David Abram, “The Ecology of Magic”

David Abram is an ecologist, anthropologist, and philosopher, but it is work with magic that has most shaped his research on the connections between the environment, human experience, and modes of perception. After the magic trick has been performed, Abram believes, we are left "without any framework of explanation. We are suddenly floating in that open space of direct sensory experience, actually encountering the world without preconceptions, even if just for a moment." How would our thinking about the earth and our place on it change if we could suspend our preconceptions about our own central importance? This is the question that Abram brings to the fields of ecopsychology and environmental philosophy.

"The Ecology of Magic" is drawn from Abram's book, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, which explores our perception of the natural world and the way we use language and symbols to process our experience. In "The Ecology of Magic," Abram describes his travels through Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Nepal to study the lifeways of magicians and healers. During the course of his research, Abram came to see the role of traditional magicians and healers as bridging the gap between humankind and nature; "the shaman or sorcerer," he tells us, "is the exemplary voyager in the intermediate realm between the human and the more-than-human worlds."

Abram could be characterized as just such a voyager. After receiving his doctorate in philosophy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he and his wife founded the Alliance for Wild Ethics, an organization that focuses on raising ecological awareness. When asked to explain why he draws so heavily on academic discourse and continues to write for an academic audience when his thinking has taken him in such unconventional directions, Abram answered that his goal in writing The Spell of the Sensuous was "to bridge the gap between the world of the imagination -- the kind of magical world of these indigenous, traditional societies -- and the world of academia, the intelligentsia, and the scientific elite. But I didn't want to do that just by writing a scholarly or scientific analysis of indigenous, animistic ways of thinking. I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted to do an animistic analysis of rationality and the Western intellect, and to show that our Western, civilized ways of thinking are themselves a form of magic."  

Abram, David. "The Ecology of Magic," The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, (New York: First Vintage Books, 1997. 3–29.
Digital image drawn from the The Kinship Conference Web Site.
Quotations come from Scott London's interview with David Abram for the National Public Radio series, "Insight & Outlook."

Links to Explore:

Interview with Abram: this web site features Scott London's interview with David Abram.

Schumacher College An International Centre for Ecological Studies: home page for a center dedicated to providing students with a "mindful and participatory style of learning" about ecology. Includes a link to Wild Mind, an article by David Abram on his teaching experiences at Schumacher College.

Ecotopia: this web site presents information about efforts to protect and preserve environmental resources in densely populated areas. The site includes a timeline with important dates in environmental history and links to additional resources on the environmental movement.

Shamanism: this site focuses on elaborating on the powers that shamans are able to take from plants and animals. This site outlines the "wisdom" a wide variety of species have to offer if approached appropriately.

Questions for Learning:

• In his interview with Scott London, David Abram concludes with some observations on the power of language: "I don't think the alphabet is bad. What I'm trying to get people to realize is that it's a very intense form of magic. And that it therefore needs to be used responsibly. I mean, it's not by coincidence that the word "spell" has this double meaning -- to arrange the letters in the right order to form a word, or to cast a magic. To spell a word, or to cast a magic spell. These two meanings were originally one and the same. In order to use this new technology, this new play of written shapes on the page, to learn to write and to read with the alphabet, was actually to learn a new form of magic, to exercise a new form of power in the world." Does language exercise these magical powers any longer in the West? Can you provide examples of such moments?
  
  
• How would you say the pedagogy at Schumacher College An International Centre for Ecological Studies differs from the pedagogy you have encountered in the public schools? At the university? Can experiential learning be institutionalized? How does one determine when an individual has, in fact, had the kind of experiences that Abram values?
  
  
• Ecotopia presents Henry David Thoreau as a central figure in the environmental movement in the United States and include his essay, Walking, on the site. After you've read this essay, what would you say is the relationship between Thoreau's view of nature and Abram's? Are the discoveries that Thoreau describes still available in the United States today? Could Abram have had his ecstatic experiences without traveling abroad?
  
  
• What do you think Abram would make of the Shamanism site included here? How might one distinguish between practices that promote the kind of spiritually empowering relationship with the natural world that Abram describes and practices that gratify the senses more generally? That is, should one distinguish between an "authentic shamanism" and, say, a "hedonistic shamanism"?

Questions for Connecting:

• In “The Mind's Eye,” Oliver Sacks asks, “to what extent are we—our experiences, our reactions—shaped, predetermined, by our brains, and to what extent do we shape our own brains?” By phrasing the question in this way, Sacks asks us to consider “to what extent” the brain shapes experience and experience shapes the brain. Drawing on Abram's discussion of sensuous experience and shamanism for your examples, respond to Sacks's question. Is the relationship between the shaping power of the brain and the power of personal experience one of relative equality? Is the brain itself largely responsible for who we are and how we experience the world, or is sensuous experience more decisive?

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