Bloger 3 spell of Sensuous

 

Bloger 3


In truth, the human experience of magic – our ancestral, animistic awareness of the world as alive and expressive – was never really lost. Our senses simply shifted their animistic participation from the depths of the surrounding landscape toward the letters written on pages and, today, on screens. Only thus could the letters begin to come alive and to speak. As a Zuni elder focuses her eyes upon a cactus and abruptly hears the cactus begin to speak, so we focus our eyes upon these printed marks and immediately hear voices. We hear spoken words, witness strange scenes or visions, even experience other lives. As nonhuman animals, plants, and even “inanimate” rivers once spoke to our oral ancestors, so the ostensibly “inert” letters on the page now speak to us! This is a form of animism that we take for granted, but it is animism nonetheless – as mysterious as a talking stone.

And indeed, it is only when a culture shifts its participation to these printed letters that the stones fall silent. Only as our senses transfer their animating magic to the written word do the trees become mute, the other animals fall dumb page 131


The loss of magic is when the written word acts as a determinant. I found this interesting. We have all grown up in a written word, so thoughts about what it would be like without it at first feel abstract.. However, Abram makes it very clear how everything in this world is alive and is waiting for reciprocity in interaction with our senses. Written language allowed us to determine a living and nonliving hierarchy with humans at the top. Rocks, water, planets, stars, and wind were stripped of their innate liveliness and turned into mere objects and the other. Once humans and nature are viewed as separate, it justifies exploitation.


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