Superstition as the Beginning of Participation in Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In one of his notebooks, the Romantic poet and theologian Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) wrote that superstition was "the Giant Shadow of Humanity with its back to the setting Sun of True Religion." This paper uses Coleridge as a lens to explore the role of superstition in a metaphysics of participation, wherein a combination of ignorance, wonder, and myth serve as the starting point of philosophy. This exploration will then link participation and poetics in two ways. The first is the role of the preternatural in Coleridge's poetry and philosophy, where the unknown in nature manifests in poetry as ambiguous spiritual forces. The second is the vulnerability of the person to supernatural forces beyond explanation, a participatory metaphysic that travels both ways, as expressed by Coleridge in his notebooks and poetry on dreams and nightmares.