Continuing my observations of last month, I return again to consider the spell-binding enchantments of which C.S. Lewis spoke in The Weight of Glory. I repeat the warning Lewis gave us concerning the vulnerability of our human minds to be possessed by an enchantment that overcomes reason, leaving us in the power of the enchantment and the individual or group who casts the spell.

So, you ask, what does that have to do with the idea and image of a merry-go-round? Here is the connection. Go back in your mind to your childhood excitement of riding the merry-go-round. In my experience, the merry-go-round was located in the center of the theme park, and I could hardly wait to pull my folks to that magic place of music, vibrant colors moving and flashing, lively animals bobbing up and down in their circular, never-ending pursuit of one another, the chariots, the mythical creatures I could fantasize in my activated imagination, the excited kids rushing to claim their favorite creature -- mine, the noble white horse who had been waiting for me since our last adventure, weeks, months, or a year ago.

Suspended in space and time, I rode my gallant horse in adventures of my mind while scenes of the old, boring world of familiar people and irrelevant objects floated by my eyes that were trained on mythical far-away places shared by my white horse that could easily outrun Trigger (Roy Rogers), Champion (Gene Autry), and Topper (Hopalong Cassidy). What fun, what excitement, what grand stories raced through my mind as the world whirled by, oblivious to the drama of a heroic call to what was really important in my enchantment. 

And what is really important? Alas, here I return to the idea of enchantment and the warning Lewis extended. I just described how as a small kid I fell into the enchantment of a merry-go-round. But think about that. I believe each of us is vulnerable to enchantment because we long for something big, meaningful, worthwhile, hopeful, deep, ultimate, adventurous -- something around which we want to orient our lives.

What is really important? What demands your attention? Of course, to be clear, sometimes our hobby invites our interest, if not even a goodly amount of our time and our money. Sometimes, it is our religion. But hobbies and religious practices are not necessarily enchantments.

If enchantment means to be under the power of a spell that directs our minds with commanding force, which is the way Lewis and I are using the word, then most hobbies and even our religious practices do not usually hold that level of fascination. They might attain some measure of influence over our lives. The basic distinction is this: I hold an attitude and I direct my behavior toward my hobby and my religious practice, but an enchantment holds me. 

To use the language of depth psychology, an experience of enchantment is commanding in the sense that my ego is under the spell of the enchanting force. My lifestyle, the way I think, the way I use my time, the way I see the world -- all of these are shaped by the enchantment. On the extreme end of such enchantment, we find fanatics, ideologues, fundamentalists. These people are not insane with a mental illness. What is the difference? With enchantment, the spell may be broken; with mental illness, psychotherapeutic care is necessary to restore the sane balance of healthy cognition, emotion, sensations, and behavior.

Here is an example. A young man in his late twenties was referred to me by a political professor in a neighboring university. The young man talked out of turn in class in an obsession with UFOs, unidentified flying objects or unidentified aerial projections. I asked that the young man call my office for an appointment which he did. The reason he gave for wanting to see me was that his professor told him I might be someone he could talk to about UFOs.

As an aside that is important, the professor in his own research had come across a paper by Carl Jung in which Jung reflected on the phenomenon of UFOs. In a little booklet published in English in 1959, under the title, "Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies," Jung explored the psychological enchantment of UFOs. He was 84 years old at the time, only two years before his death in 1961. And yet, Jung's research was true to form and incredibly timely. Presented in his Collected Works, Vol. 10, paragraphs 589-824, the reader will be impressed with the Swiss psychologist's summation of the data, limited as it was at that time.

Here is an excerpt taken from paragraphs 785-787:

      The only thing we know with reliable certainty about UFOs is that they
​      possess a surface which can be seen by the eye and at the same time 
      throw back a radar echo. Everything else is so uncertain that it must
​     remain for the time being an unproven connector, or rumor, until we
     know more about it. ... Their movements indicate volition and psychic
​     relatedness, e.g., evasion and flight, perhaps even aggression and 
     defense. ... We are left with only two hypotheses: that of their weightlessness
     on the one hand and of their psychic nature on the other. This is a 
     question I for one cannot decide.

Then, moving toward his conclusion in paragraph 789, Jung suggests a third possibility:

     ... that UFOs are real material phenomena of an unknown nature,
​     presumably coming from outer space, which perhaps have long been
​     visible to mankind, but otherwise have no recognizable connection with
     the earth or its inhabitants. In recent times, however, and just at the 
     moment when the eyes of mankind are turned towards the heavens, 
     partly on account of their fantasies about possible space-ships, and partly 
     in a figurative sense because their earthly existence is threatened, 
​     unconscious contents have projected themselves on these inexplicable 
     heavenly phenomena and given them a significance they in no way deserve. ...

Then, at this point, Jung makes a profound psychological observation: 

     ... The meaningful connection is the product on the one hand of projection
     and on the other of round and cylindrical forms which embody the 
     projected meaning and have always symbolized the union of opposites.

​In other words, the UFOs appear in colloquial language as "flying saucers," mandala-like objects. And throughout recorded history, in myth, religion, and fairy tales, the saucer-shaped mandala has appeared as a symbol of wholeness. This is a modern-day enchantment. Remember, an enchantment is the experience of being caught up in a fantasy, a marvelous adventure that transcends the grind of daily life. We look up toward the skies and marvel at what we are calling UFOs as possible extensions of our life on planet earth, extensions that animate our fantasies with adventurous meaning. 
     
So, after that extended quote by Jung, I return to the merry-go-round. By this point you yourself may well have put together this enchanting connection of the theme park's "merry-go-round" and the enchantment of saucers flying through our skies in some strange process  where we psychically extend our search for wholeness. This comes at a time of dark despair when the unity of humankind is threatened by political ideologies, and our planet itself is threatened by human destructive acts.

In his book, The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis offered this evocative defense of his writings on the themes of mythology, theology, and adventures into the realms of the creative imagination:

       "Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your
       fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing
       them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake
       us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for
       nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to 
       silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modern philosophies
       have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on earth."

Lewis wrote to confront his generation lost under the spell of MATERIALISM that Lewis calls "evil." Now, today, our generation is also materialistic, only worse. Materialism continues to enchant us with the 10,000 distractions that money can buy and the human soul can absorb until we become bloated with the ugliness of physical corpulence.

Materialism fuels the engine of our cherished free market system. We enjoy our toys, our comforts, our novelties, our costumes, our conveniences. We have come a long way in the relatively short time between the laborious squeaking of our wagons plodding westward and our rocket ships propelling to the moon, to Mars, and beyond. Nor has it been only a venture of self-serving greed. Much good has been accomplished in the development of the materials of our life. But materialism becomes bad when it possesses our souls and we fall under the spell of its enchantments.

Materialism, however, would likely be named by Lewis as only one of our enchantments that beguile us today. I suspect he would also include EMPIRICISM, RATIONALISM, and LIBERTARIANISM. 

Consider the enchantment of EMPERICISM. Not only do we love our toys. We love to measure things; we love order, predictability, a sense of control, a capacity to master things, to explain them, make them "work." We love to be able to demonstrate results so that we can justify our requests for large grants that will enable us to measure more things large and small, things cosmic in scope and infinite in depth. It is the way of science that formulates hypotheses, sets up experiments to test the hypotheses, monitors and measures the parts and pieces of the experiment and draws conclusions that make possible newer inventions, developments, and even medicines that come to our aid in times of pandemics that threaten our existence. Empiricism serves many worthy ends by which we understand nature and our place in nature; but empiricism slides off the rails when it reduces humanity to objects in an experimental lab.

And the same is true of another enchantment, RATIONALISM. Unlike empiricism that measures experiences, rationalism begins with the structures of reason and thought. Looking at the nature of mind and the way our thoughts proceed within the contours of reason, rationality may be considered a safeguard against "emotional reasoning." In this sense, rationalism has challenged the swamps of superstition, age-old prejudices of race and gender, witchcraft, and fundamentalist views of creation. Not only can we think, we can think about the ways in which we think and come to conclusions. Arising in the 17th century as part of the advent of mathematical reckoning, rationalism helped not only to explore the outer world but also the contours of human consciousness. However, when rational decision making and problem solving fail to take feelings into account, rationality ceases to be humane.

But it is the "enchantment" of LIBERTARIANISM that threatens us more directly today and may be seen as the underlying dynamic of the attack on our nation's Capitol on January 6. Of course, who does not love liberty? "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty," we sing. Liberty is indeed sweet, and precious lives have been lost defending the liberty we enjoy. However, in thinking about what liberty means, I find two very interesting definitions (from The Oxford English Dictionary): 

       1. "the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed
           by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views." 
       2. "the power or scope to act as one pleases." 

And libertarianism is defined as: 

          "a political philosophy that advocates only minimal state intervention in
           the free market and the private lives of citizens."

If we tease out the key element between the idea of liberty and libertarianism, it would be the question of "oppressive restrictions at the hands of the state or authoritarian individuals." The matter thus becomes: When does my expression of liberty conflict with your expression of liberty? When two automobiles rush from opposite directions toward a busy intersection where there are also pedestrians trying to move through the intersection, not everyone may act as he/she pleases if a major disaster is to be avoided. 

Obviously, in this simplistic example, someone has to yield. And for that to occur, some "authority" will have to determine the process and ensure it is followed. One does not have the liberty "to act as one pleases" within human community. Always, the concern for the common good shapes the laws and ethical behavior of a nation, just as human personality is shaped by the nurturing care of parents who teach their children to share and to live by the norms of justice and mercy for all.

In the extremes of libertarianism, however, a very regressive attitude misleads individuals and groups, losing sight of liberty in the service of a common good with justice and mercy for all. Individuals who live under such a spell, the enchantment of an authoritarian libertarianism serve their own needs without respect for others.

This is the evil of which Lewis warns us, the danger of falling under the spell of enchantment that blinds us to the evils of materialism, empiricism, rationalism, and libertarianism. Like all "isms," materialism, empiricism, rationalism, and libertarianism are indeed "spells," "enchantments," that dominate the human mind. And, as Lewis said, the power of such spells to control human thought, emotions, sensations, and behavior can be overcome only by an enchantment that is more powerful, an enchantment in the service of a higher power. What that might be is my topic for the next blog.