Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Looking for demons in a disenchanted world

https://harpers.org/archive/2022/06/sorcerers-apprentice-looking-for-demons/

by benbreen • 4 years ago

35 20 4 years ago

I am disappointed to find out the article is not about system administration.

Taywee6• 4 years ago

Interesting article, but I found the ending unsatisfactory. Like the author, I went in wanting my perceptions to be challenged and my beliefs to be undermined, but after it all, I'm as steadfastly atheist and nonspiritual as ever. I was hoping for something more than vague, soft divination, and pondering about the hypothetical nature of demons in our world.

bowsamic6• 4 years ago

It won't be what you expect to change your worldview that will actually do it. Actually it will be unlikely to be something you read. It's also probably not even going to be seeing a ghost or something that makes you drop an atheistic, nonspiritual worldview.

I would say that the more likely route into such a thing will be a profoundly shifting personal experience. For example, some kind of psychedelic experience (although for some it is just "fun" and doesn't trigger any spirituality), or more commonly, immense personal suffering and a desire to escape from it.

The shift from atheist and nonspiritual, to religious or spiritual is a dramatic shift. It's unlikely to be pleasant or comfortable. For me, it only developed as a coping mechanism because I was unable to accept the world from a nonspiritual point of view. As such, it probably isn't something you should desire.

bsedlm• 4 years ago

For me, it only developed as a coping mechanism because I was unable to accept the world from a nonspiritual point of view.

Yeah, I found that after some point, after I realized that a strict linguistic (formal) outlook was rigid and unflexible and started to relax about it, that I started to reach into a wider pool of concepts to allow me to make sense of the world.

Also accepting that some beliefs which are not testable by science can still be judged in terms of what do they do for me; do they make me feel good? or bad? do they allow me to engage in actions with postivie outcomes? and so on...

NateEag3• 4 years ago

It's also probably not even going to be seeing a ghost or something that makes you drop an atheistic, nonspiritual worldview.

I have seen testimonies from more than one skeptic / atheist who witnessed something they "have no explanation for" but who remain atheist.

I think it goes back to that almost-religious commitment to only believing the reproducible.

Or, perhaps in some cases, to confirmation bias and a desire to believe there is nothing beyond matter.

Taywee6• 4 years ago

I didn't go in wanting my atheism to be shattered, just challenged. I enjoy being challenged, and I really enjoy demonology as well.

On a simple level, I was hoping for something more profound, entertaining, or interesting on some level. In all, the article was a prologue in somebody's journey of discovery where nothing really actually happened, spiritual or otherwise.

solomonic• 4 years ago

This article was fairly good, all things considered, but you need some background in order to get the most out of it. The kind of magic King does not eventually perform (goetic magic) falls under what's called "ceremonial magic". Key to this sort of magic is time/resource-consuming preparatory work (which besides constructing expensive seals, may include fasting / ritual cleansing).

When King says at the end, "the key unlocks the door but you are the one who has to walk through it", he's partly referring to the preparatory but also imprinting process. The fact that one has to spend a lot of precious personal time and money (if one follows the directions of the grimoire to the letter) means that one becomes invested in the process with many changes happening in the psychological realm. Think of the whole preparatory process as ritual, acting it out strengthens and imprints the work. Or stated another way, one is constructing a new model of reality and simultaneously imprinting it.

When the time for the actual conjuration comes, which could be years after one first sets foot upon the path, the mind has been adequatly prepared to open the doors to the unconscious. Again, King seems to possess an understanding of this when he talks about the brain being the medium for the work. So, ultimately one can say that there's nothing supernatural here and people who have stayed at the supernatural level are either charlatans or deluded fools.

There's a good movie one can watch about ceremonial magic, called A Dark Song. Even though it does have some elements that can be superficially described as supernatural, it's -smartly- playing with the interpretation and does not rigidly impose a supernatural causality.

Taywee6• 4 years ago

That sounds supremely fascinating. I love the idea of the blending of psychology with the supernatural, and the blurring of the lines between. I'll have to check out that movie, thank you for the recommendation.

thaumaturgy• 4 years ago

This article is a good argument for certain kinds of writers being modern spell-casters, able to conjure attention out of a little over a hundred paragraphs of incantations.

Taywee6• 4 years ago

You could make the same argument for a huge amount of human creative and technical endeavors. Many of the things humans do in general are amazing, and even magical when you step back and really consider the amount of cumulative knowledge and technique that go into them. The simplest story is backed by a lifetime of personal experience, generations of family experience, pools of cultural context, and thousands of years of language development.

Often, as a programmer, the things that I do strike me as profound and mystical. I make incantations that affect the physical world around me. It quite is real world wizardry.

dschuetz• 4 years ago

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Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Looking for demons in a disenchanted world

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