The idea of magic is a useful one in interpreting the poem. It is present in several elements: for example, the way in which the mariner’s ‘eye’ compels the Wedding Guest to listen to him; the curse of the dead men’s eyes upon the Mariner; the reanimation of corpses etc. The context of magic, of course, is a world of – essentially pagan – spirits and powers that are able to act arbitrarily, without the over-arching ‘Good’ of a benevolent deity and His Providence. This exactly matches the world of the poem, and is nowhere more evident than in the game of dice between Death and Life-in-Death where fate is seen to hang purely upon chance. Apart from these two there are also the spirit ‘voices’ heard on the air by the mariner; the Polar Spirit who controls the ship for much of the poem and whose motives are particularly difficult to fathom. Despite the horrors of the first parts of the Rime , there is much that is celestial and good about this world, of course; though even the ‘seraph band’ is sufficiently ‘other’ to excite no inconsiderable degree of terror in the mariner. The overwhelming feeling induced by The Ancient Mariner is that we are not in control; that we know nothing of the powers that surround us; that our punishment or salvation is essentially arbitrary.

All of these are elements of a dream-state, of course, and this remains the best hermeneusis of the poem. Once this is established, and the spectre of rational interpretation banished from the poem, the reader can quickly recognise many psychological features that are common in dreams and nightmares. Phobia is certainly present in the poem, based as it is on a sense of not being in control and at the mercy of arbitrary forces. Irrational guilt is also a major ‘underground’ theme of the Rime , most obviously present in the weight of the albatross fastened about the mariner’s neck, as well as the horrifying sense of exclusion communicated by the lingering curse of the dead men’s eyes, that the Mariner cannot escape. Only on this irrational level does the poem begin to make sense: the terrible guilt of the Mariner (best seen here as a psychological disturbance without any obvious ethical corollary) requires its terrible sufferings in ‘hell,’ as well as it requires the extraordinary lengths to which the ‘good spirits’ go to restore the Mariner and renew his faith (to an extent) in the goodness of the world. In this sense the poem can be read as an imaginative catharsis.

It is doubtful, though, that many readers approach the poem in this way (though it may well be that such subconscious needs were instrumental in Coleridge’s composition of the poem). The wonder of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is as straightforward as it is profound: the bonds are loosened, and the reader is drawn into a richly fantastic world in which anything can happen . That timeless evocation of the dream-state has fascinated writers and readers for centuries, and to look for meaning here is as foolish as Theseus implies, when he talks of ‘Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend/More than cool reason ever comprehends’ ( A Midsummer Night’s Dream V.i.5).