The Role of Religion in the Potterverse was Magical Latin

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 186144

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, No Limberger <no.limberger at ...> wrote:

> Thus, as demonstrated here, the concepts of an immortal soul, love and self-sacrifice are universal themes that no one religion can claim ownership.

Pippin:

That seems a bit like saying that the imagery taken from ritual masks in Picasso's paintings isn't African because other cultures used ritual masks. AFAIK, Picasso used those images without much concern for the meanings they had in their original cultures. He liked them because they were foreign and psychologically powerful, while for Western audiences their ritual significance was unknown and irrelevant. But it seems hard to argue that JKR is doing the same thing with Christianity, particularly when she does use matter from astrology and alchemy in  that way.  

JKR's imagery is Christian enough that a non-Christian like me can easily recognize it. Why deny it? Certainly  wizards would have had concepts of self-sacrifice and love before the advent of Christianity, but they cannot have been burying their dead in Christian churchyards, marking burial sites with crosses, or putting quotations from Christian scripture on their tombstones. 

To say that none of this is meant to have anything to do with the reasons that Lily and Harry decided to sacrifice themselves, or that Lily wouldn't think of these concepts in a Christian context (particularly as she would have been introduced to Christianity before she entered the WW) seems an awful stretch. 

We might also notice who is buried but *not* in consecrated ground  -- Dobby, the non-human, and Dumbledore, who commited suicide by Snape ;), and may have judged himself unworthy. 

Pippin