Harry Potter’s Hocus-Pocus
by Steve Bonta

Millions of kids formerly interested only in video games are now reading, thanks to the unprecedented popularity of the Harry Potter books — but there are some red flags.

If you haven’t heard of Harry Potter by now, you’re probably in self-imposed exile from Western civilization. British author J.K. Rowling’s four books of fantasy have taken the world by a fervor that borders on the religious. Cabbage-Patch Dolls, hang your heads, Fab Four make way; the hype and hoopla surrounding young orphaned wizard Harry Potter and his magical doings at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry have created the Mother of All Popular Fads.

The Potter books, originally marketed for children, fascinate young and old alike, with 35 million copies of the first three volumes in print, in 35 different languages. Their popularity far exceeds that of any TV series or rock band, not to mention any other fantasy book before them. Mostly in reaction to the books’ unprecedented popularity, the New York Times has initiated a list of Children’s Best-sellers which, of course, the Potter series has dominated during the list’s brief life span.

The release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth book in the series, was carefully planned and directed by Ms. Rowling herself, who instructed that copies should be released worldwide on the same date, and required book retailers to sign agreements not to sell the book before July 8, 2000. Accordingly, at midnight, July 7th, bookstores across the country held grand Harry Potter parties, with children, dressed in Harry Potter’s trademark taped glasses and wizard attire, queueing up to be the first on the block to negotiate the 700-plus pages of Harry’s latest adventure. Aside from a few murmurs of dissent from religious groups, who contend that the Potter books promote magic and the occult, the love affair with Rowling’s creation is nearly universal. Another three books are planned.

Imaginative Entertainment

Written in a tradition of children’s fantasy stretching back at least as far as L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, the Potter books are indeed extraordinarily entertaining in spots. While the prose can be uneven in places, as might be reasonably expected from a young author still experiencing the growing pains of celebrity, Rowling’s impressive imagination and creativity pervade all four of the Potter sagas released to date. Her talent in inventing nonsensical names is particularly noteworthy, from the Hogwarts School and its sundry offbeat professors (Albus Dumbledore, Minerva McGonagall, Severus Snape), to a host of fabulous creatures (garden gnomes, the Whomping Willow, Blow-Tailed Skrewts), to hilariously innovative settings like Diagon Alley, a sort of shopping mall for wizards in downtown London, and Quidditch, a soccer-like game played on broomsticks. At times Rowling’s imaginative gifts can be a bit overwhelming; almost every chapter features some new outlandish character, spell, creature, or other facet of Harry’s magical world.

Book One (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), first published in Great Britain in June 1997, opens with the infant Harry deposited on the doorstep of his aunt and uncle, the Dursleys. Harry’s parents, both powerful wizards, have just been killed in a confrontation with the evil wizard Lord Voldemort, but Harry has been inexplicably spared. Moreover, Voldemort, as a result of his unsuccessful effort to kill young Harry, has been drained of most of his powers, and is forced to disappear. Harry Potter, therefore, is a celebrity in the world of wizards and witches but, because of his upbringing among "muggles," or non-magical people, is completely unaware of who he is until his 11th birthday. On the day he turns 11, Harry is tracked down by the wizarding community and invited to enroll in Hogwarts, the elite boarding school for young wizards and witches. Against the strenuous objections of the Dursleys, who not only detest magic and its practitioners but also have treated Harry abusively his entire life, Harry Potter enters the magical world of wizardry. After a shopping trip to Diagon Alley to pick up school supplies, including a wand, and a visit to Gringott’s, the wizards’ bank, where he withdraws some of his deceased parents’ life savings to pay tuition, Harry boards the magical Hogwarts Express and is whisked off to school.

Each of the four Potter books so far covers one academic year at Hogwarts. The plot is essentially the same from one book to the next: Harry and his friends discover some menace threatening the students at the school and Harry himself. Invariably, the hidden menace turns out to be the not-so-dead Lord Voldemort or one of his surrogates, working in cahoots with someone at the school, and leads to a climactic confrontation between Harry and his nemesis. In each installment, young Potter barely escapes unscathed, while Lord Voldemort or his stand-in retreats into the shadows to prepare for the next volume. Though formulaic, the Potter episodes are intended, according to Rowling, to portray the fight between good and evil. However, each new book seems a bit darker and more morbidly tragic than the one preceding. In The Goblet of Fire, one of the students at Hogwarts is actually murdered by Voldemort at the climax — but the conflict between Harry and his deadly foe is riveting in places.

Doom and Gloom

But what of claims that the Potter series glamorizes the occult and that the books are too grim to be suitable children’s fare? One disappointed reviewer wrote that "there is a prevailing shadow of death that hangs over much of the storytelling. This is not a light happy world, but a landscape clouded by gloom and murder." The author herself admitted in a recent interview that "death and bereavement and what death means, I would say, is one of the central themes in all seven books."

The Potter books do indeed contrast sharply in mood with most other children’s fantasy writing. Rowling has claimed, for example, that C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series (see "Masterpiece of Christian Allegory," page 15) has influenced her heavily, but the Potter books bear little resemblance, either in style or in substance, to Lewis’ sunny prose and undisguised Christian themes. While the Potter books purport to concern themselves with the struggle between good and evil, nowhere is there a towering Christ metaphor comparable to Lewis’ fantastic Lion Aslan, whose benign, immortal presence always trumps evil in the land of Narnia. Whereas in Narnia, evil is always ludicrously impotent before Aslan and his allies, evil, in the person of the implacable Voldemort, is quite nearly dominant in the Potter series, constantly threatening to utterly overwhelm good. Voldemort himself has never died and intends to achieve immortality, as he informs Potter in Book Four; his path to power is littered with the corpses of "good" wizards and muggles who fecklessly stood in his way. As a result, rather than dealing with good versus evil in the Christian sense of the terms, where evil is understood always to be subordinate to omnipotent Good, the Potter stories come across more as dualist allegories, where, as in dualist heresies of every age, good and evil are regarded as coeval, warring equals — different sides, as it were, of the same cosmic coin.

This anti-Christian take on good and evil is vigorously reinforced in the Potter books by various twists suggesting that Harry and Voldemort, despite being mortal enemies, are not really that far apart. Harry, in fact, during his infant encounter with Voldemort, has actually taken on many of Voldemort’s traits, thereby absorbing some of his powers. He, like Voldemort, has the rare gift of being able to speak with snakes, and also ends up with a wand manufactured from the same source as Voldemort’s. The result of this is that, during one conflict between the dread foes, Harry’s and Voldemort’s wands cancel each other out, and the encounter ends inconclusively. In Book Four, Voldemort is restored to full strength by absorbing a phial of blood taken from Harry which, the Dark Lord explains, will impart to him those attributes that allowed Potter to resist him as an infant. Finally, Harry’s most distinctive feature, the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, was received from Voldemort and is ultimately the source of Harry’s exceptional magical abilities.

Occultic Backdrop

All of these images, moreover, seem to be derived from occult material, suggesting a sophisticated knowledge of the occult on the part of the author. Regarding Harry’s ability to speak "Parseltongue," or the language of snakes, the books are suffused with serpent imagery, beginning with the early pages of Book One, when young Harry, still unaware of his magical gifts, has a conversation with a boa constrictor in a zoo. After the snake communicates a desire to escape his confinement, Harry unwittingly vaporizes the glass enclosure, and the reptile escapes. In Book Two, Harry discovers that the secret menace attacking the students at Hogwarts is a basilisk (a giant snake with looks that kill, literally), while in Book Four, we meet Voldemort’s vile familiar, Nagini, a serpent that feeds on Voldemort’s victims. The serpent, we need hardly remind the reader, is one of the most ancient and pervasive occult and pagan motifs; the Satanic serpent of the Garden of Eden finds expression in most pagan systems as the Serpent God, from the ancient Egyptian god Set to the sacred cobras associated with both Vishnu and Shiva in the Hindu pantheon (the name "Nagini," in fact, means "pertaining to cobras" in Sanskrit) to the ophiolatry or snake worship practiced over much of pagan Africa and in Haitian voodoo.

Furthermore, there is Voldemort himself, whom Rowling clothes with all sorts of hellish imagery. In an early encounter with Lord Voldemort, for instance, Harry descends into a hidden tunnel beneath the school, which is guarded by a savage three-headed dog reminiscent of Cerberus, the guardian of the Greek underworld. At the end of the tunnel, he discovers his arch-enemy manifested as a hidden, second face on the back of one of his teacher’s heads. We are reminded of the ancient two-faced European deity Janus, whom many authorities credit as the source of much medieval Satanic iconography. The devil in medieval times was often depicted as having two faces, one of which was usually hidden somewhere out of sight, as on the devil’s posterior or the back of his head.

Like the devil in both the Book of Revelation and the European witch cults of the Middle Ages, Voldemort sets a mark on the members of his secret circle of followers, who are referred to as "Death Eaters." In the Potter books, the "dark mark" is placed on the arm, and causes the bearer pain whenever he is summoned by Voldemort. Yet Harry has been marked as well; his forehead scar erupts into agonizing pain whenever Voldemort is nearby, or his power is manifest.

The practice of "marking" among members of medieval European witch cults is not well-known — probably because of the amount of ridicule with which the subject has been generally treated — but deserves comment here. Scholar Margaret Murray, who was quite sympathetic with the supposedly romantic aspects of witchcraft, recorded that most witches brought to trial testified that, as part of their initiation into the cult, they were given a mark by the coven master to indicate their subjection to the devil. This marking, usually inflicted on the shoulder but sometimes on the thigh, breast, groin, or other hidden part of the anatomy, was uniformly described as excruciatingly painful. It was evidently some kind of brand or tattoo; one initiate recalled that "when the Devil marked her on the right shoulder he hurt her so much that she cried out, and felt at the time a great heat as if a fire had burned her." This procedure was painstakingly documented by Murray in her classic work God of the Witches, a seminal source for studies in the history of the occult, and would certainly be familiar to anyone with a thorough grounding in the subject. It is most unlikely, therefore, that Ms. Rowling’s choice of this and other prominent occult images is accidental.

Ambiguous Message

The fact that occult symbols like the above-mentioned fill the pages of the Potter books and are associated with both the hero and the villain creates a cloud of ambiguity around their motives and those of their creator. Good and evil are never clear-cut, it seems; Harry is part Voldemort and Voldemort part Harry. Likewise, many of the supporting characters are confusingly two-sided. The "lovable" groundskeeper Hagrid, for example, is one of Harry’s staunchest friends, but has a penchant for keeping deadly animals in his house as pets, animals which frequently endanger Harry and the other students. Professor Lupin, Harry’s friend and ally in Book Three, is a werewolf. Severus Snape, who seems to detest Harry and opposes him at every opportunity, turns out at the end of Book One to be a good guy — sort of. In Book Four, we learn that Severus has a secret: He was once one of Voldemort’s Death Eaters, and bears the dark mark on his arm, but now he wishes to fight his old master. Sirius Black, the eponymous "prisoner of Azkaban" (the wizard prison) of Book Three, turns out not to be the dangerous psychopathic murderer he was thought to be, but a friend and godfather of Harry. Endearing little Ginny Weasley, who has a crush on Harry, turns out to be the student responsible for the basilisk’s rampage in Book Two. And on and on.

The only characters, besides Voldemort himself, who are portrayed with absolute consistency are the Dursleys, Harry’s adopted muggle family, who have no redeeming traits whatsoever. Mr. and Mrs. Dursley vent their bigoted resentment towards Harry and his magical powers by subjecting him to abuses so ludicrously exaggerated as to give David Copperfield pause for thought. They feed him on a starvation diet and keep him locked in his room or in a cobwebby cubbyhole under the stairs, all the while showering gifts and affection on their own obese bully of a son, Dudley. In contrast to the Dursleys’ strident opposition to Harry’s magical activities and the constant mistreatment he endures at their hands, the magical community, his "real" family, gives him a hero’s welcome, lavishing him with praise and attention wherever he goes. The message comes through loud and clear: The magical world is exciting, compassionate, and full of lovably unconventional characters, while the world of conventional, button-down, working stiffs is populated by dysfunctional families full of narrow-minded bigotry and pathological pettiness.

Admittedly, the Potter series amounts to an entertaining read. Further, the books have as one redeeming quality the distinction of having served to separate millions of children from the brain-numbing electronic devices — notably television and video games — that have of late so detrimentally monopolized our children’s time. At least, then, there is the possibility that the books will stimulate a minor renaissance in grammar, spelling, and general language skills in today’s youths. But in terms of charm, subtlety, and lightheartedness, J.K. Rowling’s Potter series does not compare with such timeless and uplifting children’s classics like Winnie the Pooh, The Wind in the Willows, and Charlotte’s Web, to cite several personal favorites. Nor can the books claim the majesty of the aforementioned Narnia series or Madeleine l’Engle’s outstanding Wrinkle in Time trilogy, fine examples of fantasy in the service of overtly Christian themes. As pure imaginative storytelling, Rowling’s creations have few peers, but as sources of edifying, uplifting material teaching positive, Christian values to children (and adults), the Potter series ranks rather far down the list.

Rowling’s Revealing "Heroine"
by Steve Bonta

Joanne Kathleen Rowling has had a lifelong penchant for writing and telling stories. She’s a single mother who, before the explosive success of Harry Potter, lived from welfare check to welfare check, writing at a table in an Edinburgh coffeehouse with her child on her lap. She is well-educated, having studied in both France and England. She worked for a time with Amnesty International in London, and taught English in Portugal. She continues to live privately and modestly, by all accounts, and has guarded her religious and political views carefully.

Rowling did let slip a revealing tidbit during an online interview at Scholastic.com, however. Asked by one youthful reader whether she had any role models, Rowling responded that she didn’t, but that she did have a "heroine," one Jessica Mitford, a "human rights activist." Mitford was, in reality, a prominent member of the American Communist Party along with her husband Robert Treuhaft, and a lifelong socialist.

A self-styled "muckraking journalist," Mitford earned notoriety beginning in the ’60s for her vociferous espousal of various socialist causes. The most noteworthy of these was her 30-year fixation with death and funeral customs in the United States. Her most influential book, The American Way of Death, was a socialist-inspired screed condemning the death industry, and large American mortuary chains in particular, for their "exploitation" of the dead and the bereaved. The book, and Mitford’s ceaseless lobbying on behalf of the downtrodden deceased, was largely responsible for the first-ever congressional regulation of the death industry, which started in the early ’90s, a few years before Mitford’s own demise. That Rowling would cite Mitford, poison-penned muckraker, unrepentant socialist, and death-fetishist extraordinaire, as a "heroine" speaks volumes about her personal convictions.