Patrick Harpur has attempted something quite
extraordinary and difficult. Not only does he want to capture lightning in a
bottle, he wants to show how it is done. In both these aims he is only
partially successful.

Imagining the world may be the one
single defining characteristic of genius. It is those sudden shafts of light
that illuminate our existence in a way never known before that transform the
world. It is never the same again. Harpur tries to grasp this most illusive of
acts in a highly charged and vibrant account that cuts swathes through
traditional historical and cultural structures, and makes new and novel
connections across time and space. This is both his strength and his weakness.
The plausibility of the thesis behind the book relies on him being able to
sweep the reader along and give over their trust to him. When this works it is
hugely enjoyable, when it does not it stretches credulity just a little too
much.

He speaks of universals, such as the tension
between the rational and the unseen, he looks to re-enchant the world and he
sees significance everywhere. He does seem to believe in coincidence or perhaps
synchronicity, but in the same way that a delusion has its own self-fulfilling
logic, interprets everything as evidence, and even the lack of evidence as
confirmation of the occult, that something is so important that it must be kept
hidden.

It may be said that he is rather selective in
his use of supporting data, and the scholarship that canvasses such diverse
sources is really assertion. Sometimes, it is engaging, and he uses many of the
arguments of Joseph Campbell and others to link together anthropological and
cultural themes. Sometimes, it is bravado as he moves quickly from Inuit legend
to the Ancient Greeks and ends up in the next paragraph in Valhalla. But hold
on, if you don’t like that conjunction there will be another one along in a page
or two. Perhaps if you keep on throwing up ideas and connections one will ring
true sooner or later.

Some of the most original material concerns
the imagery associated with rationalism; something that is always a timely
reminder whenever it occurs. His point is that we laden our observations and
science with a language as rich in metaphor and emotion, full of aesthetic
sense and rapture, even at the very point at which we claim to be objective. He
notes how credulous a scientific community can be when it wants to believe, and
cites examples of hoaxes and charlatans all along the way, but does not seem
quite able to turn this insight upon himself.

Harpur does suggest that what really ails the
modern world is the estrangement of the soul. He argues that we should let a
little madness into our lives in order to ‘ensoul’ the world and restore our
vision. And he goes on to say that this secret is not really a secret at all;
it has been passed on down the ages along a "Golden Chain of
initiates". He may have a point about the way in which we imagine the
world tells us something of ourselves, perhaps more than is readily
acknowledged, but the reach of this book is greater than its grasp, its detail
over-elaborate ornament, its imagery too often opaque. It is indeed, ‘a’
history of the imagination, but if the "secret of the secret fire remains
a matter for oneself" the point of it all is more obscure at the end than
the beginning.

© 2003 Mark Welch  

Dr
Mark Welch is currently a Senior Lecturer and Postgraduate Coordinator in The School of
Nursing at the University of Canberra, Australia. His PhD investigated the
representation of madness in popular film, and his other research interests
include the mental health of refugees and victims of torture, and the history
of psychiatric epistemology.

Categories: Philosophical, Psychology