How to Fall in Love Better: A Field Guide to Enlightened Enchantment

Enchantment, J.R.R. Tolkien believed, is “as necessary for the health and complete functioning of the Human as is sunlight for physical life.” But enchantment is a story we tell ourselves that tells us back to ourselves, and like every story, it can be true or false. Love is the most powerful enchantment we know, the most transformative if true and the most dangerous if false. “When we are falsely enchanted, we desire either to possess the enchanting being or be possessed by it,” W.H. Auden obs