Occult anarchy or a re-enchantment of the world?
A review of Sebastian Morello's new book exploring the idea and practices that lead, so say the author, to a vision of the world as God's icon.
In the Coracle this week: Stephen Watt on Sebastian Morello’s book which has stirred a lot of online debate. The upcoming Saints for this month include one of the most important in the northern British Isles - St Ninian. Not to mention, and arguably as important as Ninian - St Adomnan. We also have St Mirrin of Paisley. Please click here to find out more.
Book Review: Re-enchanting the world? Sebastian Morello’s Mysticism, Magic, & Monasteries: Recovering the Sacred Mystery at the Heart of Reality. (Os Justi Press, 2024, pp.204. Paperback £14.95. ISBN: 978-1965303047.)
Sebastian Morello’s book on re-enchanting the world has provoked a flurry of online comment and reviews, mainly centring on whether Morello is advocating the reception of occult practices into Catholicism. While I think the critical comment in its extreme forms is unfair, there are areas in his writing that need to be developed more carefully. Nonetheless, overall, it’s a book worth engaging with and which addresses the subject of the disenchanted modern universe that is at the heart of much modern debate about Catholicism and religion more generally. [1]
Morello has recently been appointed as Wolfgang Smith Chair in Philosophy at St Mary's University, London and, as well as by his Catholicism, has clearly been heavily influenced by Roger Scruton. The central aim of his book is to recommend
…a set of practices and disciplines of mind, will, and imagination that habituate the practitioner to a vision of the world that acknowledges it as God’s icon. [2]
Although there might be something to be said even against this starting point, I’ll accept it as a reasonable aim. Where Morello starts to become more controversial is in his use of the term ‘Hermeticism’ for these practices. Hermeticism in its ancient sense is a spiritual movement combining Egyptian and Greek elements and involving a mix of Platonic philosophy, alchemy and magic. It can be seen as part of the general intellectual background in the Mediterranean world of roughly of the period between 200 BC and 300 AD. This material has been used in subsequent centuries in the West and as part of the nineteenth century occult revival, including the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn which has been a major influence on modern Anglophone occultism and ritual magic.
Whatever Morello’s specific account of the failings of modernity, his work falls into a recognisable and common pattern in contemporary religious discussion of claiming that there is something uniquely wrong with modernity and that we need to repair that fault and recover an older way of looking at things. But as he notes himself, the ‘Hermetic’ practices he recommends to cure modernity might in principle range from innocuous efforts of concentration to Aleister Crowley’s sex magic, so it should be particularly important to be clear here what is meant. And I don’t think that clarity is achieved, particularly in what is ruled out. In fairness to Morello, it’s worth stressing that the book is primarily a collection of essays previously published as separate pieces in the online magazine The European Conservative and it consequently reads as slightly ad hoc and bitty. So, it’s probably unfair to expect a coherent and systematic account of these practices here. But some of the ones that he mentions include meditating on an image of Hildegard von Bingen’s red angel called ‘The Theophany of Divine Love’ [3]; ‘rock climbing, practising martial arts, dancing, training with a steel mace’ [4]; and ‘booze, hunting and education (treasured in that order)’ [5]. There is nothing particularly objectionable here in a commonsense sort of way and the resolute heartiness of most of these practices should allay some suspicions. That said, it is understandable that some have read into his book claims that go dangerously near dabbling in the occult or even crossing that boundary. Using terms such as ‘Hermeticism’ and ‘magic’ favourably throughout the work; bringing in authors such as Guénon and Valentin Tomberg both of whom did originally dabble in occult circles and arguably remain tainted by them -all this feels like a deliberate edginess.
A particular problem here is that, since both Guénon and Hermeticism explicitly emphasise the importance of esoteric, secret teachings given only to the few, it is not surprising that, in the absence of complete clarity about what is intended, suspicions might arise that undisclosed teachings lie behind what Morello explicitly states. Paradoxically, given this suspicion of hidden teachings and practices, one of the main problems with Morello’s approach -and indeed with much Catholic writing in modernity- is that it overlooks the need to address different audiences differently. Morello as a Catholic academic might have a right, even a duty, to explore intellectual and spiritual areas that may be dangerous. And the broad suggestion that Hermeticism and magic might have something to contribute to Christian thought is no more surprising in principle than the suggestion that an academic study of other non-Christian religions or philosophies might have a positive contribution to make. But that is very different from suggesting that all ordinary Catholics, particularly those who may have fled contact with modern occultism, might benefit from delving themselves into those areas. A traditional, enchanted Catholic view of the universe would amongst other things certainly emphasise the real and dangerous existence of demons: getting things wrong with the occult is not just a cognitive failure, but involves the very real possibility of letting the wrong entities in. One of the services that ordinary Catholics might look to their academics to provide is that of a careful sifting in any field of study of what is and isn’t valuable to non-academics. There is too little of that here.
Finally, there is perhaps a hint here of a diagnosis of a failing in modern Catholicism that might explain some of Morello’s more worrying tendencies. He is often quite rude in his criticism of the modern institutional Church. He suggests that there is a crisis of authority in the Church which is the result of the use of naked power to exact immediate obedience rather than a genuine spiritual and reasonable authority: as he puts it, a ‘servile’ rather than a ‘filial’ obedience [6]. Now there may be something in this. Authority structures in modernity sometimes depend on an unthinking obedience that is different from the personal obedience of pre-modernity: modern armies and symphony orchestras require a different sort of discipline from the ancient Germanic war band. But if one confines one’s gaze to the 1960s and later, it’s hard to argue against the view that one of the characteristics of this period has been a general unwillingness to respect and obey any sort of authority.
This general suspicion of institutions is particularly worth noting here because a resistance to institutional discipline has been posited elsewhere as a virtue of ancient Hermeticism and an overemphasis on obedience as a particular failing of the post-Constantinian Church.
The monastic way of life came, it is true, to be called the Christian ‘philosophy’, but monks were not encouraged to be independent minds in the manner of Origen and Arius, who were much closer to the traditional ideal of the philosopher. Both these teachers were to be condemned by a Church that valued conformity to conciliar decisions, episcopally and even imperially enforced, above the personal authority of the sage [7].
There may be something of this sort going on in Morello’s mind, but if so, it needs to be developed more fully to avoid itself becoming part of modernity’s drive towards anarchy.
By Stephen Watt
Yes - I agree! Eric
Thank you for the very useful review of the Morello book, which has saved me from buying the book. I'd read a couple of his articles touching on the subject and was quite intrigued by some of what he was saying. Then I heard him on a podcast and was less convinced but was still thinking perhaps I should give the paperback a go. Now, having read, this and followed the link in the footnotes to the long essay in Catholic Culture I find my doubts confirmed.