Part 3 in the series, A Literary Search for Meaning by Dr Karen Hughes
If the proponents of the secularisation theory were wrong in their predictions and Western culture is now experiencing a spiritual resurgence, how might speculative fiction, as an aspect of popular culture, play a role in this process? In the third article in this series, I examine speculative fiction as a literary mode, encompassing a wide range of genres, including science fiction and fantasy. In later articles, I’ll explore specific narrative techniques which might enable the writer of speculative fiction to spark a feeling of the numinous in their readers and thus contribute to the re-enchantment of the West.
While speculative fiction is nebulous and difficult to define (much like modern Western spirituality), there are comparisons to be made between the mystical quest of the modern spiritual seeker and the various forms of the fantastic explored by writers of speculative fiction. Rudolph Otto would probably agree. Otto discusses “fantasy and narratives”, namely fairy tales, whose power can only be fully realised when they contain “a sense of the wonderful and miraculous, which acts as ‘an infusion of the numinous’” (Buckland 19). This is, perhaps, one reason why writers of speculative fiction might wish to bring a mysterious, magical or uncanny feel to their work. Fantasy authors, including C. S. Lewis and Philip Pullman, use “mystical fancy” and experiences of “wonder and the sublime” (including Otto’s “daemonic dread”) as a means of evoking this mysterious “supra-rational dimension”—a dimension that provides deeper insight than the usual systems of human knowledge (Buckland 24).
The same could be said for science-fiction authors who strive for a “sense of wonder”, an equivalent concept which encourages the “sudden opening of a closed door in the reader’s mind” (Nicholls and Cornel). Awe and wonder are sensations that have long been regarded as having the capacity to open the subject, in this case the reader, to a deeper perception of reality (see A. HarveyDirect Path). Accordingly, speculative fiction that focuses on these sensations and offers specific techniques and tropes developed for their evocation seems well positioned to contribute to a spiritual milieu which places so much value on personal subjective experience. Other forms of literature, such as poetry, could make a similar claim, but it would be difficult to argue that these reach the same wide audience today as popular speculative fiction.
“Enchantment” can be broadly defined as “the sensation when one experiences events or circumstances that produce a sense of the mysterious, the wild and the uncanny” (Schneider)—a definition that could encompass both Otto’s feeling of the numinous and Maslow’s peak experiences. “Re-enchantment”, in the context of modern Western spirituality, denotes the restoration of this sensation to secular Western society. Scholars across a range of disciplines have long called for art and the humanities to “redeem the mechanised and de-sacralised world” (Falck, cited in Buckland 27). The essays in Popular Spiritualities(Hume and McPhillips) illustrate that re-enchantment is already happening as a natural consequence of the “evolving, evocative and innovative” search for meaning in the West (xxi), through popular literature, music, technology, “alternative” spiritualities (such as vampire culture, goddess pilgrimage, and eco-paganism), and other “re-enchantment tropes” (1). This does not, of course, mean that re-enchantment is all love and light. Hume and McPhillips refer to the many “shadowy aspects” (xvii) of the modern spiritual journey, and it follows that most seekers will encounter some form of “Dark Night of the Soul” (Underhill, Mysticism 43) as they delve into the murky depths of the unconscious.
Re-enchantment might sound nostalgic, but its proponents argue that it is thoroughly modern in its aims. It does not hark back to magical thinking or “primitive” superstition (Tacey, “Mind and Earth” 20), nor is it a return to the New Age, a counterculture which grew so popular in the late twentieth century that it became mainstream (Vincett and Woodhead 328). Vincett and Woodhead write that the term “New Age” is “falling out of fashion”, and other scholars, such as Olav Hammer, argue that it has become “perjorative, even meaningless” (Hammer 74) and should not be used in relation to the current spiritual milieu, and this seems appropriate given widespread criticism that the term has been hijacked by commercial interests, reflects Western materialism, and is now rarely used by spiritual groups. That said, the modern spiritual quest draws many of its essential phenomena from the New Age movement, which appears to have its roots in a wide range of ancient Western esoteric traditions, including the belief in a network of hidden correspondences (“as above, so below”), nature as a living organism animated by its own soul, intermediary entities between the human and the divine, and practical techniques for the transmutation of body and spirit (Urban 13).
Jason Crawford, author of Allegory and Enchantment, questions whether the language of enchantment is useful for this discussion, arguing that Westerners have too much baggage around the concept. Crawford argues that the language of enchantment has, in the past, been tied to naivety and the abuse of innocence, and even those who strongly advocate re-enchantment reinterpret the word so as not to appear too romantic or naïve. He suggests that it might be better to focus on a “conversion of spiritual power into new forms” instead of making a romantic attempt to reinvigorate the old (Crawford, “Trouble”). Modern integralists, following Jürgen Habermas, say there is room for both, claiming that the ability to consciously combine magical and mythical perceptions with a rational world view provides a catalyst for human evolution (T. Murray 148). Habermas describes this as an aspect of “post-metaphysical thinking” rather than a form of “re-enchantment”, but the consequences are the same. No matter how the process is described, there is no question that we are entering a spiritual age of personal subjectivity, individualism, and for many, “believing again” (C. Taylor, “Church”).
Richard Kearney refers in “God after the Loss of God: What Comes after Atheism?” to this renewal of faith as “anatheism”, which he defines not as an end to religion but as a “‘returning to God after God’: a critical hermeneutic retrieval of sacred things that have passed but still bear a radical remainder, an unrealised potentiality or promise to be more fully realised in the future”. Kearney writes that anatheism is a historical–cultural phenomenon in which secular Western society, through creative “not knowing”, must discover what comes after its atheistic “dark night of the soul”. Secular Western society now has the opportunity to release outdated beliefs and reimagine the sacred, which Kearney describes as “somewhere between the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘religious’”. The modern sacred is something “strange and ineffable”, which is integrated with the secular and is available through it while at the same time remaining distinct. One area in which this is apparent is the arts, and particularly literature, where the fictional space of as if—or in speculative fiction, what if?—allows the reader to suspend their beliefs and become open to the possibility of poetic epiphany, leading to a recreation of the divine in the self and the mundane world.
Buckland, Corinne. “Fantasy and the Recovery of the Numinous.” Towards or Back to Human Values? Spiritual and Moral Dimensions of Contemporary Fantasy, edited by Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Marek Oziewicz. Cambridge Scholars P, 2006, pp.17–29.
Crawford, Jason. “The Trouble with Re-Enchantment.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 7 Sept. 2020. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-trouble-with-re-enchantment/.
Hammer, Olav. Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age. Brill, 2001.
Harvey, Andrew. The Direct Path. Random House, 2010.
Hume, Lynne, and Kathleen McPhillips, editors. Popular Spiritualities: The Politics of Contemporary Enchantment. Ashgate Publishing, 2006.
Kearney, Richard. “God after the Loss of God: What Comes after Atheism?” ABC Religion and Ethics, posted 19 Nov.2019 at 10:45 pm. https://www.abc.net.au/religion/richard- kearney-anatheism-what-comes-after-god/11719700.
Murray, Tom. “Knowing and Unknowing Reality.” Integral Review, vol. 15, no. 1, Jan. 2019.
Nicholls, Peter, and Cornel Robu. “Sense of Wonder.” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by John Clute, et al. Gollancz, 9 Apr. 2015.
Schneider, Mark A. Culture and Enchantment. U of Chicago P, 1993.
Tacey, David. “Mind and Earth: Psychic Influence Beneath the Surface.” Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, vol. 3, no. 2, Taylor &Francis / C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, 2009, pp. 15–32, https://doi.org/10.1525/jung.2009.3.2.15.
Taylor, Charles. “The Church Speaks—to Whom?” Church and People: Disjunctions in a Secular Age, edited by Charles Taylor, et al. The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2012, ch. 1, pp. 17–24.
Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism: The Preeminent Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness. 1911. Image Classic, 1990.
Urban, Hugh B. New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements: Alternative Spirituality in Contemporary America. U of California P, 2015.
Vincett, Giselle, and Linda Woodhead. “Spirituality.” Religions in the Modern World, 3rd ed., edited by Hiroko Kawanami, et al., ch. 11, Routledge, 2016.