HBP spoiler(ish): Hor-thingies: etymology

[pippin_999]

 Kneasy:
> I've never really understood the need to fit HP into any religious
framework.
> Perhaps someone could explain why numbers of fans consider it
important that it should show some sort of congruence. 
 HP's just a bit of fun fantasy, isn't it? Nothing really important.
And 
where did she say they weren't secular?
 'Not secular' implies the opposite. A delicate position for books
selling to a multi-faith readership.

Pippin:
The Time magazine interview:

http://www.quick-quote-quill.org/articles/2005/0705-time-grossman.htm

(Interestingly, although Rowling is a member of the Church of
Scotland, the books are free of references to God. On this point, 
Rowling is cagey.
 "Um. I don't think they're that secular," she says, choosing her
words slowly. "But, obviously, Dumbledore is not Jesus.")
---

To answer your other question, I don't feel a need to fit the books
into a religious framework. I just perceive that it's there in the
text.

I'd feel silly ignoring it, nor do I see why its existence should be 
more offensive to fans than a framework of secular humanism, or 
multi-culturalism or agnosticism or existentialism or  any other 
philosophy.

Fans might be disappointed to learn that the author's philosophy
is different from theirs; on the other hand they might also find
it  depressing to think she hadn't an idea in her head and it
was all just fluff, created with no no other purpose than to kill 
lots of trees and make piles of money for the author (not that 
she doesn't deserve every penny.)

 It's like the Shipping debate isn't it? The author thinks she's 
dropped anvil sized clues, and many fans agree, and think that she 
couldn't have  made it more obvious without writing it in neon
letters, while others are taken aback and say that they never saw it 
coming and wouldn't have wanted it if they did. 



Pippin
noting that the cathedral metaphor showed up again in HPB