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Source: Paul Cudenec
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In recent essays I have been looking at the divine magic of this world and the ways in which this has always been recognised and celebrated in traditional human cultures.
In these next few articles, I am going to explore why it might be that this sense of the sacred in nature has been marginalised in contemporary society, before eventually going on to suggest how we might go about bringing it back to the centre of our thinking.
The term “disenchantment of the world” (Entzauberung der Welt) was famously invented by the German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920), so it seems appropriate to start with a look at his analysis of how this came about.
Weber identified close parallels between the growth of the industrial-capitalist mindset and the emergence of the Protestant branch of Christianity.
“The direction in which the influence was exerted was the same in Protestant countries which knew the most diverse imaginable political, economic, geographic and ethnic conditions; this was the same on the decisive points and, in particular, was independent of the degree of the development of capitalism as an economic system, whether we are looking at New England, at the German diaspora, at southern France, at the Netherlands or at England, to which we could further add the Scots-Irish of Ireland and a great number of other German territories.
“I have established the ‘absence’ of the ‘capitalist spirit’ (in the sense which I have given to this term!) elsewhere, including in Italy, the territory in which, before the Reformation, the capitalist economy was most developed (the situation is the same in Flanders)”. [1]
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Weber (pictured) explained that while the Roman Catholic Church had always accommodated the accumulation of wealth (in contradiction to the teachings of Christ), it had never glorified this activity – indeed, a sense of guilt amongst the well-off was fostered to encourage their compensatory charitable contributions to the coffers of the Church.
With Protestantism, while getting rich for the sake of getting rich was still frowned on, obtaining wealth as the fruit of professional dedication was regarded as a divine blessing. [2]
Working hard in order to earn money was regarded as a moral virtue – even one that formed part of the individual’s salvation.
“Work was, in itself, the purpose of life, as laid down by God… An aversion to work was a symptom of the absence of a state of grace”. [3]
This strange new belief, so very different from the old-fashioned approach of doing only the minimum of work to get by, thus helped sweep away the traditional European ethical view that it was “sordid” and “perverse” to lead a life dominated by an accursed hunger for gold (“auri sacra fames“). [4]
The modern pursuit of profit as the purpose of someone’s life, rather than as a means to satisfy their material needs, was the “inversion of a state of affairs that one could describe as ‘natural’,” remarks Weber. [5]
“Any economic activity fuelled by the ‘capitalist spirit’ is, certainly, directly opposed to traditionalism”. [6]
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Puritan Protestants frowned on any kind of worldly joy, such as frequenting taverns or taking part in sports. [7]
Even sex between man and wife was not supposed to bring pleasure, but to serve only as “a sober procreation of children”, according to religious leader Richard Baxter. [8]
As I set out in my 2014 book The Stifled Soul of Humankind, [9] in my native country they also set out to do away with Merrie England, its folklore and its traditions, such as the Padstow May Day that I enjoyed in 2025. [10]
Writes Weber: “The Puritans’ furious hatred of everything that smacked of ‘superstition’, of everything that suggested a magical or hierurgical dispensation of grace, was directed at the Christian feast of Christmas as well as at the Maypole”. [11]
In his work on the sociology of religion, Weber points out that the Old Testament, very important in Protestantism, was the product of an advanced urban civilisation in the Middle East.
He writes that Judaism has a “particular historical importance in the blooming of the economic ethics of the modern West” [12] and involves a “systematic regulation that also applied to everyday ethics”. [13]
Weber notes that the decrees of the most ancient Hebrew sacred law “presupposed the existence of a monetary economy”. [14]
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So there was a gulf between this view of the world and the traditional lives of European peasants “so strongly connected to nature, so dependent on organic processes and natural events and as such so little orientated towards rational systemisation, including in the economic sphere”. [15]
For people living close to the land, the magic of the natural world and the elements was deeply ingrained, along with the importance of all the festivals and dances through which they bonded with the sacred earth.
But the disciplined domination of “economics” and industrialism meant that “in its entirety, the content of human existence, ever more rationalised, left the organic circuit of the simple rural life”. [16]
The Puritan outlook represented “the exact opposite of ‘joy-of-being-in the world’ (Weltfreude)”, judges Weber. [17]
It promoted instead the ideal of being reserved and self-disciplined – robot-like, we might say today – and thus eminently suitable for the dehumanising demands of industry or the military.
“Destroying the innocent and instinctive joy of life was its most urgent task; instilling order into the life conduct of its followers was its principal means”. [18]
“At the time of its birth, capitalism needed workers who went along, for reasons of conscience, with their economic exploitation”. [19]
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In order for industrial development to advance, there had to emerge a way of thinking and living that was conducive to its agenda and this change in outlook was provided by Protestantism, says Weber.
The specific features exclusive to a life completely impregnated by the spirit of capitalism included, he said, “a cold objectivity, insensitive to humanity”, “a calculating spirit” and being confined within a narrow specialism. [20]
A sort of double denial of life was involved in the Protestant work ethic – you were supposed to work hard to earn money but not to spend that money on enjoying yourself!
Weber adds that this treatment of a human being as primarily a unit for production – which obviously forms part of our contemporary corporate-run mentality – was shared by the Marxist outlook, which also spurned deeper meaning in life in favour of a rigid “economic” (money-orientated) approach. [21]
The “left-wing” labelling of men and women as “workers” has always struck me as a pitiful reflection of the dehumanising viewpoint of the exploiting class.
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Weber also explores the way in which some strands of Protestantism adopted the idea of the “elect” – the chosen few who were guaranteed a place at God’s side, in contrast to the rest who were definitively excluded.
This, he argues, meant there was no need for “sacramental magic” to provide the path to salvation. [22]
“The great process, in the history of religion, of the disenchantment of the world, which began with the prophecy of ancient Judaism and, in association with Greek scientific thought, rejected all the magical means of seeking salvation as arising from superstition and sacrilege, found here its culmination.
“The authentic Puritan even rejected any trace of religious ceremony at the graveside and buried his loved ones without song or music, so as to leave no room for any kind of ‘superstition’, any confidence in a salvational act of a magical-sacramental order. There was not only no magical means, but no means of any kind, to bring down divine grace to someone to whom God had chosen to deny it”. [23]
Weber again makes the contrast with Catholicism, in which “the priest was a magician who carried out the miracle of transubstantiation”. [24]
The Protestant faith, so suited to the new industrial capitalism, had spurned the idea of a sacred world, infused with divinity, in favour of the Middle Eastern idea of a God who had created the world from nothing and remained apart from it.
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“The path of self-divinisation and the fully mystical possession of God was closed, because it was identified, in the literal sense of the term in any case, as blasphemy, the idolatry of human beings. Another ultimate consequence was also forbidden: pantheism”. [25]
Puritan Protestantism encouraged the reduction of the human existence to dry duty, economic function and obedience to authority, with the prohibition of “all enjoyment of the beauty of the world, of art or of exalted state of mind and personal emotions”. [26]
In other words, the anti-traditional modern industrial-capitalist mindset set out to steal from us everything that makes life worth living.
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[1] Max Weber, L’Ethique protestante et l’esprit du capitalisme, suivi d’autres essais, édité, traduit et présenté par Jean-Pierre Grossein (Paris: Gallimard, 2003), p. 335. Translations into English from the French translations of Weber’s work are my own.
[2] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, p. 235.
[3] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, pp. 207-08.
[4] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, p. 53.
[5] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, p. 27.
[6] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, p. 378.
[7] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, p. 225.
[8] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, p. 206.
[9] Paul Cudenec, The Stifled Soul of Humankind (Sussex: Winter Oak, 2014) https://winteroak.org.uk/wp-
[10] Paul Cudenec, ‘Channelling the spirit of life’ https://winteroak.org.uk/2025/
[11] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, p. 227.
[12] Max Weber, Sociologies des religions, choix d’extraits et traduction Jean-Pierre Grossein (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), p. 331, cit. Max Weber, Sociologie de la religion (‘Economie et société’), traduction de l’allemand, introduction et notes par Isabelle Kalinowski (Paris: Flammarion, 2006), pp. 285-86 FN.
[13] Weber, Sociologie de la religion, p. 320.
[14] Weber, Sociologie de la religion, p. 158.
[15] Weber, Sociologie de la religion, p. 206.
[16] Weber, Sociologie de la religion, p. 440.
[17] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, p. 13.
[18] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, p. 137.
[19] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, p. 247 FN.
[20] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, p. 407.
[21] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, p. 29.
[22] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, p. 107.
[23] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, pp. 106-107.
[24] Weber, L’Ethique protestante, p. 132.
[25] Weber, Sociologie de la religion, pp. 351-352.
[26] Weber, Sociologie de la religion, p. 358.