Spoiler Alert: The following post will make reference to things revealed over the course of the Magnus Archive.
Horror stories, at least when done well, capture something which nearly all other genres miss. The structure of a good horror story assumes the “daily life” we all inhabit as we go to work, do our grocery shopping, pine for our vacation in the far-too-distant future. It relegates this “daily life” to the peripheries of the story and emphasizes the strange and terrible Thing(s) that impose themselves on someone. The juxtaposition of daily life just off stage and the suffering of the characters produces something analogous to our own experience of reality, where our difficulties and fears press on us while “everyone else” goes on as normal, unaffected by the terror we feel so acutely.
Go listen to the Magnus Archives. It is a great podcast.
The Magnus Archives captures this feeling very well. The “place” is the Magnus Institute, an organization dedicated to the studying of paranormal experiences, based in London. While ordinary life continues outside, completely out of frame, the podcast focuses in on the primary source material for the Institute’s investigations: statements. People who experience some great terror that they suspect, or know, to be paranormal make their way (one way or another) to the Institute to give their statements, recounting in detail the context and the incident(s) that put them in contact with some dread supernatural experience. What initially appears to be a “monster of the week” radio play format begins, over time, to tie things together, revealing that the seemingly disconnected experiences recounted in the statements connect to one of the 14 Fears, or Powers, or sometimes named gods, which reflect and feed on the terror of mortals.
The early Christians, like their Hebrew forebears, did not think that their pagan neighbors worshipped nothing. (Although God did have something to say about that)They thought their pagan neighbors worshipped demons. The devil, in some sense, had usurped the kingship of the world and sin created the dominion of death. It is this that Jesus freed us from. So when the magnus Archives unveils the Powers, or the Fears, it taps into this understanding. The esoteric knowledge of Powers unrecognizable by a post-Christian society enchants people, both characters and audiences. That these powers enslave and feed off people, something extremely well expressed in Season 5, would look to early Christians like the inevitable result of playing with those powers.
Look, for instance, at the way characters who work(ed) at the Magnus Institute got involved. Tim lost his brother to the Strange, and so in a quest for vengeance plunged into a career studying the paranormal and so came to the Institute. Jonathan was marked by the Spider, and his terror and need to understand enmeshed him at the Institute. The Beholder, the Fear that feeds on knowledge of suffering and terror, marks the inevitable terminus of such exploration.
So too does the tendency of characters who grow too close to their chosen Power (or, in some cases, those chosen by the Powers) to turn into Avatars who actively spread the relevant fear and come to feed on it themselves.
As an aside, before Season 5 I had been convinced that we, the audience, were the Eye. In our hunger for horror, we demand the statements, in a way forcing the characters to relive, or at least retell, their worst experiences. It is a very Cabin in the Woods interpretation.
Unsurprisingly, there is no religion in the Magnus Archives. There are cults aplenty, but no religion. The difference between a cult and a religion is the nature of its information. All cults are gnostic, in that they involve a secret gnosis (knowledge) t hat the initiated receive in stages. The value of such information is its secrecy; if everyone knew everything like Elias in the Magnus Archives, then Elias would hold no power. Thus Elias spends his time sufficiently informing his underlings to make them useful for his ends while simultaneously withholding information and misdirecting those underlings lest they put enough pieces together to recognize the picture and become a threat to his designs.
Religion, on the other hand, is public knowledge. The truth claims are not more powerful if fewer people know them, nor do they weaken as more people come to know them. This is because Religion, distinct from Cult, is not primarily about what God can do for you. Religion is an institutionalization of justice, offering God His due insofar as we are able. Embedded in that claim is an understanding that the world is the way it is, and we ought to act in certain ways (and not in others) because God has created and sustains reality in this way and not another. If everyone had a truer understanding of reality, and how it works, and how we ought to act, people would both become freer and more potent, i.e. better able to change the world according to their (true) desires. But that is secondary. Acknowledging God is God because it is True, and not for the utilitarian end of changing the world to conform to my desires, is key. Reducing God to the Big Man in the Sky reduces Religion to Cult, God to a Power (or Fear), Truth to Utility.
While my argument to this point is philosophical, intended for anyone and tenable regardless of one’s confessional faith (or lack thereof), I would feel remiss if I did not repeat and slightly unpack this single claim that rests on Revelation: Jesus’ Passion, Death, and Resurrection liberates us from an ordering of the world where utility reigns, secrecy confers power, and “freedom” requires the enslavement of others. Jesus’ self-offering renders true worship to God, thus enabling us (by the grace of the Holy Spirit) to recognize God as God, no longer reducing Him to a Power or a Fear, and allowing Truth to mutually build up rather than seizing truths and twisting them for personal gain.
It is necessary to distinguish esoteric knowledge from difficult knowledge. Esoteric knowledge is acquired without a methodology. There is no natural causal connection between what I do and the knowledge I gain. To concoct an extreme example, if I draw a circle in goat blood, inhale some illicit substances, and chant some dark spell invoking Black Phillip, there is no relationship between my actions and whatever knowledge I (allegedly) attain. Thus esotericism is at core a kind of occasionalism, albeit one where God is not necessarily the agent. It requires some supernatural agent to bridge the gap between the blood circle and, say, the knowledge of my enemy’s secrets.
Go watch The Witch. It is a great film.
If, however, I pick up the Bible and read the Book of Exodus, and then read a number of commentaries or studies on the Book of Exodus, then my knowledge has a relationship with my actions. Theology (or philosophy) may be difficult, and require long hours of study. But the same is true of physics, or medicine, or all sorts of other disciplines. In fact, part of the reward - internally and externally - of these studies can only be recognized by submitting to the difficulty in humility. The young student of physics may have a spark of enthusiasm which strengthens him, but that does not necessarily mean his studies will be easy. Nor does it mean that the enthusiastic physics student will be superior to the student who lacks such a disposition. So too with Religious knowledge. One may have an internal spark which creates an initial enjoyment and enthusiasm, or one may not. Religion is ordered to Truth, and so that internal experience, while not nothing, is not necessary.
Faith and Reason are often opposed, but I resist this with the core of my being. I stand in great company in this conviction. “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth” In the last century, Catholics fought bitterly about the relationship between grace and nature. I encounter the consequences of that fight, or perhaps better the descendants of that fight, often. A great fear of mine is that, in the violent separation of, and forced conflict between philosophy and theology, Christian faith is being reduced to a kind of esoteric knowledge. The knowledge of God, the knowledge of Jesus as the Incarnate Word, is often presented as unconnected from our actions. Faith is something you have or you do not, you are given or you are not, and it is unconnected to anything you do or do not do.
I hate this approach, even if I find myself falling into it sometimes. For if my faith is truly to be mine, and not some copy-pasted faith externally imposed into me, then my thoughts, feelings, decisions, and actions matter. Philosophy is the only way I know how to communicate that with someone who does not already share my convictions in faith. I cannot bring myself to command someone who does not believe to “just have faith.” I respect the human intellect and will (which is the Imago Dei) too much to ever ask the suspension of the former or to try and bind the latter. One currently popular way of describing faith might sound something like having an encounter with Jesus. But what of someone who thinks Jesus does not exist, or if He existed that he died and stayed dead long ago? I cannot simply tell someone to have an encounter with someone they do not know. I can, however, tell someone about God. I can speak and reason and argue and contemplate God, sometimes called “of the Philosophers,” and will always contend that God can be known about. Jesus, the Son and Perfect Image of God the Father, offers the promise and the path to know God, personally, as a friend.
Perhaps even more than that, philosophy is the only way I can see to prevent the reduction of Religion to Cult, of God to the Big Man in the Sky, of Religious Truth to Esotericism. For if God is just a slightly nicer Zeus then I deny He is owed worship. The human heart is an idol making factory, and philosophy, while not sufficient, helps prevent the construction of an idol to replace the worship of the Living God.