Dark Enchantments

"In other words, I am three. One man stands forever in the middle, unconcerned, unmoved, watching, waiting to be allowed to express what he sees to the other two. The second man is like a frightened animal that attacks for fear of being attacked. Then there's the over-loving gentle person who lets people into the uttermost sacred temple of his being and he'll take insults and be trusting and sign contracts without reading them and get talked down to working cheap or for nothing, and when he realizes what's been done to him he feels like killing and destroying everything around him including himself for being so stupid. But he can't-- he goes back inside himself."

"Which one is real?"

"They're all real."

--Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog

One legit reason we might not want to risk enchantment: it's an expansive, wide open experience into which wounding witches, sick motherfuckers and toxic, unconsciously or consciously abusive people can as much make a home as can angels and healers. When charmed, by necessity, discriminating judgment and character assessment goes out the window-- zoom. 

Especially for me, in the light of a wide open spiritual and radiant etheric love, where it feels like my heart has no pericardium and is beating on the outside of my ripped open chest, and there's a corona of transcendent 11 dimensional laurels around my head, if you know what I am saying, which you probably do if you have read this blog much or maybe probably not, an entire cast of characters can walk right in and over. Unsavory characters. The kind you don't bring home to mother. 

Of course Pandora gets a bad rap. And yet. 

The story of my life is as much getting fucked over by assholes who I let into my uttermost sacred temple and who ended up being shit for brains liars (you know, like, human beings), as it is being expansively wide open to love for people worthy of meeting in that uttermost sacred temple of my being. Because when you do the Agave thang and get your thyrsus goin' and step outside the city, you might just as well rip your own son's head off as anything. 

AGAVE: [dragging Pentheus's dismembered chest to the center of the orchestra] Alas, for my poor son, my only child, destroyed by his mother's Bacchic madness. How could these hands of mine, which loved him so, have torn these limbs apart, ripped out his flesh. Here's an arm which has held me all these years, growing stronger as he grew into a man, his feet…oh, how he used to run to me, seeking assurance of his mother's love. His face was handsome, on the verge of manhood. See the soft down still resting on these lips, which have kissed me thousands of times or more. All this, and all the rest, set here before us. Oh Zeus and all you Olympian gods…. [She cannot complete the ritual of gathering all of Pentheus's dismembered body parts and collapses in grief] It makes no sense—it's unendurable. How could the god have wished such things on me? (from Euripides, of course, in a shit translation by Ian Johnston, but hey it was free on the interwebs)

One could probably persuasively argue that the valid terror of this kind of bottomlessly amoral and indifferent enchantment is what has given rise to all of civilization (hand in hand with a desire for comfort) and what has led to the current apotheosis (supposedly-- faux apotheosis) of "reason" and the mind. In fact it could even be persuasively argued (and undoubtedly has been) that the nexus of enchantment and religion or so-called "spiritual experience" is not only the highest experience we can have, but also, potentially, the very darkest and most base, duplicitous, excoriating and needlessly destructive madness-- savagely dismembering and not in a good way. 

Love seems like it could provide an even better buffer than reason, but love is also the thing against which love could provide the buffer, so. We're kind of fucked. 

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one dischage from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

--Tommy Eliot, Little Gidding, Fo Qotets

So, of course we fear the risk of enchantment-- we ourselves could be the dark enchanter of others, not only the mere seducer, which ultimately is probably more kicks than pricks, but the legit source of the thoroughgoing devastation of another who has wandered into the darkest woods we have. Or we stand at the edge of a grimpen, risking enchantment, and make the leap-- maybe the light is exactly right at that moment, or the drugs are good, or the oxytocin is particularly strong that day, or we are simply taken by a veritable God of some kind and so thoroughly deluded that the grotesque, swampy, quicksand riddled, venomous viper laden woods look inviting, exciting and grand. 

Here goes nothing! Hold my heart and watch this!

I suspect there are a lot of other reasons that we pause for that infinite second between saying yes to the trip or turning and heading back to the city and safety. Maybe I'll write about some other ones. 

But it's weird-- stories that end with people deciding to do the sober, ethical, practical thing in the face of the risk always feel like tragedies to me. Even in light of the pending tragedy that often waits in the dark wood.