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I remember in the early 2000s there was a similar reaction to Harry Potter. My family attended a rather extreme church at the time. One day the pastor started t

I remember in the early 2000s there was a similar reaction to Harry Potter. My family attended a rather extreme church at the time. One day the pastor started the sermon with: "We need to talk about Harry Potter". I thought "Ohhh nooooo, here we go". He proceeded to berate the congregation, reminding every one that Harry Potter is a fictional children's book. Witches aren't real. Wizards aren't real. You know who is real? Satan and he's coming for ya, but not thru this fairytale book. Always thought that was pretty funny.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
A family friend told me about ten years ago that she thought Harry Potter had occult elements. I pointed out to her that JK Rowling is a Scottish Episcopalian and compared it with the Narnia story cycle, which is also the work of a Christian. Didn't go down that well. (There is a chain of toy stores in the UK that will not stock anything Harry Potter-related because of this kind of belief.)
- krapp 5y ago
  Christianity would be so much cooler if they left in more of the esoteric apocryphal texts with wizard battles, mysticism and demon summoning, and cut out Paul's misogynist bullshit.
  - mrjangles 5y ago
    The revelations book fits this description. And we already have a religion that bases itself around it: the Jehovah Witnesses. While your idea sounds cool in theory, in practice the results is a crazy cult which no one in their right mind would want anything to do with.
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
      QAnon is rather like this, as other commenters are pointing out; people who believed in or amplified the Satanic Panic are present in the QAnon "faith" too. It compares even more closely to Millerism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millerism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millerism ... in that a series of prophecies has been made and not come true, and like the Millerites, Q believers have experienced a great disappointment and branched off into other further-splintering schools of belief around Covid vaccinations and The Great Reset.
- digisign 5y ago
  The definition of occult nails HP to me, the authors leanings notwithstanding: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/occult https://www.dictionary.com/browse/occult - of or relating to magic, astrology, or any system claiming use or knowledge of secret or supernatural powers or agencies. - beyond the range of ordinary knowledge or understanding; mysterious. - secret; disclosed or communicated only to the initiated.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    It fits the fictional subjects the fictional characters are taught, sure. But that doesn't make Harry Potter occult literature! If it did, so are Superman comics. And the X-Files. And James Bond. Fictional stories about occult figures are at least two steps removed from occult literature. One, they are written about other people studying such material, two they are explicitly fictional. (Three, perhaps, so are the people doing the studying.) There is actual, primary source occult material out there; confusing this with Harry Potter is precisely what the looney fringes want. When I say that my family friend thought Harry Potter had occult elements, I do not mean that she thought the content of the stories was about the occult. Of course they are. I mean that she believed the stories themselves to be as dangerous as primary source occult material: that fiction about the occult is at some level interchangeable with the occult; that it's a primer on the occult. Which is why the Lewis comparison wasn't well-received. Because it punctures the notion that making up stories about witches invites Satan in.
    - digisign 5y ago
      I tend to agree, although this is moving the goalposts from the original statement.
      - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
        It's really not. I just wasn't as clear as I could have been.
        5y ago
dylan604 5y ago
While attending church camp the summer after Prety Hate Machine released, the preacher started quoting some of the lyrics. My friend and I got in trouble for singing along. My fondest memories of church was when the hypocrisy just popped out and smacked you in the face.
- nobleach 5y ago
  I remember hearing "While the devil wants to f** me in the back of his car" and thinking, "wow, I'm sure as a 12 year old, I'm supposed to find this thrilling... such aggression , such anger... this guy seems really mad at things he doesn't even believe in." I just wasn't interested in it. Not saying Trent isn't a genius. Or that I don't appreciate all the cool experimentation he was doing back then (sending instruments and vocals through an ARP 2600!!). That lyric just felt like a cop-out to me. Church camp did get me listening to Metallica though! Fade To Black was such an amazing song... and no amount of "this song was written by the devil to make kids kill themselves" could ever change that.
  - jmcgough 5y ago
    I appreciate PHM for what it was - important from a technical perspective and a precursor for what was to come. But Trent was in his early 20s so not his most emotionally complex work ;)
    - dylan604 5y ago
      I always joked that I wanted to meet the girl that did him so wrong that led to that album.
    - nobleach 5y ago
      His reaction to Johnny Cash's version of Hurt made me have a great deal of more respect.
    - hiptobecubic 5y ago
      Y'all are crazy. PHM is a banging album.
SynAck6 5y ago
I grew up in a Jehovah's witness household and my dad burned my harry potter books after a particularly zealous talk about harry potter and the association books had with the occult and satan. Fun times
atlantas 5y ago
What is it about Harry Potter and moral panics? Then "We need to talk about Harry Potter. The story is evil and will corrupt your kids!" Today "We need to talk about Harry Potter. The author is evil and will corrupt your kids!"
- QuercusMax 5y ago
  Bigots. Those freaking about satanism and Harry Potter were bigots. JK Rowling is an anti-trans bigot. She is the one freaking out about how trans women are going to rape children or something like that.
  - kleiba 5y ago
    trans women are going to rape children Did she really state that? If so, please provide a citation. If not, claiming this would be a grave diffamation that cannot be taken lightly, whether or not one dislikes her position on LGBTIQA+.
    - QuercusMax 5y ago
      She's definitely accused transwomen of being rapists, and wrote a book about a man who wears a dress to kill women. Btw, the word is "defamation". Here's an article with some documentation: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/12/j-k-rowling-tweet-paints-trans-women-rapists-author-continues-crusade-civil-rights/ https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/12/j-k-rowling-tweet-paints...
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - labster 5y ago
        Article includes no JKR quotes, but lots of quotes from enraged twitterati. She uses an Orwell quote which doesn’t refer to rape at all, just to doublethink. Please provide evidence, not smear campaigns.
ilamont 5y ago
"Harry Potter Books Spark Rise In Satanism Among Children" LOCK HAVEN, PA—Ashley Daniels is as close as you can get to your typical 9-year-old American girl. A third-grader at Lock Haven Elementary School, she loves rollerblading, her pet hamsters Benny and Oreo, Britney Spears, and, of course, Harry Potter. Having breezed through the most recent Potter opus in just four days, Ashley is among the millions of children who have made Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire the fastest-selling book in publishing history. And, like many of her school friends, Ashley was captivated enough by the strange occult doings at the Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry to pursue the Left-Hand Path, determined to become as adept at the black arts as Harry and his pals. "I used to believe in what they taught us at Sunday School," said Ashley, conjuring up an ancient spell to summon Cerebus, the three-headed hound of hell. "But the Harry Potter books showed me that magic is real, something I can learn and use right now, and that the Bible is nothing but boring lies." https://www.theonion.com/harry-potter-books-spark-rise-in-satanism-among-childre-1819565664 https://www.theonion.com/harry-potter-books-spark-rise-in-sa...
- jamiek88 5y ago
  man my fire was up, I'd already started pounding on my keyboard in a frothing rage and then I saw the url. You got me good.
- bsagdiyev 5y ago
  Hah, an Onion article and it's based around where my dad grew up/grandparents still live and where I spent many summers. Never thought I'd see Lock Haven (or the real "Jersey Shore", right up the street) here.
klyrs 5y ago
My great grandmother wasn't a terribly religious person, but towards the end of days, she decided it would be prudent to go to church. She picked one of the fire and brimstone sort, and Harry Potter was the subject of their intense ire. She wouldn't talk about it, even when prompted. Our sense was that she was seeking some sort of closure in going to church; it didn't matter much what they had to say.
kuang_eleven 5y ago
I was always amused at the amount of flak Harry Potter got when His Dark Materials came out about the same time period. The young adult book series that very explicitly is about killing God, how evil the church is and even has gay angels as side characters!
- plasticchris 5y ago
  I think few people read past the first book. I’ve almost stepped in it talking to religious people that say they love this series and I thought it was some kind of coded message. Like, me too, what was your favorite part?
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    Plenty was written about the message in the third book, in particular. The Pullman books just haven’t had as much cultural staying power so the debate about them isn’t being reinforced.
pyuser583 5y ago
I think some folks confused Dungeons and Dragons with Lovecraftian role playing games that were popular at the same time. Those were demonic. That’s not a value statement or judgement. They were literally based around demons taking over the world and killing all goodness. And there were was nothing anyone could do to stop it. D&D was ultimately based on Lord of the Rings, so there were demons in it. But it wasn’t demonic in the Cthulhu sense.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I think some folks confused Dungeons and Dragons with Lovecraftian role playing games that were popular at the same time. No, the latter were never anywhere close to as popular; the deliberate propaganda was targeted at D&D because it was fringe enough that people wouldn't know it was lies and popular enough that it would have impact. > Those were demonic. No, they weren't (the in-game fiction may have been, but that was often true of D&D which was like an order of magnitude more popular than anything else in the TTRPG market at the time of the Satanic Panic.) In fact, using the Lovecraft mythos in D&D, for which it was written up, was more popular than the purpose-built games. > D&D was ultimately based on Lord of the Rings, so there were demons in it. But it wasn’t demonic in the Cthulhu sense. D&D was pretty distant from LotR, and had the Cthulhu mythos literally started up in one of the major supplements.
- Talanes 5y ago
  > They were literally based around demons taking over the world and killing all goodness. And there were was nothing anyone could do to stop it. So are the Left Behind books, and those are literally Christian Fiction.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago

A family friend told me about ten years ago that she thought Harry Potter had occult elements. I pointed out to her that JK Rowling is a Scottish Episcopalian and compared it with the Narnia story cycle, which is also the work of a Christian. Didn't go down that well. (There is a chain of toy stores in the UK that will not stock anything Harry Potter-related because of this kind of belief.)

krapp 5y ago
Christianity would be so much cooler if they left in more of the esoteric apocryphal texts with wizard battles, mysticism and demon summoning, and cut out Paul's misogynist bullshit.
- mrjangles 5y ago
  The revelations book fits this description. And we already have a religion that bases itself around it: the Jehovah Witnesses. While your idea sounds cool in theory, in practice the results is a crazy cult which no one in their right mind would want anything to do with.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    QAnon is rather like this, as other commenters are pointing out; people who believed in or amplified the Satanic Panic are present in the QAnon "faith" too. It compares even more closely to Millerism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millerism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millerism ... in that a series of prophecies has been made and not come true, and like the Millerites, Q believers have experienced a great disappointment and branched off into other further-splintering schools of belief around Covid vaccinations and The Great Reset.
digisign 5y ago
The definition of occult nails HP to me, the authors leanings notwithstanding: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/occult https://www.dictionary.com/browse/occult - of or relating to magic, astrology, or any system claiming use or knowledge of secret or supernatural powers or agencies. - beyond the range of ordinary knowledge or understanding; mysterious. - secret; disclosed or communicated only to the initiated.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  It fits the fictional subjects the fictional characters are taught, sure. But that doesn't make Harry Potter occult literature! If it did, so are Superman comics. And the X-Files. And James Bond. Fictional stories about occult figures are at least two steps removed from occult literature. One, they are written about other people studying such material, two they are explicitly fictional. (Three, perhaps, so are the people doing the studying.) There is actual, primary source occult material out there; confusing this with Harry Potter is precisely what the looney fringes want. When I say that my family friend thought Harry Potter had occult elements, I do not mean that she thought the content of the stories was about the occult. Of course they are. I mean that she believed the stories themselves to be as dangerous as primary source occult material: that fiction about the occult is at some level interchangeable with the occult; that it's a primer on the occult. Which is why the Lewis comparison wasn't well-received. Because it punctures the notion that making up stories about witches invites Satan in.
  - digisign 5y ago
    I tend to agree, although this is moving the goalposts from the original statement.
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
      It's really not. I just wasn't as clear as I could have been.
      - 5y ago

dylan604 5y ago

While attending church camp the summer after Prety Hate Machine released, the preacher started quoting some of the lyrics. My friend and I got in trouble for singing along. My fondest memories of church was when the hypocrisy just popped out and smacked you in the face.

nobleach 5y ago
I remember hearing "While the devil wants to f** me in the back of his car" and thinking, "wow, I'm sure as a 12 year old, I'm supposed to find this thrilling... such aggression , such anger... this guy seems really mad at things he doesn't even believe in." I just wasn't interested in it. Not saying Trent isn't a genius. Or that I don't appreciate all the cool experimentation he was doing back then (sending instruments and vocals through an ARP 2600!!). That lyric just felt like a cop-out to me. Church camp did get me listening to Metallica though! Fade To Black was such an amazing song... and no amount of "this song was written by the devil to make kids kill themselves" could ever change that.
- jmcgough 5y ago
  I appreciate PHM for what it was - important from a technical perspective and a precursor for what was to come. But Trent was in his early 20s so not his most emotionally complex work ;)
  - dylan604 5y ago
    I always joked that I wanted to meet the girl that did him so wrong that led to that album.
  - nobleach 5y ago
    His reaction to Johnny Cash's version of Hurt made me have a great deal of more respect.
  - hiptobecubic 5y ago
    Y'all are crazy. PHM is a banging album.

SynAck6 5y ago

I grew up in a Jehovah's witness household and my dad burned my harry potter books after a particularly zealous talk about harry potter and the association books had with the occult and satan. Fun times

atlantas 5y ago

What is it about Harry Potter and moral panics? Then "We need to talk about Harry Potter. The story is evil and will corrupt your kids!" Today "We need to talk about Harry Potter. The author is evil and will corrupt your kids!"

QuercusMax 5y ago
Bigots. Those freaking about satanism and Harry Potter were bigots. JK Rowling is an anti-trans bigot. She is the one freaking out about how trans women are going to rape children or something like that.
- kleiba 5y ago
  trans women are going to rape children Did she really state that? If so, please provide a citation. If not, claiming this would be a grave diffamation that cannot be taken lightly, whether or not one dislikes her position on LGBTIQA+.
  - QuercusMax 5y ago
    She's definitely accused transwomen of being rapists, and wrote a book about a man who wears a dress to kill women. Btw, the word is "defamation". Here's an article with some documentation: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/12/j-k-rowling-tweet-paints-trans-women-rapists-author-continues-crusade-civil-rights/ https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/12/j-k-rowling-tweet-paints...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - labster 5y ago
      Article includes no JKR quotes, but lots of quotes from enraged twitterati. She uses an Orwell quote which doesn’t refer to rape at all, just to doublethink. Please provide evidence, not smear campaigns.

ilamont 5y ago

"Harry Potter Books Spark Rise In Satanism Among Children" LOCK HAVEN, PA—Ashley Daniels is as close as you can get to your typical 9-year-old American girl. A third-grader at Lock Haven Elementary School, she loves rollerblading, her pet hamsters Benny and Oreo, Britney Spears, and, of course, Harry Potter. Having breezed through the most recent Potter opus in just four days, Ashley is among the millions of children who have made Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire the fastest-selling book in publishing history. And, like many of her school friends, Ashley was captivated enough by the strange occult doings at the Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry to pursue the Left-Hand Path, determined to become as adept at the black arts as Harry and his pals. "I used to believe in what they taught us at Sunday School," said Ashley, conjuring up an ancient spell to summon Cerebus, the three-headed hound of hell. "But the Harry Potter books showed me that magic is real, something I can learn and use right now, and that the Bible is nothing but boring lies." https://www.theonion.com/harry-potter-books-spark-rise-in-satanism-among-childre-1819565664 https://www.theonion.com/harry-potter-books-spark-rise-in-sa...

jamiek88 5y ago
man my fire was up, I'd already started pounding on my keyboard in a frothing rage and then I saw the url. You got me good.
bsagdiyev 5y ago
Hah, an Onion article and it's based around where my dad grew up/grandparents still live and where I spent many summers. Never thought I'd see Lock Haven (or the real "Jersey Shore", right up the street) here.

klyrs 5y ago

My great grandmother wasn't a terribly religious person, but towards the end of days, she decided it would be prudent to go to church. She picked one of the fire and brimstone sort, and Harry Potter was the subject of their intense ire. She wouldn't talk about it, even when prompted. Our sense was that she was seeking some sort of closure in going to church; it didn't matter much what they had to say.

kuang_eleven 5y ago

I was always amused at the amount of flak Harry Potter got when His Dark Materials came out about the same time period. The young adult book series that very explicitly is about killing God, how evil the church is and even has gay angels as side characters!

plasticchris 5y ago
I think few people read past the first book. I’ve almost stepped in it talking to religious people that say they love this series and I thought it was some kind of coded message. Like, me too, what was your favorite part?
- 1123581321 5y ago
  Plenty was written about the message in the third book, in particular. The Pullman books just haven’t had as much cultural staying power so the debate about them isn’t being reinforced.

pyuser583 5y ago

I think some folks confused Dungeons and Dragons with Lovecraftian role playing games that were popular at the same time. Those were demonic. That’s not a value statement or judgement. They were literally based around demons taking over the world and killing all goodness. And there were was nothing anyone could do to stop it. D&D was ultimately based on Lord of the Rings, so there were demons in it. But it wasn’t demonic in the Cthulhu sense.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> I think some folks confused Dungeons and Dragons with Lovecraftian role playing games that were popular at the same time. No, the latter were never anywhere close to as popular; the deliberate propaganda was targeted at D&D because it was fringe enough that people wouldn't know it was lies and popular enough that it would have impact. > Those were demonic. No, they weren't (the in-game fiction may have been, but that was often true of D&D which was like an order of magnitude more popular than anything else in the TTRPG market at the time of the Satanic Panic.) In fact, using the Lovecraft mythos in D&D, for which it was written up, was more popular than the purpose-built games. > D&D was ultimately based on Lord of the Rings, so there were demons in it. But it wasn’t demonic in the Cthulhu sense. D&D was pretty distant from LotR, and had the Cthulhu mythos literally started up in one of the major supplements.
Talanes 5y ago
> They were literally based around demons taking over the world and killing all goodness. And there were was nothing anyone could do to stop it. So are the Left Behind books, and those are literally Christian Fiction.