment" became so extreme that social life ceased to be humanized, personalized and sweetened by it. 

Everything became materialistic and mundane; explicit, procedural, bureaucratic. Experience divided into the subjective and the objective - and the objective was impersonal - a realm of entertainment and exploitation, and exploitative entertainment - it became "politicized" and systemic. 

And - because we are alienated, nowadays we all know this; and insofar as we regard the public/ institutional, social realm as objectively real - then this is the reality we have chosen. 

Meanwhile, everything else, is regarded as subjective hence arbitrary - and relevant only to our private emotions*.  

21st century Man has chosen his assumptions, then chosen to assert that these assumptions are inescapable reality; and painted himself into this corner of purposelessness, meaninglessness and hopelessness. 

 

That is the nature of the millennial threshold and the New Age. 

Yet... if this can be understood, and if we choose to take ultimate and personal responsibility for what we regard as the nature of ultimate reality - instead of assuming that this is "a given" to which we can only submit passively...

Then we may consciously choose another path by which we each-and-all may individually participate in divine creation; and each bring to it something unique and irreplaceable. 

And that would be the threshold to a New Age, a new consciousness, which is worth living.  

**

* Note: I should also record that there is also an assertion of subjectivism - that because it is only in the subjective and personal that we can find purpose, meaning and enchantment, we ought therefore to regard the subjective as reality. Well, this is "easy to say" - but I have never come across anybody who remotely does it: either in their speech, or observable actions! Such a recommendation is (whatever its merits in an ideal sense) un-real and un-motivating, even to those who most vehemently espouse it. 

The self-chosen false dilemma of 21st century Man is therefore between an objective public discourse that is death and despair; and a subjective personal world that is experienced as unreal and unmotivating.

The (obvious?) conclusion is apparently a case of "back to the drawing board" to discover on what basis these (supposedly exclusive) alternatives were formulated. 

And, it turns-out, that means going back a very long way down - deeper than almost anybody else has been or is prepared to go...

Which is, in a nutshell, the reason for our current situation. 

  

Destroying "enchantment" in the arts

Ever since I became self-aware in my mid teens, I have valued "enchantment" - that magical quality of what I might now call "participation" - which is depth and breadth, significance and beauty. Enchantment is the same thing that CS Lewis called Joy, and Novalis called Sehnsucht - and was something of an obsession for the Romantic Movement.  

I found it first in Tolkien - and realized quickly how rare it was, and how it was altogether absent from most of what most people valued and praised. Furthermore, there didn't seem to be anybody else who valued it as I did - rather, more exactly, there were differences of opinion as to where it might be found, even among those who did value it. 

Finding it was therefore something of a personal quest; and I began to realize that even when I located a source of enchantment, the trend of our times was working against it. 

I found enchantment in the work of the electric folk group Steeleye Span, especially in their supernatural and magical ballads. But after seven LPs of reliably enchanting music - I noticed that in 1975 "All around my hat" was a considerable step down in this respect. It was something to do with a feeling of "overproduction" in the music - which was apparently intended to make it more "commercial", more instantly appealing to a mass audience; and this being achieved by what seemed like excessive messing around with sound and arrangements and (presumably) performance; excessive production-control - such that the delicate bloom of the songs was somewhat rubbed-off. The following album - Rocket Cottage - was poor, and then the band broke up. 

The thing about enchantment is that it isn't usually a conscious goal, but happens as a by-product, as a part of a larger and spontaneously integrated activity. Indeed, it is not possible to get enchantment by making it primary - as CS Lewis describes and explain in Surprised by Joy.

But enchantment can be prevented or destroyed by any focus on almost any specific - it can be pulled-down, but also killed by breaking-up.

So, whereas I quite often found an almost accidental enchantment in many amateur plays and music; I only seldom found it in the work of professionals - especially when they were required to repeat performances, and these became routine. I have never seen a play with enchantment in the West End London theatre, for instance - where actors do long runs of the same play. 

Routine is a killer of enchantment; as is management, "mugging" (exaggeration for effect, as when performers show-off); more generally a striving for entertainment, shocks, horror, laughs. 

A political agenda dominating is maybe the commonest cause of deadly disenchantment. Politics is one of the most disenchanted of all domains. 

Any priority, that is, which arises from outside, and imposes onto the creative process and interaction.

The death of enchantment is a product of separation... Modernity takes an original unity, analyses it into components, treats it as a collection of attributes - and then pursues these singly, perhaps in sequence - or emphasizes on or a few at the expense of the whole.

I have even come across modern attempts - some genuine, others probably insincere - to make enchantment itself an externally imposed priority, to layer it onto works or an intrinsically anti-enchantment aspect of life (such as politics, bureaucracy, mass media, or corporate life) - as if it was some kind of sauce! This never works, but achieves the opposite. 

Enchantment is either integral to the creative process, to Life; or else it is absent   

Now, although enchantment is still discerned and valued by a few people, and can still be found and still arises (but almost exclusively outwith professional and official sources); our civilization lies on the far side from it - the nature and trend of our whole world is systematically and pervasively hostile to enchantment.  

This is apparently what I sensed fifty years ago, back in 1975; although I didn't realize how far the process had yet to go. 

And, as usual, we can't go back. The future of enchantment in the arts, or anywhere, must be something essentially unprecedented; because it can only arise from the large perspective of a lived enchanted life - more exactly from that part or aspect of a Man's life which is enchanted. 

Note: Exactly the same problem of disenchantment happens in churches, and over much the same timescale. There is near zero enchantment in church services, or in any aspect of church life - even when the Christianity is sincere, the atmosphere is as mundane as an office. And probably a majority of serious modern Christians have set their face against many of the manifestations of enchantment - which they reject vehemently as demonic. The truth his the opposite: enchantment is a manifestation of the divine, is indeed Heavenly, and the hope of resurrection. Whatever its intent; mundane Christianity does the work of Satan, quite literally.  

Why can't our life have a "magical" or transcendent quality at all times?

It seems like, even when life is going well, we cannot experience it at the best and highest level "on demand". 

We sometimes experience the "romance" of this-life, a magical moment, or even magical hours and days; but this state does not become continuous - nor can we have this magic whenever we want it, nor even when we may feel we most need it. 

There are always mundane periods, and these may be normal; there is of course suffering, illness, ageing, and the prospect of death all around and about. But even when we are not immediately affected by such things, life may be experienced as mundane; that is dull, everyday, trivial, niggling... just stuff that happens. 

And sometimes, oft-times, we cannot snap ourselves out of this, nor can we do anything that genuinely works in attaining that magical and romantic state we may desire or even crave. 

The question is whether this inability of ours is something that might in principle be overcome. The question is whether or not it is theoretically possible that "life at its best" could become everyday life? Whether and/or when we feel most trapped in everyday life, or most in need of elevation and enchantment - we could learn how to rise from that dull situation to live life at its best, again?

I think we tend to go one way or another, and end-up claiming something that is untrue or impossible. 

Mainstream secular materialism has it that this life is really mundane; and that the romantic and magical is illusory, a temporary subjective aberration merely - and this is also the view of "oneness" spiritualties such as Western Buddhism. 

On the other side are claims that the romantic, magical, enchanted life of "higher consciousness" can (and should) become either permanent, or else available on demand - perhaps by some kind of spiritual self-improvement, or by practice of some kind of technique, method, skill - or maybe by adoption of a right attitude. 

But the basic idea is that this-life in this-world could and should become a paradise. 

For me, neither of these one-sided extremes are valid. It is an evil form of despair to assume that the bad things in life are real and the good experiences are illusory. Yet, there is nothing solid (just wishful thinking and unsubstantiated claims and rumours) to indicate that it is possible to live a magical life at all times or on demand - nobody ever seems to have done it. 

Christianity is the only form of understanding that I know, which takes both sides into account - both the reality of the romantic, and the inevitability of the mundane; and which goes beyond them.

Jesus Christ knew that paradise is real but temporary, and never available "on demand" because of the nature of this life and world (which is both entropic and evil); therefore the only really-real and actually possible paradise is by resurrection to life in Heaven, which lies outside this world, beyond our "biological" death. (And which, of its nature, can only occur by personal choice.) 

Only Heaven is "romantic" on-demand and eternally; and that only because Heaven has left-behind both death (entropic change) and evil, which are intrinsic aspects of this-world. 

It is exactly because Heaven on earth is real, that Jesus was able to create Heaven and make it possible for us to want and choose Heaven; and it is exactly because we cannot have a permanent or on-demand Heaven in mortal life and on this earth, that Jesus enabled resurrection and created the sustained and everlasting romantic-reality of Heaven.   

Can anything effective be done to reverse disenchantment?

We all probably experience personal disenchantment as a process through our childhood - a transformation of the world from being a magic place of hidden motives and meanings (often sinister and malign) - to the mundane materialism of adult and mainstream life. 

There is also a slower, social trend towards societal disenchantment - that I have both read-about and also experienced in my own life. in the 1970s and 80s, even such mundane materialistic bureaucratic "systems" as schools, universities, hospitals - and many cities - were still touched by a kind of residual-enchantment that was spontaneous, often unconscious. 

And there were then still many people who remembered them as even more magical - and treated them as such - and added to the enchantment thereby. 

As a romantic by nature; I felt these receding of enchantment in my life, and the world around me, very keenly at the time - and did my best to fight against it by holding-onto the residuum, and trying to build from it: but with little and lessening success.  

I did this because it seemed then, and it seems now, that a mundane world and life - without enchantment, depth, spiritual resonance, in a dead and unconscious universe - is simply not worth living. 

If life is nothing more than comfort, convenience, amusement, and excitement for the (temporarily) "fortunate" - and pain, disability, disease, degeneration, and death for the rest (and everybody, sooner or later) -- then such a life is a matter of indifference to the mass of mankind; as evidenced by the reluctance to have children, or indeed lift a finger, to defend it.  

And it seems that (on the whole) the rest-of-the-world agrees with me on the worthless futility of a mundane life; because most people are actively-planning or diligently-implementing the end of civilization (thus themselves and their loved-ones); or are going-along-with-it in a state of denial and idle-incomprehension - having no better ideas or ideals. 

But if clinging to the residuum of enchantment does not work; and since this disenchanted world cannot motivate us to sustain it; then it seems we must seek something else if we are not to fall inevitably into despair. 

It seems that a viable re-enchantment of the world, to be attempted in some new kind of spirit, from some new kind of understanding, is actually the most important thing in the world? 

I personally cannot let this subject alone; and when I am not brooding on it in a would-be constructive fashion, I feel as if I am neglecting my most fundamental duty. 

I have encountered quite a few good ideas about what we ought to be doing towards a genuine and effective re-enchantment - for examples I have often referenced the likes of Steiner, Barfield, Arkle - but none of their practical ideas to encourage or create re-enchantment seem to work nowadays; and some seem counter-productive (although they probably did work, to an extent, in their eras). 

My current conclusion is that the task has now devolved from the group to the individual; so that general plans and schemes, and recommendations of a generalized kind, have apparently ceased to be useful. 

Since the necessity remains; this may imply that re-enchantment has become the work of the present day, or even hour. 

We each must start afresh start from here-and-now and from our current personal state of being - whenever we become conscious of the need.  

Very vague, I realize; and maybe yet another ineffective suggestion? But maybe not. Maybe there is little alternative; and maybe that is the way God has made it. 

We can only do what we ought to do - if we are to do anything at all in the necessary direction.

And since God is the creator, and God loves each of us; we can assume that any small positive good we accomplish (in thought or action) and that is worth it; shall be noticed and amplified by God to ramify throughout his creation. 

 

The sacred kingship of Arthur, and the role of Merlin (from Gareth Knight)

Having magically engineered his conception; Merlin carries Arthur, son of Uther and Igraine, into hiding.  

From The Secret Tradition in Arthurian Legend: the archetypal themes, images and characters of the Arthurian cycle and their place in the Western magical tradition. Gareth Knight, 1983. Excerpted from pp 123-4.

In the matter of Britain the days of the dawn of our epoch, man was far less individualized than he is now. Man was more group-minded and open to inner plane influences. Those who could best guide the destiny of their particular group were those who could be most readily receptive to teachings of a higher order of consciousness from the inner planes. 

Certain blood lines had a natural clairvoyance which was an important corollary of power and vision. This was the foundation of the concept of aristocracy and the 'divine right of kings' - a concept so deeply ingrained in human consciousness that Charles I was proud to be a martyr in defense of it. 

The importance of this sacred kingship, and our inherited ease of contact with the inner planes, is clearly demonstrated in the Arthurian legend of Arthur's conception and birth, which reveal a specific policy of genetic engineering on the part of Merlin. 

Arthur, according to Merlin's intention, was meant to be a priest-king in the ancient tradition of Atlantis, chosen before birth, as a result of a mating carefully planned in the light of esoteric genetic considerations. 

Merlin chose the two parents with great care. Arthur's father was to be Uther Pendragon, of the ancient British royal lines. On his mothers side, Arthur had the blood of an Atlantean princess, Igraine. She was one of the Sacred Clan, who had come to Cornwall and become the wife of the local chieftain; known as Gorlois, the Duke of Cornwall or Duke of Tintagel.

**

Gareth Knight was a scholar of Owen Barfield, and aware of the idea that human consciousness had developed through the centuries, in a particular direction from groupish to individualized, from obedience towards freedom; and in accordance with a 'divine plan'. Here he explains and imagines this in terms of the Arthurian legendarium - with the purpose of using the result as a focus for ceremonial magical activities. 

In particular, GK homes in on the transitional stage of human consciousness - the 'classical and medieval' centuries which came in-between the remote era of immersive and unselfconscious groupishness of tribal Man, and the current individualism of modern Man. 

This was a time when group-identity and clairvoyance could be found most strongly in certain blood-lines of inheritance; and when contact with the spiritual world was still achievable - but only by such people, and/or by the use of initiation, ritual, symbol and other 'technologies' and disciplines. 

This passage triggered thoughts of the English then British monarchy, and the occasional rulership of monarchs who - to some degree - approximated to the 'priest-king' ideal. There were several such in the Anglo-Saxon era - most notably Alfred; but the Norman invasion, which was an alien and hostile takeover, caused a considerable disruption. 

Not until Henry II (the first Plantagenet) do we find a monarch that might be supposed to have had some 'magical' attributes - mainly by the female influences of his mother Matilda (who was descended from the Saxon kings) and his wife Eleanor of Aquitane (who had many of the attributes of an fairy enchantress). 

From then, through to the end of the Stuart line (with the death of Anne), there were from time to time English kings or queens with a touch of magic about them, and an apparent capacity sometimes to connect 'clairvoyantly' with higher guidance: e.g. Richard I, Edward III, Elizabeth I.   

By my understanding, this form of natural magic gradually but inexorably dwindled, but persisted as at least a possibility into the 20th century - however it is now so weak a stream that it has become ineffectual. 

Such is the nature of these times, and of our predicament. 

There are three basic possibilities: 

We can yearn for, and try to restore, ancient ways -including the group-ish enchantment of those times; including to hope for the restoration of a sacred monarch, with divine right and naturally 'clairvoyant'  who serves his people by his own subjection to divine guidance. 

We can (and this has been the response of our official and mainstream culture) dispense altogether with the magical and spiritual aspects of life - except maybe as a hobby and lifestyle choice that does not affect our primary motivations (and these motivations are some mixture of political ideology with whatever is currently hedonically-expedient: i.e. the bureaucrat-careerist archetype). 

Or... we can look forward, through, and beyond the present aspiritual, mundane, ideological and hedonic world; and consciously seek as individuals for a qualitatively-different kind of spiritual knowledge and guidance. 

Gareth Knight - Romantic Christian

In 2011, Gareth Knight (1939-2022) published an autobiography titled I call it Magic which is easy and enjoyable to read on the surface; yet contains several deeper layers of implied content that have only revealed themselves on re-reading.

Of particular interest was his account of the transformation in his own 'magical life' throughout his adult life; especially the changes in what he 'called' magic, the means by which he reached the state of enchantment or poetry, and the actual content of these magical-states. 

Knight began as a formal ritual magician, ascending through the prolonged training and initiatory steps of the Society of the Inner Light (founded a generation earlier, as a Christian organization, by Dion Fortune); he went on to found his own ritual magic group - on similar, though looser, lines; then to 'staging' much larger annual weekend events (almost 'happenings') at an anthroposophical centre called Hawkwood. 

By Knight's own account, in the 1970s to the early 1980s, these weekends attained a very powerful level of magical activity among the participants (who had been trained in the requisite methods of concentration and visualization). He then stopped doing this, and moved on to less formal and more improvisatory styles of magic either alone, with his wife and daughter, or in small and private groups. 

After the turn of the millennium his magic practice had changed further. In December of 2004 he was invited back to the Hawkwood weekend; which had changed considerably over the previous couple of decades (the following quotations are from Chapter 31 of I called it Magic) :

The occasion was a jolly romp, with the place filled to capacity, and a rich variety of activity. [But] Power was not ramped up to the degree that it had been in the early Hawkwood days...   

In other words, the experience was less-strongly magical, less enchanted than it had been. In other words; this corresponds to my observations on the declining power of symbolism and ritual through the late 20th century.  

Knight does not draw attention to the meaning of these changes for his inner life; but describes how in fact his practices changed - in the direction of becoming more individual, personally based, and exploratory (rather than relying-on an established and quasi-objective system of symbols, rituals, and group activity). 

Rooted in his study of French language and literature (in which subject he did a degree in later life); Knight embarked on an engagement with the medieval French Arthurian poet Chretien de Troyes:

I took upon myself the task of going through each of Chretien's romances as if both he and I were present, travelling through the whole scenario from start to finish as a kind of directed visualization, and writing it all down...

It then filtered into my head the realization that much that I had witnessed in this was was not chivalrous knights going to the aid of damsels in distress but accounts of their initiation into fairyland - for there was a strong case for seeing the principal female characters as faery rather than human. 

This led on to what Knight termed faery 'contacts' - which then led to writing several books deriving from these contacts. What this meant he explains further: 

It dealt in imagery but with a philosophical intent, yet a wisdom expressed more through the medium of a story than by intellectual definitions. To make the contact it was necessary to build a scenario [i.e. in imagination] something like a questing knight discovering a castle in a particular symbolic shape, and then entering into it... with a ... direct feeling of relationship with the fabric of the building itself. 

After further description of his imagined but real-seeming experiences; Knight elaborates the resulting new and deeper engagement with nature:

This kind of thing was at a different level from local countryside experiences where contact was virtually devoid of intellect but impacted more on the emotional and etheric levels... Along with contacts... came a greater sense of presence and communion with the world of nature, and particularly trees...

It may well be that experience and wisdom of this nature comes with age, which is [an] aspect of the Merlin and Nimue story... But there is no real need to await one's dotage for a realization of these things.

  

What Gareth Knight seems to me to be describing here, is a kind of recapitulation of Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield's scheme of the development of consciousness. The ritual magic was the Intellectual Soul era, characteristic of classical and medieval culture. 

Contact bears some relationship to 'channeling' of spiritual Beings - which he also did for example in a channeled series of direct communication (much like taking dictation) of 1993, published as The Abbey Papers. 

But 'contact' comes across to me as much more of a two-way interaction between himself and a spiritual Being - and not necessarily in words, nor in images - i.e. more direct than language- or symbol-mediated. 

Knight then moved towards what sound very much like Final Participation - which is something like a recapitulation in conscious thinking of what was a much more passive and unconscious in the spontaneous animistic Original Participation of early childhood and tribal Man. 

Animistic, because it recognizes the world as consisting of living, conscious Beings with which one may have relationships and communication. Knight also seems to be moving towards a communication less based on perceptions and visions, and more a matter of what I have called Direct Knowing: that is direct, wordless and imageless communication in thinking. 

In other words, a direct communion between Beings, such that the thinking of one is participated-in by the thinking of another. 

Once Gareth Knight had reached this kind of 'magic' I think he has largely left-behind the formal and institutional roots of his practice, and indeed its 'objective' aspects, where experiences were shared via a common language and symbolism that could be relied-upon to evoke the same inner states in its participants.

It seems he has - in practice, if not in terms of theorization - fully Romantic Christian; in that he takes an inner, intuitive and personal responsibility for whatever 'methods' he uses to attain magical states of mind (within the over-arching and primary Christian metaphysical framework).   

Knight puts this change down to his own personal development, experiences, expediency, and ageing - but such is the generality of such a development that I interpret it as driven by inner and divinely-destined changes in the human consciousness of Western Man. 

What all this seems to mean is that (here and now) we cannot rely upon external and institutional forms of spirituality to attain 'participation' in the world; and the language of 'objective' communication of spiritual experiences has weakening and withered. 

Yet, on the positive side, we can develop distinctive (perhaps unique) personal 'aids' and methods (i.e. 'contacts' occurring inside thinking, rather than as external 'events), that will achieve the participation which is natural, good, and divinely-intended. 

Also, that strong forms of achieved participation are likely to be more animistic and personal - engagement with particular Beings - than the abstract forms of earlier symbolism. 

     

Whether Gareth Knight would have agreed with my interpretation of his life and development is perhaps doubtful... 

It does rather involve a cutting-off of the branch upon which his life's work rested: that is, the general validity of some particular kinds of ritual, symbols, group-activity; and the communication of these in abstract and written forms, and by speech. 

But his desire to use more narrative story-like communications; his primary mode of magic in later life being a personal, inter-Being and two-way 'contact'; and the continually-evolving nature of the subject matter and formal techniques of his magic - all suggest that there was exactly such an evolution; and that Gareth Knight's life ended with him being implicitly a genuine and fully-realized Romantic Christian. 

The unexamined Christmas is not worth living...

Christmas is the great 'romantic' season of the year - at least potentially. It is the season when enchantment is nearest the surface, strongest, most likely to cast its spell across the mundane. 

And, of course, Christmas is a Christian celebration. Therefore it ought to be a fine time for the Romantic Christian...

That, at any rate, is the challenge. Because the 'traditional' romanticism of Christmas is generally immersive, un-conscious and passive: Christmas is too-often a time when we try to devise situations where we become overwhelmed by pleasure-inducing situations and stimuli; with an apparent intent to eliminate thinking and live only emotionally, instinctually - in a happy and comfortable present.

Yet this is only truly possible for young children - which is why childhood Christmases are regarded as the best, and why they cannot be recreated later*. 

To know oneself to be un-consciously happy is an impossible paradox; so to the limited extent someone succeeds in achieving immersive Christmas goals (for example with the use of alcohol) then (by definition) he also abolishes his own awareness and memory of having done so. 

To distort Socrates's phrase somewhat, the experience of most adults in these times is that "the unexamined Christmas is not worth living" - yet to 'examine' Christmas while living it is also to ruin it! 

Thus, at best, adult Christmases become little more than shallow self-indulgence; unless a further and different attitude can be achieved.  

What Socrates meant by the 'examined' life was not what the 2021 Romantic Christian means. For Socrates, living at the dawn of the era when the human soul became self-conscious, first able to detach itself from immersion-in the world; Socrates was asserting that it was Man's proper destiny to become more conscious - to step-back and examine life philosophically. 

Socrates could advise this without fear of inducing alienation and despair in his pupils, because in Ancient Greek times it was not possible for a Man to detach himself fully from participation in the world. In other words, Socrates was such a natural romantic (he was a man who experienced living in an alive world, populated by real gods, and conversing regularly with a 'daemon' who guided him) that he could advise Men to be less romantic without disenchantment becoming a problem.  

But we, in these times, find ourselves already detached from the world - the world has lost its sense of reality, seems relativistic, socially-constructed... For us, the mainstream, publicly enforced unromantic life is meaningless; and any 'purpose' applied to life is arbitrary and does not 'involve' us personally. 

Thus to advise a modern Man to step out-from life and 'analyze' it philosophically, is to make an already-bad situations worse! 

A modern Man who looked upon Christmas 'philosophically, or analytically, would miss all the good that the season had to offer. Certainly he would not be a Romantic Christian. 

So, the examined life in 2021 is unavoidable; but if it is to be a good life (i.e. a life of meaning, purpose and one that we personally have a relationship with the world), then 'examined' must have a different meaning from the usage by Socrates. 

That is, the modern era rules-out both unthinking 'pre-Socratic' immersion and 'Socratic' thinking detachment; and implies that we need a third and qualitatively different thing. 

Christmas therefore can be regarded as a test case, an exemplar of life for the Romantic Christian. We want a romantic, a magical Christmas - and we want this romanticism to be real, honest and personal; not a failed pretense at reverting to childhood. 

What should it mean to have an 'examined' Christmas, and an examined Life? What would it mean for any romanticism (of Christmas, or anything else) to be real - for adults, here-and-now? 

This needs to be conscious (not unconscious), actively-chosen (not passively-absorbed); it needs to be thought (else it cannot be willed) - but thought with a kind of inwardly-originating and inwardly-driven thinking (i.e. intuition, heart-thinking, direct-knowing) that also consciously knows itself to be real. 

In other words; for Christmas to be really-real - starting from a position of the actual alienation of modern adult man; we need to reconstruct our thinking on the basis of different and true metaphysical assumptions. 

Instead of having passively absorbed the incoherent assumptions of modernity that thought is an epiphenomenon of the brain with no direct connection with anything outside the body; we need to recognize the truth that our thinking is an essential participant in all possible knowledge of the world and of our-selves. 

There is, indeed, no reality without thinking; and no real reality unless this thinking is 'from' our real and divine selves - rather than merely being absorbed from the materialistic and demonically-dominated world of media, officialdom, law, 'science', etc. 

In the end we come around to agree with Socrates that the unexamined life is not worth living; because for modern Man the unexamined life is... whatever incoherent value inversions and distortions have been put-into us by the Global Totalitarian Establishment.  

But if we examine our fundamental assumptions and discover coherent and true assumptions - we will reach the Christian reality of romanticism. 

And from this root, we can appreciate the worth of Christmas. 

I am Not suggesting that you start wishing people a "consciously-participative romantic Christmas" or anything similar! 

But we may be helped immediately and materially by awareness that the truths of Christmas are romantic truths; truths in which we are personally-involved, truths which we personally participate in creating. 

And these truths are really-real - even when not as the literalistic summaries forced-upon us by language and the need for brevity; even when, to the world, these truths are 'nothing more' than manipulative cultural fabrications. 

The really-real is wordless, direct knowing - and can be known only for-ourselves, from our-selves. 

The knowing-heart is wiser than (either or both) mind and instinct.  

*Parents of young children may - with the right attitude, and if they come to recognize what they are doing - be re-experiencing the joys of childhood Christmases; and in exactly the Romantic Christian way. For example; a parent can become the real spirit of the real Father Christmas; and also empathically identify with the child's immersive awareness of Father Christmas. But it is vital that this be regarded seriously, un-ironically, known as a deep truth of the real-situation. Mainstream modern cynicism about Christmas is fatal both to enchantment and insight; because cynical materialism is dishonest, hence un-real - thus demonic.   

Animating the landscape - thirty years experience

The Devil's Beef Tub - a powerfully-evocative hidden valley near Moffat

I was very 'sensitive' to country landscape in my middle and late teens, but this capacity was one of the casualties of my young adulthood - when I became city-orientated. It was in the summer of 1991, thirty years ago, that I began to recover - or re-forge - my capacity to know the mindscape as alive and implicitly conscious and purposive.  

This happened through a series of explorations of the English-Scottish borders - which at that time I was approaching from the Scottish side (I was living in Glasgow). And the medium was a mixture of history and folklore. 

In retrospect, what I seemed to be doing was to view the here-and-now landscape through a lens of a past in which I was personally involved, mainly due to the many ancestors who inhabited this part of the world. I was reading every book on the region I could lay hold of - gleaning whatever ideas and impression fed the magic.

At the same time as this retrospective angle, I felt that there was something occult (hidden but discernable) about this place which pointed to a better future. 

This future was vague, but had to do with a re-integration of life and spontaneous-warm community - a kind of 'neo-pagan' aspiration for a life of more immersive engagement, although I was not initially aware of that term or movement.

At the time, and for long afterwards, I conceptualized this landscape sensitivity in terms of an immersion, an attunement; a lowering of barriers between my-self and that which the landscape contained. 

There was therefore a sense of self-hypnotically reducing my conscious awareness of what was happening - but not too much; enough to 'liberate' the associative powers of the mind, but with enough consciousness retained so that I would be aware of, and then remember, what was happening. 

This was a difficult balancing-act - and could never be retained for long. But such is mortal life...

This may all sound very theoretical, but it was effective - to a significant extent, sometimes. I was sometimes able to be in a kind of magical mood for considerable periods of time (a few minutes usually, up to an hour or two).

That it was objectively effective was evidenced by the synchronicity of these moods - I would move from one such experience to another; would move through the landscape from one discovery to another; discoveries not known, not seen, but with the inevitability of a dream and recurrent deja vu even for places I had certainly never been.   

It was all very encouraging, but of course habituation soon sets-in and repetition of action loses its effectiveness; the experiences became less reliable, less intense, less frequent - and in general I needed to know what (if anything) they meant for me and my life. Or was it just a kind of pleasant delusion, a self-deception...

In retrospect I can see that I was recapitulating the search for Original Participation that was evident in neo-paganism as it developed from the late 19th century, and in the likes of CG Jung and Robert Graves; and indeed that was the direction in which my reading was drawn - for example I recognized the state of mind I sought as being Jung's Active Imagination. 

It was evident that this quest could never be more than partially and dwindlingly effective and very intermittent. An activity for holidays, essentially. And an expensive one - meaning that I had to work at alienating jobs in order to achieve these moments of brief engagement and fulfilment. 

Plus, they were solitary; and yet I was prone to loneliness and boredom.  

And - most decisively - I recognized how much of this was me, was brought by me to the situation; and this undercut the experience, reduced and invalidated it significantly. 

It was a paradox: one part of myself sought to engage in self-examination to try and exploit my own disposition and sensitivities of another part of myself! This splitting was sustaining the alienating divisions that I was (supposedly) trying to overcome. 

It was a psychological equivalent of the split between work - needed to get the money (and car) needed to pursue these Border explorations; and the bought-leisure in which such explorations could proceed.    

This struck me as not just a practical limitation, but a fault in the whole project; the whole idea. It was ultimately incoherent - and therefore not a valid basis for life.

I have now conceptualized this experience as Final Participation. It is not a 'recovery' of ancient ways of being or thinking; it is a moving forward to a new way of being and thinking, that exists in a new kind of thinking. 

I recognize that I bring my-self not only this these magical moments; but to all moments - all meaning, and lack of meaning, comes from me; yet is not merely-subjective, because of God and because this is a creation.

All meanings, purposes, and relationships in God's creation always-have-been the consequence of 'minds', of consciousness - thus the integration of all things is a fact, not an aspiration. 

What is an aspiration is the awareness; from which comes the magic, the enchantment.