C.S. Lewis on the “Four Ages” of Enchantment

"I think there are these four ages about nearly everything. Let’s give them names. They are the Unenchanted Age, the Enchanted Age, the Disenchanted Age, and the Re-enchanted Age." — C.S. Lewis

Lewis was spot on with his idea of a cycle of enchantment. Civilizations as a whole go through these four ages in mass cycles over centuries. Individuals also go through the same cycle within a single lifetime, regardless of which phase of the grand "enchantment cycle" their society at large is currently in.

Society today is somewhere in the transition between the Disenchanted Age and the Re-enchanted Age. We've been through "God is dead" and the New Atheist movement. Church attendance has dwindled, but society is no better for it. People find something lacking in their lives under the materialist secular framework. Hence there is the start of a movement toward re-enchantment. Young people are returning to church—but not just any church— traditional forms of Christianity: the Traditional Catholic Latin Mass and Eastern Orthodoxy. There is also a rise in Neo-Paganism, witchcraft, and New Age movements like tarot, mediums, and astrology.

I was raised Catholic, but eventually became lapsed and fell away from the Church. I suppose even cradle Catholics are "unenchanted" when they are still in the cradle, as they are too young to understand religion or God or just about anything else.

When I was old enough to understand, I was enchanted by default, as the Catholic worldview was all that I knew. I went to mass weekly and went to a Catholic school. Everyone I knew was Catholic, and we all took it for granted that Christianity was true.

But by high school, I started questioning much of the religious dogma I took for granted and had suspicions it was not all true. By college, I became fully disenchanted, taking the Bible to be complete fiction and becoming very skeptical of any and all things supernatural.

I followed Sam Harris and the New Atheist movement for several years—until I encountered Jonathan Pageau, who gave me a new framework with which to view Christianity and the Bible. I realized those stories were much deeper than my child self and New Atheist self had thought.

I became re-enchanted. I did not fully understand Christianity and the Bible or the nature of God. But I knew there was more to reality than reductionist materialism. I am still basically there. I would say I am a Christian in that I believe in the message of Jesus, though I have not fully returned to Catholicism, because I cannot say I believe all the dogma of the Church. But if my enchantment cycle continues, I may get there again in the future. Only God knows.