The Spell of the Sensuous

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Breathing the flesh of the landscape - Rated
The main thesis of this book is that the alphabet, or rather, the adaptation of the hebrew alphabet that the greeks effected, is to blame for our current state of separation from nature.
However, the real joy about reading the fundamentation of such claim is that David Abram manages to drag you into the animistic view of the world.
The way he describes his own experiences is highly poetic. Anyone who has travelled to asia knows what it feels like to be there and the difficulties of comming back to the western society.
When he analyses indigenous concepts and practices, you can't help immersing yourself in the forgotten magick of the sensuous landscape.
This natural form of awareness,according to Abram, could be the solution to the ecological crisis and the unhappy separated state of human kind.

paying respect - Rated
Review from Jay Griffiths, author of "Wild: An Elemental Journey"

This is one of the rarest, most utterly original books there is, and indeed could ever be. It is written by someone whose soul is that of a magician and poet and whose art is so triumphant with sheer spirit that every sentence is radical and radicalizing. It is a book whose comprehension of the human condition is generous, natural and enormous. It describes the necessity of nature not just for human being but for human thinking; this is a cry for the protection of the human mind.

It has deeply influenced my own thinking, from the moment I read it, and has remained one of the best books I've ever read.

its the way he tells it... - Rated
Its unsurprising that certain 'rationalists' who have unsuspectingly come across this book have had found its 'arguments' 'assumptions' 'assertions' problematic. They are problematic and SHOULD be problematic- the language is pushing at the boundaries, trying to explain what can only really be experienced. At no stage in the book does Abram suggest otherwise. The essential argument is simple- through civilization, writing systems and other forms of logos inspired 'mental technology' we have disconnected ourselves from the sensuous world and overly abstracted it- resulting in the twin related problems of environmental and mental degradation which are now reaching a tipping point in the western world. The solution is not some kind of fantasy retreat from civilization or any kind of grand program for change but a re-alignment of each individuals relationship to sensory reality. It would be nice if we were able to manage this 're-alignment' before lots of people die in economic & environ/mental collapse but i'm with the pessimists/realists who hold that history has never worked that way before and we're unlikely to be the lucky excpetion. Roman empires rise then fall spilling a lot of blood in the proccess.

Any old fool can come up with this kind of argument and sound clever (look I just did it)- Abram makes you realise its actually true. To go beyond understanding Abrams argument at the 'rational' 'intellectual' level is a real mind bender and risks unravelling your whole word-view if you're not careful.

Although you are not being asked to leave your critical faculties at home; when engaging with this book at the 'sensuous' level it does require a certain leap of faith into an unknown mode of mentality and that can be a disquieting, almost queasy feeling (like going down a proverbial rabbit hole) for the uninitiated. Without wanting to sound too 'challenging' I think that this is a leap too far for certain 'intellectual' readers who feel this is verging into 'new age' 'metaphysical' woo-hoo. So it will be left to those of us already initiated into woo-hoo: the deep ecologists, the druids, cabalists, magicians, occultists, witches, Jungians, gaia activists, neo-pagans, people with their minds generally left swinging open in the breeze, schizophrenics, simplicity activists etc etc to make the leap. This is a leap 'we've' already made by engaging with such sensuous, trickster nonsense in the first place and so Abrams risks merely preaching to a mostly converted crowd who have already had their minds short-circuited.

That's why I give it 4 stars- its been said many many many times before- but it needs to keep being 'said' in different ways in the hope that more people will 'feel' it.

Intriguing ideas, but confused and indulgent - Rated
This is a difficult and fascinating book, exploring subtle and complex and ideas, not always convincingly. I found it deeply thought-provoking but was left yearning for more clarity, precision and depth of thought.

Broadly speaking the argument is that humanity has lost its intimate connection with nature, that this relates to the development of writing, and that it results in our modern capacity to disrespect and destroy nature.

In developing these themes the book dsiplays significant problems with its argumentation, its structure and its style. Together, I believe, these undermine its ability to do any more than pleasantly indulge already-committed environmentalists with muddy, half-baked thinking.

Abram develops fascinating ideas in probing the inner perspectives of cultures that have not lost their connection with nature. It was intriguing to get the beginnings of an understanding of what it might feel like to have such a different relationship with a homeland that one could almost read it, and how bereft one would be to move away from it. The connection with the development of writing is also imaginative and up to a point convincing. However, Abram is unfortunately distinctly weak at explicating subtle concepts and expressing nuances of feeling to the reader. Time and again I felt I half-grasped something that the author was muddily presenting through confused, slippery arguments. Time and again I was just not quite convinced, and just when a little more clarity was needed to help me comprehend, the author slpipped into poetic musings, seemingly abdicating explanation. The concepts of phenomonology in particular are extremely difficult. Abram is highly original in their application, but needs to be less vague.

The structural problem is the massive focus on the argument about the effect of writing on our perception of nature. This dominates the book in a way that ultimately cuts it off from its own context - i.e. may leave the reader asking 'so what?'. The context is mostly provided by a short and wholly inadequate final chapter which glosses discussion of consequences and implications. The argument about writing is also so long that it absolutely needs greater rigour and clarity, and willingness to address obvious counterarguments, to avoid being at times dull, repetitive and meandering.

Abram suggests towards the end that he doesn't want the book to be judged in terms of conventional rational argument, but rather as a story that can help us make sense of the world. I don't find this convincing. It is perfectly reasonable to question the limits of traditional rationality and critique its contribution to political and environmental problems. And it is great to present ideas in an imaginative, creative way rather than as academic philosophy. But in the case of this book it just doesn't add up: the lengthy invocation of writers such as Husserl and Merleau-Ponty left me feeling that I was undoubtedly being offered some kind of logical theoretical argument - but simply an unconvincing one. Rather than unifying theory and thought with the poetic, as many thinkers have done over the centuries, Abram sets them side-by-side in an awkward, jarring alternation. The poetic elements therefore feel like a stylistic indulgence added to soften the reading experience, to emotionally attune the reader and render them less critical of the flaws of the rest of the text.

Having said all that, I found considerable value in this book for the gems of originality in Abram's ideas, despite it being frustrating and labourious to read. And I also have an admiration for its audacity and ambition.

A Work of Heart - Rated
For a long time I have suspected that something like this book must exist somewhere, and now I have found it. If like me you have been looking for a healing application of phenomenological insight and spiritual poetics to the world/self divide, then this is definitely my recommendation. Many authors give their promissory introduction and then add nothing to it but (no-doubt well-intentioned yet meaning-impoverished) fluffy new-age babble. In contrast, Spell focuses us on lived experience and the kinship with nature that is already affective, although denied effect, in our leadened hearts. This is a work of art that brings into full view the possibility of a human relationship with nature that overcomes the alienation intrinsic to the historic western human identity. As long as there are people like Abram writing, and people who are alive enough to feel moved by such writing, there is hope of changing a catastrophically anthropocentric future that might otherwise have been bleakly inevitable.