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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 a
by 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 agoChristianity 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 agoThe 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 agoQAnon 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 agoThe 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 agoIt 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 agoI tend to agree, although this is moving the goalposts from the original statement.
- unfocussed_mike 5y agoIt's really not. I just wasn't as clear as I could have been.
- 1123581321 5y agoWe couldn’t have known you meant to exclude fiction from “occult elements.” Also, I bet the conversation actually did go well. :)