Conjuring Asia

Marvel’s Doctor Strange is just the latest in a long line of seekers after truth who have headed to the Mystic East in search of spiritual enlightenment and supernatural powers.CHRIS GOTO-JONES recalls the Western magicians who transformed themselves into turbansporting seers, and examines the continuing appeal of Orientalism’s magical myth.

After the car crash that leaves his hands shattered and ruined, Doctor Stephen Strange exhausts the possibilities of modern science in an attempt to repair the damage and cure his injuries. He endures all kinds of painful surgeries and experimental procedures; he spends his entire fortune. Driven by desperation and perhaps by providence, this paragon of scientific accomplishment – the brain surgeon – finally makes his way into the mysterious mountains of Nepal and Tibet. In the remote and exotic vastness of the Himalayas, Doctor Strange finally encounters an old master of wisdom, hidden away in an ancient, forgotten, and virtually inaccessible monastery.

The doctor struggles to let go of his hard-won and deeply embedded scientific scepticism, even when confronted by the evidence of Oriental magic that flows from the fingers of the ancient master – the sorcerer supreme. Being far away from NewYork and London, the monastery is apparently also far away from the conventions and laws of modern science. It is both in the world we know and beyond it.We can get there on a plane, but the real journey is a spiritual not a geographical one.

In the end, it is Strange’s desperation, suffering, and courage that break him free from his overly-rational Western mind, liberating him into an apprenticeship in Eastern mysticism that ultimately helps him to overcome his injuries but also transposes him into a bigger, more complex, more magical world.When Stephen Strange returns to NewYork, he finds it transformed by his new knowledge – the city is recognisable, but it is also profoundly different; it is interlaced with magic that only the initiated can see.