Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged

When Harry met Lucy...

HARRY POTTER AND THE BIBLE
The Menace behind the Magick
By Richard Abanes
Horizon Books, Penn., USA. £9.99
Available in the UK through Penfold Books, tel. 0800 389 2538
ISBN 0 88965 201 5

HARRY POTTER: Witchcraft Repackaged - making evil look innocent
Jeremiah Films 2001. 60 minutes. £12.99
Available in the UK through Penfold Books

For any Christian parent or educator, the Harry Potter books, films and merchandise present a considerable problem. The author J.K. Rowling did not write them for children (Abanes p.138) but has been happy to see them so read. Yet HP's values are non-Christian, the books are saturated in occultism, and the series is becoming more cruel and violent.

Amid the many Christian responders, Richard Abanes offers an intelligent and well-informed critique. He summarises the plot of each book before highlighting areas of concern. In the second half of the book he provides a wider theological context, a true rather than fictional account of the battle between good and evil. In passing he denounces the execrable Goosebumps series (p.262) which shares a US publisher with HP.

Delight in revenge

Harry Potter is not a good boy. He and his friends are much given to lying and to breaking rules, but his teachers at Hogwarts, the wizard academy, are indulgent. He (and his author) delight in revenge, and mock the handicapped. Their conversation is profane. They scorn the people of the ordinary world.

Most of all, at Hogwarts they are learning magic, a whole range of activities forbidden in Scripture. Indeed the informed student finds real occult historical persons, books and practices embedded in the stories. The temptation to explore these areas further will certainly be felt by a percentage of readers. The occult underground is waiting for their call - with web sites, books, and magical requisites so that they too can become real occultists or (more likely) casualties. For the Pagan Federation it is like Christmas, if you get my meaning.

Nothing serious?

Keeping a balance here is difficult. There are those liberal church people who suggest that nothing serious is happening in the Potter phenomenon, even that HP offers a positive role model. Abanes doubts if they are really taking in what the books demonstrate - a profoundly anti-Christian worldview.

But he does not bring out some relevant continuities. First these are boarding school stories, a genre with a long history (more so in the UK than in the States). The children in such stories have rarely been paragons. In fact the main characters in children's literature have often been, to say the least, naughty. Just William for example - or Biggles and colleagues, who did so much to help the war effort, but used expletives!

Secondly, they are social comedies, in which (as so often) a novelist mocks respectable people (like the Dursleys, Harry's stepfamily) or the bureaucracy of the Ministry of Magic. And once embarked on a magical college, the author and the reader enjoy the minute detailing of that imaginary world. That includes spells and other magical practices.

This is not new. There were, for example quite detailed descriptions of spells in Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree books published in the War, and in Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937).

Lewis and Tolkien

Abanes loves Tolkien (a Roman Catholic incidentally) whose magic he claims is of a different kind to Rowling's, and he actually ends with a song from The Lord of the Rings.

But some of the features he condemns in Rowling, such as word play in names, are in Tolkien too. And did you realise that Gandalf was a Maia (a non-human angel) and not a human (Abanes, p.237)?

C.S. Lewis and Narnia also get a vote of confidence. Undoubtedly these authors wrote in a gentler age, and those of us who find say Roald Dahl gross, will rightly recoil from some of current children's literature.

Strategy

We need a strategy to respond to Harry Potter, and Abanes ends with some brief practical suggestions. Indeed this part could usefully be expanded, and then an index added. He insists we should get our facts straight about the Potter books and what we criticise.

There are some real quotes from witches. But in his treatment of parapsychology (the attempt to study scientifically inexplicable phenomena) the author resorts to second-hand data (p.157). It is, he says, a pseudoscientific field, which is exactly the view of the militant humanists.

The video

Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged, a video from a California company, comes with a cover recommendation from Tim Le Haye, the Pre-Trib Rapture writer whose Left Behind series makes him a sort of Christian mini-equivalent of Ms. Rowling in sales. It is a repackaging of Jeremiah Films' own earlier work on witchcraft, and is much better than you might expect. Caryl Matrisciana, the co-presenter, was formerly Caryl Williams of Deo Gloria Trust in Bromley, England, so the English references are reliable. With considerable scholarship, the video hammers home the point that witchcraft is taught in the Potter books, occasionally taking guilt by association a long way. (Harry has a lightning scar on his face - the video 'cuts' to marching Nazis with lightning insignia. The name 'Potter' has both biblical and Sumerian significance, where it implies idolatry, feminism, etc.). The video leaves no doubt that if Wicca (which, incidentally, was substantially developed in England) is now a recognised religion, books which describe its practices ought not to be promoted in schools.

Powerful woman

J.K. Rowling is not only one of the wealthiest women in the country, she is also one of the most powerful, because she reaches millions of children and adults. Her publishers and booksellers are very happy. But the full ramifications of what she has stirred up through occult fiction are yet to unfold. She has not espoused any religion beyond a vague theism, and could come out as a card-carrying pagan. Or her inspiration could overwhelm her as she deliberately allows dark themes to unfold, taking her closer to horror writers like Stephen King. We must pray that she will hear God's word, and turn Harry Potter away from the path of destruction.