Harry Potter and the End of Religion
BELIEF VERSUS KNOWLEDGE, FAITH VERSUS THOUGHT. THE DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN THE TWO CAMPS GOES BACK, IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, TO THE CAVES. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT A SET OF CHILDREN’S BOOKS WOULD TURN INTO YET ANOTHER BATTLEGROUND FOR THE TWO SIDES? PERHAPS BECAUSE HARRY IS AN EXAMPLE OF THAT MOST DANGEROUS OF EXAMPLES: SOMEONE LEARNING TO THINK FOR HIMSELF.
IS HARRY POTTER A DANGER to the spiritual health of today’s children and a threat to the moral fabric of contemporary society?
Well . . . that depends.
To sincere followers of conservative Christian traditions, the answer to this question is a clear and unequivocal “Yes!” The publication of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (and each subsequent volume in the series) inspired a strident outpouring of criticism from individuals and organizations dedicated to protecting impressionable young minds from the evil influences of Satanism, witchcraft and the increasing godlessness of the modern world. Opponents of the books declare that parents who expose their children to the magical adventures of Harry and his friends are condemning them to eternal torment in the fires of Hell. To hear these critics talk, to enjoy Rowling’s fictional universe is to contribute to the ultimate collapse of Western Civilization as we know it.
One glance at the sales figures for the Harry Potter novels, not to mention the box office receipts for the hugely successful feature films, suggests that only a small minority of people have decided to stay away from Harry for the sake of their immortal souls. It’s tempting to simply dismiss commentaries posted on religiously conservative Web sites, or diatribes published in the mainstream media, as the ravings of fundamentalist religious fanatics. Surely their arguments are irrelevant to anyone who doesn’t follow their belief systems.
Or are they?
What, exactly, is so bad about Harry Potter? Are Rowling’s stories as potentially dangerous as their detractors claim them to be? And if you don’t subscribe to the same beliefs as the people who denounce the books as evil, why should you care?
The likelihood that religion plays a part in your life varies widely depending on where you live, how old you are and whose statistical studies you’re consulting for your information. It also depends, significantly, on how you define the word “religion.” My pocket dictionary calls religion “an organized system of belief and ritual centering on a supernatural being or beings.” Sounds simple and straightforward . . . until you start wondering about the words within the definition. An “organized system”—okay, that’s pretty self-explanatory. But what is belief? What constitutes ritual? Who decides the difference between natural and supernatural?
Here at the beginning of the twenty-first century, having faith in a deity or deities (the supernatural, in one form or another) is still the norm in many cultures, especially in the developing countries of the Third World. In developed, industrialized nations, Americans tend to affiliate with organized religions more often than do citizens of similar levels of education and economic status in Europe, Canada and Australia. But even people who don’t consider themselves particularly religious, or don’t identify with any specific historical tradition of faith and ritual, are likely to have strong opinions about religious subjects. You don’t have to be a practicing Buddhist, church-going Methodist or observant Jew to find yourself wondering about the nature of good and evil, how the world was created, why you were born or what happens after you die.
Religious feeling—spirituality—seems to be innate in human beings, as much a part of our basic nature as our ability to acquire language, walk bipedally and manipulate the world around us with our opposable thumbs. In fact, the capacity for spirituality may be a defining human trait. Prehistoric populations are identified as fully human—or not—based in part on the presence or absence of cave drawings, carved figurines, ritualized burial of the dead or other signs of spiritual self-expression. In cultures around the world and throughout history, humans have sought to find meaning and structure in the universe. Again and again, despite the evidence all around us—earthquake, flood, war, disease—humans dream of an ideal state of existence where justice prevails. Despite our flaws, we envision perfection. Despite our mortality, we imagine eternity.
How do we come up with such ideas? More importantly—why? Is it possible that human beings are born with a religious instinct? If so, what purpose could it possibly serve? Is it proof that we are creatures of spirit as well as mere flesh and blood? Or is it merely an odd side-effect of the basic biochemical functioning of our brains?
The trouble with questions regarding religion is that they rarely come with definitive, objectively verifiable answers. Maybe the answers aren’t as important as the questions themselves. But this leads to other problems. Although similar questions occur to most of us at one time or another, that’s no guarantee that we’ll come up with similar answers. History is full of examples of people finding it impossible to agree on the “correct” way to express common religious feelings, and the frequently violent outcomes of such disagreements—persecution, political upheaval, all-out war.
Which leads us back to our original question: Why do certain self-described religious people—specifically conservative, traditionalist Christians—get so upset about Harry Potter? And do their concerns have any relevance for people who don’t share their particular beliefs?
For much of the past two thousand years, Christianity has played a central role in world history, as well as in the private lives of countless millions of people. Christian symbols, practices, rhetoric and philosophy provide the underpinning for modern Western culture at such a fundamental level that many people, Christian and non-Christian alike, barely notice their presence. Because of the way Christianity pervades our society, even if you’ve never set foot inside a church you’re still likely to be familiar with at least a few Christian concepts: the existence of a single, all-powerful God; Jesus as the savior of the faithful; the idea that prayers will be heard and answered by God.
It’s important to recognize that each subdivision within the Christian community—Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Coptic, Lutheran, Baptist, Evangelical, Church of England, Jehovah’s Witness, Presbyterian, sect after sect too numerous to list here—has its own individual interpretation of the stories recorded in the Christian Bible, adding and subtracting teachings and rituals based on spiritual revelations received by key leaders and handed down from generation to generation. This helps explain why there hasn’t been a unified, worldwide uprising of Christian protest against Harry Potter; lots of Christians think the stories are at worst harmless entertainment or at best useful tools for teaching moral and ethical values to children.
On the surface, Harry and his friends are Christians, living in a Christian society. Christmas—a major Christian religious holiday—is celebrated at Hogwarts. The holiday’s traditions, as described in affectionate detail by Rowling, include gift-giving, decorating with evergreen trees and mistletoe, feasts and, at least for the Weasley family, listening to music on the radio on Christmas Eve. The “holiday spirit” evoked in the books is comfortably familiar to anyone who has ever lived in a dominantly Christian community:
The Hogwarts staff, demonstrating a continued desire to impress the visitors from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, seemed determined to show the castle at its best this Christmas. When the decorations went up, Harry noticed that they were the most stunning he had yet seen inside the school. Everlasting icicles had been attached to the banisters of the marble staircase; the usual twelve Christmas trees in the Great Hall were bedecked with everything from luminous holly berries to real, hooting, golden owls, and the suits of armor had all been bewitched to sing carols whenever anyone passed them. (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)
Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? But Rowling’s depiction of Christmas is all surface, no substance. In book after book, the trappings of Christianity are used as just another sort of background scenery, like the landscape or the weather. They have no meaningful content. The passage quoted above continues:
It was quite something to hear “O Come, All Ye Faithful” sung by an empty helmet that only knew half the words. Several times, Filch the caretaker had to extract Peeves from inside the armor, where he had taken to hiding, filling in the gaps in the songs with lyrics of his own invention, all of which were very rude. (Goblet of Fire)
One reason a sincere Christian might object to Rowling’s stories is their failure to present Christianity as a vibrant religion, relevant to the daily lives of its followers. None of Rowling’s characters ever talk (or even think) about Jesus, or the Bible, or salvation. Nowhere in any of the books, at Christmas or any other season of the year, do any of the characters go to church. This isn’t just a choice of certain individuals or families. The students at Hogwarts never go to chapel. For all we can tell from the descriptions given in the books, the school doesn’t even have a chapel. Daily announcements and special ceremonial occasions alike take place in the Great Hall. The description of Harry’s Christmas with the Weasleys in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince includes no mention of attending church services, although that could be interpreted as merely the custom of one particular family. However, from the very beginning of the series we have been presented with the example of a model, “average” family, the Dursleys:
Mrs. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense. (Sorcerer’s Stone)
If church attendance was the norm for respectable people in the world of Harry Potter, you would think that the Dursleys would be prominent members of their local congregation. Yet on Privet Drive, as at Hogwarts, no mention of church services or church officials—ministers, priests, reverends, deacons—is ever made.
But the primary reason that some people object to Harry Potter—or at least the one most often strongly voiced—is based on a literal reading of the Christian Bible. Several passages (Deuteronomy 18:10–12 and Exodus 22:17, for example) instruct the ancient Israelites to abstain from practicing witchcraft or consorting with anyone who does. For centuries, these verses have provided the foundation for the Christian definition of “magic” as evil.
Yet today, not all Christians approach Scripture literally. Some regard the Bible as a unique and highly valuable collection of very old texts—histories, poems, parables, prophecies—first put down in written form anywhere from two to three to four thousand years ago (depending on which scholarly source you consult), in languages such as ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. In the centuries since then, those original texts have been translated and retranslated into almost all of the languages on Earth. Anyone who has ever studied a foreign language knows how difficult it can be to translate words and ideas from one language to another. Inconsistencies in wording—and changes in meaning—inevitably crop up. Students of the Bible who are aware of this challenge examine the text with the goal of gaining a deeper, richer understanding of its message by acquiring a comprehensive knowledge of its origins and the various permutations it has gone through over the centuries.
For literalist Christians, however, if the Bible says witchcraft is “an abomination,” then it’s an abomination. No scholarly exploration of the language and socioeconomic conditions of the ancient culture in which the Bible’s code of morality originated makes a difference to that fundamental truth.
Another factor to keep in mind is that Christians today are practicing a religion shaped by two thousand years of history and tradition. The full saga of Christianity’s conflict with the polytheistic religions it encountered as it spread across Europe is too complex to relate here. Suffice it to say that the resulting culture clash profoundly affected all concerned. Sometimes the Church took symbols or rituals from local pagan traditions and reinterpreted them to convey Christian messages. In other cases, instead of adapting polytheistic practices to its own needs, the Church labeled them as evil. Old gods were declared to be demons, which meant that to worship in the old way—to seek to communicate with deities other than the Christian God—was, by definition, consorting with demons. The only acceptable way to approach the supernatural was through Christian ritual and Christian prayer. Anything else was magic, witchcraft, superstition—and thus forbidden.
To this day, some people worry that Christianity is in competition with other religions, including various forms of paganism. Although some Christians call their pagan rivals “Wiccans” or “modern witches,” others use the broad term “occult” to encompass everything they abhor. For literalist Christians, everything associated with the practices mentioned in the Bible as “detestable to the Lord,” including spells, levitation, fortune telling and supernatural beings, are works of darkness to be shunned. Rowling’s books contain all those things. That makes the Harry Potter books works of darkness, dangerous because they defy the strictures of Christian morality and encourage readers to accept pagan religious practices as “normal.”
The trouble with this conclusion is that practicing pagans insist that Rowling’s books do not portray pagan religious practices or represent their beliefs. The Harry Potter universe may be full of witches and wizards who wave magic wands and fly around on broomsticks but, according to modern pagans, all these are simply dramatic elements in a work of fiction with no relation whatsoever to any contemporary religious practice.
The truth is, Harry and his friends don’t practice witchcraft as a religion any more than they practice Christianity as a religion. They don’t engage in public worship or private prayer of any kind. Thoughts of God, or gods, never cross their minds. Even when discussing what we usually think of as “religious” subjects, such as questions of good and evil or the nature of the soul, there is no sign that the characters in the books believe in the existence of any sort of deity:
[Quirrell:] “A foolish young man I was then, full of ridiculous ideas about good and evil. Lord Voldemort showed me how wrong I was. There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it. . . .” (Sorcerer’s Stone)
“Well, you split your soul, you see,” said Slughorn, “and hide part of it in an object outside the body. Then, even if one’s body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthborn and undamaged. . . . You must understand that the soul is supposed to remain intact and whole. Splitting it is an act of violation, it is against nature.” (Half-Blood Prince)
Note the wording: “against nature.” Not “heresy” or “an abomination” or any other phrase that would imply that the act is prohibited because it defies rules laid down by God.
Literalist Christians who brand Harry a dangerous role model for children because he is not a Christian (arguably true), or because he actively promotes a competing religion (arguably false), are missing the point. Harry and his friends, through all their adventures and personal growth and intellectual discoveries, demonstrate time and again that they have no interest in or need for any kind of religion at all.
Over the course of the books, Harry confronts many questions that traditionally have fallen into the realm of religious or spiritual concerns. Yet the answers he finds have nothing to do with religion—no “organized systems,” no “beliefs,” no “supernatural being or beings.”
For instance, one of Harry’s recurring questions is what happens to people after they die:
[Dumbledore:] “After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” (Sorcerer’s Stone)
[Dumbledore:] “You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think that we don’t recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble? Your father is alive in you, Harry, and shows himself most plainly when you have need of him.” (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)
“Wizards can leave an imprint of themselves upon the earth, to walk palely where their living selves once trod,” said Nick miserably. “But very few wizards choose that path. . . . [referring to Sirius] He will have . . . gone on.”
“What d’you mean, ‘gone on’?” said Harry quickly. “Gone on where? Listen—what happens when you die, anyway? Where do you go? Why doesn’t everyone come back? Why isn’t this place full of ghosts? Why—?”
“I was afraid of death,” said Nick. “I chose to remain behind. I sometimes wonder whether I oughtn’t to have. . . . Well, that is neither here nor there. . . . In fact, I am neither here nor there. . . .” He gave a small, sad chuckle. “I know nothing of the secrets of death, Harry, for I chose my feeble imitation of life instead.” (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)
[Luna:] “And anyway, it’s not as though I’ll never see Mum again, is it?”
“Er—isn’t it?” said Harry uncertainly.
She shook her head in disbelief. “Oh, come on. You heard them, just behind the veil, didn’t you?”
“You mean. . . . ”
“In that room with the archway. They were just lurking out of sight, that’s all. You heard them.” (Order of the Phoenix)
In Harry’s world, there is no heaven waiting for the righteous or hell waiting for evildoers. No one mentions the possibility of rebirth or reincarnation. Yet everyone clearly believes that people possess a “soul” and that, after the mortal body dies, the immortal soul goes on—they just don’t know where. Nor, for the most part, do they seem to care. Harry’s interest in the subject is atypical, and entirely personal. His wish that he might have known his parents and his grief over the death of Sirius lead him to wonder if, and when, he might see them again. Unfortunately for Harry, no one has a definitive answer for his questions about the ultimate destiny of the human soul, so his curiosity remains unsatisfied.
However, Harry’s questions about what happens after a person dies are noteworthy not for the answers he finds, or fails to find, but for the approach he takes. Whenever Harry and his friends encounter a mystery, they follow a similar pattern in trying to solve it. They discuss the matter together, to see if one of them can suggest a solution based on their existing knowledge and experiences. If that doesn’t work, they seek additional information and assistance from outside sources, such as their classroom textbooks, the school library or helpful teachers like Hagrid. At moments of crisis, however, each of them—and Harry especially—tends to turn to the greatest source of power in Rowling’s universe: personal courage and inner strength.
Religion in Harry Potter’s world is not merely irrelevant; it literally doesn’t exist. There is no divine being to pray to, no “higher power” from which to seek guidance or strength. Power, moral and physical, lies within the individual and is wielded according to the natural laws of Rowling’s universe. None of the characters, whether good or evil, express any belief in the supernatural. Magic spells and magical creatures abound in the Harry Potter universe as entirely natural phenomena. Witches and wizards use magic the way engineers and architects here in the twenty-first century use mathematics or physics: as tools with which the human mind can conceive new ideas and manipulate the physical world. For witches as for engineers, an individual’s skill, training, ingenuity and simple hard work can enable her to achieve better results than her less-talented peers. Harry and his friends recognize that magical talent varies widely, ranging from the entirely ungifted Muggles at one end of the spectrum to the most powerful wizards—Dumbledore and Voldemort—at the other. But Dumbledore and Voldemort are neither demons nor gods. They are simply people who happened to be born with a level of magical ability, later enhanced by years of training and personal dedication and ambition, that others lack. Although many in the wizarding world are terrified of Voldemort, and his followers serve him slavishly, Rowling makes it clear that his abilities are not supernatural. He is an immensely powerful, dangerous, evil man—but still a man. Practically speaking, there is no fundamental difference between Lord Voldemort and his minions, or between Dumbledore and a Squib like Filch or between any magic-user and the most oblivious Muggle. All are human beings. The only consistent difference between individuals in Rowling’s books is what use they make of the power they possess.
And herein lies the real ethical challenge posed by Harry Potter. It’s not that Harry is a bad Christian role model, or that he promotes a Wiccan agenda or tempts anyone to worship Satan. It’s that, in Harry’s world, the characters make their own, independent moral choices, with no reference to any established, higher moral authority—no church, no Bible, no God. Harry turns to his friends and to a few trusted elders like Sirius, Hagrid and Dumbledore for support and occasional advice but, ultimately, the decisions he makes are based on his personal understanding of right and wrong, good and evil.
Furthermore, in Harry’s world, there is no outside, objective scale by which to evaluate a person’s choices. Right and wrong are subjective, changing with the situation. Harry, for example, prefers to speak the truth. Yet again and again throughout the books he lies to his teachers, his friends, Dumbledore, representatives from the Ministry of Magic—anyone at all, in fact, if he’s convinced that lying is the best way to accomplish his goals. Objectively, there seems to be little difference between Harry and Draco Malfoy, who also frequently and skillfully practices deception to achieve his ends.
Authorities, in the form of individuals and institutions, do exist in the Harry Potter universe. But Rowling makes it clear that it is unwise to obey a rule or follow a leader just because they are authoritative. The Ministry of Magic oversees affairs in the wizarding world, passing and enforcing laws that, theoretically at least, are intended to enable witches and wizards to live peaceably with one another and with the wider Muggle community. The Ministry, however, makes mistakes. Cornelius Fudge jeopardizes everyone’s safety by refusing to believe that Lord Voldemort has returned. Dolores Umbridge is a Ministry official, yet she tortures Harry simply because she is a petty, egotistical, vicious human being. Other authority figures prove equally, dangerously fallible. Voldemort, revered by his followers as the highest authority in his area of specialization—dark magic—is hindered repeatedly in his quest for power by his mishandling of situations and misjudgment of individuals. Even Albus Dumbledore, respected by his friends and feared by his enemies, is not perfect. Despite his age, experience and wisdom he occasionally makes the wrong decision. Some of his poor choices cause inconvenience or unhappiness for the people around him; from Harry’s point of view, his worst mistake—trusting Severus Snape—results in his death.
Harry Potter can be considered a dangerous role model for children because, for Harry, the highest moral authority is the inner prompting of his own heart and mind. He can’t turn to his society’s government, the Ministry of Magic, for guidance, because it is full of corrupt officials and inept, cumbersome bureaucracy. And he can’t depend on the parental figures in his life, because all of them are flawed. His parents fail him by dying before he has a chance to know them. The Dursleys are narrowminded and cruel; Hagrid, not too bright; Sirius, short-tempered and impulsive; Dumbledore, too willing to trust and love.
Harry decides life’s most critical ethical questions for himself. The nature of good and evil is not defined for him by religious teachings; “evil” is not spelled out as the Satanism of Christianity or the dark half of a Zoroastrian-style duality theology, or any other clear, easy-to-recognize dogma. Instead, Harry and all the other characters assess for themselves what is “right” and what is “wrong.” As the story progresses, Rowling does draw a clear distinction between which characters she considers to be good and which bad. However, no reason is given to justify a person’s inclusion in either category; apparently it is considered self-evident, to both the characters and the reader. (Except, of course, in the case of intentionally ambiguous characters.) Thus, Voldemort and his followers are evil because they are cruel and greedy and cause pain to others. Harry and his friends are good because they are kind and generous and supportive of others. Someone like Fudge is judged to be good when he is acting in his capacity as a law-enforcing minister, but bad when he acts in opposition to Dumbledore. And then there is Snape, the classic double agent. We are never sure what to expect from him or how to react to him. Should we dislike Snape for what may be all the wrong reasons: his greasy hair, his unsavory past, his animosity toward Harry? Or should we trust him for what may also be the wrong reasons: our respect for Dumbledore’s judgment, pity for the way Snape was bullied at school, the fact that he protects Harry on certain occasions, hope that repentance can be genuine?
There’s an element of risk in such morally confusing messages. With no clear guidelines, what’s to prevent an innocent young reader from drawing the wrong conclusions about various incidents and characters in the Harry Potter saga? Furthermore, what happens to the smooth operation of institutions that rely on the unquestioning obedience of their members if people start believing that they, like Harry, should be able to make important moral judgments and life decisions for themselves?
This, perhaps, is the most disturbing, and potentially threatening, concept in Rowling’s universe: that each person is completely responsible for his or her own fate. Although certain circumstances are outside the control of an individual character (no one can choose their parents, or the circumstances of their childhoods), the way each person responds to events is entirely up to them. Individuals must live with the consequences of their actions. There is no appeal to a supernatural power for mercy, no promise of divine justice. God is not poised to step in and make everything all right, like the cavalry coming over the hill in the nick of time. There are only good people, like Harry and his friends, trying to protect themselves and their families from bad people, like the Malfoys and Voldemort. And all any of them have to rely on is their own inner strength and skills and courage.
The trouble with this philosophy of personal choice and self-reliance is that, translated into everyday life, it flies against the principles on which contemporary society is based. Human communities rely on the cooperation and, yes, obedience of their members in order to function. Authorities, in the form of religious leaders, elected officials and public safety personnel, establish and enforce the rule of law. Priests and pastors tell us we must not steal or commit adultery. The fire chief tells construction companies how many and what size windows they have to provide in bedrooms in the homes they build. The city council tells us we can’t dump our sewage into the street. The police tell us we can’t drive drunk.
Sadly, history teaches that, in the absence of recognized and respected authority, community order breaks down. Many people seem to feel that if a law can’t be enforced, they’re free to break it. Looters in towns devastated by a natural disaster are a perfect example. So are corporate executives who enrich themselves at the expense of their company’s shareholders, with no concern over whether their action is right or wrong, only whether or not they can get away with it. Like Harry, both looters and white-collar criminals have decided that the established rules of their respective societies don’t apply to them, and therefore they can do whatever they think best.
When you look at it this way, it starts to sound like maybe the traditionalist Christians are onto something after all. Maybe there are lessons in the Harry Potter books that could lead to the collapse of Western Civilization as we know it.
There’s no doubt that Harry exists in a godless world. He does not believe in the omnipotence of a single deity or give any indication that religious faith has a place in his life. He defies established authority to follow his personal conscience instead. Lack of religion, however, is not the same as lack of morality. Harry and his friends do care, deeply, about the difference between right and wrong. For them, the question of whether a person is good or evil—the fundamental condition of their soul—is answered entirely by their actions, not by anything they profess to believe. Each individual must choose his or her own life’s path: to pursue power and influence for its own sake, like Voldemort, or, like Dumbledore, to nurture the strengths and talents that grow out of love.
Because Harry’s is a secular world, its residents find answers to their spiritual and ethical dilemmas without the help of religion. Individuals are expected to decide right and wrong for themselves, and they do decide. Where the big questions are concerned—Who am I? How should I act? What does my life mean?—they have to discover the answers for themselves. Harry and his friends are continuously challenged to think about their options and make choices: to avoid trouble or pursue justice, to mind their own business or risk everything for the sake of the greater good. If there’s one message that surfaces again and again in the Harry Potter books, it’s the importance of taking personal responsibility for the things you care about.
So, the next time you hear someone complaining that the Harry Potter books are a bad influence on children, don’t just dismiss their concerns out of hand. In many ways, Harry is a dangerous role model. The lessons he teaches do not fit comfortably within the existing moral fabric of our society. Embracing them encourages us to change the way we think about religion, and ethics, and personal responsibility. And change, no matter its source, is always threatening.
As well as, perhaps, a reason for hope.
MARGUERITE KRAUSE’S favorite activities involve the printed word. In addition to writing, she works as a freelance copy editor, helping other writers to sharpen their skills, and for relaxation loves nothing better than to curl up with a good book. She is married to her high school sweetheart; they have two children. You can find more of Marguerite’s writing in the anthologies Seven Seasons of Buffy, Five Seasons of Angel and The Anthology at the End of the Universe; her two-part epic fantasy, Moons’ Dreaming and Moons’ Dancing, co-written with Susan Sizemore; and her fantasy novel, Blind Vision.