The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

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The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

by David Abram

4.23 · rating details · 647 ratings · 115 reviews

David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its mo...more

Paperback, 352 pages

Published February 25th 1997 by Vintage (first published 1996)

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Jul 31, 2007

Brandon rated it

In Chinese medicine, disease is defined as that which goes against the Breath of Nature (Bian Hua變化). This statement begs the question: If human disease is that which goes against the breath, how are we going against the breath? Or more specifically, how did we get to this point of widespread cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, allergies, and depression? David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous offers some important insight.

Once upon a time, humans were inherently tied to the land a...moreIn Chinese medicine, disease is defined as that which goes against the Breath of Nature (Bian Hua變化). This statement begs the question: If human disease is that which goes against the breath, how are we going against the breath? Or more specifically, how did we get to this point of widespread cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, allergies, and depression? David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous offers some important insight.

Once upon a time, humans were inherently tied to the land as hunter-gatherers – to survive they were required to follow the laws of nature and the land that they inhabited. With the advent of agriculture and the ability to store surplus grain and consequently generate wealth, a separation arose. No longer did man have to toil day in and day out for food and his survival, but with smart farming techniques and the eventual domestication of grain, the more wealthy could pursue intellectual pursuits: the creation of the aleph-beth emerged as a technology that could transmit some of these intellectual constructs.

Abram discusses the consequences of this gradual transformation from oral to written culture as a divorce from the embodied sensorial experience of time-space to a domain that is referent only to the human domain. “Only with the emergence of the phonetic alphabet, and its appropriation by the ancient Greeks [from the Hebrews who consciously did not encase the majestic air as written vowels] did the written images lose all evident ties to the larger field of expressive beings. Each image now came to have a strictly human referent: each letter was now associated purely with a gesture or sound of the human mouth.” (p.138, italicized comments mine). Instead of seeing language in everything around us – the birds, the wind, the trees, the earth itself – encapsulating speech into written words divides humans from the very world in which we depend on for our well-being. The written word is no longer a transient mutating form, but a fixed non-breathing non-living reference to be analyzed, discussed, and returned to for all time. In short, the written word divides us from nature because it is in and of itself completely unnatural; simply a construction, a technological advancement, of the human mind.

When I go to write something down, I do so to preserve the present moment so that in some future time it can again be accessed. But my words, no matter how poetic or successful at describing some part of a scene or mood must fail to express the entirety of the scene. The pure infinite nature of the present is incapable of being recorded in this linear, discrete fashion, exported into the future to be re-experienced. So language itself, and written language even more-so, is limited*.

Besides the wealth generation of agriculture, the invention of the phonetic written word can be seen as the grandmother of the technologies we enjoy today. But these technologies come at a price. Because they are invented for humans instead of for the world in which humans live, using these inventions inherently reinforces this division. In this way man can then manipulate the environment for his gain. Thus, man is not required to observe, much less follow, the breath of nature. Sometimes we do follow the breath, and we are healthy and vibrant. But often we go against the breath, and we develop diseases that ultimately kill us.

Abrams describes the healer's role (in shamanic cutures) existing at the edge of society, constantly nourishing the border between human beings and the other beings – the animate and seemingly inanimate creatures of nature. For it is through this membrane that nature communicates with us, and where the answers lie to cure disease and live in the balance that is necessary to sustain life.(less)

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Feb 22, 2008

Jason rated it

Shelves: we-own

The book has two significant flaws:

1) Abram is far too quick to succumb to reducing Judeo-Christian sensibilities to the villainous role here. In doing so, he's exacerbating the dialectic gulf he's making otherwise noteworthy leaps toward bridging. I had a hunch he'd be headed down this path, though, when he summarily blacklisted the Genesis creation account as narrative of oppression and dominion, ignoring its long tradition, in various theological circles, as an account emphasizing...moreThe book has two significant flaws:

1) Abram is far too quick to succumb to reducing Judeo-Christian sensibilities to the villainous role here. In doing so, he's exacerbating the dialectic gulf he's making otherwise noteworthy leaps toward bridging. I had a hunch he'd be headed down this path, though, when he summarily blacklisted the Genesis creation account as narrative of oppression and dominion, ignoring its long tradition, in various theological circles, as an account emphasizing relational stewardship of land. He - and his argument - would've been much better off with a fairer treatment of this prevailing tradition, with giving dialogue a little encouragement as opposed to giving those within the Judeo-Christian tradition inclined to think his view hot air reason for thinking it.

2) He tries too hard to make his usually very good points, and in doing so weakens his argument. For instance, on page 252, within the space of two paragraphs, he writes:

a) "For by using visible characters to represent the sounded breath, the Greek scribes effectively desacralized the breath and the air."

b) "By providing a visual representation of that which was - by its very nature - invisible, they nullified the mysteriousness of the enveloping atmosphere..."

c) "By breaking this taboo, by transposing the invisible into the register of the visible, the Greek scribes effectively dissolved the primordial power of the air."

It reminded me of Neal Gabler's assertion that "Walt Disney was no racist" - the kind of overzealous statement that immediately makes one think Disney may very well have been. Similarly, beating your point into your reader over and over, however beautifully sculpted the sentences, bespeaks anxiety in the author that his point might not hold much water after all (it is this that I find so humorous and telling about Christopher Hitchens's anti-religious fervor). But the thing is: Abram's position is provocative, convincing, utterly fascinating and could generate a seismic shift in Western perspectives on language. His writing, too, is often gorgeous - it merely needed a booster shot of confidence now and then. (less)

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May 04, 2008

Brandy LaChapelle rated it

Abrams is incredibly adept at rolling language, the landscape, magic and sexy breathing life into ...philosophy? Phenomenology is the most intelligent philosophical notion I have ever come across. Abrams' translates the writings of Marleau Ponty and reminds us of our responsibilities to the cycle of life. In this time of going green we should all be talking to the bugs and the trees and grass and the dirt to see what they think would be the best course of action.

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Aug 31, 2009

gk rated it

Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: favorites, nonfiction

One of those books that I had to read slowly, to have time to stop & reflect. It introduced me to a lot of ideas which at first glance seemed strange, but on further thought made such sense that I wondered how for so long I had thought differently. (And even the ideas and theories I ended up not agreeing with, I liked thinking about.)

The book induced a paradigm shift, made me look at the world in a new way - it seemed much richer, afterwards, much more vibrant.

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Feb 01, 2008

Janie rated it

Shelves: this-beautiful-world

Wow. David Abrams covers enormous ground, delving into philosophy, cultural anthropology, the environment, phenomenology, and spirituality. I read this book in NYC and it helped convince me (as did 9/11) to leave the city for an island off the coast of Maine where I lived for five years reconnecting with the natural world and my place in it. This is an important book for anyone concerned about the contemporary society's disconnect from nature.

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Apr 20, 2011

Bob Hamilton rated it

Shelves: ecology, philosophy, to-revisit-one-day, read-in-2011

This is not an easy book to review. Indeed, I'm not sure if I've ever read a book that has left me with quite so much to think about. That we in the modern technological world have become disconnected from the natural world is really beyond argument. Focusing on language, Abram offers a radical approach to an understanding of why this happened, and also just a hint at how we can begin to reconnect - because it is common sense, of course, that humankind cannot continue this process of disconnecti...moreThis is not an easy book to review. Indeed, I'm not sure if I've ever read a book that has left me with quite so much to think about. That we in the modern technological world have become disconnected from the natural world is really beyond argument. Focusing on language, Abram offers a radical approach to an understanding of why this happened, and also just a hint at how we can begin to reconnect - because it is common sense, of course, that humankind cannot continue this process of disconnection from its sustaining source indefinitely.

He suggests the adoption of a way of thinking that is in accordance with our senses, one that "associates truth not with static fact, but with a quality of relationship." We can only live in truth by living in harmony with the rest of the natural world. "A civilization that relentlessly destroys the living land it inhabits is not well acquainted with truth, regardless of how many supposed facts it has amassed regarding the calculable properties of its world."

I refer to Abram's approach as radical because he calls for nothing less than a paradigm shift in our perception of the world around us. This resonates with me strongly. I have long believed that our sentience is not just to be associated with the self, but has to be regarded as continuous with the sentience of the whole living world. This is not an easy concept to get across however, and it is at this point, in his discussion of the philosophical tradition known as phenomenology, that the book can get quite difficult. We are so familiar with living entirely in our heads that it is nearly impossible to grasp that experience of pure perception before our conceptualising minds internalise it. After dealing with the work of the phenomenologists (Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty), Abram goes on to discuss at length the relationship of our indigenous peoples to the animate world, to try to give us some feel for their culture of sensuous participation, before the advent of written, phonetic language.

He does an incredible job of transporting us into this so very different, almost alien world, conjuring meaning out of the written word to offer us a glimpse of a world without the written word. The rhythm of his writing is such that it reads more like poetry than prose. It's quite spellbinding. And that actually directs us straight to Abram's central thesis, that the written word has indeed cast us under a kind of spell. He argues that the development of written language has played the key role in cutting us off from our original "sensuous bearings", isolating the human world from the rest of the earth, the "more-than-human" world to use his own turn of phrase. Our language, rooted at the very beginning in the fauna and flora of the land and the very air we breathe, and evolving over time from pictograms and icons to the phonetic system of abstract symbols that we use today, has served to dislocate us from the shapes and sounds and smells of the living earth.

Having had a few days to think about this book now, I keep revisiting the thought that Abram's writing is so elegant, so seductively beautiful, that he actually swept me away from my normal reasoning state of mind to the extent that I wasn't willing to question his ideas enough. I didn't want to break the spell. It was almost as if I had indeed succumbed to a kind of magic!

With a little perspective I can now say that I'm not entirely convinced that a story read can be that different from a story heard in terms of the way that the language and ideas are processed. But this is really not to take anything away from the book. If I was forced to come up with one word to describe it then that would be audacious. It's not often a book makes you question your very deepest assumptions. There is so much wonderful insight here, into the nature of perception, the almost lost culture of our aboriginal peoples, the story of the evolution of written language, that I can thoroughly recommend it, quite independently of the extent to which I buy into Abram's main thesis.

It is, quite simply, an audaciously good read!

PS Blogging at Goodreads here (less)

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Jan 19, 2009

Cameron rated it

I find The Spell of the Sensuous’ captivating exploration of language, phenomenology, and oral versus written storytelling an absolutely essential addition to anybody interested in how language and place are braided inextricably together. Abram, relying upon the theories of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, and American Indian peoples, explores what happens when, through the invention of writing, language is apparently “severed” from the sensual, material reality that it is born out of? Abr...more

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Jan 05, 2009

Samantha rated it

Shelves: favorite, non-fiction

I had the wonderful opportunity to meet David Abram on a number of occasions while living in Santa Fe. My poetry professor was having us read this book, partly because David Abram was a personal friend of his and partly because the book is just remarkable on a thousand different levels. It has a poetry to it, to be sure, but no other phrase works quite as well as "Spell Binding" when describing this book. It's wordy, you can't read it in one sitting like some pulp fiction book. But I s...more

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Jul 29, 2011

Andrew rated it

Any words I think of to try to describe this book and the impact it had on me would just be mere hyberbole. I am reading it again after a number of years, and just marvel at the way Abram is able to communicate what Zen Buddhists might refer to as "a special transmission" - the sort of understanding poets dance circles around, and Taoists come to know by studying the wind and the water.

It's not an easy book to read, as most people I've tried desperately to force it on have ...more

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Nov 20, 2010

Keith added it

Onto something awesome

Suits me because the thought connections are in line with other thinkers I've been fueled by: Paul Shephard (Nature and Madness, Coming Home to the Pleistocene), Joseph Chilton Pearce (the Magical child, Exploring the crack in the Cosmic Egg)
Aldous Huxley (doors of perception, marriage of heaven and hell) ; Guy Debord (society of the spectacle)
and last but certainly not least Derrick Jensen the writer, inspirer, killer culture criticizing Earth activist...more

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Aug 31, 2009

Bob Nichols rated it

Abram starts out strong by providing a fresh perspective about the separation of humans from nature. Anchoring his work first in Husserl's phenomenology and then Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, Abram says that we think more about the world than experience it. He writes that we are first and foremost physical bodies that complete themselves only through active relationships with nature. There is, in other words, a visceral circuit of energy with the world and it is this that gives...moreAbram starts out strong by providing a fresh perspective about the separation of humans from nature. Anchoring his work first in Husserl's phenomenology and then Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, Abram says that we think more about the world than experience it. He writes that we are first and foremost physical bodies that complete themselves only through active relationships with nature. There is, in other words, a visceral circuit of energy with the world and it is this that gives us meaning and a sense of engagement and fulfillment. So far, so good. But then in a somewhat complicated argument, Abram goes on to argue that humans increasingly abstracted themselves from nature through language, transforming nature into something that was external because we were no longer integrated with it. To put it bluntly, the alphabet removed us, deterministically, from nature. Along with this linguistic argument, Abram references magical and native cultural practices to illustrate how indigenous peoples, not us, remain true to nature. Abram denies that his thesis involves a "going back" and acknowledges that other factors are relevant as well. Despite his denial, the book nevertheless has the feel of a "return to nature" as his thesis is that we become impoverished when nature becomes "less." This is a point of debate. His book idealizes indigenous man and suggests that all of the modern conveniences of life (health, leisure, etc) somehow are not (or "should not be"?) desired by indigenous cultures. From the outside looking in, that may be easy to say. These conveniences also may be the very reason developed societies are removed from nature. Simply put, these societies unlike native societies are no longer so dependent on nature for survival and well-being. This, not language, may provide the stronger argument about why our direct engagement with nature has become less relevant. Whether our move from the world of magic to science is good or bad remains, however, a fair debate and Abram offers some provacative and helpful insights. (less)

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Nov 10, 2011

Carolyn rated it

Shelves: essays, library-books, philosophy

When our ancestors invented the alphabet several thousand years ago, one of the tradeoffs was the loss of the intimate communication that the people of preliterate, oral cultures seem to enjoy with the world around them. As a skilled slight-of-hand magician, Abram knows a thing or two about perception and attention. He has a doctorate related to phenomenology and the psychology of perception. (Neither the book jacket or the internet bio I found said exactly what field.) He traveled to Asia...more
When our ancestors invented the alphabet several thousand years ago, one of the tradeoffs was the loss of the intimate communication that the people of preliterate, oral cultures seem to enjoy with the world around them. As a skilled slight-of-hand magician, Abram knows a thing or two about perception and attention. He has a doctorate related to phenomenology and the psychology of perception. (Neither the book jacket or the internet bio I found said exactly what field.) He traveled to Asia to compare notes with shamans from oral cultures in Indonesia and Nepal, seeking to learn something about their healing techniques for ailments considered intractable in the west and to try to recapture some of the skills in perception and attention that the remaining preliterate cultures retain, but which literate man has lost.

It is a book of enormous breadth and depth. Abram is an ecologist who cares deeply about the natural world, but he is not to be confused with so-called ecologists like Michael Moore or Al Gore. He is closer in spirit to E. O. Wilson and Dr. Doolittle, and some of his philosophical analysis reminded me of Marshall McLuhan. This book, his first (published in 1996) has been widely described as visionary, and has been steadily gaining fans and advocates and his thought described as leading to a paradigm shift. His second book, Becoming Animal, has just been published, in September 2011.

One of the chapters is a deep analysis of phenomenology, emphasizing the philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. (Abram kindly invites readers to skip this chapter, but I didn't, and found it worth while.)

More fascinating for the general reader are the author's uncanny experiences with various aspects of the natural world and his explanations of the ways the people of oral cultures communicate with their surroundings. In nearly all oral cultures, the word for “breath” is the same as the word for “spirit.” The ancient Hebrew alphabet, probably the first phonetic alphabet (as contrasted with the pictorial written language of the ancient Egyptians and the Chinese) omitted any symbols for vowels. Consonants shape the mouth for speech, but vowels move the breath through the mouth, and Abram theorizes that reverence for breath/spirit required that vowels not be represented in the writing. Thus the reader of ancient Hebrew had to interpret the text, choosing from context the intended (or, sometimes, chosen) meaning from a variety of possibilities. The Greeks added vowel symbols around the 8th century BCE, and thus the poetry of the semi-mythical Homer became the earliest written version of these poetic verses that had been told or sung by many storytellers for many generations.

This is one of those rare books that deserves rereading, maybe several times. It has given me a new perspective on the world around me.(less)

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Mar 30, 2010

Stewart rated it

This 1996 book by ecologist and philosopher David Abram explores similar territory and has many of the good qualities -- and bad attributes -- of "Philosophy in the Flesh," which I read several weeks ago. Abram says that most in the First World, especially those of us who live in urban settings, inhabit a world where "we participate almost exclusively with other humans and with our own human-made technologies." Abram says, "The simple premise of this book is that we a...more

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Jul 13, 2009

John rated it

An important book, if a little long and too casually written in some places. A philosophical historical exposition of our alienation from a more archaic and "ecological" experience of sense-worlds, with critique of the psychological, social, ecological effects of this alienation. I was glad to consider the phenomenologists (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger) again, and Abrams nicely illuminates their work with descriptions of alternate or more archaic modes of consciousness and exper...more

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Sep 24, 2010

Kitty rated it

I enjoyed the foray into philosophy, linguistics and the reminder of an ever-present invitation to connect to and through the senses, revisit "vowels as breath" , "reflection" as both inner and outer worlds. "The inner -- what is it? " -- the Rilke quote p. 261 provides his understanding --
"if not intensified sky, hurled through with birds and deep with the winds of homecoming".

A book to read slowly, respond to in spirals, whorls of thin...more

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Jan 12, 2010

Dan rated it

Shelves: given-up-on

This book discusses some very interesting concepts about how man has lost his connection with nature, and his true purpose on the planet. However, the content was just too 'deep' and the language too complex where simple would have been better, and I didn't find the book particularly easy to read.
After two attempts on read it right through, I gave up on this approach and simply skimmed through the chapters for the content I found I was most interested in.
It's a shame, and I was di...more

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Jun 12, 2008

Cynthia rated it

Probably one of my favorite books in the world, a brilliant discussion of language and how humans are deeply cognitively, emotionally, spiritually connected with the landscape, the earth.

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Feb 12, 2008

Daniel rated it

Abram makes a compelling case for the rediscovery of our senses as a way of knowing. A beautiful read that said some things I had been thinking in language better than mine.

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Apr 01, 2010

Pip rated it

Shelves: ecology, philosophy

This book enlivened my experience of the world, which shows the magic that words can weave, so I'm not altogether in alignment with Abram's treatment of the written word. For people who have been and are severely wounded in the world, the refuge of words (as he pointed out for the dislocated Jews) remains a sanctuary. Writing remains a way of expressing the relationship we have with the world, including what it teaches us.(Perhaps Abram considers writing differently from what is written). That t...more

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Jul 12, 2007

Ali Eastley rated it

one of the MOST pivotal books in my personal development; beautiful writing, flooring substance. (non-fiction)

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Jan 09, 2009

Mariana rated it

Wow! This is a worthwhile book which establishes a stable foundation for eco;ogy based on our connection to the earth. Using such diverse thbinking as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, our alphabet, and Apache, Navajo, and aboriginal thought to show we must reconnect to the land.
"Any undue harm that befalls the land is readily felt within the awareness of all who dwell within that land. And thus the health, balance, and well-being of each person is inseparable from the health and well-being...more

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May 08, 2009

Red rated it

A clear articulation of the cure for our separation from the Other. The sheer magic of a formal realization that we live in a world inhabited by the most alien of creatures with their own perceptions and cognitions, leaves one spellbound by the majesty and mystery of previously unnoticed residents. The life of a lowly spider now seems far more enchanting and esoteric than I ever imagined. Yet, the wonder is not from any kind of hidden realm to be found in the imagination, but rather right before...more

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Jan 11, 2012

Kellyann rated it

Shelves: ecology, non-fiction, favorite-books, philosophy

A densely written book that takes the phenomenological intersubjectivity and concept of the life-world of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's conception of the participatory nature of perception as its jumping-off point, builds on Heidegger's horizonal and grounded understanding of time, critiques the rise of written language as that which gradually loosened our hold on the sensual and sensuous world, and ultimately puts forward a sense-based, animistic, and story-based understanding of t...more

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Oct 31, 2010

Ian Davies rated it

Researching the use of magic in folk medicine led David Abram, a professional sleight of hand magician studying the psychology of perception, to observe that that the primary 'healing' function of the indigenous, tribal sorcerers he met was not the balancing of forces (demons or spirits) in individuals, but in the whole human community; the 'healing' of its relationship with the world around it.

In this book, he summons the Koyukon Indians of Northwestern Alaska, the Western Apache of A...moreResearching the use of magic in folk medicine led David Abram, a professional sleight of hand magician studying the psychology of perception, to observe that that the primary 'healing' function of the indigenous, tribal sorcerers he met was not the balancing of forces (demons or spirits) in individuals, but in the whole human community; the 'healing' of its relationship with the world around it.

In this book, he summons the Koyukon Indians of Northwestern Alaska, the Western Apache of Arizona, the Aboriginal peoples of Australia and many other oral cultures, and acquaints them (as best he can) with the likes of Kant, Saussure and Merleau-Ponty. Aristotle and the ancient Hebrews come to life within the pages, as do the birds, insects and forests in the stories he recounts. And he identifies this very phenomenon as a reason for our imbalanced relationship with the world around us.

In reading, our senses are brought together; they overlap and intertwine as we focus our eyes on the page and 'hear' the words we read. Our senses function together as a single organ, revealing the expressive character of the book and allowing it to 'speak to us' in a meaningful way - just as the wind in the trees does to so many indigenous peoples.

'Only as our senses transfer the animating magic to the written word do the trees become mute, the other animals dumb.'

He goes on to describe the different ways of experiencing the world in oral and literate cultures with great insight. His approach to judging the truth of ways of speaking is not by their 'literal truth' (originally meaning 'faithfulness to the written record') but by the 'sense' they make; the awareness they give us of the more-than-human world. To 'live in truth' in this sense allows us to attend to sensations and sensibilities through which we can glimpse perspectives other than our own in an animate world of sentience and intelligence - rather than noticing only that which reflects back upon ourselves.

It's a really great book, written from the firm ground of experience and integrity but with a wealth of knowledge underfoot. Can't wait to read his next one.(less)

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Jul 17, 2011

Adam Kranz rated it

Recommended to Adam by: Melody Moberg

Shelves: the-problem-of-civilization, richland-public-library, philosophy, non-fiction, environmental-history, favorites

Spell of the Sensuous is two things in one book. In the bright light of the academic world, it is a treatise that attempts to illustrate, if not prove, a rather ambitious thesis: that the advent and development of writing, from ideograms to Hebrew un-voiced phonetic script to the complete-with-vowels Greek alphabet, has been in large part responsible for the gradual estrangement of agricultural and now industrial humans from the living, speaking world evidenced to them through their senses.
...moreSpell of the Sensuous is two things in one book. In the bright light of the academic world, it is a treatise that attempts to illustrate, if not prove, a rather ambitious thesis: that the advent and development of writing, from ideograms to Hebrew un-voiced phonetic script to the complete-with-vowels Greek alphabet, has been in large part responsible for the gradual estrangement of agricultural and now industrial humans from the living, speaking world evidenced to them through their senses.

Abram begins with a rhetorical question. If at one point, humans obtained wisdom from all facets of their land, if they once held the trees and the rivers and the stars holy, how did anyone ever allow the land to be attacked with the fervor found in industrial humans today? The story, of course, begins with agriculture, and its course is intimately tied with the transition to life indoors. The discovery and use of fossil fuels has been another key element in the story. But Abram focuses on an under-explored aspect of this millenial transition: writing. It began innocently enough, with pictographic characters that constantly called their readers' attention back to the living world around them. The phonetic script of the Hebrews allowed them to lift their entire culture off the land that had sustained it and take it into exile with them - one of the first cultures thus abstracted. The final step was taken by the Greeks, when they went one step further than the Hebrew alphabet and added vowels, thus removing the need for constant for constant reinterpretation that made the Hebrew text in some ways still alive.

One of my favorite images from the book came at this point. At the cusp of the Greek discovery of phonetic writing, as they begin the transition from a deeply oral culture to a somewhat literate one, two philosophers came along and made a breakthrough. Socrates seized upon the abstraction of a word like justice, which had formerly been deeply ensconced in provisional, situational meaning, and began to quiz his fellows on what the word might mean outside of those specific contexts. Here was the word on a page, so clearly it had to have some meaning of its own, and inherent, rather than a contextual being. This is what Socrates sought, and explains why his interlocutors are so often baffled by his inquiries. Plato goes many steps further. He is so taken with these abstractions that he believes they are the ONLY true reality. Since the trend of Western thought has been dominated by the same influences that got Plato started down this track, it's no surprise that this initial mistake has dogged our culture ever since.

Abram proves his thesis methodically, clearly, and with an expert command of his resources. It is the kind of thesis that you believe or you don't believe, but can't really ever be proven. But Spell doesn't stand or fall on the strength of this argument. For it is also another book. Every word breathes a beautiful expression of the way of perceiving he attributes to oral cultures. Every sentence is an invitation, an exhortation, to return, a little or a lot, to this way of being in the world, to this way of living. Abram's charm (http://www.mythicimagination.org/home/wp...) and persuasion make the book dance.

Some of the key revelations that come from this side of the work:

The ways that indigenous people have of seeing the world, the stories they tell about the origins of things, the way their ethics and aesthetics map intimately onto the land they call home, can be partially and usefully understood as elegant mnemonic devices to pass on an incredible store of information. How else could you wrap your mind around the uses of thousands of plants, and internalize the behavior and personalities of countless prey animals? How else do you bury deeply in all of your actions the accumulated wisdom needed to live with *this* land in perpetuity and happiness? Transferring this kind of knowledge into human-digestible forms - anthropomorphized dramas - is the only way to remember all of it. These cultures are not crude imitations of the kind of explanation provided by our science. It is instead our land ethic (or lack thereof) that is revealed as crude. It is thus somewhat clear why many indigenous stories seem empty or weak - abstracted from the land that is a crucial character in all of them, why would you expect them to be good stories?

Further, this conception of culture grants a more insightful understanding of human-caused environmental catastrophes. The relevant contrast is not in the mode of production - hunter-gatherer vs. agricultural or industrial - but rather whether the culture is deeply attuned to the land. Peoples moving into a new land haven't had time to realize, for example, that the North American or Australian mammals haven't evolved to deal with hunting pressure from humans, so you should only take so many. This problem fixes itself with time. Agricultural peoples were more permanently handicapped. Their culture prevented them from responding to the damage they did to their land, so the damage just continues to grow.

Perception and awareness are inherently reciprocal. It is a mistake to regard the land as inanimate, unable to perceive us and respond to our presence. This is most persuasively understood through his metaphor of the hand: in order for your hand to feel physical objects in the world around you, it must itself be physical, touchable. As he puts it in Becoming Animal, "As breathing involves a continual oscillation between exhaling and inhaling, offering ourselves to the world at one moment and drawing the world into ourselves at the next, so sensory perception entails a like reciprocity, exploring the moss with our fingers while feeling the moss touching us back, at one moment gazing the mountains and at the next feeling ourselves seen, or sensed, from that distance."

Just as humans are not the sole bearers of awareness, perception, and consciousness, nor are we the sole producers of expression. This is something I'd realized in many specifics (trees, in particular) but just barely avoided seeing the forest. For example, in music. Music is clearly communication, often deep communication, a kind of expression that doesn't translate into thoughts but remains its own, inherent meaning. The same, I'd already known, was true of the dance of clouds in that ultimate canvass, the sky - a writing that reveals all human scribblings as crass and uninspired. As I came to know trees, I saw that their bodies, both the individual forms of their branches and the patterns of textures and growth that distinguished species. It is indeed possible to recognize tree species 'as old friends,' and it is their embodied expression that allows us to do so. Abram's revelation is to expand this to include our whole environment. The whole earth is speaking to us, all the time, and it is to our own impoverishment if we decline to listen and engage with it.

David Abram is, in my mind, the principle philosopher of the modern age. He has brought us out of the limited philosophical scope of Western tradition, and combined the most relevant insights it has produced with the wisdom of happier cultures. Most importantly, his philosophy and scholarship engages the most pressing issues and provides us a felicitous route back to a healthy relationship with the land and with each other, and to an ultimately fulfilling way to live.(less)

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Apr 03, 2010

Angelia rated it

This reads like poetry, and given the subject matter, poesy is perfect. Abram's work is quite popular in the pagan community because of its emphasis on nature and on the feminine, a world left far behind after the Industrial Revolution and certainly the technological revolution we live in now. I always hear the echo of Wordsworth when I think of what Abram is trying to achieve here, a return to the place where the world is not "too much with us," and where everything we see in nature i...more

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Aug 28, 2008

Michelle rated it

Shelves: summer08

Capital! Capital! Capital!

The first thing that amazes me about this book is how poetic David Abram's writing is on a book of theories. Page after page, I never got lost in his many abstract ideas (still new to me) because his language holds life in itself, much like his beloved Earth.

The real chunk of the book starts with a crash course on phenomenology, but soon ecology, language, perception, Greek philosophy, mythology and native cultures are all synthesized harmoniou...more

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Jun 07, 2008

Chandler rated it

Even though it reads as speculation, it's engrossing speculation--

Probably showing my ignorance in these subjects, but what I found most interesting is the way Abram is able to drape a reverant spiritual framework onto hard matter; in my experience, the arguments for "everything is exactly as it is" tend to be rather bleak in their conclusions, ignoring the subject of mystery completely.

Thankfully, the book isn't spirituality justified by the terrible new-age "...more

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Feb 17, 2008

jeremy rated it

"to be sure, our obliviousness to nonhuman nature is today held in place by ways of speaking that simply deny intelligence to other species and to nature in general, as well as by the very structures of our civilized existence- by the incessant drone of motors that shut out the voices of birds and of the winds; by electric lights that eclipse not only the stars but the night itself; by air "conditioners" that hide the seasons; by offices, automobiles, and shopping malls that fina...more

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Feb 26, 2009

Jason Weeks rated it

Recommends it for: Anyone with an interest in language and thought

Shelves: reviewed

"I felt myself stripped naked by an alien gaze infinitely more lucid and precise than my own."

Thus does David Abram describe his close encounter with a condor in the Himalayas. Following his experiences with Nepalese holy men, Balinese shamans, and Apache story-tellers, magician David Abram returned home to a modern, western culture completely severed from participation with nature.

In this book -- as lucid and precise as the condor's gaze -- Abram argues that hu...more

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“A story must be judged according to whether it makes sense. And 'making sense' must be here understood in its most direct meaning: to make sense is to enliven the senses. A story that makes sense is one that stirs the senses from their slumber, one that opens the eyes and the ears to their real surroundings, tuning the tongue to the actual tastes in the air and sending chills of recognition along the surface of the skin. To make sense is to release the body from the constraints imposed by outworn ways of speaking, and hence to renew and rejuvenate one's felt awareness of the world. It is to make the senses wake up to where they are.” — 3 people liked it

“...along with the other animals, the stones, the trees, and the clouds, we ourselves are characters within a huge story that is visibly unfolding all around us, participants within the vast imagination, or Dreaming, of the world.” — 2 people liked it

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