Supernaturalism in Humans, Humans in Supernaturalism

이수정

’Outside or beyond the natural world’, ‘the fundamental premise of theism’, ‘attributed to a power that violates natural forces’, the list goes on and on. Although at a first glance these phrases seem to describe distinct concepts of separate fields, they eventually end up at a common destination, supernaturalism.

The word ‘supernatural’ comes from the Latin word ‘super’, which means ‘above’ + nature. Because supernatural phenomena are usually those that cannot be perceived by natural or empirical senses, the word supernatural loses its meaning when we start defining nature as ‘how things are’. If things happen, they are natural and science should study them; if they do not happen, they are not supernatural- they are simply false and science should prove them false. This is why when interpreting history, there is no room for supernaturalism. Historical events, as amazing and unique as they were, either happened or didn’t. There is nothing supernatural about them.

From this perspective, all this draws nothing but a conclusion about the impracticality and unreality of supernaturalism. Why then, has it always remained as a subject that is awed by people all around the world? Why do people turn to the supernatural when they want to find an answer that cannot be explained by theoretical means?

Evidence for human belief in the supernatural can be found as far back as the Paleolithic periods. Throughout history, humans have sought to explore and explain the world by using supernaturalism to fill the gaps of human knowledge and to create an explicable universe where human rituals and actions can affect the gods and powers controlling our lives. The famous Paleolithic cave art of the Lascaux Caves has been interpreted as depicting shamans’ journeys into the spirit realm, a widespread supernatural belief that was hoped to bring prosperous and abundant lives to the people. From cave paintings of the Stone Ages to stories and movies of the modern days, the underlying cause for the frequent emergence of supernaturalism is the human desire for incomprehensible but remarkable miracles.

Ever since the dawn of literature, the supernatural has played a role in the stories humanity tells about itself. In English literature, the element of supernaturalism has had its place since the dim twilight days that go back to ‘Beowulf’, a fictional story that was written during 8th~11th century B.C. Since then, supernaturalism has been a prominent element in English fiction, and of late years it has been used more and more in many different ways. Scholars of language insist that the reason this topic could remain and be expected to expand in the future is because it has nothing to do with the question of whether or not the extra-human happenings are ‘possible’ or ‘true’. It is a literary study solely.

The real precursor of supernaturalism in modern English literature was the ‘Gothic novel’. This genre was developed in the late eighteenth century as a reaction to the central ideology of the Enlightenment that valorized human reason. Gothic literature dealt with tales of the irrational aspects of human existence, and is devoted primarily to stories of horror, fantasy, and the ‘darker’ supernatural forces. These forces are often represented as the ‘dark side’ of human nature- irrational of destructive desires. Monsters such as vampires the Dracula in Gothic works tend to externalize our own dangerous repressed desires. The two most famous examples of Gothic literature that people are still familiar with nowadays are Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

One of William Shakespeare’s most well known plays, Julius Caesar, is another work that is widely recognized to contain various forms of supernaturalism. The supernatural elements and superstitions in Julius Caesar have been introduced to reflect the prevailing social beliefs and taboos. Among the forces of nature that play very important roles in the play, there is much attention paid to omens and nightmares, and how they foreshadow the death of Julius Caesar. All events that lead up to the death of Julius Caesar are predicted by omens from multiple characters such as his wife and the soothsayer. Many of the main characters ignore the omens; some people rely on them to show how to live their life. Hence, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar shows that there is always a relationship between omens and nature in everyday lives, and this affects those who believe in them.

#이수정