All of this—the movement from an iconic cosmos to a mechanized one—is what Charles Taylor hauntingly called “excarnation.” In a past “enchanted age” there was a “strong sense” of the sacred, which “marks out certain people, times, place, and actions” and is “by its very nature localizable, and its place is clearly marked out in ritual and sacred geography.”21 Our modern world, on the other hand, is haunted by a sense of loss: “This is what we sense, and often regret the passing of, when we contemplate the medieval cathedral. God-forsakenness is an experience of those whose ancestral culture
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