FoneBone, I would be interested in your response to this post that I made earlier on this thread:
And for the record, I have read all of the HP books and liked them very much. I absolutely understand and acknowledge that the magic in HP is fantasy and not real and in no way related to practicing witches or wiccans.
Also, i believe that we are specifically talking about impressionable people–young people and perhaps those young adult “seekers” who glom onto anything that comes along. would i allow my child, if i had one, to read HP? yes. but I would also be sure to have a few casual conversations about fantasy and make believe. and since I also have read all of the Dragonriders of Pern and other such fantasy fare, the child would likely have been exposed to that concept of “fantasy” long before they got to HP.
Sure, that’s a very reasonable question. And you sound very informed to me.
There are four reasons I don’t think the
Harry Potter series presents this danger.
**(1) **Structurally and otherwise, the “magic” of Rowling’s universe is qualitatively distinct from and dissimilar to real-world occult practices. The reason real sorcery is immoral is because any human being who uses such powers got them from a supernatural source - and God has forbidden such practices, which leaves only the forces of evil to offer such power.
Rowling, by contrast, has used the entirely fictional idea of a subspecies of the human race with
purely natural inborn powers that seem magical to those without them. No invocation of any kind is involved, and these powers
cannot be learned under any circumstances by ordinary people (“Muggles”).
In other words, the “magic” of Rowling’s “wizards” is like the “magic” of Tolkien’s elves. Would reading
The Lord of the Rings and being fascinated by the uniquely elven mystical abilities pave the way for a curious child to investigate the occult? Anything is possible, but thinking it might happen would be like thinking that a child who loves going to the zoo is going to start investigating how to build robots. There’s just no connection.
**(2) **Besides, the aesthetic/external aspects of this “magic” are deliberately made to be obviously fantastical and unreal. The examples from page 2 that Gabriel cited and that I examined prove this: point a wand - made, by the way, from obviously fictional ingredients like phoenix tail feather - say “Petrificus totalus!”, and down your enemy goes. Literally the only thing such “magic” has in common with any real occult practice is the word “magic.”
So I don’t think it paves the way for a child to investigate witchcraft, since even if they think
Harry Potter magic is “cool” or something, real occult practices will in no way *feel *like them or aesthetically approximate them at all.
**(3) **I could be wrong, but my impression is that real-world occult practices focus on manipulating circumstances and people to get the knowledge or the results that you want. Manipulating people forcibly is consistently portrayed as really slimy and immoral by the
Potter books, so I can’t imagine a child steeped in them would find real-world occult power to be alluring. More likely their exposure to
Harry Potter would turn them off to such power, which the
Potter series always depicts as overrated and spiritually inferior to real relationships and trust.
(4) Finally, the Christian elements in the series - again, see curlycool’s reply on page two for just one example - really do prepare kids’ hearts and minds for Christian truths about death, love, and valuing good infinitely above the perishable things of this world (“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” is, if you’ll remember, even on Ariana and Kendra Dumbledore’s gravestone). That actually probably
weakens their susceptibility to being tempted by the occult.
Anyway, those are the four reasons that occur to me. By contrast, I see no solid reasons - in light of these points - to fear that the series would mentally/spiritually prepare a child for witchcraft.
There’s enough good Christian culture out there. So why would you want to immerse your kids in Harry Potter pagan occultic culture?
So you can demonstrate logically that it’s not a sin. So what? Why are you trying to have one foot in occult culture and one foot in Christian culture?
For all the reasons some of us have been trying to explain (earlier in this thread and in other threads on the subject),
Harry Potter is not part of any pagan/occult culture. A kid steeped in it has both feet in Christian culture.
