See this article, which was reported on widely a few months ago.

quote:

The Vatican's chief exorcist is no fan of Harry Potter.

Father Gabriele Amorth, who is Pope Benedict XVI's "caster out of demons," told Vatican Radio: "Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of the darkness, the devil."

Oh gosh . . . that's a bit of a stretch, imo. Just what is the evidence of evil, here?

I'll admit that I've never read the books, but I have seen the movies and enjoyed them. How would you distinguish Harry Potter stories from the usual round of fairy tales that deal with good and evil in mythical ways?

quote:

Father Amorth is said to have carried out more than 30,000 exorcisms in his career and his favorite film is, according to Italian newspapers The Exorcist.

Man alive, that's a lot of exorcists! If he's been ministering for 30 years, that averages out to 1,000 a year, or almost three a day. Maybe his perspective on this issue is a bit skewed? What do you all think?

Maybe he's been exiling more parts of the psyche than real demons, with some concern he's the Pope's miracle boy . . . . Wonder if he's a pedophile?


(just thinking out loud)

Coming from the vantage point of someone who has involved himself with the occult and practiced some real forms of magic, Harry Potter is not really a good thing.

I enjoy fantasy and have also watched all the movies and enjoyed them. The problem with Harry Potter is he isn't a mythical character in a sense. He is a real boy from England who is practicing real white witchcraft, which is still demonic as Satan is the source of the power behind all magic.

Compared to Lord of the Rings, Gandalf and the Elves do not do magic, they just do what they can do...like angels. But Harry Potter practices real contemporary witchcraft, big difference imo. It is the same reason I consider the series "Charmed" about the three witch sisters to be somewhat evil, again they practice real contemporary magic.

According to scripture magic is evil and as Christians we cannot blur the lines between dark/black magic and white/good magic - They are both evil.

The world in which Harry Potter lives is a fantasy world, where wizards have natural powers that muggles do not. Magic there does not seem to involve the invocation of demons or spirits but rather natural human abilities. Harry Potter has always impressed me as being a typological signifier of Christ, and one of the better ones in modern day literature. Others I have read seem to concur:

http://www.christianitytoday.c...t/2005/128/52.0.html
http://www.ev90481.dial.pipex....y_potter_granger.htm
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/116/story_11681_1.html

The type of sorcery forbidden in scripture seems to primarily involve the invocation of spirits: Lev 19:31, Lev 20:6, and Deut 18:9-14.

From the experience I know evil spirits travel through our society in various ways including video games, TV, music, movies etc. As Jacques pointed out correctly Harry Potters is white magic. Eric has three good reasons to avoid HP: http://www.ericbarger.com/potter.8.htm

Grace, the article you cited states the following as an objection:

quote:

2) Endorsement of Moral Relativism

Harry Potter is the poster child for relative ethics and morals. That is the "good" characters employ the same principles, standards and techniques as the "evil" characters including:

* Virtually every conceivable Occult teaching and practice
* Drunkenness
* Cursing
* Lying/Dishonesty/Revenge
* Relative standards for Ethics, Morals and Integrity

Remember, we are referring to the good characters.

I must have missed all that from the "good guys." John Wayne does a great deal of the same and hasn't been condemned as evil, to my knowledge.

The issue of "white magic" is a little more complex, imo. As khd (welcome!) notes: The world in which Harry Potter lives is a fantasy world, where wizards have natural powers that muggles do not. Magic there does not seem to involve the invocation of demons or spirits but rather natural human abilities. That's been my impression as well -- that it's sort of a cultivation of natural human powers along with a kind of esoteric wisdom about how these powers interact with nature. In Spiral Dynamics terms, it's vintage Purple, along with fairy tales about sleeping princesses, talking frogs, cartoon characters that can fall off of buildings and not be hurt, etc.

OTOH, Pope Benedict seems to be genuinely concerned. Complimenting an author critical of Harry Potter, he wrote: �It is good that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because these are subtle seductions which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly,� Benedict wrote, according to the excerpt.
- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8566663/

I'm just not seeing the "deeply distort Christianity in the soul" part, as the stories aren't presenting themselves as any kind of analogy for Christianity. If the message is that you can conquer evil through magic, then I can see the Pope's point, but generally the "moral of the story" has much more to do with honesty, integrity, friendship and love. What's wrong with that?

I think part of the issue is that for young Christians, or people with a semi-Christian past or influence, Harry Potter advocates a worldview and philosophy that centres around witchcraft. When these people then encounter witchcraft in any of its forms, they think Harry Potter, good wizard, magics okay as long as its white magic etc.

OTOH, I have had a "magical" past and I therefore know the facts about witchcraft etc. I don't think Harry Potter can do anything to me. When I watch the next movie I will pray through it and see if I get a sense of evil.

I have no personal experience with occultism or magic. Has any of those that do have this experience actually read Harry Potter? Can you comment on how the magic in that book feels compared to your own experience? I have read a little about what magicians say about magic, such as Isaac Bonewit's laws of magic at

http://www.neopagan.net/AT_Laws.html

and the "Law of Invocation" and "Law of Personification" especially points to aspects of magic consisting of invocation of spirits. However other principles such as the "Law of Positive Attraction" and the "Law of Negative Attraction" seem to refer more to something involving karmic/resonance/spiritual attraction/psychic interaction. Others such as the "Law of Similarity", "Law of Contagion", and "Law of Association" seem to be due more to psychic resonance attraction. But having no personal experience, my analysis is a purely intellectual and theoretical one.

Could anyone with actual experience comment on whether all aspects of magic inherently involve the demonic? Are there any aspects of real world magic that involve just psychic/subconscious/unconscious abilities (NLP seems to fall into that category).

In Harry Potter, the magic seems to involve primarily Latin/pseudo Latin phrases that focus the mind and trigger inherent psychic powers that wizards have. I generally don't like fantasy books partially due to the dark feel of the magic involved, but have always liked science fiction that involved psychic or paranormal powers. The resulting world-view and spirit of the books is very different in my perception. However some books use magic as if it were something more like a psychic ability, and I would include Harry Potter in that category.

As a result I am reluctant to characterize Harry Potter as having a worldview that centers around witchcraft, even though I can't deny some surface similarities.

I can't really say much about the "theory" behind magic, but I myself was wondering...is magic only bad if it evokes the demonic. Is it not just as bad to use psychic/subconscious/unconscious abilities to alter what should not be altered, to influence and change things that should not be changed. In other words e.g. manipulating natural energies and matter with the mind....?

I've read two or three of the books and have a bit of history with occult and dark entities etc. When I read the books (as a Christian) I really enjoyed them for their literary merits - the plotting is excellent, the writing's exciting and suspenseful, the characters are interesting and well developed. But then I got to focus on the witchcraft angle and saw that it really seems to be the acceptable face of a subcultural undercurrent of real witchcraft, magic, demonolgy which is particularly dangerous and is attracting kids by the barrelful everyday.

I don't know how aware J.K. Rowling is of this subculture, I'm sure she sees her work as part of a different tradition of children's writing that includes C.S. Lewis, Tolkien etc. The problem for me lies in the subtle tactics involved in presenting this kind of stuff to a mass market as a bit of harmless fun/entertainment when the reality of magic, witchcraft is absolutely horrendous. Its akin to movies and books which glamourise drugs or alcoholism. (To be honest the huge consumer machine behind all the movies and Harry Potter merchandise has put me off the books and the whole H.P. scene anyway.)

As I say, the books in themselves don't appear to represent or promote any ostensible evil but the whole subculture, which they do tap into, however innocently, is just around the corner. (And I'm not saying that anyone who reads the books will automatically be drawn into witchcraft etc; only that the books by dint of their subject matter do connect themselves to the dangerous realities of magic ((white or black)) ).

quote:

Originally posted by Jacques:
[qb] I can't really say much about the "theory" behind magic, but I myself was wondering...is magic only bad if it evokes the demonic. Is it not just as bad to use psychic/subconscious/unconscious abilities to alter what should not be altered, to influence and change things that should not be changed. In other words e.g. manipulating natural energies and matter with the mind....? [/qb]

It is clear from scripture that invoking the demonic is wrong. It is less clear to me that magic is wrong if is a natural psychic power. This is tremendously complicated by the difficulty of clearly distinguishing between the two. In the context of fiction, I can suspend my metaphysical uncertainty and just react to the plot, the story, and the characters, and I enjoy those in Harry Potter without any sense of evil, but admit I may lack in sensitivities there.

Back in the real world I see a lot of things that seem to fall short of demonic magic, but I actually do find them problematic. NLP seems to involve certain unconscious/subconscious abilities to manipulate yourself and others. There is a certain base sense of a biblic truth of "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he". But the practice tends to push beyond that into a manipulative instrumentality for self-help and pushing others around subliminally. If you get your sense of self-worth by incantations and mind discipline to remove doubts, you have removed yourself from presence of God, which is the only ultimate help and that for which we were created.

Pushy salesmen who weave a web of reality that bends your will to theirs, and the reality distortion field common among charismatic leaders are all likely instances of some natural abilities that may or may not move into the psychic/subconscious realm, and I wouldn't hesitate to have ethical problems with that.

I have read of some that had apparently natural psychic abilities, but subsequently lost them upon conversion to Christ. This makes me wonder if even apparently natural abilities don't have some demonic component.

However, the witness we have of the abilities of Christ's resurrection body may indicate that there are some natural abilities in some context (new heavens and earth) that we may be able to enjoy without evil. Hopefully my enjoyment of Harry Potter is merely a vicarous appreciation of abilities that may legitimately be ours one day.