When Enchantment Becomes a Snare: On Disenchantment and Guardian Angels

Enchantment is not a good in itself. It all depends on what you’re being enchanted by, and how that enchantment is working.

Written by Professor Jacob Philips for Catholic Unscripted

One of the things that’s most likely to prove fruitless for a Catholic seeking to deepen or improve their knowledge of the faith would be to read whatever comes up when searching the words ‘angel’ or ‘guardian angel’ online, or picking-up books with these words in the average book shop. Catholics should be expressly recommended not to do this, because there are vast amounts said and written about angels, and the majority of it is cringe, or silly, or unhelpful, and sometimes even spiritually deleterious.

Yet the reality of these awesome spiritual intelligences is a necessary aspect of the Catholic faith, a rich doctrinal tradition, testified to in Scripture along with countless mystical writings, and portrayed beautifully in sacred art. The Catechism leaves us in no doubt about the role of these radiant heavenly beings in sustaining God’s creation, and indeed preserving and guiding families, nations, communities, and particularly individual souls. As St Basil writes, ‘Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life’.

On occasion these two very different approaches to the angelic realm overlap: when Catholics encounter the idea that they can or should name their Guardian Angel. If you search this practice online you’ll soon discover all the good reasons as to why it is wrong.

It implies the human being has power over their angel, but tradition dictates this angel serves God and God alone (notice the ‘angel of God’ prayer uses the verbs to ‘light and guide, instruct and guard’, not serve). You also cannot be certain the name you apportion is divinely inspired, because it is not given in Scripture. It could be a product of your own imagination, or worse - something else’s imagination.

The Church is clear on all this, for the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy reads:

“Popular devotion to the holy angels, which is legitimate and good, can, however, also give rise to possible deviations . . . . The practice of assigning names to the holy angels should be discouraged, except in the cases of Gabriel, Raphael, and Michael whose names are contained in Holy Scripture” (no. 217).

So far so simple. Yet here is an important point, connected to one of the most discussed themes of the current year: enchantment. That is, one of the things which is often missing in today’s calls for a re-enchantment of the world is a proper awareness of the fact enchantment is not a good in itself. It all depends on what you’re being enchanted by, and how that enchantment is working. Naming Guardian Angels is an enchanted practice – and this is why it is wrong.

We use this word enchantment today following the sociologist Max Weber who coined it in order to describe the ancient world as opposed to the modern ‘disenchanted’ world. For most, our current state of disenchantment means simply the world presented by modern science, stripped of the divine life which imbues it with unfathomable wonder and beauty.

For Weber, however, it originally meant something quite different. He describes the first disenchantment as heralded by the prophets of the Old Testament who, in their thoroughgoing monotheism and their demand for exclusive allegiance to the Creator God, were pointing to the divine power which is infinitely superior to all the forces of nature worshipped by pagans. Hence the unpronounceability of the divine name given in Exodus 3:14, translated as “I Am Who I Am”. The Old Testament describes a process of disenchantment insofar as people are commanded not to dare to utter God’s name, nor to represent or symbolise Him.

The same process continues and reaches its fulfilment in the New Testament. He who cannot even be named is given to the world in Jesus Christ – a representation of God who is God Himself, the name which is above all names. St John calling Jesus the “Word” (Logos) of God, meant he was the living embodiment of that unspeakable word given to Moses. And because he was understood as God incarnate, he was infinitely beyond the manipulation and techniques of human beings seeking their own advantage.

Using manipulation or techniques to influence divine or otherworldly forces was thus cast asunder by the events of the New Testament. This is why St Paul condemns principalities and powers (Eph 6:12), and says Jesus led them away like captives taken into exile (Col 2:15). Indeed he makes this latter point precisely to instruct believers in Colossae against practicing the techniques most often used to manipulate otherworldly forces – dietary stipulations and rituals bound to planetary movements (“Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath day”).

Disenchantment was originally not the de-spiritualising of a worldview, then, but a putting of spiritual matters into their proper order under the jurisdiction of the one God revealed to us in Christ. The original German word Entzauberung means literally ‘de-magic-ing’, and was first translated in English as ‘demagification’. Yes, there are dietary stipulations involved in the Catholic faith, like Friday abstinence and Lenten fasting, and yes, the festival of Easter is bound to the movements of the cosmos - but it is not these things that imbue believers with spiritual power in and of themselves, they’re simply approved means of pointing to the God who has all power.

To name one’s Guardian Angel is to forfeit the doctrinal tradition surrounding them for manipulation and technique, that is, for magic. It is to claim a profoundly mysterious aspect of God’s grace as lying under one’s own jurisdiction. If we’re really entering a period of re-enchantment, of “re-magicification” – then the great challenge will be ensuring that cooperation with grace isn’t forfeited by the manipulation and technique and tries to claim God’s grace all for itself.