Living in a Sacramental Cosmos
Reading Rod Dreher
Several years ago I first heard Rod Dreher make mention of his plans to write a book on the “re-enchantment” of the world. I was excited at the prospect, as his spiritual autobiography (How Dante Can Save Your Life) deeply affected me back in early 2018. Though I later enjoyed his better-known Benedict Option and Live Not by Lies, it was the biography which truly showcased Dreher’s ability to capture the pilgrimage of a soul in search of meaning and spiritual fulfillment. I looked forward to his expansion on this theme in what eventually came to be entitled Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age.
Though Dreher’s “woo” book seems to have required a longer period of incubation than initially planned (in his own words, “a rocky and lengthy gestation”), I suspect the work is all the better for it. The past few years have witnessed a rapid acceleration toward the aforementioned “re-enchantment”—a move beyond the rationalism of the early 2000’s and an embracing of the spiritual in all its manifestations. As in the mid-1960’s, this revival of spiritual interest has included both a renewal of traditional religion as well as a foray into the occult, the pagan, and the esoteric. Like the curious men of Issachar who “had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” (1 Chron. 12:32), Dreher has read the signs of re-enchantment of our own day. An attempt to capture this peculiar moment, Living in Wonder provides readers with a Christian vision for living in an enchanted cosmos. This is, Dreher argues, a world not only permeated with the supernatural, but also a sacramental world—wherein “all created things are connected to the divine Logos” (p. 51).
At the outset, it should be said that this book manifests an ecumenical spirit. Dreher commends both evangelical prayer (pp. 158–161) and Roman Catholic exorcistic practices (pp. 100–109) as well as Eastern Orthodox mysticism (p. 16). Though he is not shy about his devotion to the Orthodox tradition, he does not write as a partisan. The message he offers is for believers of all traditions.
Capturing the Imagination
It is fortuitous (or rather providential) that I made my way through Dreher’s work simultaneously alongside Carl Trueman’s Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (to which Dreher wrote the Foreword), in which one reads of the sharp turn toward the aesthetic exhibited by Wordsworth, Shelley, and Blake. “Mere reason,” Trueman writes of the Romantics’ worldview, “does not stir the sentiments or emotions as is necessary for true moral transformation.”1 Poetry, say they, is the most authentic and effective means for “the moral improvement of the audience.”2 While these writers did much to undermine the Christian faith in their day, they had nonetheless discovered an important truth: the path to true transformation is via the heart.
Dreher, recognizing this, writes not to the mind but to the heart, that “faculty of perception that allows a person to access spiritual realities.” This nous—as it is called in Eastern Christianity—provides a “way of knowledge through spiritual intuition, as distinct from the way of knowledge through conceptual analysis” (p. 51).
This is apropos. As Dreher wrote in another context, “few people . . . give a rip about reason. It all turns on affection these days.” Throughout his work, he draws heavily from Iain McGilchrist’s groundbreaking work on the tyranny of the analytical/rational “left brain” on Western civilization and the resulting pendulum swing to the intuitive/aesthetic “right brain.”
This dynamic is precisely why I wrote A Magical World within a framework of capturing the imagination of readers. Though my own work includes empirical data and reasoned conclusions, my ultimate goal was to have readers to fall in love with a divinely-orchestrated cosmos rather than to syllogize them into belief. Living in Wonder is no different in its own “enchantment apologetic.” As he writes in chapter 8:
We love what we find beautiful. This is an experience common to everyone. The Orthodox theologian Timothy Patitsas has developed a persuasive approach to evangelism and discipleship that he calls “beauty first.” He teaches that falling in love with beauty—something that everyone naturally does—is the surest gateway to God. . . .
Contemporary people may find it impossible to relate to rationalist apologetics or moral suasion by Christians, but everybody can relate to the shock and wonder of beauty. (pp. 184–185)
A Supernatural Faith
Readers of mine will be familiar with my emphasis on the concept of the “Power Encounter,” wherein the power of Spirit-filled Christians is pitted against the powers of competing spiritual forces.3 Dreher makes use of this dynamic when describing the rise of Christianity. Citing the work of historian Robert Knapp, he points out that
a main reason the early church succeeded in winning so many converts in the Greco-Roman world is that the “magic” of the Christians was more powerful than the magic of the pagan priests and sorcerers. (p. 24)
This was not only true of the New Testament ministry of Jesus and the Apostles, but also throughout the following centuries, where “miracles, not message, were the prime motivator for the conversion of the first Christian generations” (p. 26). Dreher laments the later Western trend of marginalizing the centrality of the supernatural element of faith, particularly pointing to the Reformers who “chalked [miracles] up entirely to the devil” (p. 30). “[T]he idea,” he writes, “that churches should downplay the numinous and the mystical for the sake of making Christianity relevant and accessible to seekers is a mistake” (p. 87).
As a Protestant influenced by the Charismatic renewal movement, this is a critique I myself have offered in the past. Dreher’s implicit suggestion is that a revival of authentic Christianity in our re-enchanting age will need to entail a recovery of this supernatural dimension. And he is right.
The Disenchanted Spiritualist
Dreher explains that the new wave of disenchanted “nones”—those who no longer identify with any particular religious tradition—are not, generally speaking, gravitating toward atheism. Rather, most fall into a vague “spiritual but not religious” category, helping themselves to “a do-it-yourself bricolage of Christian practices joined to pop occultism, Buddhism, and whatever interests the individual in a given moment” (pp. 77–78).
This has been an obvious trend for anyone paying attention. As Justin Brierley has lately pointed out, the New Atheism which enjoyed its high-water mark 15–20 years ago has been largely discarded by a new generation jaded with such self-satisfied rationalism. This shift has been so pronounced that, as early as 2014, one Christian thinker went so far as to ask whether believers should “be spending most of their time addressing atheistic materialism? I think not. There is a much more pressing need in addressing the occult/paranormal worldview.”4
Dreher points out, however, the impotence of such buffet-style spiritualities: “a religion you make up yourself has no power to enchant” (p. 78). Indeed, his charting out of the contemporary lust for enchantment in his chapter on the occult is a testament to the dissatisfaction among many of the “spiritual but not religious.”
Rage Against the Machine Elves
In his treatment of false forms of enchantment, Dreher offers seasoned thoughts on the contemporary revival of psychedelic usage. He does not approach this topic from a fundamentalist or ignorant point of view. In fact, he admits not only that these substances offer promising therapeutic benefits to trauma survivors (p. 95), but also that his own conversion to faith was jumpstarted through an LSD trip, where he “believed that I had been granted a glimpse of the really real.” Before he concludes with his warning against recreational use of psychedelics, he is responsible enough to note that “some people appear to benefit from them, both psychologically and spiritually” (p. 97).
Despite the positive caveats, Dreher cannot escape the conclusion that the present fascination with these mind-altering compounds are opening doors that render the human psyche vulnerable to delusion and domination. His friend “Jonah” serves as a foil for this section, a man who experimented heavily with psychedelics and “began to have visions and communicate with demons. On a number of occasions they entered his body—sometimes against his will” (p. 90).
Readers of mine will know that I am not one to suspect demons behind every unknown or spooky phenomenon. I have written of such an approach being both lazy and unimaginative. Especially through my continuing education in the field of parapsychology, I am all too aware of how mysterious aspects of nature or the human soul can be summarily labeled as “demonic” without any real reflection. Yet a look at some of the trappings of the entity contacts common among the “psychonauts” gives me enough information to be wary.
Back to Jonah: these contacts with spiritual entities served as a form of initiation, where he was inducted into “a group of the elect who had been chosen by the gods as their acolytes to enlighten humanity” (p. 90). These visions, of course, presented themselves as “genuinely beautiful and truly meaningful” (p. 90). One is reminded of Frodo’s first encounter with Strider, where he remarks that servants of the Enemy would “seem fairer and feel fouler, if you understand.”5
Never enduring “a stereotypical bad trip,” Jonah “experienced them all as empowering and enlightening” (p. 92). Through these liaisons, Jonah eventually came to a place of “feeling demonic loathing for humanity” (p. 91) even amid his quest for “the divinization of the human” (p. 94). He calls this dynamic “the twin principles of superhumanism and anti-humanism” (p. 94).
Dreher points out that psychonauts from widely varying social statuses and cultures are reported to “see the same entities in their visions,” which suggests that “psychedelic experiences involved entering into an objective realm” (p. 95). Importantly, he mentions the anecdotes of subjects who have experienced “unwanted paranormal happenings, with unseen beings lingering after their psychedelic journeys” (p. 95).
Dreher’s contention that DMT (and its companions) “makes the self more porous” fits with everything I have learned, both of the substance itself as well as of the human soul.
This is its spiritual benefit but also its spiritual danger. . . . it opens doors in the nous [mind-heart] that ought to remain closed, unless opened by God through prescribed prayer and religious practice. (p. 97)
Again, one is tempted to resort to an analogy from Tolkien. The palantíri (seeing stones) were, in their original setting, legitimate means of preternatural communication. Yet when the Ithil-stone fell into the hands of Sauron, there was introduced a danger of being dominated by the Dark Lord’s will. Some, like Denethor, resisted domination but were driven to despair, while others, like Saruman, became useful tools of evil, seduced by false delusions of grandeur.6
Depending on how far one takes this analogy, of course, it is conceivable that there may remain a legitimate use for these substances. For the palantíri “were not made . . . by the Enemy,”7 and “religious preparation” (p. 97) would be our equivalent to the hereditary right of Elendil’s descendants to use the stones. Yet I suspect that, for most of us, our religious preparedness is more Pippin-level than Aragorn-level. As Gandalf’s wisdom tells us: “Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves.”8 Saruman fell into the same trap as Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew: He “was working with things he did not really understand; most magicians are.”9
While I reject a superstitious “demon under every rock” worldview, I am nonetheless persuaded that the spiritual realm is not entirely benign. As I have elsewhere quoted Dale Allison: “Maybe God is not the only reality beyond our earthly cave. Maybe additional powers exist, not all of them friendly.”10 Or as Dreher relates the advice of exorcist Don Cipriano: “Any re-enchantment that does not incorporate a healthy fear of the shadow side of the spirit world is a lie” (p. 108).
Moses warned us about the hubris underlying the Tower of Babel, Zeus warned us against opening Pandora’s box, and Dante warned us about Ulysses’ “reckless quest for forbidden knowledge” (p. 97). While we should not “pretend that these events are all bad” (p. 96), we have reason enough to be circumspect. The recurring theme among psychonauts who report anti-human affections and an accompanying Messiah complex should be red flags for those on the lookout for prelest—the Orthodox term for spiritual delusion common to the egotistical “seeker of private mystical experiences” (p. 99).
In ET We Trust
Importantly, these themes are also common to ostensible “alien contactees,” such as Steven Greer, who has engaged in a quest to recruit telepathic human ambassadors to extraterrestrials. He and his followers believe that these beings are humanity’s ticket to the next stage of evolution and the rescue of a dying planet. His method of summoning these enigmatic entities through meditation and telepathy is not without corroboration. Many of those who have associated with Greer report genuine visions of ostensible UAPs/UFOs. The question is: what kind of entities are they really seeing?
Though Dreher does not mention Greer by name, he covers this theme of a naive hope in extraterrestrial saviors. Helpfully, he draws from Jacques Vallée’s valuable comparisons between contemporary UFO encounters and historical episodes of contact with spirit-beings. Vallée’s contention that these beings are likely “higher intelligences coming to us from a dimension beyond space and time” (p. 112) is known as the Interdimensional Hypothesis (IDH), and it provides a key point of overlap with the psychedelic entity contacts.11
The overlap between the messages of enlightenment and divinization coming from alien contactees and psychonauts alike suggests an overlapping origin—one that I am hard pressed to consider benign. Both groups are representative of today’s “emerging forms of post-Christian religion,” which feature “plenty of opportunities for ecstatic spiritual experience, with none of the ascetic discipline, epistemic rigor, and doctrinal depth of the true faith.” Dreher’s interviewee Jonah warns that the devil keeps his appointments: “If you summon the devil and his servants and ask them to dazzle you, they will come” (p. 100).
I reserve the right to evolve my opinion on these emerging forms of spirituality. I am acutely aware that figures like Shawn Ryan—who is now an outspoken believer—have received profound psychological healing through ibogaine treatment, and his advocacy for veterans with PTSD to undergo psychedelic therapy is something that even Justin Brierley’s overall negative take on these substances points out.
At the present, however, the I can’t help but agree with Dreher’s “forbidden fruit” approach—one that emphasizes spiritual maturity via the long route of prayer and fasting rather than a “lottery ticket” shortcut to mysticism. As he wrote as early as 2015:
It seems to me risky to have a spiritual experience so profound that is unearned, that you haven’t prepared for, as a mystic would have prepared through years of prayer. A man who makes his millions slowly, through hard work, regards his fortune differently than a man who made his millions by winning the lottery.
This is my sentiment exactly. But as Dreher follows this statement, I echo his humility: “I could be wrong about this.”
Saints & Sanctioned Enchantment
Dreher does not dwell on the dark side of enchantment. He moves on to discuss what the lives of the saints can offer us, highlighting in particular the miraculous feats and holy lives of Elder Paisios and Padre Pio. Both were known for their preternatural abilities of healing and clairvoyance, yet both saw these as byproducts of a life lived in pursuit of union with God. There were no shortcuts to mysticism for them.
Dreher briefly mentions Kyriacos Markides’ classic The Mountain of Silence, a work that he has previously praised as “the book that was most important in my conversion to Orthodox Christianity.” This work—the Eastern Orthodox equivalent of a Carlos Castaneda book—presents a framework for living in enchantment, as understood by the hermits and saints of Mount Athos.
(Recently, I was fortunate enough to visit the magnanimous Dr. Markides on my return trip from Maine’s largest wilderness—Baxter State Park.)
In the final chapters, Dreher takes his cue from the mystical approach to Christianity delineated in Markides’ book. This is the way forward in our brave new world.
In the post-Christian world, people—especially young people—are not looking for powerful exegesis of papal encyclicals, erudite sermons about the mechanics of salvation, five killer apologetic arguments to use against atheists, or any other canned strategy. They want to know whether life has any meaning . . . They don’t want to know about God; they want to know God.” (p. 240)
Dreher closes the book with candid accounts of his own experiences of God, offering readers an opportunity to join him on a new odyssey for approaching the world as fully permeated by God’s divine energies.
Early in the book, he advises us to “develop practices that allow us to live as if enchanted when the grace of enchantment leaves us” (p. 60). What are these practices? Reading the lives of the saints. Meditating on the Scriptures. Praying the Jesus Prayer. Attending church (for him, this means experiencing the Divine Liturgy). Going into the woods. In each of these disciplines, one becomes trained to listen when God decides to speak. And when He speaks, we are transfigured.
I’ll be returning to Living in Wonder for years to come. It is a book for our moment. Don’t miss it.
Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020), 143.
Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 142.
See chapter 3 of Matthew McGuire, A Magical World: How the Bible Makes Sense of the Supernatural (Independent: 2024).
Putnam, Cris. The Supernatural Worldview: Examining Paranormal, Psi, and the Apocalyptic (Crane: Defender, 2014), 98.
Tolkien, J.R.R., The Fellowship of the Ring (New York: Ballantine Books, 1976), 233.
See the essay “The Palantíri” in Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien (New York: William Morrow, 2012).
Tolkien, J.R.R., The Two Towers (New York: Ballantine Books, 1977), 258.
Tolkien, The Two Towers, 258–259.
Lewis, C.S., The Magician’s Nephew (New York: HarperTrophy, 1994), 43.
Dale C. Allison, Jr., Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022), 43–44.
It should be mentioned that I have no theological objections to the notion of extraterrestrial races. C.S. Lewis’ Cosmic Trilogy provided for me the conceptual categories to imagine separately created races with their own redemption programs. That said, the inherent difficulties of interstellar space travel (alongside the aforementioned anti-human tropes) leads me to believe that the beings encountered today do not come from distant solar systems. See, for instance, Hugh Ross’ chapter “Interstellar Space Travel,” in Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men (Glendora: Reasons to Believe, 2012).
Appreciate this summary of the book! I heard him last week talking about it on Pageau's podcast, and though I'm not sure I'll get to the book, I could tell it was useful.