AFICIONADOS OF SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY OFTEN TALK ABOUT HOW IMPORTANT THE SENSE OF WONDER IS TO THE READERS OF BOTH GENRES. ELISABETH DEVOS MAKES A TELLING ARGUMENT FOR HOW THIS IS NOT JUST IMPORTANT TO LOVERS OF THE FANTASTIC, BUT TO ALL OF US.
DOZENS OF EVANGELICAL PARENTS demand that libraries ban them. A few fundamentalist churches build bonfires with them. Meanwhile, the Harry Potter novels draw millions of readers into their magical world as irresistibly as if we were Charmed.
Why?
Not because J. K. Rowling made a deal with the Devil, as Internet rumors suggest. And not because she’s luring innocent youngsters into a life of witchcraft and tree-worship, as the religious reactionaries fear.
No, the reason for Harry Potter’s extraordinary rise to the top of both the bestseller and banned book lists is that we Muggles are deeply drawn to that most mythical, mystical being of all—the one which never appears in Rowling’s stories. Our innate human drive to connect with the magical power that created us is what propels fans of Rowling’s epic into its six volumes. And, ironically, that same drive energizes the fervent beliefs of its foes.
To those pious individuals, the Harry Potter books are a series of giant recruiting pamphlets for modern occultism: The Few, the Proud, the Magical! They are a seductive invitation to evil that glorify beliefs and practices Christianity has spent two millennia attacking with censorship and fire. And by continuing the assault, enemies of Rowling’s tales acknowledge the spiritual power of her work. After all, there would be no need to banish and burn them if her novels were viewed, from the fundamentalist standpoint, as benign. Or if they were viewed, as they are by many devout defenders of the series, as fully compatible with faith.
However, everyone agrees that traditional religion, with the exception of some secularized Christian holidays, is excluded from the stories. So where does their spiritual power come from? If you ask an anti-Harry evangelical, they’ll probably tell you that not only is God absent from Rowling’s novels, but what is glorified instead is an unholy hybrid of paganism and Satanism, Wicca and witchcraft. A faith that draws its power from dark sources, its morality from shades of grey. A mythology that, at best, sets a bad example and, at worst, poses a grave spiritual danger to anyone misguided enough to read the books. But if we examine this perception, we notice three inconsistencies, and exploring them enables us to move toward an understanding of the true reasons for the fanatical reactions, both positive and negative, evoked by the series.
First, Satan must be in the eye of the beholder, because he is certainly not in the pages of Harry Potter. Six books and counting, and we’ve got guys riding invisible horses, horses with one horn, and horned dragons with tails, but no invisible guy with horns and a tail. In fact, there are no gods or godlike beings—good or evil—at all. There are no priests and priestesses (or their equivalent) ordained as the earthly emissaries of a god. There is no worship, no religious ritual, no doctrine of faith. There’s not even a church or temple built in some omnipotent being’s honor, just a big old academic institution with really interesting architecture. And the Muggles that end up at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry don’t come by their powers as the result of conversion to a dark religious sect; they were born that way. They don’t even have to pledge allegiance to magic in order to become part of the magical world; they just have to show up on time for the Hogwarts Express (or enchant an old car). In short, magic, as portrayed in Rowling’s series, is not a religion, nor does it arise from one.
Which brings us to the second problem with the slippery-slope-to-Satan view of Harry Potter: Not only does its magic not displace God, but instead it is a natural science. Magic isn’t something you believe in any more than we believe in gravity or electromagnetism. These forces are givens in our reality, just as magic is a given in the alternate reality of Harry Potter. And in that world, the natural magical force is the basis for technology: It powers transportation, protects buildings, cooks food and even washes the dishes.
Magical technology, like Muggle technology, is a work in progress, with the knowledge base always under expansion. In both realities, technology doesn’t come cheap, and money buys advantage, as the Slytherin Quidditch team’s Nimbus Two Thousand and One broomsticks, courtesy of Draco’s rich dad, attest. But the underlying source of power is neutral: Magic, like any other system of knowledge, is neither good nor bad. It is how it is used that determines whether the magician is an Auror or a Death Eater.
And it is not just people who are magical in Harry Potter’s hidden world—for science is simply a means of describing nature. The enchanted ecosystem is richly populated by plants, animals and some very interesting combinations thereof. It sustains a kingdom of diverse beings upon which its human inhabitants depend, just as our ability to thrive is linked to that of the creatures which share our environment.
Despite all this, to its fundamentalist critics Harry Potter’s magic is anything but natural and neutral, because they believe that anyone who engages in something called or resembling witchcraft is not going to end up curled next to the Gryffindor fireplace on a cold winter evening; they’re going to end up someplace very hot. But . . . do they really believe this? Disney, another producer of blockbuster fantasy—in particular, Fantasia—made millions without getting burned for its trademarked enchantment. But which is really more demonic: a leering mouse in a wizard’s cap bringing on the biblical flood with an out-of-control bewitched mop, or a bunch of kids playing aerial polo on cruelty-free, non-polluting, self-powered stick ponies? And which sets a worse example: stargazing man-horses adhering to a rigid code of honor, or prancing pretty-boys pairing off with pastel bimbos?
This double standard for magic in children’s entertainment is the third problem with the perception of Harry Potter as wicked: If occult or pagan content were really the issue, then the ultra-conservative Christians would have boycotted Mickey long before he instituted domestic-partnership policies. Rowling’s stories, however, are not an epic animated series in book form: cute, colorized and so far removed from our world as to be utterly non-threatening. Their author does not indemnify herself by requiring us to give up our reality—or die—in order to escape to a magical place. Instead she proclaims that enchantment is all around us, just hidden from view.
And the enchanted realm of Harry Potter refuses, unlike that other mega-selling magical kingdom of children’s entertainment, to eviscerate its mythical inhabitants and embalm them in cheesy cartoons, or to cower behind fairy tales that have been sanitized for mass consumption. Its wizards are not plastic figurines (at least, they didn’t start out that way), nor is their wizardry glitter and harmless make-believe. Rowling does not denature the imaginings of past cultures any more than she omits the shortcomings of contemporary ones. And so her creation is a world that we intuitively recognize, one that we instantly believe: a world of true magic that rings true. This, as we will see, is why it speaks so strongly to the part of us that seeks the true magic of our own world. And why certain individuals, who believe they can only find that magic through narrow interpretation of a very different set of books, are so alarmed by its words.
Thus we come again to our paradox. If the Potter-purgers are wrong, and the intense temptation of Rowling’s stories does not arise from unholy sources—but if God, or any semblance thereof, is noticeably absent from her novels—then from where is their spiritual power coming? And how does it account for their unprecedented success? To answer these questions, we must first recognize that while the basis of the opposition to Rowling’s tales extends centuries into the past, those tales’ extraordinary popularity is very much a function of the present time.
The most high-tech generation ever to walk the Earth has embraced the Harry Potter books in staggering numbers because those books are fantasy. Since World War II defined a new technological era and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy defined a new literary genre, progress has smashed everything from atoms to sacred assertions about our universe—sending readers both young and not-so-young fleeing into the pages of novels in which fireballs result from incantations and not ammunitions. The fantasy genre has exploded as once science-fictional terrors keep materializing like boggarts in the daily news and once holy lines keep vanishing like the markings on a Marauder’s Map. And this is because fantasy provides an escape—from the complexity created by progress, from the oppressive rationalism that dominates modern life, and from the increasingly uneasy cohabitation of science and religion.
God lives in religion—and has a lot of houses. This is the impression that most of us form growing up. But like Harry traveling by Floo powder and arriving covered in ash, we arrive in our houses of worship coated with the byproducts of science: digital devices in our hands, synthetic fibers on our bodies, engineered lenses over our eyes. And that’s nothing compared to the soot coating our minds. Rationalism has burned there since we were old enough to ask “why?”—a fire carefully cultivated through years of schooling, stoked stronger with every new discovery. For most of us, that fire can never be extinguished, and it daily consumes more of our worldview as mystery after mystery is illuminated by its glaring light. God may have a lot of houses, but unless they are defended by a rejection of science, their intellectual property is shrinking at an alarming rate.
What is more alarming, since those houses are not located at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, is that their property can shrink at all. What we are taught we will find in religion is that which is eternal, not that which can be made obsolete by someone’s bright idea, and that which is undeniably true, not that for which we have to take someone else’s word. We are also taught we will find an unfailing moral compass—not guidance that, in this era of awesome new horizons, appears centuries out of date. And most importantly, we are taught we will find connection to the ultimate magic that is God—a connection that, like a phone call made from a bad cell, is hard to maintain when the intermediary is having technical difficulties.
And so millions of high-tech kids have turned off their mobile phones and video games to actually pick up a book—a book from the most explosive fantasy series of all. Because while most epics justify the existence of magic by transporting us to a vaguely medieval past, Rowling’s stories are set in a world like ours—but with an added dimension built on the very mythologies that religion and science, like two adversaries united against a common foe, have eradicated as living beliefs. And this is why legions of us so greatly identify with their young protagonist and his emancipation from stifling, magic-averse Privet Drive: Because like Harry prior to the arrival of that self-replicating letter, we too have spent our lives in a place devoid—or at least in denial—of supernatural power that we can actually perceive. A place where all forms of magic are judged by predetermined notions, and our rare innocent encounters with the paranormal are dismissed as nonsense. And so when Harry is whisked away by his hairy, half-giant rescuer, we cheer—and want desperately to go along for the ride, so that we too can escape the rigid authorities that define our existence and that make it increasingly difficult for us to connect with the miraculous force that is all around us.
And escape we do—to a place where religion is notably absent, science is marginalized and technology is a curiosity, a clumsy crutch used by the unfortunate Muggles who can’t access the endless power that resides in the world within their world. It is a poor second choice to being magical, as proved by the relish with which Muggle-raised Harry and Muggle-born Hermione abandon the realm of science for a place that is every bit as dangerous. We all know that in their shoes we’d do the same, even if the alternative wasn’t living in a cupboard. We want to be on the other side of the barrier at platform nine and three-quarters, where bedrooms are considerably larger and where magic may hide ancient houses and institutions but is not hidden within them. Where access to the miraculous is available now, instead of being conditioned upon a lifetime of good behavior. And where that power, although still falling far short of omnipotence, is an irrefutable fact.
Magical ability may not be gifted equally to everyone, but even the unfortunate, magicless Squibs still have the comfort of knowing that magic exists, that there is a department in the Ministry of Magic where the great mysteries of life are kept for study, as opposed to being only words and intangible experiences, the very reality of which science regularly assaults. How comforting to understand that illusions are conjured by Charms, and time is real enough to be captured in a bell jar instead of being labeled an illusion conjured by equations only mathematical geniuses will ever comprehend. How deeply reassuring to know—from personal experience—that light truly can be created with words. And so we identify, at last, the source of Harry Potter’s spiritual appeal: Rowling’s magical world, perhaps more than any other fictional realm, validates our most fundamental longing—a universal desire to access the amazing power that lets there be light and everything upon which that light shines.
It is this longing which has fueled mankind’s ongoing spiritual quest and belief in stories resulting from it, many of which have become worldwide bestsellers in their own right. Crisscross continents and centuries, and you will encounter again and again not only the beings that dwell in the collective unconscious, but prophecy and rituals aimed at summoning supernatural power—the same menagerie and magic we encounter in Rowling’s novels. But her inclusiveness does not evangelize the mythologies of the past: Instead, it acknowledges the common yearning that gave rise to those attempts to find and describe the magic hidden within us and our world. And more, her inclusiveness generates a new and unique mythology that comes full circle by evoking the same aspects of spiritual experience that inspired its sources. Let us now look at how:
Rowling’s tales are about and written for those experiencing childhood—when awe is our natural state. But for today’s children, that awareness is too often exhausted by the mind-numbing explanations and sensory overstimulations of the Technological Age. And then along came Harry Potter, offering a portal into a realm populated by mythical, mystical beings that resonate someplace deep inside us. A world where we are surrounded by the impossible, the stuff of dreams and nightmares. The amazing things that we Muggles hear tell of, or sometimes even glimpse, are out in plain view, which does not eliminate mystery as explanation but rather confirms mystery. The world of Harry Potter is a place where something can arise from nothing, and where there is an explanation of how that doesn’t rob us of our sense of wonder or require us to forget our science lessons. It is a place that reawakens our awe.
In rediscovering the creatures that can only thrive in an enchanted ecosystem, adults are able to resurrect the faith we had as children—and children are perhaps able to revive the faith that dies so quickly in this media-saturated, innocence-stealing era. We all return to a time when Santa and a giant bunny laden with baskets of sweets were real—but instead of consumerized modern fantasy creatures, we find ourselves in the company of the best and most enduring that the divine magic of human creativity has conjured. Rowling has rescued them from the ruins of lost cultures, giving them new life and validity. By telling us where they have all gone, and that they are alive and well, she gives children permission to believe despite “the facts” and adults permission to stop thinking about whether we “believe” in genetically engineering flying horses and to remember that belief is not an intellectual debate.
Rowling, however, gives us far more than magical creatures: She gives us magic itself, and with it, a validation of longings that begin in childhood and never leave us, although they may be exiled to our sleeping hours. Who hasn’t fantasized about having special powers? How gratifying to finally see that bully get his comeuppance; how thrilling to finally be able to fly through the air. And what if imminent doom could be chased away by thoughts of those we love leaping silver and staglike from our minds? What if we knew for a fact that death wasn’t annihilation because there were friendly ghosts hanging around to confirm it? Magic may be a science, but unlike our technology, it puts true miracles at its users’ fingertips. (In fact, this is why the inhabitants of the magical realm have no need of Muggle science: The forces of nature are theirs to harness with a well-pronounced phrase and the skillful flick of a stick.)
And in Harry Potter’s world, like our own, miraculous power encompasses both good and evil, both light and dark. Rowling’s magic is not decaffeinated, alcohol-free lite enchantment stripped of any real clout: It is potent wizardry, capable of transformation and destruction, of both saving and taking life. It is a natural superpower that obviously springs from the source of all nature, even though that source is never named and worshipped. And although not a religion, magic—like religion—places the burden of morality on mankind.
For most human beings, morality and our Maker are inextricably intertwined. In striving for goodness, we strive for godliness. In using magic for right and against wrong, the heroes of Rowling’s series, despite their inevitable human flaws, are living their faith. And they are living it in a way that we Muggles never can, restricted as we are to a realm where the awesome forces that gave rise to our reality are light-years, and not just a wand-wave, away. Consider Harry and Hermione’s Time-Turning in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban that enables them to save two innocent lives, or the ancient couple in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone who give up immortality for the greater good. Conversely, consider Lord Voldemort’s use of horrific Dark Arts to prolong his own existence. Rowling’s novels demonstrate how miraculous power, and our relationship with it, determines our fate in this life and beyond. Her stories confirm that although we have free will, we do not exercise it in a vacuum where our actions are devoid of meaning—or eternal consequence. Only in the magical world, your soul cannot just be lost, but actually sucked out of your body.
Many of Harry Potter’s fundamentalist critics see morality in absolute terms, with the equivalent of a Dementor’s Kiss as punishment for failure to obey God’s law. However, most of us live in a reality where our Creator’s intent is difficult to discern from ancient and oft-reinterpreted rule books, let alone apply to the ever-more complex questions raised by progress. This is why it is so spiritually refreshing to escape those questions. The heroes of Rowling’s tales seem confident of what is right. They prevail (at least, thus far), assuring us that the love of a mother for her child—and what is more magical and divine than that?—is more powerful than the most evil intentions. Harry and Hermione and Ron prevail, assuring us that there is a benevolent force underlying the universe, and that when we align ourselves with it, although bad things may still happen to good people, the good people do ultimately win.
And so, it is obvious—as long as you don’t judge a bespectacled boy and his best friends to be bad people because they ride broomsticks and break rules—how Rowling’s stories grow from the timeless roots of spiritual experience. They validate our deepest yearnings, stimulate our awe, exercise our faith and affirm our perceptions of miraculous power, morality and benevolence. But even this is not enough to explain why our longing for divine magic causes so many of us to long for the next volume in Rowling’s series. It does not fully elucidate why we wait years, our enthusiasm undiminished, to share the experiences of the boy with the lightning-bolt scar. What fuels our passion for Harry Potter is more than a desire to flee from a reality that excludes magic, more than the true magic we find in the place to which we flee—it is how these converge in the depth of our identification with Harry himself.
Like that young wizard, we, as a civilization, have gladly left our former existence behind, but in so doing we have been thrust into a realm where the impossible is possible and where the old rules no longer apply. A place where grave danger (resulting largely from our technological wizardry) is gathering, and where we must rely on our inherent abilities, our courage and our kind hearts to help us figure out what is right and to do it. Yes, there are those who can teach us, who can share wisdom and who can even try to protect us. But since they have inadvertently helped to create the predicament—whether it arose from prophecy or progress—in which we find ourselves, and have failed—whether they serve the Order of the Phoenix or a religious order—to create lasting peace, it is obvious that our elders cannot solve the problems we face.
Thus, we relate profoundly to the Boy Who Lived, because we too live in a time of critical importance—whether we recognize that fact with the naïve perceptivity of a child or the intellectual sophistication of an adult. And because we too must learn to control the wizardry we have inherited if we are to rid the world of evil before it—or our own immature judgment—destroys us. And finally, because our future, like his, depends on developing our relationship with the miraculous power that sustains our reality.
Harry’s story, then, is our story, but seen through a very different set of spectacles than the ones we all wear: the poorly coordinated twin lenses of religion, whose clarity is becoming obscured by time, and rationalism, whose focus, as time passes, is clarifying the mysterious into the mundane. When we look through Harry’s glasses instead, we see a world that is haunted, yes, but also hauntingly familiar. A world so genuine and enthralling that our attention is wrenched away from the mesmerizing, neon spectacle of our civilization and brought inward, to that which cannot be viewed directly—that which requires belief. And so, we reach for a series of novels that transports us out of our Muggle lives as instantaneously as Portkeys, emancipating us temporarily from our endless summer in the domain of the Dursleys. Because no matter how much the authoritarian voices around us may deny it, we, like Harry, know there is far more to reality than can be seen from our locked window. And we long for that hidden enchantment which goes by so many names.
Of course, if you share Aunt Petunia’s view of magic and magical folk, then Rowling’s novels are an entirely different experience. For the religious reactionaries, these books open a door that should be kept firmly shut—or even incinerated. But that is because for them, spirituality is synonymous with religion—and most likely, their religion.
The irony of the controversy surrounding Harry Potter, then, is that religions are built on a foundation of awe, faith, longing for the miraculous and divine, and a perception of morality and benevolence—the same timeless basis that Rowling’s stories use to provide a timely evocation of the spiritual. Her novels do not undermine or attempt to replace traditional beliefs, as critics charge. Their immense appeal arises from the fact that they enable readers to return to the soul of those beliefs. The fans and foes of Rowling’s series, like Harry and You-Know-Who and like most opposing sides, have more in common than we might care to admit. And, as is so often the case, that which we share generates our conflict, whether it is the power to do great magic or a powerful yearning for the greatest magic of all.
Thankfully, though, devotees and detractors of Harry Potter are not bound to a destiny where only one side can survive! And so, for millions of wistful Muggles around the globe, the pages of Rowling’s books are wide open. We enter them by suspending our disbelief in that which we have learned our whole lives is not real—and we find something that is real. We believe, for 309 or 870 pages, in that which we have never seen, that which cannot be proven, that which is miraculous by its very existence, because we yearn for just this.
Yes, on one level the Harry Potter novels succeed, and succeed brilliantly and lucratively and famously, because their author cleverly combines a school-year series, with its best friends and bratty rich kids and mean teachers and juvenile exploits, with an epic fantasy of good and evil, and then fleshes the whole thing out with endless charming detail and utterly engaging characters. But on a deeper level, Rowling’s stories capture our minds and hearts because they temporarily fulfill, through fantasy, a universal longing—and an increasingly urgent need—to connect with the hidden magic we know is all around us. In so doing, they bring us home on the wings of our imagination—just as surely as a white owl swooping in an open window.
Sources
Robinson, B. A. “Conservative Christian Boycott of Disney Company.” http://www.religioustolerance.org/disney.htm.
Wagner, Rachel. “Bewitching the Box Office: Harry Potter and Religious Controversy.” Journal of Religion and Film. Vol. 7.2, Oct. 2003.
ELISABETH DEVOS is the author of science fantasy novel The Seraphim Rising, as well as short fiction that has appeared in Talebones magazine and the anthology Imagination Fully Dilated. Her stories explore what happens when mythical, mystical beings collide with the Muggle world of religion and rationalism. Elisabeth grew up near Orlando and earned a B.S. in computer science from the University of Central Florida. She has lived in the Seattle area for over a decade and read her first Harry Potter book while flying diagonally across the country for the umpteenth time.