Religion in the Wizarding World. (Was: Re: Halloween Toasts)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 191389


> 
> projectrosemary:
> 	I thought about religion in the Wizarding World.  It seems to me that most witches and wizards do not have religion at all.  They are mostly agnostic atheists.  Wizards and witches do not have to believe because they have evidence.  We need to define terms here:

Pippin:
I don't think we know enough to say anything about the beliefs of "most witches and wizards."  We do know that  many wizards and witches celebrate Christmas and Easter though we don't know whether they attach any spiritual significance to them. 

 I would say that Harry, along with most witches and wizards, believes loads of things for which he has only hearsay evidence, though Luna Lovegood and her father are the extreme examples. 

Godric's Hollow supports a church, and in its graveyard witches and wizards are buried, some with quotations from Christian scripture on their headstones. There was a Christmas eve service going on in the church, though we don't know whether there were any magical beings in attendance. But we do know on the evidence of ghosts and portraits that there were in the past wizarding monks, nuns and friars. 

Whether the "tufty little man" who speaks at Dumbledore's funeral and performs the marriage between Bill and Fleur has some kind of religious title is unknown, but he performs the religious function of presiding at rites. 

Harry celebrates a holiday for each season: his birthday, Hallowe'en, Christmas and Easter. Interestingly, he receives each of the Hallows  on or near one of these days. He gets the cloak at Christmas, the Resurrection Stone on his birthday, and control of the Elder Wand passes to him over the Easter holidays.  

He marks the resting place of Moody's eye with a cross, but doesn't put a cross on Dobby's grave, which seems to indicate that the cross is something other than  a generic symbol to mark a grave. 

Pippin