The following is the second of a two-part series. The first can be found here.
In a chapter titled “The Magic of Being Mormon”, [1] Stephen H. Webb presents us with an account on magic within Mormonism and its theology. Within Christianity, calling something magical, or the magic label itself, clearly, can only serve as a designation for various spells and empty incantations or, more straightforwardly, as a means to ridicule someone simply for holding this position. But it is precisely the Mormonism with its peculiar sense for both ancient magic and new evolutionary science that enables us to rethink the meaning and the theological sense of these allegedly non-Christian or simply “pagan” elements.
Webb is right that among many objections and prejudices against magic, the strongest is that magic “clashed with the belief that God is absolutely sovereign and thus in complete control of all events.”[2] But against such a prejudice, for Webb, “the sacrifice of Christ was sufficient to repair our relationship to the divine.”[3] In the era of quantum thinking in physics but also in philosophy and theology, we know that by using strictly causal thinking it is not possible to reveal more hidden layers of both physical and spiritual reality that surround us.
If we take only one example of such an enhanced view of our intellectual abilities, then we can contend that this way of thinking reveals “an innate ability of the human brain and psyche, drawing its deepest resources from the heart of the universe itself.”[4] As furthermore visible within the quantum field theory, the universe and all its constituents consist of energy in different states of excitation. People, tables, chairs, trees, stardust and so on are patterns of dynamic energy set against a background (the quantum vacuum) of still, unexcited energy (…) [W]hen two metal plates are placed very close together, they are attracted to each other because of the subtle pressure that the quantum vacuum exerts on each. The kind of transcendence illustrated by the quantum vacuum is similar to that described as the Tao or the Void (Sunyata) in many Taoist, Hindu and Buddhist texts.[5]
Two consequences can be inferred from this: firstly, we have now come close to our initial definition of God as based on Ruyer’s elaborations: it was a relation to the primeval chaos/ ungrounded abyssal ground in a time moment still not known to us; secondly, magical thinking appears now to be much more complex and dynamic than expected. The divine, or God, can now be viewed as a “kind of pervasive energy that can be tapped into.”[6] As such, God is not immaterial in relation to space nor eternal in relation to time:
Mormons believe that there is an essential continuity between this world and the other world, so that there are no gaps or gulfs between matter and spirit. God is not a unique entity who stands outside of the world and requires us to do likewise if we are to know anything about him. God is very much a part of the cosmos (or the cosmos is a part of him), which means that the way we come to know God is not different from the way we come to know anything else in the world.[7]
Reality as becoming, and the goal – “the perfectly dynamic creativity that God has already achieved”[8] – is the core of Mormonism’s radical theological invention. For Stephen H. Webb, the message of Mormonism as a branch of Christianity could now be described as follows:
If I am right that magic and religion are close relatives, then it simply makes sense that a new and exuberant religious tradition like Mormonism would mix the two together, but it also makes sense that Mormonism can show the rest of Christianity how to retrieve a truly magical (in the sense of wonder and awe at the works of God and the beauty of Christ) way of being in the world.[9]
It is now time to turn to the Nolan philosopher’s magical way of knowing the immense cosmic divine, or God.
Living in the 16th century, Giordano Bruno still believed in demons. Since his childhood, he had been encountering them as spiritual forces, being able to throw stones or snatch cloaks in the night. They were living creatures consisting of a subtle body, having the ability to fuse and contract themselves into various shapes, having also the ability to see the future.[10] But the magic of the Nolan philosopher soon became more intellectual and philosophical. By perfecting the art of memory (based on the art of mnemonology of Ramon Llull), he was convinced he was able to “connect” or “bind” the sacred knowledge in his mind and thus, intellectually, “gain power over the entire universe.”[11]
Now, for the Nolan, the world-soul causes matter to be formed in infinite ways and it is the working of this connection or bond between both entities that interests our philosopher. Further, for the Nolan philosopher, all the bonds “can be reduced to the bond of love.”[12] This vinculum or hidden bond therefore cannot be found in visible things and is somehow secretly present in the cosmos:
[T]he vinculum [is] that which links to an ever-changing degree the operator (the vinciens) to the vinciendum. The original unity of the All, therefore, establishes the conditions for the success of magical action, because it allows us to understand how a magus can restore an existing apparent multiplicity to its underlying unity. Human beings, too, are presented as matter over whose surface pass infinite forms, and clearly each one of them is a vinculum, one of the many which we all, in fact, encounter.[13]
Clearly, Bruno’s use of magic is of the kind that we initially delineated within the context of the Mormon theology. Consequently, Bruno deals only with the magic in its divine, physical and mathematical types. Within contemporary scientific thought, this would imply contributions from theology, cosmology and religious studies (for the divine field), physics and astrophysics (for the quantum field) and logic (for the field of bonding) respectively. This constitution is fully in accordance with the nature of “Truth”, which, for the Nolan, is “’ideal, natural, and notional’;” or, in more general terms, appears as metaphysics, physics and logic.[14]
Truth, therefore, is “manifest in all living things, operating through the eternal laws of an immanent God identified with a timeless universe.[15] Now, the most important feature of his theory of magic is, that various spirits occupy the bodies of humans, animals, stones and minerals [and that] there is no body which is completely devoid of spirit and intelligence. (…) Finally, it must be consciously accepted and firmly asserted that all things are full of spirits, souls, divine power, and God or divinity, and that the whole of intelligence and the whole soul is everywhere, although they do not do everything everywhere. (…) As a result, the philosophers say that in the original state of things there was one matter, one spirit, one light, one soul and one intellect.[16]
A General Account of Bonding (De vinculis in genere) brings a more detailed account on bonding agents and their effects in both visible as well as invisible cosmos or nature. For Bruno, the main bonding agents are God, demons, souls, animals, and nature. But essentially there are four things which are located around God, and they are mind, soul, nature and matter. They circle or rotate around God and are bound to the divinity with more or less attraction.
Metaphysically, humans are most powerfully bound by the bond of love, and in physics, the bonding agent could be designated either as gravitational force, electro-magnetic force, strong force and weak force as far as to the gravitational force of dark matter (we think of electro-magnetic and and gravitational fields as collections of force lines that drive or pull objects towards other objects[17]). Humans may be attracted by humans or animals, and vice versa; music can bind in a profoundly aesthetic way, and, last but not least, on a completely other scale, stars and galaxies are bound to other stars and galaxies with gravitational force. According to Bruno, and to come full circle with our preliminary elaborations on the principles of co-ordination:
Things in the universe are so ordered that they constitute one definite co-ordination in which there can occur a transition from all things to all things in one continuous flow. (…) And just as there are various species of things and differences between them, they also have various times, places, intermediaries, pathways, instruments and functions. (…) If there were only one love, and thus only one bond, all things would be one.[18]
In all things there is one fundamental (divine) force, according to Bruno, and this force is called love. This bond reveals as the “hypostasis of things”[19] both visible and invisible. But it is not possible yet to develop a full theology, as based on bonding or vinculum as love. The missing link still needs to be discovered – and here we can only hint at a possibility of a cosmic Christ as highest among the bonding agents – to be revealed as the cosmic vibration of love.[20]
The Futurity of God in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar
It it our aim now to reconnect both the idea of a futurity of God as well as a materially underpinned bond/vinculum of nature, human, and God into a new theological synthesis, enabling us to affirm our initial thesis from the conclusion of the first part of this essay – on God as the future itself and fully evolved Being, projecting into the present/past by the mediation of visible/material signs or divine gestures, based on a cosmic bond. Let us now embark on a journey into this future by looking more closely at Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar.
Nolan’s Interstellar represents one of the most original possibilities for imagining the bond of love and futurity of God on the background of time travel, quantum physics and postapocalyptic thinking.[21] Since the beginning of cinematic history, time or cinematic temporality has featured as one of the most central settings for imagining alternative visions of life and reality or imagining alternative futures. This especially holds for Christopher Nolan to which cinema itself is “a time machine” of its own kind.[22]
The plot of Interstellar itself is worth special attention and its postapocalyptic setting is intrinsically related to one of the most pressing issues of our time – the climate crisis. In the near future, humanity is facing a catastrophe and, being on the brink of starvation, seeking a new home in space. In the center of the plot is the story of the Dust Bowl – the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, and actually the first ecological catastrophe in the world, caused by human beings’ activities and deeds. The Dust Bowl represents one of the saddest epochs in American history, causing an unprecedented mass exodus of desperate Americans in search for shelter and food.[23] For Nolan, the catastrophe represents an impetus for an idiosyncratic cinematic journey into the future, based on the best possible scientific accuracy as well as an extremely rich philosophical imagination.
At first it seems that Nolan is not interested in the theological consequences of his story (there is no mention of God or divinity in the movie) but actually all of the main elements of the film hint at a profound level of thinking which could imply more than an imaginary journey into the cinematically arranged future: from Murphy’s “ghost”, manipulations of time and matter, and quantum dimensions of a space-time continuum to five-dimensional (bulk[24]) beings (gods, perhaps?) and a tesseract; from the uncertain destiny and despair of the apocalyptic future and love being the strongest of all bonds to the redemption of humanity marked in the final scenes of the movie by green fields and new life – all these elements indicate Nolan’s initial constellation that we wish to interpret along more theologicallines.
By adding quantum physics itself and its quest for ultimate answers concerning the nature of the universe (featuring so importantly in this movie), all that implies that we cannot fully understand various facets of reality beneath the visible and tangible world.[25] It might come out that the effects of physical quantum laws could indeed help us to understand what we have earlier described as the effects of a “magical” bond. Christopher Nolan meets our Nolan philosopher here.
The story of Interstellar is about Cooper, a NASA-trained pilot and engineer, his ten-year-old daughter Murph, and their family (Cooper’s father-in-law, and Murphy’s fifteen-year-old brother Tom). They live in times of great environmental crisis and farm corn, as this is all that is left for agriculture in 2067. It is already clear that even farming corn will soon not be possible anymore. Now, Murph comments that her room is haunted by a ghost (we may remember Giordano Bruno’s faith in “demons” here) sending her secret and encoded messages by using books as they move and fall from the book shelter in various patterns.
One of these messages carries a secret code (it turns out that this holds the GPS data of a secret location) which takes her and her father to a highly secret NASA base. Cooper and Murph are introduced to Professor Brand and his team and their top-secret program for finding an extra-terrestrial solution – new inhabitable planets for humanity. Professor Brand asks Cooper (he is the last on the Earth with such expertise) to embark on a secret intergalactic mission towards three planets in distant galactic systems beyond ordinary reach. Three pioneers – Miller, Mann and Edmunds – were earlier sent to these planets (now named after their founders) by NASA since these planets were identified as the best candidates for humanity.
Cooper knows that he would put his entire family in great danger by embarking on such a dangerous journey but he accepts it. His daughter Murph feels abandoned but her father promises to return to her. But during the intergalactic journey Cooper’s timeline is thrown out of synch with Murph’s due to a time dilation in intergalactic travel and their bond is radically endangered. By using a tesseract (a hypercube presumably placed there by some advanced beings) Cooper is able to travel intergalactically as well as back in time to the ten-year-old as well as to the forty-year-old Murph’s bedroom. Such a journey is possible because humans discovered some fifty years earlier that some unknown (future) beings positioned the wormhole near the planet Saturn and thus enabled humanity to travel with the speed of light to distant galaxies with habitable planets.
These planets are located near a black hole called Gargantua, which is ten billion light-years away from the Earth. Being in a tesseract, now docked near Murph’s bedroom, Cooper actually reveals that he is her “ghost,” and, by giving her a secret NASA location as well as necessary quantum data, actually enables humanity to be rescued. The tesseract is not positioned only alongside Murph’s bedroom, but “has potentially infinite facets, each one docked alongside the bookcase at a particular moment, the whole representing Murph’s bedroom at every possible moment.[26] Now, it is important to add that the rules of Interstellar do not allow Cooper to travel to his own past, but they allow that the “gravitational forces can carry messages into our brane’s past.”[27] Tesseract thus appears to be a symbol for a quantum synchronicity beyond our brane’s time and space continuum. Theologically, tesseract appears as a plane of immanence of love, place of divine providence, a symbol of a future dwelling of evolved beings-gods.
Now, one of the most original ideas of this film is that humanity indeed lives in a five-dimensional bulk inhabited by hyperspherical or five-dimensional beings. Upon the impending catastrophe, it is these beings that help the inhabitants of the Earth to survive by populating new inhabitable worlds of the universe.[28] But who are these bulk beings? In Interstellar, these beings are referred to as “They” – and nobody knows who they were. According to Christopher Nolan’s imagination, these beings “are actually our descendants: humans who, in the far future, evolve to acquire an additional space dimension and live in the bulk.”[29]
It might thus be so that these beings exist: if they do, and if they pass through our worlds, we could be affected by their gravity: “for example, if a hyperspherical being appears in my stomach and has a strong enough gravitational pull, my stomach may begin to cramp as my muscles tighten; trying to resist getting sucked to the center of the being’s spherical cross section.”[30] On a spatial level, one of the hypotheses is that the universe as a membrane (called “brane” by the physicists), is “residing in a higher-dimensional ‘hyperspace’ to which the physicists give the name ‘bulk’.”[31] As the brane necessarily has three space dimensions, the bulk would have at least four.
The scientists do not yet know if the bulk or hyperspace really exists but the 1984 announcement of a “superstring theory” by Michael B. Green and John Schwarz (of the theory that might reconcile the laws of quantum physics with Einstein’s relativistic laws), demanded that apart from our three-dimensional membrane, there must be a multidimensional bulk (according to the superstring theory, the bulk actually would have six more dimensions).[32] Our thesis would now be the following: analogously to the “mysterious” or scientifically still undisclosed relationality of brane and bulk, analogously, the same relationality appears between two temporal moments: our time (as human beings) must be related in a yet unknown manner to the temporality of a “God”, which, as it were, interferes with our “ordinary” worlds through the effects that we learned to call “miracles”.
In an analogous manner – as in spatial terms – it might now be so that this God exists (as a supreme bulk being): if it does, and if it somehow (mysteriously) passes through our worlds, we could be affected by this “gravity” in ways we do not yet know to apprehend or describe. God, which is the future itself (Ruyer), messages as a super-humanely-technologically evolved being into the past. The tesseract will represent the cosmic “vehicle” of God’s supreme love for humanity and nature (thus revealed both ethically and ecologically).
Apart from the postapocalyptic setting and science of intergalactic and time travel, we wish to turn our theological attention to Murphy (Cooper’s daughter) and Dr Amelia Brand (Professor’s Brand daughter). Their stories are stories of love, faith and hope – and it is here where the theological aspects as siding with the overly scientific setting of the film may be introduced and taken into consideration. Murph and Amelie are two daughters in search of love and trust in dangerous times. Murph has faith in what she claims to be messages from the “ghost”, and her love and hope for her father, and for humanity, is immense.
Similarly Amelie – despite a constant dismissal of her faith from the side of Cooper and his own faith in Mann’s planet (which turns out to be a catastrophic mistake) – is guided by her love towards Edmunds, and hope for his mission and for his planet stays with her until the end; also Amelie (intuitively) “knows” that, out there in the universe, there exist sympathetic bulk beings, and she states accordingly: “And whoever They are, They appear to be looking out for us.”[33]
As a ten-year-old, Murph is convinced that there is a ghost in her bedroom, messaging something to her. Despite the fact that her intuitions are being constantly rejected by her father (in line with our previous elaborations, we could assume that Cooper sees her faith as belonging to some unjustified magical beliefs…), Murph still insists on what she believes might be a sign of a mysterious communication from some unknown source, perhaps even from some god. In this way, her faith intervenes two times in a most decisive manner: firstly, by her faith in a ghost she discloses a secret code that actually enables humanity to embark upon its journey towards the new habitable world, and, secondly, again by her hope for her father’s return, a forty-year-old Murph finds the decisive quantum data from the watch in her bedroom, which he gave her upon his departure and which now enables humanity to escape the dangerously suffocating atmosphere of the Earth. As regards Amelie – the final scenes of Interstellar confirm her important role – after meeting an older Murph, who is now nearing her death, Cooper returns to Edmunds and rejoins Amelie on her habitable planet.
Let us now finally return to our Nolan philosopher, his theory of bonding agents and the theological consequences that may be inferred from this teaching. According to Bruno, we know that
[T]he vinculum [is] that which links to an ever-changing degree the operator (the vinciens) to the vinciendum. The original unity of the All, therefore, establishes the conditions for the success of magical action, because it allows us to understand how a magus can restore an existing apparent multiplicity to its underlying unity. Human beings, too, are presented as matter over whose surface pass infinite forms, and clearly each one of them is a vinculum, one of the many which we all, in fact, encounter.[34]
Translated into the theological language, this now means that the vinculum may be represented by the tesseract as a quantum field of the bonding agent. The magical action of the bonding agents – i.e., futuristically evolved humans or gods – represents the process of restoration of ever broken connections of love – from the more elemental nature, towards connections between other sentient beings, and all the ways towards nature as an elemental whole. Beings of the brane are, in the exact words of the Nolan, presented as matter over whose surface pass infinite forms, and clearly each one of them is a vinculum. The addendum to our argument on the existence of God from the end part of our first section, updated by our reading of Interstellar, would now finally run as follows:
On the background of the existence of brane beings and objects, God exists as a supreme bulk being. God passes through our worlds which are affected by this “gravity” in ways we do not yet know how to apprehend or scientifically describe. These events can be designated as mesocosmic constellations of a vinculum or bond of love that are affecting our agapeistic activities. As an enhanced spiritually-material being, God subtly passes through the surface of brane beings which report these weak passings as “mystical experiences”. The interactions of God with brane beings establish secret or hidden correspondences between microcosmic (brane beings, objects) and macrocosmic (Gods, other bonding agents) “deities”.
The world is full of gods.
Lenart Škof is Professor of Philosophy and Head of the Institute for Philosophical Studies at the Science and Research Centre Koper (Slovenia). He is author of several books, among them Pragmatist Variations on Ethical and Intercultural Life (Lexington Books, 2012) and Breath of Proximity: Intersubjectivity, Ethics and Peace (Springer, 2015). His current research project is dedicated to Antigone, feminist ethics, and questions of philosophy, religious justice, and peace.
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[1] See Stephen H. Webb, Mormon Christianity (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 46–76.
[2] Webb, Mormon Christianity, 48.
[3] Ibid., 49.
[4] Danah Zohar & Dr Ian Marshal, SQ: Connecting with our Spiritual Intelligence (London: Bloomsbury, 2000), 9.
[5] Ibid., 69f. This is known in physics as “the Casimir Effect”.
[6] Webb, Mormon Christianity, 57.
[7] Ibid., 58. Also note the following: “Matter, according to Mormonism, exists according to gradations of spiritual refinement, so that even spiritual entities like God, angels and the soul are composed of some kind of matter.” (59)
[8] Ibid., 60.
[9] Ibid., 70.
[10] Ingrid D. Rowland, Giordano Bruno: Philosopher / Heretic (Chicago / London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), see ch. 15. For those of a more skeptical character, let us only mention the existing practice of exorcism in the Catholic Church. For rites of exorcism see the document Of Exorcisms and Certain Supplications (De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus Quibusdam; revised in 1999).
[11] Ibid., 120.
[12] Bruno, Cause, Principle and Unity / Essays on Magic, xxviii (Introduction).
[13] Ibid., xxix (Introduction).
[14] Giordano Bruno, The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, tr. by Arthur D. Imerti (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 31 (Editor’s Introduction).
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid., 125 and 129.
[17] See Kip Thorne, The Science of Interstellar (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014), 22ff.
[18] Bruno, Cause, Principle and Unity / Essays on Magic, 170f.
[19] Ibid., 171.
[20] It is perhaps not coincidental that the term vinculum only reappears in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s 1959-60 course notes known under the title Nature, which represent a rare, yet supreme attempt to think along Bruno’s realms of thoughts. This is fully attested in the following observation: “There is a unique theme of philosophy: the nexus, the vinculum ‘Nature’ – ‘Man’ – ‘God’. Nature as a ‘leaf’ of Being, and the problems of philosophy, are concentric”. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France, transl. by Robert Vallier, Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1995, 204.
[21] The screenplay of Interstellar was written by brothers Jonathan and Christopher Nolan in a close collaboration with the Nobel peace prize winner for physics, Professor Kip Thorne. Thorne’s parents were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and raised Thorne in the LDS faith, as well, although he now describes himself as an atheist.
[22] Jacqueline Furby, “About Time Too: From Interstellar to Following, Christopher Nolan’s Continuing Preoccupation with Time-Travel”, in: Jacqueline Furby & Stuart Joy, eds., The Cinema of Christopher Nolan: Imagining the Impossible, pp.247-267(London and New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). See p. 249 for the citation.
[23] On the history of the Dust Bowl see: Dayton Duncan, The Dust Bowl: An Illustrated History (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2012) and Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time (Boston / New York: Mariner Books, 2006).
[24] See Thorne, The Science of Interstellar on the quest of many physicists to understand the so called “singularities”: “That quest produced superstring theory, which in turn led to a belief that our universe must be a brane residing in a higher dimensional bulk.” (227)
[26] Furby, “About Time Too, 250ff. See also about the full plot and other details about “Interstellar (film)” from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction_film (accessed June 28, 2020).
[27] Thorne, The Science of Interstellar, 263.
[28] In episode four of the second season of The Expanse, we witness the launch of the giant spaceship Nauvoo, which has been designed by the Latter-day Saints: “The Nauvoo was originally commissioned by the Mormons to take thousands of their members on a generations-long trip to Tau Ceti, a G-class star located approximately twelve light-years from our solar system.” (K. Murnane, “Science and Tech in Syfy’s ‘The Expanse’: The Spectacular Launch of the ‘Nauvoo’” Forbes (Mar 1). The Pearl of Great Price – one of the sacred texts of Mormonism – describes the planet Kolob as a location that is geographically closest to God while also being the planet which Latter-day Saints head to in their afterlife (see The Pearl of Great Price, Abraham 3:2–16). The creator of the postapocalyptic series Battlestar Galactica (1978–79), Glen A. Larson, was himself a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he has incorporated Mormon elements into the series – most notably by introducing a planet called Kobol (i.e., Kolob) as the dwelling place of gods. The very idea of an intergalactic trip is unusual for Christianity because of its scepticism towards critical or technological posthumanism. But, it “should [also] not be forgotten that in the depths of Christian history, remote settlements such as monasteries preserved civilization during dark times” (B. P. Green, “The Catholic Church and Technological Progress: Past, Present, and Future”, in: N. Herzfeld (ed.), Religion and the New Technologies, Basel: MDPI 2017, 25), and that, from the very beginning of the history of the Church, exploration – both physical and intellectual – was encouraged.
[29] Thorne, The Science of Interstellar, 22. There are three options here: (A) Bulk beings are our descendants, caught in a disastrous and slowly closing time-loop due to an impeding catastrophe awaiting them if they are not able to communicate vital data to us. They can travel back in time but they are restrained by the rule that they can never travel to their own past. (B) Bulk beings are gods, or a God, which as intellectually-materially-technologically evolved supreme being(s) communicate(s) back in time from the hyper-space between two singularities. They act like Buddhist Bodhisattvas, refusing to enter their final enlightenment (i.e., a point beyond the singularity’s edge) from their highest ethical vow not to reach nirvāṇa until someone else is able to achieve enlightenment. (C) Bulk beings are extraterrestrials with an advanced technology, communicating with us through tesseract.
[30] Ibid., 192f.
[31] Ibid., 32.
[32] See Green, M. B. and Schwarz, J. H.,“Anomaly cancellations in supersymmetric D = 10 gauge theory and superstring theory”, Physics Letters B, 149: 1-3 (1984): 117-122. For more about the superstring theory see Brian Green, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010, 2nd ed.). We do not yet possess available means for the scientific experiments that could prove the validity of this theory.
[33] Cit. after Thorne, The Science of Interstellar, 193.
[34] Bruno, Cause, Principle and Unity / Essays on Magic, xxix.
