Wizarding Religion (Wizarding Anarchy)

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "bluesqueak" <pip at e...> wrote:
> 
> I think, myself, that religiously, the English (and Welsh)
Wizarding 
> World is probably very like the English (and Welsh) muggle world. 
> That will mean that probably many (though maybe not most) of the WW 
> would consider themselves various types of Christian, with an 
> attendence at church that would vary between weekly and 'weddings 
> and funerals'. The rest would be either other non-Pagan religions,  
> Pagan, or agnostic/secular (and if it's an exact match with modern 
> Britain, that last category will be the majority). The big 
> difference might well be that more of the WW kept to pre-Christian 
> religions - but since the Hufflepuff ghost is 'the Fat Friar', we 
> *know* that some of the WW  had 'careers' within organised 
> Christianity.
> 
I agree a great deal with you (or you agree a great deal with me)
including that most of the wizarding folk nowdays seem to be agnostic
/secular, but I feel that the religious census of the UK wizarding
world is is not 'an exact match' with that of the Muggle or RL UK. Not
BIG differences:

For example, new/small religions or cults which are relatively new or
small among Muggles probably haven't reached the wizards at all yet,
and there may be more than one small religion/cult among wizards which
hasn't reached Muggles (yet?).

Btw I don't see how there could possibly be any Wicca among wizards.
As something of a Wiccan myself, I wish there *were*, but I just don't
see how our beliefs and practices could relate in a world where magic
is a technology. 

> I'd like to think the pure-blood-ites aren't Christians, but since
I 
> am a Christian, that would be my prejudices showing. The nasty 
> villains of the series can't belong to my religion, that sort of 
> thing. ::embarrassed shrug::

I feel even more embarrassed than you do: I propose that the nasty
villains belong to something related to *my* religion. *sigh*

Because of what I said about the wizards last post, that they are
choosy or slow about adopting new customs, they are anarchic, and they
scorn Muggles, I also think that the pure-blood-ites aren't Christians
(that would mean having adopted a new (less than 2000 year old)
religion brought by Muggles), but have a religion of their own, which
excludes Muggles.

It's probably called 'The Old Religion' or 'Our Religion', and
contains pieces of Druidism, religio Romano, Hellenistic mysteries,
and self-aggrandizement. The various religious elements may have been
brought to Britain by Muggles, but they were brought long enough ago
and were appealing enough to the pure-bloods that they say they were
brought by wizards. Self-aggrandizing elements like, for example that
wizarding humans were created by the highest God, while Muggles and
non-human magical people were created by imitative lesser Gods.

I'm sure Voldemort doesn't believe in any religion at all, and neither
does Lucius, altho' I imagine Lucius goes through whatever motions
('weddings and funerals') are part of his social status. However, I
think Bellatrix might well totally believe in some religion which
attributes all bad things that have happened in the last several
centuries to wizards having given up offering Muggle human sacrifices
to the Ancestral Wizards.