Evil Harry Potter

[TheHolyTrinity]

Yes, ‘witchcraft’ is still something that occurs. Unless you can directly link each case to Harry Potter, then it is not particularly relevant to this thread (although it is sad to read about).

Yes all are very sad and disheartening. Albeit the sad sinful reality of this world. One can’t fight evil with evil.

I really don’t uderstand the point you’re trying to make with these videos. It’s the same as the interview you linked to a while back. Some used to believe these ‘spells’ worked, or these creatures existed. They didn’t, and they still don’t. Harry Potter is a fictional series with fictional witchcraft set in a fictional world.

How do you know that the spells don’t work? LOL How does anyone really know? To be frank, I am not sure why the emphasis is solely on this small portion of the bigger problem.

I linked the interview and video’s as a some perspective to the naysayers. Perhaps reading about Bartolo Longo may help some. Whilst many here disagree in HP series and its off shoots as being fantasy fun and innocent , I do not.

It can arouse the interest of the readers into the dark arts. There are many Biblical sources that warn against such.

It makes it all the more harmful as it promotes the interest in such arts. With the potential of reaping some grave spiritual harm.

St. Paul warned us about Satan in 2 Thessalonians 2: 10.

and every kind of wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

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[GKMotley]

I thought that was understood.

 

[GKMotley]

I agree. Perhaps if … wait. I think…what is that… I see it – coming here – hell-wind – titan blur – black wing – Yog Sothoth save me – the three-lobed burning eye…

 

[JanetF]

I must’ve been 8 or 9 and saw Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds”, or at least part of it. It wasn’t intentional, the adults watching didn’t know I was in the room. Those who know the movie know there are some quite violent scenes.

I accidentally watched Rosemary’s Baby as a 8-9 year old. Haven’t watched it since. CREEPY! Never told my parents I had seen it, didn’t understand a lot of it, sure I remember it, but I wasn’t really scared by it. I just remember it was the first scary movie I watched by myself.

 

[JulianN]

Whilst many here disagree in HP series and its off shoots as being fantasy fun and innocent , I do not.

If you do not, then you should absolutely avoid reading the books and watching the movies. You just need to recognize that this is only true for you – most people do recognize and understand fiction, have also absorbed the very Christian themes of good vs. evil in the books, and for them, it is indeed innocent.

 

[TheHolyTrinity]

If you do not, then you should absolutely avoid reading the books and watching the movies. You just need to recognize that this is only true for you – most people do recognize and understand fiction, have also absorbed the very Christian themes of good vs. evil in the books, and for them, it is indeed innocent.

Yep see my typo.

Aside from the lack of a true Christian meaning in the books is the fact that the books are very centered on occult arts and power. One can’t fight evil with evil. Catholic Exorcists have said the same. I am not alone in this thinking nor should I remain quiet.

 

[JulianN]

Aside from the lack of a true Christian meaning in the books is the fact that the books are very centered on occult arts and power.

But they are not. Have you actually read all seven books?

 

[Lou2U]

Aside from the lack of a true Christian meaning in the books

There is clear Christian imagery all through the series, especially the last book.

 

[Dolphin]

Everyone who calls Harry Potter evil are the same people who haven’t read the books

 

[niceatheist]

A good deal of Lovecraft’s atmosphere comes from his peculiar vocabulary. He could paint quite creepy pictures with his “R’lyehian” words. The plots of many of his stories aren’t anything special, but he created a mythos (or rather two separate but joined mythologies), and as with Howard, Tolkien, CS Lewis and Frank Herbert, once you’ve created that kind of a background, you can take even rather unremarkable stories and give them a certain air of histories only distantly glimpsed. But there is a law of diminishing returns, and some of the later Lovecraft stories became somewhat repetitive. Only Tolkien, I think, was able to maintain a certain majesty, by basically using two very different tones; the sort of lofty “Biblical” tones of the Silmarillion, and the silly and earthy tone of The Hobbit. The Lord of the Rings is a synthesis of the two, and no more so than in Frodo himself.

I never really fell in love with CS Lewis. The world creation was never really taken that seriously. As to Herbert, well Dune is brilliant, but the successive novels less so, but that was true of much of the work he did in the latter part of his life. He seemed to fancy himself a philosopher, and that often intruded on his later works. Robert E. Howard had no such grand aspirations, and Conan remains firmly seated in the swords and sorcery genre, but I think there’s some admirable storytelling to be found there. I also give a nod to Edgar Rice Burroughs, and loved his Mars novels (I actually have a thing for the whole genre of Martian fiction, Leigh Brackett for instance had her own Mars mythology that produced some fantastic stories).

In some ways I view Tolkien as the isolate. As much as later fantasy writers for the most part admired him, I think much of what they wrote was far more inspired by Howard and Burroughs (and by and large the adventure genre of the 1930s and 1940s). The real isolate there is Michael Moorcock, who found a way to flip the whole fantasy genre on its head by inserting anti-heroes like Elric, Corum and the whole Eternal Champion multiverse. If Moorcock had written Lord of the Rings, Boromir would have been the star of the show.

 

[niceatheist]

Within the stories themselves, there’s a clear delineation between “good” and “evil”. There are good spells, and then there is clearly evil magic like Horcruxes. Really, in some ways, it’s just Star Wars; the Force follows pretty much the same pattern. If anything, I suppose you could accuse HP of a bit of Gnosticism, the only difference being that the heroes of the story are those willing to put friendship, honor and self-sacrifice above the pursuit of power. Harry Potter is just another Luke Skywalker. And the last book is such a blatant Christian allegory that to some extent I think it detracts from the book overall.

 

[BartholomewB]

Dostoevsky disliked (even hated) Catholicism, .

The only book where I remember any mention of the Catholic Church is The Brothers Karamazov, where one of the monks has a Catholic crucifix on his wall, and there is the famous restaurant episode in which Ivan recites his “poem”, the Grand Inquisitor. What other evidence is there of Dostoevsky’s attitude toward the Catholic Church?

 

[niceatheist]

I know Tolkien was no fan of the Narnia series, feeling it a bit of a pastiche of pre-existing mythology and folk tradition. He did admire the Space trilogy, though as I recall he was less fond of That Hideous Strength, which again, had strong allegorical elements. As a bit of trivia, the Space trilogy grew out of a bit of a gentlemen’s bet between Tolkien and Lewis over whether they could write a space story. CS Lewis’s story became Out of the Hidden Planet, and Tolkien’s, in typical fashion, got drawn into the Silmarillion mythos and morphed into the legend of Numenor, which became the springboard for the Second Age, and the ultimate link between The Silmarillion and The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

 

[niceatheist]

Tolkien was somewhat atypical. There was a trend in Oxford circles towards bachelorhood, either extended in duration, or permanent. I don’t think Tolkien was always the perfect husband (I think at times Edith felt rather isolated, and Tolkien certainly strongly believed in the positive benefits of creating societies of men like The Inklings), but he had pretty firm views on marriage that set him apart. I think, to some extent, it was his very strong and fervent Catholicism, in opposition to the general Anglicanism of most his peers.

As to the Shire, well he clearly viewed that as an ideal society; rural, with people largely self-governing by a mutually agreed upon set of rules. Where there was authority, it was either ceremonial (like the Mayor) or only invoked at times of crisis (like the Thain, which is apparently hereditary, being passed along from eldest Took to son), and even in that context the Brandybucks seemed to be essentially a jurisdiction apart from the rest of the Shire, a “colony” as it were. But even in Bree, where there were Men and Hobbits, the same general style of governance was used; people managed their own affairs, the economy was rural and agrarian. If there’s anything allegorical in there, it’s that Tolkien had an ideal of the English countryside, which I think even he would have admitted, was never real, but was sort of drawn out of that aspiration of a proper Englishman.

 

[whatistrue]

Everyone who calls Harry Potter evil are the same people who haven’t read the books

Reminds me of the people who picketed theaters showing “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” back in my younger days. The main thing that such people prove is that they really don’t know what is actually in the book/movie/game/comic/etc. they are up in arms about.

 

[niceatheist]

Dolphin:

Everyone who calls Harry Potter evil are the same people who haven’t read the books

Reminds me of the people who picketed theaters showing “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” back in my younger days. The main thing that such people prove is that they really don’t know what is actually in the book/movie/game/comic/etc. they are up in arms about.

They probably would have disliked Eric Idle’s germ of an idea that lead to Brian; “Jesus, Lust For Glory”.

 

[GKMotley]

Agree, basically. Though in Moorcock’s LOTR, I think maybe Wormtongue would be the focus.
His flip on the head with the Eternal Champion multiverse turned me off. Even got tired of folks with JC initials. Most of them, anyway.

Herbert and DUNE were a failure for me. DUNE was barely endurable, nothing thereafter was even close. Personal opinion. As to HPL’s two story cycles, I guess you are thinking of the Dream Worlds and the Cthulhu Mythos. And, as you will know, both have been greatly expanded by followers and hangers on, of varying quality. No matter. I’ve read most of them, without regret.

Met Leigh Brackett once.

 

[niceatheist]

About the closest you get to it was the scene where the people at the back of the audience listening to the Sermon on the Mount can’t hear Jesus properly. “Blessed are the cheesemakers? What’s so special about the cheesemakers?” “It’s obviously not to be taken literally, it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products”. It does take blasphemy head on with the delightful stoning scene. “All I said is this tuna sandwich was good enough for Jehovah.”

 

[niceatheist]

Met Leigh Brackett once.

Cool! One of my favorite Golden Age writers.

 

[niceatheist]

I am a sad bear now

Moorcock’s famous Epic Pooh? I think it is an inherently silly bit of writing and could be countered by any reasonably competent writer familiar with Tolkien and fantasy easily. It struck as edgy for the sake of being edgy when I read it years ago.
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Elric was a product of its time; a sort of spiritual heir of Humphrey Bogart. I think what Moorcock disliked in fantasy literature in general was the archetype of the “pure hero”. I think he willfully misread Tolkien, and certainly at the time nothing was known in general public of some of Tolkien’s First Age heroes; people like Feanor (who became an outright villain), or Turin, who is every bit the anti-hero that Elric was.

I enjoy Moorcock’s work. I’ll agree that Elric is edgy for the sake of being edgy, but at the same time, the fundamental moral conflict of Elric, who, born to a fundamentally amoral society, and questioning his own society (and ultimately destroying it), certainly has a 1960s and 1970s feel to it. But his writing lacks depth, in my view. He also by and large eschewed lengthy fantasy novels. He really was the pocket paper back fantasy author.