The Guild of Pastoral Psychology
Enchantment – Wonder in Modern Life
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We consider the experience of enchantment through some personal accounts of deep wonder, and by exploring its chief characteristics, dynamics and conditions. These include relationality, participation, wildness, metaphor, and ‘concrete magic’ (Max Weber). We shall also consider its rootedness in more-than-human nature. Although enchantment is a universal human experience it is also a highly distinctive one, so it is important as well to recognise what it is not. That leads us to address disenchantment, especially deliberate disenchantment as part of the project of modernity, including glamour. We shall also think through some of the implications of enchantment seriously for aspects of Jungian thought, both common ground and differences.
Photo credit – Patrick Curry
Speaker: Patrick Curry
Patrick Curry is an independent scholar and writer living in London. He has a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science and has been a Lecturer at the universities of Kent and Bath Spa. He edits an online journal, The Ecological Citizen, and is the author of several books including Defending Middle-Earth: Tolkien, Myth and Modernity (rev 2nd edn 2004), Ecological Ethics: An Introduction (rev. 2nd edn 2017) and most recently Enchantment: Wonder in Modern Life (2017). Most of his papers and reviews are available on his website: www.patrickcurry.co.uk