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Fantasy » alt.fan.tolkien » Harry Potter and the Paganization of Children's Culture
Harry Potter and the Paganization of Children's Culture [message #97585] Fr, 29 Juli 2005 14:25
weiler161  
Harry Potter and the Paganization of Children's Culture

By Michael D. O'Brien



The realm of human imagination is a God-given gift, a faculty of the
mind that is intended to expand our understanding by enabling us to
visualize invisible truths. In the modern era this zone of man's
interior life has moved to the forefront of his experience. With the
advent of film, television, and now the near-virtual reality of
special-effects videos and other electronic entertainment, the screen
of the imagination is stimulated to a degree (both in quantity and in
kind) more than at any other period in history. This has prompted a
continuing debate over what constitutes healthy nourishment of the
imagination and what degrades it.

In his essay "On Fairy Stories," J.R.R. Tolkien pointed out that
because man is made in the image and likeness of God he is endowed with
faculties that reflect his Creator. One of these is the gift of
"sub-creation"--the human creator may give form to other worlds
populated by imaginary peoples and beasts, where fabulous environments
are the stage for astounding dramas. The primal desire at the heart of
such imagining, he says, is the "realization of wonder." If our eyes
are opened to see existence as wonder-full, then we become more capable
of reverential awe before the Source of it all. "Fairy stories may
invent monsters that fly the air or dwell in the deep," he wrote, "but
at least they do not try to escape from heaven or the sea." However
fantastic the sub-created world may be, if it is a product of the
"baptized imagination" it will be faithful to the moral order of the
universe. Tolkien cautions, however, that because man is fallen, the
creative faculty is always at risk of veering away from its true
objective. We are all quite capable of taking God-given gifts back in
the direction of idolatry.

Even the most cursory glance at what is available in children's
literature and entertainment today offers ample evidence that the
paganization of the imagination is well underway. In the late 19th
century there appeared in children's fiction a trickle of books that
began the process of redefining Christian symbols and the presentation
of occult themes in a favorable light. Until then, witches and
sorcerers--important elements of traditional fables and fairy
tales--were consistently portrayed as evil. With the advent of the
occult revival (which entered the West primarily through certain
British writers involved in esoteric religion) more and more material
appeared that attempted to shift the line between good and evil. The
characters of the "white witch," the pet dragon, and the wise wizard
became familiar figures. During the last quarter of the 20th century
the trickle became a torrent, and by the final decade before the
millennium it entered the mainstream of culture, powerfully augmented
by the interlocking mechanisms of television, film, video, marketing
techniques and spin-off industries, and applauded by a class of critics
who told us that this was all a long overdue broadening of our
horizons.

In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman describes how
television has reshaped our society. In the past, when Western man
moved from an oral culture to the print-dominated or "typographic"
culture, significant changes resulted in our capacity to absorb
experience and abstractions. The volume of information fed to the mind
increased, while the mind's ability to sort and evaluate the influx of
data did not always keep pace. With the advent of television another
quantum leap occurred. Flooded with powerful stimuli that bypassed the
mind's normal faculties for filtering and interpretation, both the
rational and the imaginative aspects of our minds became increasingly
passive. As a result, Postman warns, our ways of perceiving reality
itself are becoming fundamentally distorted. We now imbibe a massive
amount of impressions in small bites that demand of us neither
sustained attention nor truly critical thinking, thus rendering us
vulnerable to manipulation. We are dangerously close, he says, to that
condition described by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World; no longer
conscious of our bondage, we are soothed by endless entertainments.
Postman writes:

For in the end he [Huxley] was trying to tell us that what afflicted
the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead
of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about
and why they had stopped thinking.

How does this warning apply to books that promote a pagan view of the
world? Surely, it is argued, their popularity heralds a return to a
more literate culture. Is not their success a positive sign,
demonstrating that the human imagination can never be fully satisfied
by electronic media? At first glance, it would seem so. But a book is
not necessarily always better than a video simply because it is a book.
While it is true that media technology tends to overwhelm the viewer,
and books usually pay some respect to the integrity of the reader
(sparking the imagination but not displacing its creative powers), much
of contemporary fantasy for the young is actually closer in style to
television than to literature. It overwhelms by using in print form the
visceral stimuli and pace of the electronic media, flooding the
imagination with sensory rewards while leaving it malnourished at the
core. In a word, thrills have swept aside wonder.

If the purpose of wonder is to lead to reflection on the splendor of
existence, and reflection to clear thought about its meaning, what has
been lost? And why has it been lost? Postman warns that the power over
our minds exercised by constantly changing images is now so deeply
embedded in our consciousness that it has become invisible. We are fast
losing our ability to recognize that we have lost anything at all, let
alone the ability to ask why it has been lost.

There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic
revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television
seems natural, not bizarre. For the loss of the sense of the strange is
a sign of adjustment, and the extent to which we have adjusted is a
measure of the extent to which we have been changed. Our culture's
adjustment to the epistemology of television is by now all but
complete; we have so thoroughly absorbed its definitions of truth,
knowledge and reality that irrelevance seems filled with import, and
incoherence seems eminently sane. And if some of our institutions seem
not to fit the template of the times, why it is they, and not the
template, that seem to us disordered and strange.

THE HARRY POTTER PHENOMENON

If the fragmenting and leveling of consciousness distorts how we
perceive the world, it will necessarily distort our assessment of
cultural material. A case in point is the publication of Joanne K.
Rowling's Harry Potter novels, which during the past four years have
met with a deluge of favorable reviews and an astonishing sales
response. Some 76 million copies have been sold, there are translations
in 42 languages, and three of the titles are concurrently on the New
York Times best-sellers list as this essay is written.

Because the Harry Potter series presents the world of witchcraft and
sorcery in a positive light, it has also sparked a minority reaction
ranging from outright alarm to sober analysis. Some critics say the
books are flawed but essentially harmless fantasy, filling a real need;
others decry them as the next stage in the ongoing degeneration of
culture. In either case the books invite an appraisal, for they are
going to be a major influence on the thoughts and perceptions of the
coming generation.

The four novels published to date are so rich in characters and ornate
sub-plots that it would be impossible to describe all of them in a
single article. However, at this point a sketch of the structure of the
series may serve to set the context for themes I will discuss further
on.

In volume one, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, we are
introduced to the world of sorcery and the boy who plays the pivotal
role in the struggle between good and evil as it is defined in the
series. The story begins with the murder of Harry's parents, a witch
and wizard who are destroyed by another wizard named Voldemort, chief
of all the wizards who have gone too far into practice of the "Dark
Arts"--the "evil side of sorcery." Baby Harry survives the attack for
some unexplained reason, and Voldemort flees, much reduced in power. We
later learn that the sacrificial love Harry's mother has for her baby
son somehow deflected Voldemort's curses onto himself, with the result
that Voldemort has become no more than a barely human shadow of his
former self. Harry is rescued by witches and wizards who take him to a
suburb of London to be raised by his aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs.
Dursley. The Dursleys are "Muggles"--the wizard term for ordinary
humans who have no magic powers. A thoroughly despicable couple, they
are unrelievedly cruel to Harry, opinionated, conceited and full of
malice for anything to do with magic. Harry knows nothing about his
background.

On his 11th birthday, Harry begins to discover that he has some
mysterious powers. He soon meets witches and wizards who harass the
Dursleys with magic in order to obtain their permission for Harry to
attend Hogwarts, a school of witchcraft and wizardry. There Harry meets
the headmaster Professor Dumbledore who is also the unofficial chief of
the "good wizards" in the world. At Hogwarts, Harry makes special
friends with fellow students Ron and Hermione, and together the trio
experience many adventures throughout the four novels written to date.
In this first novel Harry comes to understand that the Dark
Lord--Voldemort himself--seeks to recapture his old magical strength
and seize power over the world. One of the Hogwarts professors, a
wizard named Quirrel, is secretly loyal to Voldemort and tries to help
him by stealing the Philosopher's Stone (containing the "elixir of
eternal life") which is safe in Dumbledore's keeping, and by draining
the life from Harry in order to restore Voldemort's own powers. If he
can achieve this, Voldemort intends to kill Harry, for Harry is the
only one ever to have resisted his killing curse. In the attempt,
Voldemort possesses Quirrel and lures Harry into a confrontation where
he tries to seize the stone and kill the boy. But the power latent in
Harry is too strong for him; Voldemort flees and Harry collapses,
remaining unconscious for three days before he revives.

Volume two, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, chronicles Harry's
second year at Hogwarts. The plot revolves around mysterious events
connected to a secret chamber in Hogwarts castle. Supposedly an evil
presence lurks there and has been released to roam about the school,
terrorizing students and killing as it pleases. Students and some of
the professors suspect that the famous Harry Potter may be the cause,
and it is rumored that he has become a practitioner of the Dark Arts.
After all, it is argued, even as a baby he was more powerful than the
Dark Lord, the most powerful evil wizard in the world. Isolated and
despised, Harry begins to doubt himself, suspecting that he might be
destined to become evil. Dumbledore reassures him that this is not so.
Eventually Harry discovers a secret passageway to the underground
chamber, and enters it to save a little witch girl named Ginny who has
become entranced by Voldemort. He does not realize that Voldemort has
used her as bait. Inside the chamber Harry kills the Basilisk, a giant
snake that is associated with Voldemort, then uses a fang of the snake
to stab a magic dialoguing diary that was the method Voldemort used to
entrance Ginny. When Harry destroys the diary, Voldemort is banished a
second time.

In volume three, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry is
embroiled in an old conflict between his "godfather," a wizard named
Sirius Black, and a wizard named Peter Pettigrew, and other magicians
who are at odds with each other due to a mysterious ancient feud. Black
has been thrown into the wizard prison of Azkaban on a charge of
murdering Pettigrew--which he alleged did in revenge aafter Pettigrew
betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort. The truth is that Pettigrew
faked his own death, framing Black for his murder, then transformed
himself into a rat named Scabbers (the sleepy pet of Harry's friend
Ron), in which disguise he has been hiding out for 12 years while Black
remained in prison. As the story begins, Black has broken out of
prison, and both the wizard world and the Muggle world (where he is
believed to be a mass murderer) are trying to track him down. The
wizard world thinks Black is searching for Harry in order to kill him.
Into the tale comes Romulus Lupus (who is also a werewolf) the new
teacher of Defense-Against-the-Dark-Arts at Hogwarts. We discover that
Lupus, Black, Pettigrew, and Harry's father had once been fellow
students at Hogwarts and were a foursome of friends during their youth.
Harry has a difficult time untangling the web of deception and
intrigue: who betrayed whom, who can be trusted, who is telling the
truth about the past? None of these characters are what they appear to
be. Harry's assumptions (and the reader's) about who is good and who
is evil are constantly flipping, and only in the last chapters do we
discover that Scabbers the rat is the real villain. In a final
confrontation Scabbers is transformed back into his human form (as
Pettigrew) by the commanding spells of Lupus and Black, who are about
to administer justice by killing him. Harry asks them to be merciful
and to send Pettigrew to Azkaban Prison. But Pettigrew escapes and
flees in search of his old master Voldemort.

Volume four, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, is about Voldemort's
elaborate plan to ensnare Harry through the services of Pettigrew, to
take some of the boy's blood and make a potion that will restore the
Dark Lord to his former powers. Indeed, the latter hopes to obtain more
power than he has ever known, for Harry's powers, though as yet
undeveloped, are potentially greater than those of Voldemort himself.
The plot revolves around a year-long competition in wizardry that
involves the student-champions of the three great schools of sorcery.
Harry is one of the champions for his school, and in feat after daring
feat he overcomes terrifying obstacles (usually by putting the good of
others above his own desire to win). He emerges the victor of the
competition, only in the end to be tricked into Voldemort's hands. The
Dark Lord takes some of Harry's blood, makes the potion and is restored
to his full powers. Harry rallies, resists Voldemort's killing curse
with the power of his will and magical commands, then flees to
Hogwarts. The book concludes with a stirring speech from the headmaster
Dumbledore, who praises Harry for his virtues, and calls the students
and professors to unity in the face of the overwhelming danger that now
looms over the world.

MATERIALIST MAGIC AND THE ASSIMILATED IMAGINATION

Pro-Harry commentators say that Rowling's sub-creation is witty,
thought-provoking, entertaining, expands the child's imagination, and
even retains a certain morality. Furthermore, she has succeeded in
introducing an electronically addicted generation to the world of
reading. All of this is true. The stories are packed with surprises:
delights of the imagination that will enchant almost all readers.
Talking chess pieces argue with the players about the advisability of
move;, ingenious toys and devices abound; mythological beasts run in
and out of scenes; owls deliver mail; a lovable giant hatches dragon
eggs and breeds new species of creatures; elves serve dutifully;
wise-cracking ghosts play tricks; and of course there is the game of
Quidditch-a combination of rugby, basketball, and polo played on
flying broomsticks.

But the charming details are mixed with the repulsive at every turn.
Ron seeks to cast a spell that rebounds on himself, making him vomit
slimy slugs; the ghost of a little girl lives in a toilet; excremental
references are not uncommon; urination is no longer an off-limits
subject; rudeness between students is routine behavior. In volume four
especially these trends are much in evidence, along with the added
spice of sexuality inferred in references to "private parts" and
students pairing off and "going into the bushes."

Student witches and wizards are taught at Hogwarts to use their wands
to cast hexes and spells to alter their environments, punish small
foes, and defend themselves against more sinister enemies.
Transfiguration lessons show them how to change objects and people into
other kinds of creatures--often against their will. In Potions class
they make brews that can be used to control others. In Herbology they
grow plants that are used in the potions; the roots of the mandrake
plant, for example, are small living babies who scream when they are
uprooted for transplanting, and are grown for the purpose of being cut
into pieces and boiled in a magical potion.

The wizard world is about the pursuit of power and esoteric knowledge,
and in this sense it is a modern representation of a branch of ancient
Gnosticism, the cult that came close to undermining Christianity at its
birth. The so-called "Christian Gnostics" of the 2nd century were in no
way Christian, for they attempted to neutralize the meaning of the
Incarnation and to distort the concept of salvation along traditional
Gnostic lines: man saves himself, they believed, by obtaining secret
knowledge and power. The figure of Christ was just one of many "myths"
which the Gnostics attempted to graft onto their world view. At
Hogwarts, similarly, holidays such as Christmas and Easter are stripped
of Christ, rendered down to no more than social customs and absorbed
into the "broader" context of the occult cosmology. Halloween is the
great feast of the year. Rowling's wizard world, gnostic in essence and
practice, neutralizes the sacred and displaces it by normalizing what
is profoundly abnormal and destructive in the real world.

The objection is sometimes raised: surely this is permissible because
it is a sub-creation, and so its author has free rein to establish its
own laws, its interior coherence and consistency. This objection
overlooks the fact that Rowling's wizard world interacts with the real
world and violates the moral order in both. The story takes place in
contemporary London and the English countryside. The witches and
wizards are the gnostic cabal whose secret knowledge must be hidden
from ordinary people and revealed only to initiates. The wizard world
coexists with the world of the Muggles, but it is so enchanted that
ordinary humans are blinded to its existence. When occasionally the
lines are crossed through the "misuse of magic," the Ministry of Magic
steps in to cover it up and to erase the memories of Muggles who happen
to discover the great secret. The students and professors of Hogwarts
are like personalities one would meet in any British boarding school;
their difference is only in their extraordinary powers and bizarre
activities. Some, like Harry, are likable; others are snobs and
bullies. This is our world, but one in which supernatural powers are
redefined as human faculties, needing only the proper learning in order
to be used rightly.

While Rowling posits the "good" use of occult powers against their
misuse, thus imparting to her sub-creation an apparent aura of
morality, the cumulative effect is to shift our understanding of the
battle lines between good and evil. The border is never defined. Of
course, the archetype of "misuse" is Voldemort, whose savage cruelty
and will to power is blatantly evil. Ye the reader is lulled into
minimizing or forgetting altogether that Harry himself, and many other
of the "good" characters, frequently use the same powers on a lesser
scale, supposedly for good ends. The false notion that "the end
justifies the means" is the subtext throughout. The author's
characterization and plot continually reinforce the message that if a
person is "nice," if he means well, if he is brave and loyal to his
friends, he can pretty much do as he sees fit to combat horrific
evil--magic powers being the ideal weapon.

This is consistent with the author's confused notions of authority. In
reality, magic is an attempt to bypass the limitations of human nature
and the authority of God, in order to obtain power over material
creation and the will of others through manipulation of the
supernatural. Magic is about taking control. It is a fundamental
rejection of the divine order in creation. In the first book of Samuel
(15:23) divination is equated with the spirit of rebellion. The
Catechism of the Catholic Church calls divination and magic forms of
idolatry.

All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult
powers, so as to place them at one's service and have a supernatural
power over others...are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion.
(2117; see also 2110-2116 and 2138)

In Rowling's wizard world, children are taught to manipulate undefined
forces, and to submit themselves to no higher law than the wizard
authorities who will help them exercise their powers "wisely." However,
the authorities themselves are divided, imparting to the impressionable
reader the certainty that the best person to decide what is or is not a
"proper use of magic" is the young witch or magician himself, guided
only by the occasional intervention of a Dumbledore or some similar
guru figure. The Ministry of Magic attempts to regulate the use of
magic, but it is as bumbling and riddled with compromise as ordinary
human governments.

The author repeatedly sets up the straw man of legalism and knocks it
down with unsubtle blows. The Dursleys are a parody of staid
conservatism, "touchy about anything even slightly out of the
ordinary." Ron's brother Percy, the most unattractive member of his
family, is a caricature of the fastidious clerk, "fussy about
rule-breaking." In Hogwarts, although it is organized along a system of
rules pretty much like an ordinary boarding school, Harry's
disobedience is frequently overlooked and even rewarded by the school
authorities. After all, he is a special boy: gifted, hated by evil
incarnate, and destined for greatness. Moreover, his daring and
resourcefulness (combined with a sense of fair play toward "good"
fellow students) are always pitted against "bad" characters.

But is Harry really all that good? He blackmails his uncle, uses
trickery and deception, and "breaks a hundred rules" (to quote the
mildly censorious but ultimately approving Dumbledore). He frequently
tells lies to get himself out of trouble, and lets himself be provoked
into revenge against his student enemies. He "hates" his enemies. The
reader soon finds himself forgiving Harry for this because the boy's
tormentors are vindictive and mocking. In a consistent display of
authorial overkill Rowling depicts such "bad" characters as ugly in
appearance. She does a good deal of sneering at the Dursleys for being
fat, and ridicules the oafish bodies of the students who oppress Harry.
In these details and a plethora of others throughout the series, the
child reader is encouraged in his baser instincts while lip service is
paid to morality. In fact, nowhere in the series is there any reference
to a system of moral absolutes against which actions can be measured.
In a word, this is materialist magic, magic as a naturalized human
power.

When the meaning of the human person is reduced to a strictly natural
definition, evil will be considered no more than erroneous abstractions
or problems in the dynamics of the psyche. In his book, An Exorcist
Tells His Story, Father Gabriele Amorth, the chief exorcist of the
Diocese of Rome, warns that modern men are losing their sense of the
reality of supernatural evil. As a result, he says, many have made
themselves more vulnerable to the influence of evil spirits who seek to
corrupt and destroy souls.

I can state that the number of those who are affected by the evil one
has greatly increased. The first factor that influences the increase of
evil influences is Western consumerism. The majority of people have
lost their faith due to a materialistic and hedonistic lifestyle...it
is a well-known fact that where religion regresses, superstition
progresses. We can see the proliferation, especially among the young,
of spiritism, witchcraft, and the occult.

Father Amorth does not hesitate to say that cultural influences such as
film, television, music, and books play no small part in the lowering
of spiritual vigilance. "I was able personally to verify how great is
the influence of these tools of Satan on the young," he writes. "It is
unbelievable how widespread are witchcraft and spiritism, in all their
forms, in middle and high school. This evil is everywhere, even in
small towns."

Speaking of the growing phenomenon of diabolical possession and other
forms of bondage to evil, Amorth points to sorcery as the most frequent
cause. He warns that ultimately there is no real difference between
"white" and "black" magic. Every form of magic is practiced with
recourse to Satan, he says. So either knowingly or unknowingly, the
practitioner of magic exposes himself to diabolic influence. He points
out:

Scripture warns us that witchcraft is one of the most common means used
by the devil to bind men to himself and to dehumanize them. Directly or
indirectly, witchcraft is a cult of Satan.

The spread of occult activity, and the resulting increase in the number
of exorcisms performed by Catholic priests, has been noted by secular
commentators as well. Articles on the subject have recently appeared in
the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. An article in the
November 28, 2000, edition of the New York Times reported a ten-fold
increase in the number of official exorcists in the United States
during the past decade. These, however, are still few in number, and a
majority of dioceses have yet to implement the directives of a 1999
Vatican document that instructed every ordinary in the world to appoint
an exorcist for his diocese. Father Amorth laments that many bishops
still do not realize the scope of the problem. If he is right, it is no
wonder that many lay people also consider the danger to be so remote
that it has no bearing on their lives.



------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------
Glossary Terms: Ordinary
------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERCEPTION

With occult themes now a part of mainstream culture, the Potter series
is juxtaposed between a growing amount of blatantly diabolical material
for the young on one hand, and on the other a tide of cultural material
that redefines good and evil in more subtle ways. Thus it appears as a
healthier specimen of what has been more or less normalized all around
us. As Postman warned, the strange and disordered no longer strikes us
as such. Our society is saturated in the false notion that a lesser
evil (in this case, "good sorcery") is preferable to the great evil of
Satanism--a message further reinforced by the books' condemnation of
the extremes of diabolical behavior. What we so often forget is that
the "lesser evil" concept is a classic adversarial tactic in the great
war between good and evil--the real war in which we are all immersed.
The evil spirits seek to attract us to evil behavior by first offering
us evil thoughts disguised as good. In opposition to these, they set up
great evils from which we naturally recoil, and offer the lesser evils
as the antidote. If the lesser evil is presented with a little
window-dressing of virtue or morality (or the modern term "values"), we
can turn to it, assuming we are thereby making a choice for a good.
This dynamic can be observed in the way film classification has
gradually altered our judgments and consequent viewing habits. We have
come to assume that a film rated PG is better than an X-rated film,
forgetting that what is now called PG would have been completely
objectionable a generation ago. This is Postman's "adjustment." This
is reality-shift. This is, to put it simply, loss of discernment.

Children are dependent on adults to make careful discernments in the
area of culture because they do not have the advantages that come with
age and experience. They are in a state of formation, absorbing
impressions about the nature of reality at a fundamental level, and few
things in life are as powerful as culture for defining reality--for
defining good and evil. In the case of the Harry Potter series
discernment has been difficult for many people because these novels
seem at first glance to reject evil by dissociating magic from the
diabolic. Yet in the real world they are always associated. We must ask
ourselves if they really can be separated without negative
consequences. If magic is presented as a good, or as morally neutral,
is there not an increased likelihood that when a young person
encounters opportunities to explore the world of real magic he will be
less able to resist its attractions? Of course, children are not so
naive as to think they can have Harry's powers and adventures; they
know full well that the story is make-believe. But on the subconscious
level they absorb it as experience, and this experience tells them that
forbidden mysteries can be highly rewarding.

What long-term effects do fictional heroes and heroines have on the
mind's ability to distinguish truth from falsehood? A novel about a boy
who regularly skips along a tightrope across Niagara Falls without
falling is no real threat to one's child, because he instantly
recognizes the absurdity of the notion; the danger is immediately
perceived and the practice rejected. But a novel about a boy who skips
along a tightrope across an eternal abyss is a real threat, for the
danger is difficult to recognize unless one has a real knowledge of
moral absolutes and a developed sense of the immediacy of spiritual
combat. Parents' warnings about abstract dangers can pale in a child's
mind when set against tales packed with potent images that have lodged
deeply in his imagination.

Regardless of how few or many children are prompted to venture into
occult activity after reading the Potter series, the books will have a
strong effect on most, in the sense of what educators call the
propaeduetic: preparing the ground for later developments. If the
natural and spiritual guard has been lowered in a child's mind, if his
concept of morality has been skewed and authority undermined, what
other kinds of disordered interests and activities will follow as he
makes his choices later in life? This is no longer an academic
question. A recent search of the internet for Harry Potter references
yielded more than 500,000 "hits" or sites where the books are being
discussed. Selective searches turned up more than 100 high-profile web
sites devoted to the series, many of which offer links to advanced
occult web sites under titles such as "Learn More about the Secrets of
the Occult" and "How to Become a Witch." In an interview with Newsweek,
a spokesman for the Pagan Federation in England reported that he
receives an average of 100 inquiries a month from young people who want
to become witches--an unprecedented phenomenon which he attributes in
part to the Potter books. An article in the December 17, 2000, issue of
Time magazine reports that a similar organization in Germany deals with
an increasing number of inquiries, which it also credits to the Potter
factor. Rowling herself has expressed surprise at the volume of mail
she receives from young readers writing to her as if Hogwarts were
real, wanting to know how they might enter the school in order to
become witches and wizards.

Librarians in diverse social settings report that children in
increasing numbers are requesting material from the occult sections of
their collections. Kimbra W. Gish, a librarian at Vanderbilt University
who specializes in children's and young adult's reading, discusses the
controversy in the May/June 2000 issue of the librarians' journal The
Horn Book Magazine. Gish writes:

For many librarians, teachers, and parents, the world of children's
literature and that of the Bible represent different kingdoms whose
border continues to be debated as parents and others raise questions
about the appropriateness of certain titles. This is a passionate
issue: few things stir the heart like one's true faith or one's love
for sharing books with children.

In explaining Christian concerns about the Potter series, Gish outlines
how the books repeatedly portray in a positive light the very
activities that are condemned in the strongest possible terms in both
Old and New Testaments. She cites Deuteronomy 18:9-12, a passage in
which enchanting, divination, charms, and consulting with familiar
spirits or wizards and necromancers are described as an "abomination"
in the eyes of God, and must be driven out. She notes numerous other
passages forbidding the practice of witchcraft and wizardry or
consultation with mediums or diviners: Lev 19:31, 20:6, 27; Is 8:19,
19:3; Gal 5:19-21; Rev 21:8; 2 Kings 21:6, 23:24; 2 Chron 33:6. See
also the confrontation between St. Paul and a magician in Acts 13:6-12.


Gish points out that modern culture can desensitize people to the
corruptive nature of such activities, through "casual exposure to the
occult through media sources such as television, movies, games, and
books." While some parents are alarmed by any portrayal of occult
practices in children's fiction, she says, others feel that context is
the key: "Is the witch portrayed positively, negatively, or
ambivalently? Is the practice shown as an acceptable or enjoyable thing
to do, or something stupid or dangerous?" Like many reflective literate
people who love both children and children's literature, Gish favors
the latter approach. She comes down firmly against J. K. Rowling's
Potter series, and enthusiastically for fantasy in the line of J.R.R.
Tolkien's and C.S. Lewis's sub-creations. For her, as for many
Christian parents, the problem is not the presence of magic in a book,
but how magic is represented.

CHRISTIAN USE OF MAGIC IN FANTASY LITERATURE

Both Tolkien and Lewis use magic in a way fundamentally different from
Rowling's approach. In The Magician's Nephew, the first volume of
Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, the corruption of Narnia begins when an
elderly Londoner dabbles in occult activity, and opens the doors
between worlds. The ensuing struggle for the restoration of Narnia to
its original order is the direct result of the very activities the
Potter books portray as forces for good. Lewis depicts them as forces
allied with chaos, disruption, bondage, and violation of the dignity of
creatures. Throughout the Chronicles witches are portrayed in classic
terms, as malevolent, manipulative, deceiving and destructive--not the
least of whom is a character called the White Witch.

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a selfish boy who has no
understanding of the supernatural meets a dragon. Entering its lair he
seizes its treasure hoard and is changed into a dragon. He is liberated
from this condition--"undragoned"--only by the intervention of the
Christ figure, Aslan, who alone has the authority, the "deep magic," to
undo what evil has done. Supernatural powers, Lewis repeatedly
underlines, belong to God alone, and in human hands they are highly
deceptive and can lead to destruction.

In his great fantasy epic, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien also portrays
magic as deception. Supernatural powers that do not rightly belong to
man are repeatedly shown as having a corrupting influence on man. While
it is true that Gandalf, one of the central characters, is called a
"wizard" throughout, he is not in fact a classical sorcerer. Tolkien
maintains (as shown in Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey
Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien) that Gandalf is rather a kind of
moral guardian, similar to guardian angels but more incarnate. As
Tolkien explains, his "good magic" is not in fact what we think of as
magic in the real world. Gandalf's task is primarily to advise,
instruct, and arouse to resistance the minds and hearts of those
threatened by Sauron, the Dark Lord of this saga. Gandalf does not do
the work for them; they must use their natural gifts. In this process
we see an image of grace building on nature, never overwhelming nature
or replacing it. Gandalf;s gifts are used sparingly, and then only so
far as they assist the other creatures in the exercise of their free
will and their moral choices.

The central character of the Lord of the Rings, Frodo Baggins, is asked
by Gandalf to bear a ring of magical power to a volcanic mountain in a
region ruled by Sauron, in order to destroy the ring in the volcano's
fires and thus weaken the grip that Sauron has over the world. Frodo
agrees to undertake the journey but soon realizes that the ring has a
seductive hold on him. As he carries the very thing that could ruin the
world, he is constantly tempted to use it for the good. But he learns
that to use its supernatural powers for such short-range "goods"
increases the probability of long-range disaster, both for the world
and for himself.

Supernatural powers, Tolkien demonstrates repeatedly, are very much a
domain infested by the "deceits of the Enemy," used for domination of
other creatures' free will. As such they are metaphors of sin and
spiritual bondage. By contrast, Gandalf's very limited use of
preternatural powers is never used to overwhelm, deceive, or defile.
Even so, the author mentions more than once in the epic that these
powers must pass away from the world as the "Old Age" ends and the "Age
of Man" (and by inference the Age of the Incarnation) approaches.

Much of the neopagan use of magic is the converse of this approach. It
is frequently used to overwhelm, deceive and defile. In the Harry
Potter series, for example, Harry resists and eventually overcomes
Voldemort with the very powers the Dark Lord himself uses. Harry is the
reverse image of Frodo. Rowling portrays his victory over evil as the
fruit of esoteric knowledge and power. This is Gnosticism. Tolkien
portrays Frodo's victory over evil as the fruit of humility, obedience,
and courage in a state of radical suffering. This is Christianity.
Harry's world is about pride, Frodo's about sacrificial love.

There is, of course, plenty of courage and love in the Harry Potter
series, but it is this very mixing of truth and untruth which makes it
so deceptive. Courage and love can be found in all peoples, even those
involved in the worst forms of paganism. The presence of such virtues
does not automatically justify an error-filled work of fiction. In
Potter-world the characters are engaged in activities which in real
life corrupt us, weaken the will, darken the mind, and pull the
practitioner down into spiritual bondage. Rowling's characters go
deeper and deeper into that world without displaying any negative side
effects, only an increase in "character." This is a lie. Moreover, it
is the Satanic lie which deceived us in Eden. You can have knowledge of
good and evil, you can have Godly powers, and you will not die, you
will not even be harmed by it, you will have enhanced life. There is so
much that dazzles and delights in Rowling's sub-creation, the reader
must exercise a certain effort to see these interior contradictions and
mixed messages.

DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS

In his widely acclaimed 1993 study of the current state of organized
religion, Unknown Gods, sociologist Reginald Bibby notes that
fascination with mystery has in no way diminished along with the
decline of church-going. It is increasing proportionally, and he
suggests this is due to an innate spiritual hunger in human nature. Man
will continue to search in the realm of the quasi-mystical as long as
the vacuum of genuine spirituality spreads. As the Christian churches
lose their evangelical strength, the allurement of preternatural and
supernatural phenomena will continue to displace the world of the
sacred transcendent.

Traditionally, the signs, sacraments, and rituals of the Christian
world were a means of encountering God, and a way for man to find his
place in the hierarchy of being-a hierarchy leading all the way up to
the throne of his Father-Creator. The spread of rationalism (both in
secular and religious forms) has produced what Peter Berger, in his
book Rumor of Angels, describes as "a shrinkage of the scope of human
experience" that constitutes a profound impoverishment of man's sense
of identity and destiny. The "denial of metaphysics," he says, is
directly related to the "triumph of triviality." While this is
obviously true of the unbeliever, who has lost his connections to the
transcendent sacred realm, we must ask ourselves if the trivialization
of the great drama of existence has affected a majority of believers as
well. In other words, have most Christians in the developed nations
become practical materialists? It would seem so, if we are little more
than consumers of religious experience, rather than adorers and
obedient servants of the living God.

Philosopher Thomas Molnar in his seminal work on the rise of modern
Gnosticism The Pagan Temptation, writes:

Today the occult penetrates the lowered defenses of Christian
tradition, and those whom it persuades are the masses of men and women
who miss the sacred symbols that used to be present everywhere as
identifying signs of their civilization....the entire symbology of
Christianity yields to other, sometimes older, symbologies with their
underlying creeds and doctrines.

But why has it become so difficult for us to discern the penetration?
Psychiatrist Paul C. Vitz, in his Psychology as Religion: the Cult of
Self-Worship, discusses the psychology at work in our lack of
resistance:

....the heterogeneity of American culture, with its increasingly complex
mosaic of different religions and cultures, is a social-structural
analogue to the intellectual world of New Age. Just as the act of
rejecting a person because of his or her beliefs is considered
antisocial or undemocratic, so also to reject religious or spiritual
understandings is interpreted in the same way....When tolerance is the
primary accepted social virtue, commitment to a particular faith is
viewed as fundamentally antisocial and even threatening.

Other eminent thinkers of diverse beliefs and loyalties are agreed on
this point: religion's compromise with secular culture has produced not
so much an atheistic or agnostic culture as it has an irreligious
culture, one that pays lip service to religion but mutates it in the
service of what are considered to be higher "values" such as tolerance
or self-fulfillment. This is a broad generality, of course, and one
could find numerous exceptions, but the continuing spread of what Pope
John Paul II calls "the culture of death" has been made possible
because Christians have not lived as signs of contradiction to the rise
of neopaganism. Indeed we have cooperated with it extensively,
consuming its products and funding it generously, while authentic
Christian culture has been left comparatively undeveloped.

The inevitable outcome is that with each passing generation the
exigency of God's laws continues to fade in our minds as the power of
a mammon-driven culture increases. Indeed the secularization of
consciousness now intrudes very far into the life of most Catholics in
the developed nations. The pressing questions of existence are dealt
with by turning to the physical and social sciences and the humanities.
Even the person of strong Christian principles suffers the effects of
living in a milieu dominated by the separation of faith and reason. To
some degree, most if not all of us function with a bipolar overemphasis
on either one or the other. Indeed, the meaning of the word "faith" can
too easily be reduced to a set of beliefs assented to by the intellect.
If the beliefs are orthodox Catholicism, that is well and good. But it
is not enough.

For example, it is now almost universally taken for granted that we can
absorb a certain amount of immoral entertainment without being
adversely affected by it. We simply assume that if we have sufficient
rational faith, we will be able to sift through good and bad material
without being harmed by it, ignoring the bad and savoring the good. We
numbly watch the graphically dramatized murders of many human beings
every week, but would be upset if a dog were to be kicked on screen. We
are entertained by television programs based on the occult world view,
such as Charmed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Sabrina, the Teenage
Witch, and salacious comedy programs such as Cheers, Friends, and
Seinfeld, deriving enjoyment from the wit but little realizing how a
diet of laughing at what is profoundly unfunny will over time alter our
ability to understand the gravity of immoral acts. In short, we have
accepted the normalcy of corruption.

On a higher level of culture, the realm of serious thought, the
application of academic templates (including literary criticism) to
religious questions now functions as a kind of alternative magisterial
authority, even among many orthodox Catholics. While it is true that
social sciences and the humanities can help explain a part of man's
struggle to find his place in the great chain of being, they are
limited tools. The danger inherent in secular models of analysis--even
in the hands of faithful Catholics--is that the tool all too easily
redefines the very thing it is designed to serve. The part dominates
what rightly belongs to the whole. The supra-rational--that which
cannot be comprehended by reason alone--is all too easily dismissed as
irrational. Thus the worth of cultural material is rarely assessed with
the entire range of Christian charisms. What is forgotten is that when
the supra-rational is denied, the result is not necessarily a more
rational approach to life, but the virulent growth of the irrational.
As G. K. Chesterton once pointed out: when men cease to believe in God
they do not then believe in nothing. They then become capable of
believing anything.

Books and films which three generations ago would have been instantly
recognized as unhealthy for our children are now considered acceptable,
and those who oppose them alarmist or hysterical. Why is this so? I
believe it is due to distortions in the psychology of perception, among
believers no less than among non-believers. In other words, real
threats to our children's welfare are now being interpreted as
harmless. Molnar points out that it is precisely this dynamic which is
corrupting us.

The belief in the presence of the supernatural--always a mediated,
veiled presence--does not weaken without reawakening the latent
temptation of paganism. The pagan myth--the occult, the magical, the
idolatrous love of nature, immanentist philosophies--begins to awaken
among the masses by exerting an imperceivable influence on the
unconscious; only then does it make its appearance in consciousness and
rationalist systems.

When the reference points of Scripture and Tradition are rendered
ineffectual by over-reliance on individual reason, we risk entering the
final phase of assimilation by paganism. Chesterton once pointed out,
tongue in cheek, that the madman is not one who has lost his reason;
rather he has lost everything but his reason. In other words,
intelligence is no reliable measure of truth, for when intelligent
people are subjective they are subjective in a highly articulate
fashion.

The hard question we must ask ourselves at this point in history, is to
what degree have our judgments been influenced by "imperceivable
influences on the subconscious." The record of our hits and misses in
the area of discernment offers something of an answer. Reasonable
Christian parents would not permit their children to read a series of
enthralling books depicting the rites and adventures of likable young
people involved in drug-dealing, or premarital sex, or sadism. We are
still capable of recognizing the falsehood in glamorizing torture,
because physical pain is a reality in everyone's life and anyone
unjustly inflicting pain is instantly recognized for what he is: an
enemy. We would not give our children fiction in which a group of "good
fornicators" struggled against a set of "bad fornicators," because we
know that the power of disordered sexual impulse is an abiding problem
in human affairs, the negative effects of which we can see all around
us. Why, then, have we accepted a set of books which glamorize and
normalize occult activity, even though it is every bit as deadly to the
soul as sexual sin, if not more so? Is it because we have not yet
awakened to the fact that occultism is in fact a clear and present
danger?

When literary experts tell us that fantasy such as the Potter series is
a laudable expansion of the imagination, an enrichment of mind and
soul, that it is--well, "literature"--our antennae should quiver a
little. We should ask ourselves why evil concepts, if they are wrapped
in the aura of "culture," now enjoy a special exemption from the normal
rules of discernment.

Moreover, we should take note of the fact that in our sensually
dominated society the habit of acting out fantasy is becoming a
cultural norm. It varies from voracious consumption of expensive toys
for all age groups to trading in one's spouse for a new one found on
the internet, from clubs devoted to immoral activity to high school
murders. Why, then, do we presume that a sensually powerful series of
children's books will not affect a young reader's interests and
activities? Why have we come to assume that such novels have no
consequences, that the experience of plunging the imagination into that
alternative and ultimately false world will remain sealed in an
airtight compartment of the mind? We must ask ourselves how we arrived
at a position where we allow our children to absorb for hours on end,
in the form of powerful fiction, activities that we would never permit
them to observe or to practice in real life.



Michael D. O'Brien, a professional artist and popular novelist, is also
the author of Landscape with Dragon: The Battle for Your Child's Mind.



http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=20546
Re: Harry Potter and the Paganization of Children's Culture [message #97713 ] So, 31 Juli 2005 04:37
Christopher Adams  
Christopher Adams wrote:
> borromini wrote:
>> Cathy Weeks wrote:
>>
>>> Oh, funny. I think Lewis' Narnia and Rowling's HP books are on par,
>>> and both are better than LOTR, which I found quite boring.
>>
>> Now that's funny...
>
> I think The Lord of the Rings is pretty dreadful, myself. There's a lot
> to be said for Tolkien's use of mythological ideas and themes,
> certainly, and also for his worldbuilding skills, but his prose is
> stultifying and his "message", such as it is, pretty near meaningless as
> far as I'm concerned.
> Suffice to say I might like it more if I thought that what he was
> writing about was important . . . and if he'd had someone who could
> actually *write* do it for him.

Also the movies were impressive technical achievements but ultimately flat and
lacking in resonance.

--
Christopher Adams - Sydney, Australia
What part of "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" don't you
understand?
http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/mhacdebhandia/prestigeclassl ist.html
http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/mhacdebhandia/templatelist.h tml

Berawler: Is there any sanity or light left in this shrivelled husk of a world?
SingingDancingMoose: There was, but we had to trade it in for the internet.
Berawler: That is quite possibly the best response to any question ever.
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