[HPforGrownups] Wizard Religion / Wizards and their eye-wear/ meddlesome fools/ Hermione in myth

[shane dunphy]

No: HPFGUIDX 48141




Richelle wrote:
>I am currently reading the book "The Gospel According to Harry Potter" by 
>Connie Neal, >which goes through all four books and pulls out examples of 
>what may or may not be >Christian symbolism.

Me:
That sounds fascinating.  Who is it published by?
I (as Pippin was kind enough to point out) started this thread, and there's 
been plenty of interesting discussion and a great exchange of ideas.  I 
suppose that what my original thought was was that there's obviously a 
Christian *framework* to the Hogwarts school year (Christmas, Easter etc), 
but this is probably cultural.  England, the States, Ireland are all Western 
nations, and Christian cultural attitudes have pervaded, even for people who 
are atheistic or non-practicing.  This does not mean that Hogwarts is 
moderately Christian.  JKR is very different from other fantasy writers (C S 
Lewis, JRR Tolkien, William Horwood) who make religion a very explicit part 
of their mythos.  With JKR I do believe that its *there*, its just deeply 
buried.

My own thoughts are that there is certainly a Christianesque influence to 
the WW.  People have already pointed out the Fat Friar, ghost nuns, St 
Mungos and many other Christian-type names and places.  Does this, however, 
mean that the main religion in the WW is some form of lapsed Christianity?
I doubt it.

There are a couple of reasons for my doubt.  Firstly, the general attitudes 
in the WW are very different to that of the MW.  The world view is different 
and much more easy-going.  People seem less hung-up.  Also, there has been a 
seperation of the two cultures for many hundreds of years.  It seems to me 
that even before this very decisive seperation the two cultures weren't 
exactly living in one another's pockets.  It is therefore reasonable to 
assume that something as culturally important and influential as religion 
would be similarly seperate.

Now, how do we have all these religous names, and the nuns and monks and 
whatnot?  This is an interesting question, and I think brings us back to the 
whole idea of archetypes.  We've discussed this in several threads, and I 
think that it applies to this one too.  According to thinkers like Carl 
Jung, there exist in all human societies things called *archetypes*.  These 
are usually symbols, concepts or ideas that reflect a common truth or 
reality.  If we look at the religions across the world, we can see that 
certain ideas exist in them all: the idea that we should try and be nice to 
one another, that there is a power greater than all of us, the idea of an 
after-life of some kind...these are universal - *archetypal*.  Taking this 
into consideration, we can see that in the WW, some aspects of Christianity 
have seeped in.  Maybe the Wizarding religion has adopted some Christian 
ideas.  However, I bet that the way that it is constructed and used is very 
different to our Muggle approach to Christianity.  And somehow, I'd also bet 
that if there is a wizarding Bible, its a very different text to our own.  
There are bound to be some major Wizarding religous figures, wizards who 
have made great steps forward in the field of spirituality or personal 
development who would be included in the central text.  There was also a 
comment that perhaps the WW had embraced some form of Gnosticism, as it was 
sympathetic to magic and was also dualistic.  I think that this is a goood 
idea, but again, I think that this is a still a very muggle based approach.  
A wizarding religion would probably take some of this, adapt it and imprint 
a different cultural ethos.

Of course, if religion is brought up (and I doubt it will be) in canon, 
isn't it possible that some of our major religous figures could be in fact 
wizards?  Miraculous powers, anyone...

Just a thought (and not a blasphemous one, I hope).

Shane.

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