[HPforGrownups] Voldemort AND Religion WAS Re: Religion in HP

[Amanda Rush]

No: HPFGUIDX 40725

Shalom all

I spend more time lurking on this list than I do posting, but I think I 
will put my two cents in here.

I can't say for certain whether or not J. K. Rowling used religious imagery 
in the HP books on purpose, but I will say that it is there: Some 
Christian, some Jewish, some pagan.  The drinking of blood, for example, is 
a pagan religious custom that managed to carry over into Christianity, at 
least in its symbolic form.  Several of the mystery religions had their 
initiates symbolically drink the blood of a deity who died for the sins of 
mankind.  Others had them drink the blood in order to ingest some of the 
power of the deity.  Baptism is the same way, except that a form of it also 
appears in Jewish religious practice.  A great many religious traditions 
have some sort of immersion in water as part of them.  However, 
Christianity is one of the few that uses it as some sort of renewal 
process, in that supposedly when one is baptized, one is born again or 
transformed.



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