colours; religion

[xunza2000 <amb66@cam.ac.uk>]

No: HPFGUIDX 48643

Dear Friends
This is my first post, so please be gentle with me.
Regarding colours: JKR is interested in people's hair and eye colour,
first of all, and she seems to have a particular interest in people with
red hair or green eyes (or maybe I just saw this point because I have
both).  But she also does seem to use colour symbolically.  I'm not
convinced, however, that her colours are always symbolic.  For instance,
doesn't Mrs Weasley knit Harry a green jumper one Christmas?  To me, the
most interesting thing about the colours is the red-green opposition.  We
see this most clearly in Voldemort's duel with Harry at the end of GoF.
Voldemort's eyes are red, Harry's are green (nautrally), but the light
from Harry's wand is red, and from Voldemort's is green.  Now green and
red are opposites on the spectrum - if you take a green-red colour wheel
and spin it very fast, they cancel each other out and you get white.  This
would seem to support the idea that Harry and Voldemort are not just
*happening* to be against each other.  Rather, they are *meant* to oppose
each other.  It also suggests to me, in some way, that the link they share
through the scar, and now the blood, means that they could, eventually
cancel each other out - perhaps Harry could kill Voldemort by dying
himself, or whatever.
I'm aware that this link has probably been suggested before, but I'm just
responding to the colour-related post on the previous digest.  Thanks for
reading.

Now, regarding relgion: Yes, I think it's right that there is no mention
of real relgions in Canon, and I've found the religious references in
Fanon to be rather out of the character of the books.  Why?  Well, think
of the analogy of technology and magic.  Wizards do not use Muggle
technology ('ekeltricity') because they have magic instead.  The two
worlds merely present two ways of doing the same thing.  Religion,
however, is different: first, it is about the supernatural, rather than
the natural, and both Potter-world magic and Muggle technology operate on
the level of the natural rather than the supernatural (largely, anyway);
and second, religion is concerned with a metanarrative which informs the
thoughts and actions of its adherents.  The metanarrative in the
Potter-world is, by contrast, much closer to a secular humanist model,
with emphasis on personal choice and ethics.  It's been pointed out that
there are lots of similarities between the value system of the Potter
world and, let us say, Christianity: not only in terms of ethics, but also
in terms of the value of sacrificial love, though it is not possible to
build up a working allegory or even a set of typologies, such as those
intended by C S Lewis or J R R Tolkein.  Finally, it should be pointed out
that the fantasy stories which do contain references to religions in the
real world are extremely few and far between.  There is no parish priest
in Cinderella's village, just as there is no school chaplain at Hogwarts.
Really finally, this time, I will be very interested to see what JKR does
with the issue of the afterlife: she has already said in an interview that
we will find out why some people become ghosts and some do not.  Perhaps
this will be an opportunity to see what she thinks happens to wizards when
they die - I really don't know what she'll do with this one, as it's kind
of hard not to talk about religion in connection with this.
Thank you for reading, and apologies once again if this ground has already
been covered many times - I am new here.
Yours
Ally