[HPforGrownups] Wizard Religion/ Magic without wands

[Richelle Votaw]

No: HPFGUIDX 48177


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.

Shane responded:

> That sounds fascinating.  Who is it published by?

Westminster John Knox Publisher.  The author, Connie Neal, is the same person who wrote the "What's a Christian to Do With Harry Potter?" book, a sort of response to all the "anti-Harry Potter" books by Christian authors who were claiming it was Satanic and so on.  She is frequently interviewed on Christian radio shows and often enlightens the hosts who were led to believe (by those writing anti-HP books) negative things about HP.  For example, she gives the instance when a radio host asked her how she could support HP when the theme of the books was "There is no good and evil, only power and those to weak to seek it."  Naturally she was able to quickly explain that one away, as the one saying it was in fact evil and met his end very soon.

> 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.

I agree.  Although I must say the first time I read CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia (keep in mind I was really young, six or seven, so I guess it wasn't just being dense, but young) I totally missed the Christian connections.  Then again, I missed them (at least some of them) in Harry Potter as well.  Obviously some are jumping out, like Lily's sacrifice to save Harry.  I am still not certain the symbolisms are intentional, but I must admit if they aren't intentional, it's a very big coincidence.  And I'm not much on coincidences, so I'm pretty much convinced it's intentional.  To an extent, at least.  As far as the Gospel According to HP book, it's divided into four sections, one for each book, and I'm through the first two sections, about to begin PoA.  I'd love to post on this, but where?  Can someone let me know for sure if it belongs here or in OT-Chatter.  I mean, it's off topic in the sense that it's bringing a great deal of religion into it, but it's on topic in the sense that it's all directly related to various parts throughout the books.  Help!

Also, one more thought I had on the magic without a wand issue.  Someone mentioned Ron's "Wingardium Leviosa/Leviosar" incident in SS/PS.  The key there should be that a) Ron's wand (which wasn't even intended to be his wand at all) wasn't familiar with him and couldn't "read his mind."  b) Ron was so intent on saying the incantation that he wasn't thinking much of the results.  Then when he was using the spell in the troll incident his mind was completely focused on what he wanted done.

Richelle


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