Enchantment, Place and Space: Implications for Cultural Astronomy

Abstract

This paper considers the experience of enchantment, especially in terms of relationality and ‘concrete magic’. It then turns to place and moment, key elements of that experience, as distinct from space and time. In these respects, enchantment cannot be captured by the modern division (with older roots) into material vs. spiritual; it is indefeasibly both. Turning to the implications for cultural astronomy, I argue that they render indefensible the assumption of the sky or cosmos as an inert, passive backdrop for human meanings to be projected onto them. Meaning, as pointed up by enchantment as an especially intense kind of meaning, is necessarily participatory and relational, which means that agency and subjectivity cannot be confined to humans alone.