America's Dark Theologian by Douglas E. Cowan

Author:Douglas E. Cowan [Cowan, Douglas E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL000000 Religion / General
Publisher: New York University Press

“I Know That Sounds Crazy”: “N.” and Ritual Understanding

We’ve been to Ackerman’s Field before. It’s that thin spot in rural Maine where the monstrous weight of the unseen order peeks through as a man known only as N. struggles both to retain personal sanity and maintain cosmological order. We return there as part of King’s exploration of ritual, in this case, what we might call the ritual progression. Standing in Ackerman’s Field, N. tells Dr. Bonsaint, is a circle of stones, some about five feet tall, others a bit more than half that. As he becomes increasingly invested in what’s happening among the standing stones, also known as menhir, N. undergoes what anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann calls “interpretive drift”: “the slow shift in someone’s manner of interpreting events, making sense of experiences, and responding to the world.”12 What he at first takes to be little more than “a trick of the evening light” slowly shifts until he comes to see himself as a central character in the ritual drama represented by the standing stones.13 His ritual prop, his object of power, is the camera he carries each time he goes to the remote field. To the naked eye, only seven stones stand there. The camera lens—the ritual eye that shifts perspective—brings the eighth menhir into focus. This is his role in the ritual: to return again and again to Ackerman’s Field, to look through the lens and ensure that the final stone is there.

N. first sought out Dr. Bonsaint for help with obsessive-compulsive disorder, manifest, among other behaviors, in counting shoes on the way to and from work, and ensuring an even number of dishes in the dishwasher. His condition is also King’s controlling metaphor for the ritual process. As N. opens up to Bonsaint, gradually disclosing the strange phenomenon of Ackerman’s Field, his obsessive compulsions become an integral part of the ritual practice that he now believes keeps the world intact. No longer is the ritual of the camera something that simply keeps him sane or grounded; he now believes that it keeps reality as we know it stable and secure. Whole for the moment, if not completely safe. Now, far more than simply his state of mind is at stake.

The standing stones in Ackerman’s Field, if that’s what they are, are only one aspect of the problem. Arranged in a circle, the menhir mark the cardinal and ordinal points of the compass, and form a protective circle guarding this particular crack in the wall between the worlds. Whoever collected and arranged them had no interest in creating a gateway. Rather, recognizing the danger posed by the unseen order, they set the circle in place to keep out whatever might poke its head through. “Eight stones would keep them captive,” N. continues, “—barely—but if there were only seven, they’d come flooding through from the darkness on the other side of reality and overwhelm the world.”14 That is, they will flood our world if the ritual is not performed correctly and consistently.

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