Harry Potter and the Harbingers of Doom

I’m quite a bit behind the times on this one. I just read the first two Harry Potter novels last week, and, let me tell you, it was a bit of a shock to sail through J.K. Rowling’s simple, straightforward prose directly after navigating past the treacherous shoals of Perez-Reverte’s latest work.

But please understand: This is not to denigrate the phenomenon that is Potter, as I very much enjoyed the books and their massive appeal is easy to comprehend. They are magical escapism, ideal for the young boy or girl who would like nothing better than to disappear for a time from what can be a very difficult period of life. If they lack the mythical depth of Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising” or even the poignant whimsy of Lloyd Alexander’s “Chronicles of Prydain,” what of it? They are easy, enchanting and amusing reads.

Well-meaning Christians have attacked Harry Potter because of the idea that the books make the occult appear fun. But this is like attacking pornography because it makes sex appear fun. The problem with this approach is that sex is fun, as is getting drunk, gossiping and a whole host of other things that are accounted sin.

Sin, in general, is fun. And so is the occult. Aleister Crowley, at least, knew how to party. “OK, guys, and for the altar, we’ll use a hot naked redhead!”

While pornography can be dismissed as an evil temptation on its own, reading for simple pleasure cannot. Thus, the question becomes: Does reading Harry Potter and other books of similar ilk cause one to become involved in the occultic arts? I am willing to believe that magical fantasy might foster an interest in the supernatural, to be sure, but an interest, even a belief, in the supernatural is exactly what a Christian should hope to foster in one’s children!

The basic challenge facing Christians in the West is not that too many people believe in the supernatural, it is that too many people do not! As Christians, we believe in spiritual forces, in demons, and, yes, in magic too. Sorcery may be forbidden to us, as is astrology and fortune-telling, but it is an element of our worldview. If Harry Potter does indeed inspire one to think of the world beyond the pure material, then he is at least operating within the boundaries of the Christian worldview, if not in the precise manner that the Christian parent might prefer.

Of course, it is absurd to argue, as do Harry’s defenders, that the mere fact that children are reading the books makes them inherently worthwhile. Simply substitute The 120 Days of Sodom for Harry and the argument drowns in a viscous puddle of bodily fluids. Nor can one attempt to argue Harry’s morality on some feeble notion of good triumphing over evil. Harry is not a virtuous protagonist as he is a practitioner of explicitly forbidden arts, and if he is a lesser evil than Lord Voldemort, that still does not make him righteous.

In this, Harry Potter reflects the real world, wherein evil battles evil far more often than it is confronted by good. Indeed, it is ironic to think that some of the very same concerned parents who would ban Harry Potter from their children’s libraries blithely send these same children to schools where they are daily force-fed secular dogma and sexual technique as they learn to worship at the shrine of the material world. There are many malignant influences on children, but if the Harry Potter series is not the least of these, it is surely close. One would do far better to ban television, movies, pop music and the Internet than these fat little fantasy novels.

Indeed, I am myself a published novelist, and I can testify that if Christians – especially the Christian media – spent half the time discussing authentic Christian children’s literature and overtly Christian fantasy that they do in jousting this Potter windmill, the publishing industry would be turned upside down.

Harry Potter, like most things in this world, is neither good nor bad in himself. The books are simply books, entertaining fantasies, not a gateway into the Dionysian worship of the chthonic Great Mother and not a paragon of moral virtue either. If Harry Potter seriously troubles you, best stay far, far away from the works of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Spenser, Shakespeare, Coleridge and the vast majority of the classical canon.