Enchantment, Ecology and Embodiment

Together with Dr. Patrick Curry, you will explore enchantment – most basically, sheer wonder – as a fundamental human experience. As such, it is both embodied and ecological, so we shall consider what flows from that. For example, enchantment is indeed intensely embodied and embedded, but it is also deeply spiritual in a way that is immanent, rather than transcendent. And being ecological, as we are, it is always relational, although the other party can be almost anyone or anything. By the same token, enchantment is not merely a ‘subjective’ state of mind or an ‘objective’ condition of the world; it is both, or not at all. Finally, I will argue that despite powerful forces working to disenchant us and the world, the possibility of enchantment is inherent in being alive, and staying open to it and working with it can be a way of life.