Harry Potter |
The World of Harry Potter |
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Harry Potter |
The World of Harry Potter |
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The World of Harry Potter | The nature of Magic in Harry Potter's world |
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Read Michael's Take on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at the SF-Fandom Harry Potter Forum.The world of Harry Potter is really our world, but we Muggles don't realize that magic folk like Harry and his friends Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley are living among us. That is the premise behind J.K. Rowlings' fantastic Harry Potter books. When you write fantastic fiction, you have to decide where to set your stories. Should it be on another planet? In the past? In the future? Or on an alternate Earth, similar to ours but not quite the same? Or can it simply be that your story takes place in the present time, on the present Earth, in an inconspicuous way which is overlooked by the vast majority of the world's population? Rowling's premise is that our Earth is shared by two civilizations, one very acutely aware of the other, but the other (larger, more populous) civilization at best is only vaguely aware of the smaller one. Harry Potter spends most of his childhood living in a modest suburbab home in industrial England. His world is full of television, radio, motor cars, buses, trains, airplanes, and books. He may have heard a few fairy tales or read some magical adventure stories, but most of his exposure to magic is in his own imagination. He is completely unaware of the vast catalogue of mystical creatures such as Griffons, Basilisks, Pixies, and phoenixes. To the Muggle civilization, these are all imaginary creatures. They, and witches on flying broomsticks, don't really exist. But to the people who are born with the gift of "magic", the world looks wholly different. Dragons are real, and were-wolves exist, and vampires really do drink human blood. Rowling doesn't tell us how the two worlds came to exist as one, or where the magic-folk first arose. She doesn't explain how things as large as trolls and giants can have existed alongside normal human-kind throughout history, except to imply that what we deem to be folklore and mythology are derived from Muggle glimpses of the magical world. The readre must infer that, perhaps, when there were more monsters and perhaps fewer safe havens for magic folk, Muggles had to endure occasional or even frequent disruptions of their lives by witches, wizards, and monsters. And so, when the Muggles began hunting down the witches and wizards, perhaps thinking they were responsible for all the magical mayhem in the world, it must be that the witches and wizards began banding together for their own protection. Over 1,000 years ago Godric Gryffindor, Salazar Slytherin, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw founded Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, apparently the first of its kind in the world. The founding of Hogwarts may mark the beginning of the organization of the wizard world, which stands apart from Muggle life. As they became more organized, wizards and witches must have realized they could live among the Muggles by avoiding direct contact with them. The conscious decision to share the lands with Muggles, rather than to seek out and occupy vacant lands for themselves, must have been taken in order to avoid allout war. If that is the case, either the majority of witches and wizards felt they could not hope to sustain, let alone win, such a war, or else they believed they would have to destroy Muggles or somehow completely dominate them. It seems unlikely the Wizarding world was that powerful. So, rather than establish separate kingdoms which would be subject to invasions and conflicts with Muggle kingdoms, the witches and wizards found a way to become unnoticed. But they must also have realized that they would have to contain the monsters. It wouldn't do to have trolls and giants tromping around the landscape, reminding everyone that there were also witches and wizards. Hence, the Minsitry of Magic (in England) and its counterparts in other countries must have been established as a means of organizing both the Wizarding world and the means to contain all the magical creatures which Muggles knew about. By striving to protect the Muggles from magical creatures, the Wizarding world took on an immense responsibility. That responsibility may be why the Muggle governments came to accept the Wizarding governments. So, Harry Potter's world encompasses both the Muggle landscape in which monsters and witches and wizards are not real and the magical landscape in which witchcraft and wizardry and magical creatures are normal, everyday experiences. The nature of magic in Harry Potter's worldMany Christians are concerned that the Harry Potter books may mislead children into exploring the occult. This concern is largely unwarranted, because J.K. Rowling has been careful to avoid using the Occult in her stories. The witchcraft and wizardry her characters are gifted with are natural talents, God-given abilities. The Occult is an artificial means of acquiring power and knowledge through other sources without God's authority. The Bible explicitly forbids many practices, including divination, speaking with spirits, the casting of spells, and so forth. These Occultic practices, the Bible teaches us, are based upon an interaction with rebellious spirits which disobey God -- demons, or fallen angels -- which seek to lead Men astray from God's love.But Harry and his friends don't call upon other powers. Their gifts are natural abilities which they have to learn to control, just as we have to learn how to control our muscles. As we have the ability to harm each other with our bare hands, we have the responsibility to learn how to restrain ourselves from doing so. It is the same with Harry's magical abilities. He can no more divest himself of those abilities than he can divest himself of his skin, his hearing, or his mind. While Rowling does explore the edges of the unknown, her themes are clearly in line with the teachings of the Bible: it is an individual's responsibility, and blessing, to CHOOSE whether to commit evil or do good. Although the issue of salvation does not concern Rowling's characters, they do recognize there are higher moral responsibilities than their own petty selfishness. In Christian doctrine, mankind experienced a moral fall when Adam disobeyed God and ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In doing so, Adam died a spiritual death and he condemned all of his descendants to a similar spiritual status. That is, mankind was born without the ability to directly interact with God, because we were all born spiritually dead. The Bible teaches us that Jesus restores spiritual life to anyone who believes he is their lord and savior, and that his sacrifice on the cross was sufficient to atone for all the sins of mankind. Since Harry's magical abilities are not derived from practicing the Occult, he is not (by exercising his natural talents) being disobedient to God. He may or may not be a Christian. His story is not about Christian values, and if one must object to Harry Potter for not teaching Christian values, then one must object to all fiction which does not teach Christian values. That includes all the great works of fiction which are taught in our schools today. It is not enough to say that Harry and his friends "cast spells". They do utter incantations and make potions, but these are things guided by their own natural abilities, not by Satanic influences. It would be equally wrong to condemn a mathematician for using formulas to derive values, or a chemist for using chemicals to make medicine. If a reader were to utter these incantations, nothing would happen. Nothing should happen, for the spells are merely the fictional accoutrements of an imaginary way of life in which some people are born with gifts that other people do not share. And the ingredients for the potions in the books are largely non-existent and unobtainable. One can hardly find a kneazel, much less use it for any magical purpose. Nor is anyone today likely to find a dragon's horn, regardless of what you may find in Asian herb shops. Harry Potter lives in a magical world of J.K. Rowling's imagination, and he doesn't represent a spiritual or moral threat to anyone. If anything, he underscores the Christian's desire to achieve a sense of belonging, and to do what is right, rather than what is wrong. Who is who in the Harry Potter Movies
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