Some Thoughts on the Harry Potter Series

Michael O'Brien is the author of eleven books, including several best-selling Catholic novels, notably, Father Elijah. He has authored children's books as well, and the critically praised assessment of the pagan invasion of children's culture, "A Landscape With Dragons: the Battle for Your Child's Mind," published by Ignatius Press.

There is currently a strong controversy raging over J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Because I have six children of my own, all of them avid readers with an interest in fantasy literature, I have followed it closely. It is interesting to note that the truly reasonable arguments are all on the side of caution regarding the Potter series. By contrast, the pro-Harry articles lack any serious reflection on the issues involved. Their opinions can generally be boiled down to this: "Now, now, let's not get paranoid here. Isn't it wonderful to see kids enthusiastic about reading?" That is no argument at all, because there are a great many things to be cautious about in our present secular culture (calm vigilance is not necessarily paranoia), and children are frequently enthusiastic about unhealthy interests. Librarians around the English-speaking world have noted that due to the unprecedented marketing pressure and media attention surrounding these books, and the resulting fascination young readers have for them, a spin-off phenomenon is occurring. Among the young, an interest in witchcraft, sorcery, and allied occult activity is growing at an astonishing rate. Some libraries now put their occult section beside the Potter books, to make access easier for young readers. Thus, millions of children, including large numbers of Catholic children, are getting involved in spiritually and psychologically dangerous activity. Harry Potter provided the role model.

I was not impressed by the four books in Rowling's series, despite all the media hype that tells us how wonderful they are for young readers. And I strongly disagree with those reviewers (sadly, even some Catholic reviewers) who compare her work to solid Christian fantasy writing such as C.S. Lewis's Narnia series, or J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, or the imaginative novels of George MacDonald. The comparison is only superficial. At root, Rowling's objective is to interest the young in a spiritual path that is the converse of what healthy Christian fantasy is about. The use of "magic" in Christian fantasy is always for the reinforcing of the moral order of the universe, the development of man's proper use of freedom. Rowling, by contrast, tries to turn that order topsy-turvy. The subtle and unsubtle manipulation which she uses to control the child's mind is obvious from the first few pages, prompting one to wonder if this is a deliberate attempt at indoctrination. Among the many dubious messages, presented with charm and power, there are these: occult activity is liberating, noble, exciting, and not what your parents and Christians in general say about it. Coupled to this message is the gross characterization of traditional families, and anyone else who objects to the occult, as abusive hypocrites. The line between good and evil is significantly shifted, and the child enticed into a radically changed worldview, one in which activities known for over 4000 years to be extremely dangerous to mind and soul are now presented as positive forces.

Potter-frenzy and Potter-hype are suddenly everywhere, from school to shopping-center to library, affecting many millions of children. The promotion of such books even in Catholic schools should alert us to the fact that the Catholic community is suffering a grave loss of discernment. In a secular culture searching in all the wrong places for answers to the meaning of life, and for a "spirituality" to replace lost or weakened faith, occult movements and spiritual experimentation of all sorts are having a revival that has not been seen in the Western world since the early centuries of the Church. What is particularly disturbing is the fact that otherwise sensible people see no problem in introducing to children books that promote such activities-activities strictly forbidden by God and the Church (see Cathechism of the Catholic Church, sections 2116-2117).

The Potter series takes the old Gnostic worldview, makes it look glamorous and exciting, and does so in a way that is proving to be far more seductive than similar books in this field of children's literature. Early Gnosticism was a combination of cult and heresy that came very close to undermining Christianity at its birth, during the first few centuries of the Church. It was only defeated by the efforts of the Church Fathers as they taught, corrected, exhorted and debated with the naïve devotees of this perversion of genuine faith. And here it is again, popping up with unprecedented force, but now aimed at the most vulnerable, most impressionable part of the Body of Christ-our children. Paradoxically, the Potter books have been able to invade the Christian world due to the fact that there are a few admirable virtues promoted in them: Harry the orphan seeks a family-hey, isn't that a desirable family value? Harry the victim-innocent brings down justice on the heads of his tormentors-and don't we want to see justice done? Harry wins the reader's affection and empathy (and the child reader's identification) more readily than the bratty characters in much of children's fantasy literature-isn't it refreshing to have a "nice" boy as a hero? Harry seeks to discover his destiny and unique identity-don't we all? Yes, but in Harry's world, the ends are continually justified by the evil means (conveniently redefined as good). If the author has thrown into the plot a little moralizing for added measure, this is not a valid argument in defense of the books; indeed the whiff of morality makes them that much more deceptive. In this way, the moral order of the universe is deformed in a child's mind far more effectively than by blatantly evil books.

This raises the question: which is the most destructive form of paganism now invading children's culture? A direct assault upon faith by hard-core cultists recruiting on the streets, or an indirect seduction in the pleasant surroundings of your own home? I believe it is the latter, a "soft" form that will do the greatest damage over the long haul, because it brings a spiritually dangerous worldview into good families under the guise of promoting "values" and enthusiasm for reading. But it also prepares a child's developing imagination for worse things to follow. When he has finished reading the Potter series, what will he turn to? There is a vast industry turning out sinister material for the young that will feed their growing appetites. In the wake of likable young Harry's adventures, not-so-likable characters will appear, and they will become role models or, at the very least, images of alternative ways of living. And it should also be noted that Harry himself becomes less likable as the series gets progressively more murky. Regarding the argument sometimes put forward - "There is much good in the book, so why should we be so concerned about the flaws?" - this is not really a valid argument. The flaws in this case are grave distortions of reality in a field where such distortions have often proved disastrous. In my extended family, circle of friends and community, there are a number of people whose lives have been seriously damaged by involvement in the occult. I know three young people who have attempted suicide in acts of despair which they now attribute, years later, to dabbling in the occult. A significant factor in their attraction to the dark side of spirituality, they maintain, was their love of fantasy literature that portrayed this subculture as exciting and rewarding. Only later did they come to realize that, while occultism promises light, it actually delivers a gradual darkening of the mind and weakening of the will. I have talked with parents of children whose lives have gone seriously astray as a result of losing their moral bearings through involvement with the occult. Their anguish and puzzlement is evident as they state how their children were once stable and virtuous, how they had been so certain their child could handle anything. I have talked with priests and psychiatrists who deal with young people damaged in this fashion, and their assessment of the causes consistently points to some "experimenting" with the very activity Rowling presents as a healthy and liberating way of life. In the beginning they felt it to be no more than harmless play, simple imagining, or the acting out of fantasy. We should take note of the fact that in our sensually dominated culture the habit of acting out fantasy is becoming a widespread cultural norm. It varies from voracious consumption of expensive "toys" for all age groups, to trading in one's spouse for a new one found on the internet, to various clubs devoted to immoral activity, to high school murders. Why, then, do we presume that a sensually powerful series of children's books will not affect the young reader's interests and activities? Why have we come to assume so readily that such novels are simply entertainment, that they have no consequences, that the experience of plunging the imagination into that alternative world will remain sealed in an airtight compartment of the mind?

Of course millions of children are not going to suddenly start killing themselves and each other after reading the Harry Potter series, but studies by both secular and religious researchers demonstrate that something unhealthy is at work in the occult revival. And while we must never forget that Christ can forgive and heal the effects of any form of sin, he also calls us to guard the lambs of his flock against such sin, and the near occasions of sin. What is so often forgotten in this particular controversy is that occultism is gravely sinful. Both the Old and New Testaments warn against it with utmost urgency. Occult activity is a misreading of the nature of the war between good and evil on this planet, and the consequences of this in real life can be quite dire. Why, then, are we giving our children false tales about the nature of the war?

Fantasy literature can be a splendid way to introduce them to the great drama of existence, but we are terribly naïve if we fail to make a clear distinction between true fantasy and false fantasy-between healthy imagination and poisoned imagination. We would soon sicken and die if we applied the principle of "a little poison won't harm you" to our diet of food. Would we eat a cake in which a cook had mixed 1% cyanide with 99% good ingredients? It might not kill us, but why would we want to risk being even "mildly" poisoned. To use another metaphor, would we offer our child a bowl of fruit in which ten pieces of fruit were harmless and one had been injected with deadly poison, especially if the fruit were indistinguishable from each other?

How do we distinguish a good piece of "fruit" from a bad one, if in the mind there is no reliable criteria for doing so? How do we discern properly if we have no developed understanding of the moral order of the universe nor a consciousness of the reality of spiritual battle? If we have little or no sense of the crucial role of symbols in the healthy functioning of the mind, how can we accurately assess the spiritual realities represented by those symbols? Simply saying that the corruption of our symbol world, and in the worst cases the inversion of our symbol world, is not poison doesn't change the nature of the poisoned fruit. That's denial, not moderate reasonableness. By the same token, gathering "expert" opinions on the subject isn't very helpful either, because experts come in all varieties these days, even in Christian circles, and few are the people unaffected to some degree by the overwhelming subjectivism of our present social environment.

Parents often underestimate the power of imagination in shaping a child's sense of truth. Parents forget that they themselves grew up in another time and culture. Though theirs was an imperfect world (as is every era of history), basic truths still formed the solid architecture of their times. That is no longer so. Parents also forget that they can sort through good and bad material with more immunity than a child, because they are already formed. A child is still in a state of formation, and for that reason he experiences culture in a very different way than adults do. We can sift (although on the whole even we "grown-ups" aren't doing a very good job of sifting these days), but the child is not yet trained to recognize subtle and even unsubtle falsehood. He is busy learning about the world, and usually he is learning indiscriminately. He absorbs images and understandings of the nature of reality at a foundational level.

Getting our thinking on track according to Biblical and Church principles is essential to seeing what's really happening in this war. In other words, rational discernment. Equally important is the charism of spiritual discernment. Every parent needs to pray daily for an extraordinary grace of discernment, and for divine protection for his children. This isn't extremist or alarmist. This is just normal Christianity. Tragically, Christian faith has been so weakened in the Western world that such statements now strike many an ear as somewhat extreme. We're all a little too eager to prove that we're just normal folks, that our faith doesn't turn us into unpleasant critical people. But Jesus himself calls us to constant vigilance, to exercise the critical faculty of discernment. It is the spirit of the secular world, and the spirit of our adversary, which tells us we should all just relax and stop over-reacting. Of course, it's true that over-reacting doesn't help anyone, and usually makes matters worse. But at the other end of the spectrum is denial, a refusal to face facts, an inability to recognize a real threat to our child's well-being. This, I believe, brings about far worse consequences-again, in the long run. Neither apathy nor panic will reorient our present culture toward a condition of health. What is needed here is wisdom.

And what about the unity issue? Many of the husbands or wives who write to me about the Potter problem say that they can't come to an agreement with their spouses. A general and time-tested principle in Christian family life is that on issues where husband and wife disagree over what is or is not harmful for their child, more prayer is needed. The father's role is paramount in this, because by nature and grace his job is to watch the horizon carefully for anything that threatens the well-being of his family (tigers, bears, drunk drivers, drug-pushers, heretical teachers and unprincipled hawkers of kid-kulture). In a word, his primary focus is exterior.

The mother's role tends to be primarily interior, focused on nurturing (though of course there is considerable overlapping of roles in this regard). For that reason it's inevitable that there will be differences of emphasis and judgement. Most of the parents who contact me about these questions experience some difference of opinion between husband and wife. Prayer can bring these two "lenses" into a single unified focus. By this I do not mean that spouses should resolve their difference of opinion by bartering or compromise. Neither of the lenses work properly without the other; their harmonious function depends on earnest prayer and avoiding superficial decisions. Our culture is continuously pushing us to let down our guard, to make quick judgments that feel easier because they reduce the tension of vigilance. The harassed pace and the high volume of consumption that modern culture seems to demand of us, make genuine discernment more difficult in this regard. But in prayer and waiting on God, we do come through.

As a parent, my daily prayer is: "Oh God, please give me the wisdom of Solomon, the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, today. Every day." Without it, I would soon be shaped and molded by whatever forces are flying about in this society. My kids even more so. There is so much bombarding us all the time, with unprecedented power to overwhelm the senses and to confuse our interior radar, that we scarcely have time to make sound decisions before the next wave hits. In such a climate, if one has to choose between over-caution or under-caution, I would say that in the formation of our children's minds, hearts and souls, it's better to lean in the direction of caution rather than laxity-especially during these times when a relentless indoctrination comes at our children from every level of the culture.

A balanced, intelligent and spiritually discerning collection of articles examining the Potter phenomenon is available at the website of St. Joseph's Covenant Keepers, a large international organization for Catholic fathers. The address is: www.dads.org

If you want to consider some in-depth arguments about the nature of the new paganization of children's culture, see the Ignatius Press internet website where an entire section is devoted to what well-known Catholic authors think of the Potter series. The address is: www.ignatius.com See also the highly recommended Catholic Educator's Resource Center, which has a section dealing with the Potter phenomenon. The address is www.catholiceducation.org

LOL Exactly how many times do you get some rock an roller or politician or anyone else on TV or in the papers telling you about the fun they used to get up to the sex the orgies the drugs and rock and roll.

At the same time I was drilling or on exercise or getting shot at.

And then they have the cheek to lecture us telling us its all bad, and not just there excesses, but are simple pleasures are now under threat.

I bet it was not because they found God it was because they got to old to hack it anymore and just like an old spoil sport want to stop everyone else having any fun.

Cheers Tony

As a Christian, one will be doing some sort of filtering of the culture at all times. But this is to be done internally as an individual, communally as a body of believers, and in the home as a family.

Most definitely agreed.

It's not necessarily a subject for press releases, crusades and campaigns that only serve as platforms for people who want to be in front of the camera or behind a microphone.

Far as I know, O'Brien doesn't want to "be in front of the camera." Seems the source of the article is Family Life Center International, which is an on-line Christ-centered community.

If you don't know "magic" is something to be considered carefully as a Christian, then you've already lost. And no amount of chicken-little articles will change that.

Here we disagree. I think there are too many Christians out there who need to be taught *more* about the hazards within our secular culture. Knowing that "magic" is something to be considered carefully as a Christian isn't enough. What's important is the kind of action one takes in response to what one knows. And not knowing does not mean one has "lost," because one can always learn.

IMHO, O'Brien's intent is foremost to educate Christians who are ignorant about the subject of "magic." Secondly, if he is able to bring a few non-Christians to an understanding of his views, all the better.

Oh, I see!

Yours is an excellent example of the tautological reasoning I DID originally cite as the basis for the arguments that you and your dishonest ilk would offer:

"I think I am OK, therefore what I think is OK must be so."

The corolary being:

"I deem you not OK therefore you are wrong."

You think my position is wrong, therefore you attack my life of twenty-five years ago. To do so, you choose to defeat totally imaginary (read "false") arguments you project by presumed association, with no supporting evidence (not exactly smart, is it?). Meanwhile, you selectively ignore the thesis I have repeated at least twice because you can't disparage that. You never ask what it was that returned that life to one that is excellent, preferring to offer the original downfall when I ignored God's laws as proof that the argument (that to do so is perilous) is logically flawed.

If you are representative of your ideological cohorts, then perhaps I waste my time.

Your dishonest and, frankly, pathetic means bretray your moral and intellectual frailties, thus proving one of my points: Pursuit of excellent reading material for children is preferable to offering them Harry Potter with it's enticing justifications for repudiating some of the essential moral and intellectual foundations of Western culture, offering instead a paragon that disparages that culture as stupid; i.e., "Muggles." It is an ethic that regards entertainment as joy, gratification as satisfaction, and the projected superiority of self-justification as an objective of achievement.

It doesn't look to me like it serves you very well.

Anne Rice's vampire-fiction is pretty icky. However, give FEAST OF ALL SAINTS a try. It's historical fiction about pre-Civil War New Orleans, and it is absolutely wonderful. Not something I'd hand a teenager because of content; the free black community of that time had two principle elements: one hard-working entrepreneurs and plantation owners, and the other a network of half-black "mistresses" who were kept in relative comfort by wealthy whites. One such mistress with two teenage children tries to use her daughter's beauty to try to get her son to Paris, where he could truly be a gentleman in a world where his color mattered less. There's nothing supernatural in this book, only good research and vivid description. I love it that the major character has to take responsibility for himself after having been raised to expect to be able to do anything he wished. It's much better than anything else of hers, IMHO. (I admit I only read the two Lestat books, and I would not reread them.)

I can only conclude then, that these people have a deep-seated belief in magic, otherwise I don't know why they would fear it so much. If that is so, since I believe that all things have opposites, what would be wrong with good magic?

Just about every Christian believes in the existence of magic because it's Biblical. The Bible records Moses dueling pharoah's magicians in performing wonders.

Is there good magic? Not for Christians, because magic is the acquisition or super-natural powers through unholy means, especially witchcraft and interaction with the demonic world.

It is explicitly forbidden. Deuteronomy 18:10-12: "Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD

Now what about Moses performing wonders? Or Jesus performing miracles? Moses didn't seek to perform wonders by interacting with the demonic world. Exodus 7:9-11: "So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake." On the other hand, "Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs.

And Jesus, of course, performed miracles because he was God.

Magic is violation of physical laws without the will of God. And what doesn't come from God, informed reason, or physical laws MUST come from Satan.

When I was a new Latter-day Saint many years back I had to learn that lesson in a rather painful way. My best friend (also LDS) had happened upon some silly fortune-telling trick of using one's wedding ring and a chain to predict how many children one would have, and birth order (boy-girl-girl et cetera.) We found it uncanny, as it seemed to be accurate in reporting "the ones on the ground" and so we enjoyed playing with it, and showed it to others.

It predicted that I would have BOY GIRL BOY. I already had the first two, and since we had fertility problems I took it rather too much to heart. It predicted a whole string of kids for our friend Harlan, whose second marriage had just dissolved very painfully and whom we had heard to say would never have anything to do with women again. (I am glad to say that he and his wife have just had their first child together, and her son-from-a-previous is happy to have a brother!) We showed it to a Catholic friend of ours. Linda was pregnant with her second and her husband was being vile about it, since he hadn't even wanted the first kid, so she took the charm's prediction of several more to come as a sign that he would change his heart. It made her very happy, so she showed it to a Holy Roller friend of hers. (I want to say Assembly of God but this was years ago.)

Well, Linda told them we were Mormons who had taught her this, so now there's someone out there who believes she has convincing evidence that Mormons teach witchcraft. Linda was needlessly upset, and we felt bad that this stranger from another church actually was RIGHT. This charm, if it revealed anything true, must derive its power from the opposition to Jesus Christ, not from Him! And it certainly hadn't been harmless amusement, AND it was indeed against the teachings of our church! We had to repent, and it felt even worse to have to repent for something so darn SILLY. I'm on my guard against any such practices; I believe that the only right source of knowledge are reason informed by faith, and faith informed by reason! Horoscopes, telephone psychics, tea leaves, palm reading, even stock market analysis and doctor's prognoses CANNOT substitute for revelation through prayer, scriptures, and studying the physical world. (As a chemistry student, I believe that the physical world IS a testament of Jesus Christ.) It is belief in something outside God's power and creation that makes a thing evil.

My third child was a girl.

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