How Harry Cast His Spell

Tyndale House Publishers Inc.

Contents

Acknowledgments............................................viiPublisher's Preface........................................ixIntroduction...............................................xi1: Magic, Fantasy, and Transcendence.......................12: Cosmic White Hats and Black Hats........................133: The Hero's Journey......................................214: The Alchemy of Spiritual Growth.........................295: One Person, Two Natures.................................416: Don't Judge, Lest You Be Judged.........................537: The Triumph of Love over Death..........................638: The Question of Identity................................779: Evidence of Things Unseen...............................9110: Fun with Names.........................................10911: The Purification of the Soul...........................12512: Dangerous Books and Edifying Books.....................13513: Despair and Delivery...................................14514: Girded with Virtue.....................................15715: Dark Night of the Soul.................................16716: Baptism into a Sacrificial Death.......................17917: Choosing to Believe....................................19518: Christian Birth and Baptism............................21319: Victory Over Death.....................................22520: FAQs...................................................245Notes......................................................271

Chapter One

The magic in Harry Potter is traditional literary spellwork that acts as a counterspell to the materialism of our times.

More than any other book of the last fifty years (and perhaps ever), the Harry Potter novels have captured the imagination of the reading public worldwide. Hundreds of millions of copies have been sold to date. However, although the books have been wildly successful, no one as yet has been able to explain their popularity. The aim of How Harry Cast His Spell is to answer the question "Why do readers young and old love these stories?" The answer, believe it or not, is not great marketing, movie tie-ins, or product placement; it's the transcendent meaning of the books, and more specifically, their Christian content.

The Harry Potter books, in case you have lived on the planet Zeno since 1997 or have recently come out of a coma, recount the adventures of an English schoolboy as he advances from grade to grade at Hogwarts School. Hogwarts is no ordinary boarding school, however, and Harry Potter is no typical student-the former is a school for witchcraft and wizardry, and Harry is not only a wizard-in-training, but the target of attack by the worst of evil wizards, Lord Voldemort, and his followers, the Death Eaters. Each book ends with a life-or-death battle against Voldemort or his servants and enough plot twists to make you dream of saltwater taffy.

I am convinced that the fundamental reason for the astonishing popularity of the Harry Potter novels is their ability to meet a spiritual longing for some experience of the truths of life, love, and death that are denied by our secular culture. Human beings are designed for transcendent truths, whether they know it or not, and they pursue experience of these truths and some exercise of their spiritual faculties anywhere they can. Mircea Eliade suggested that modern entertainments, especially books and movies, serve a mythological or religious function in a desacralized world. That the Harry Potter stories "sing along" with the Great Story of Christ in the tradition of English literature is a significant key to understanding their compelling richness and unprecedented popularity. We love these books because they satisfy our desire for religious experience in a big way.

Sound loony? I take hits from both sides of the Potter wars for this thesis-from Potter fans who are shocked by the suggestion that they have been reading "Christian" books and from Potter foes who are shocked by the thought that there could be anything "Christian" or edifying about books with witches and wizards in them. But like it or not, Harry's Christian content and the fact that he takes us out of our materialist mental prisons are what keep his readers coming back again and again.

As the magical setting of the books has caused the most controversy in religious communities and has the most important and obvious spiritual significance, I'll start with the setting and several formulas Rowling observes in every book to begin the discussion of what drives Potter-mania.

Magical Setting

Some Christians have objected to Harry Potter because Christian Scripture in many places explicitly forbids occult practice. Though reading about occult practice is not forbidden, these Christians prudently prefer (again in obedience to scriptural admonishments to parents) to protect their children because of the books' sympathetic portrayal of occult practice. These Christians believe that such approving and casual exposure to the occult opens the door to occult practice.

Reading the Harry Potter books myself has convinced me that the magic in Harry Potter is no more likely to encourage real-life witchcraft than time travel in science fiction novels encourages readers to seek passage to previous centuries. Loving families have much to celebrate in these stories and little, if anything, to fear. What they have to celebrate is the traditional, edifying magic of English literature-a magic that fosters a spiritual worldview that is anything but occult oriented.

I say this without hesitation because the magic in Harry Potter is not "sorcery" or invocational magic. In keeping with a long tradition of English fantasy, the magic practiced in the Potter books, by hero and villain alike, is incantational magic, a magic that shows-in story form-our human thirst for a reality beyond the physical world around us.

The difference between invocational and incantational magic isn't something we all learned in the womb, so let me explain. Invocational means literally "to call in." Magic of this sort is usually referred to as sorcery. Scripture of every revealed tradition warns that "calling in" demonic principalities and powers for personal power and advantage is dangerously stupid. History books, revealed tradition, and fantasy fiction (think Dr. Faustus) that touch on sorcery do so in order to show us that the unbridled pursuit of power and advantage via black magic promises a tragic end.

But there is no invocational sorcery in the Harry Potter books.

Even the most evil wizards do their nasty magic with spells; not one character in any of the seven books ever calls in evil spirits. Not once.

The magic by spells and wands in Harry Potter is known as incantational wizardry. Incantational means literally "to sing along with" or "to harmonize." To under stand how this works, we have to step outside our culture's materialist creed (that every thing in existence is quantitative mass or energy) and look at the world upside down, which is to say, God-first.

For some, the distinction between invocational and incantational magic is a new idea. I've been asked how prayer fits....