Why Harry Potter is not Satanic
The new pope, Benedict XVI, has been quoted as
condemning the popular Harry Potter books as satanic. Fortunately for me, I am
not a Catholic, so I don't have to pay attention to the pope's opinion on
this.
However, many of my fellow
evangelical Christians (and particularly the more fundamentalist among them)
persist in likewise condemning the books. Here is why they are
wrong.
The Harry Potter books are
fantasy. They combine many elements of classical learning (astrolabes,
stargazing, the philosopher's stone and alchemy in general, and so on) with
mythologies from several cultures (existence of unicorns, centaurs, boggarts,
pixies, basilisks and many others) with a general culture in which classical
magic is practiced by adepts and used in place of modern (AKA "muggle")
technology.
It's hard to understand why
some Christians have an aversion to this sort of fantasy. About the only element
that seems objectionable from a Christian point of view is the use of the term
"witch" to refer to female practitioners of magic. The Bible does condemn
"witches" or "mediums" who "cast spells" and attempt to communicate with the
dead or use divination for guidance. But even the Bible does not directly
identify such people with satanism; that connection was an invention of the
Middle Ages. The hysteria and fear of witches through the Middle Ages largely
provided people in power with a way to get rid of unpopular or inconvenient
individuals. While there may have been some people who pretended to have some
sorts of power, it's unlikely that any of them were "in league with the
devil."
In any case, the only case of a
practitioner of "divination" in the Potter books is mostly an absurd and
self-deluded fraud. The main use of the term witch in the books is just a handy
referent to a female of the species of "magical
folk".
What kind of "magic" is
performed by these people? All very classical stuff: brewing of potions, casting
of "spells" to lock, unlock, disarm, petrify or unpetrify, mend bones, etc.
Arithmancy (which apparently means numerology). Care of magical creatures.
Herbology (of a magical kind, however). Teleportation, transformation. In fact,
every possible fantastic myth of whatever age or culture seems to find a home
somewhere in the Potter books.
I
submit that these elements have little or nothing to do with scriptural
proscriptions against "witchcraft" or "divination." For one thing, witchcraft
apparently referred to attempts to communicate with the dead; divination was an
attempt to find guidance in ways not authorized by God. Sorcery, or casting of
spells was calling on demons to curse someone, which of course was (and is)
antithetical to the way God was trying to get His people to live.
In Harry Potter, while the words used
are the same words (witchcraft, spells, etc), they are (mostly) used to help
others, to heal, or to care for nature (magical nature, granted). Or at least
for some harmless fun, as in the Weasley twins' magical joke shop business.
While witches and wizards are subject to the same "human condition" as muggles,
and some are of evil intent, the "witchcraft" is part of a parallel world and
equivalent to muggle technology, rather than bargaining with spirits or
demons.
The crux of the issue is this:
what is the theme of the book? What is the message? And can the message be
construed to lead to satanism or mislead children (of all ages) reading it to
embrace witchcraft?
Like all great
fantasy, Harry Potter deals with great issues: death and loss, good vs. evil.
The theme of the books is death, and how survivors deal with loss. The issues
covered include friendship, loyalty, courage, hope even in hopeless situations,
and "good" confronting "evil" and winning against great odds.
I submit this is why Harry Potter is
so popular, and so transcendent over the obvious flaws in the stories. The flaws
don't matter; Rowling is such a great storyteller that one is drawn in from the
very first page, and the suspension of disbelief is effortless.
If Harry Potter is satanic, what about
Lord of the Rings? That has a real satanic character, Sauron (who, however, is
offstage through the entire story). There are wizards, magic, spells, etc. in
LOTR. I don't hear many Christians condemning LOTR as satanic.
What about Chronicles of Narnia? Same
thing here: there is a witch (who actually is Satan) as a recurrent character in
the stories; there is magic, wizardry, etc. Once again, I've never heard of CoN
being condemned as satanic.
What is
the difference? LOTR and CoN were both written by Christians. J.K. Rowling has,
to my knowledge, made no profession of Christian faith (but note: the magical
world celebrates Christmas...). So, do my fellow Christians who condemn some
fantasy and not other fantasy use the author's faith as a criterion? That would
be absurd, of course.
What is clear is
this: LOTR has as its main theme: death, and the loss of much that is good. Good
facing evil and triumphing against great odds. Funny, those are exactly the same
themes as in HP! If you condemn one, you have to condemn the other. If one is
OK, so should the other be.
My
conclusion: Harry Potter is not satanic; it's simply a fantasy that deals with
traditional themes in a very entertaining way. And, not so incidentally, it has
caught the imaginations of a generation of children and taught them the joys of
reading, exactly when you might expect that television and the internet were
making the reading of books obsolete. Not bad for a down-on-her luck
Englishwoman on welfare.
Posted: Thu - July 7, 2005 at 06:58 PM