Catching up on the witchcraft

SOUL FOOD

In a disenchanted world we still long to be enchanted.

I’m ashamed to admit it, since it’s now more than five years since

J.K. Rowling’s book, “Harry Potter the Philosopher’s Stone,” was

first released in the United Kingdom and published here in the U.S.

as “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” but I have only just now

seen the movie.

And I still haven’t read the book.

In this case late is better than never. And I will, I promise you,

be reading the four published books in the series of the seven

Rowling says she intends to write.

While “The Sorcerer’s Stone,” its three sequel books and then the

film, stirred a caldron of fervor and debate, I steered clear of them

all.

Fantasy literature has never easily drawn me in. Even in the late

60s when I was in high school, when reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle

Earth series was the badge of haute-hipness, I could not acquire a

taste for it. I read “The Hobbit,” then settled for the Cliff Notes.

If the Harry Potter series was anything like Middle Earth, I simply

wasn’t interested.

And then there was the great witchcraft controversy. Rowling and

Potter were, and still are, accused of promoting of magic, witchcraft

and all things occult.

I have in my lifetime been captivated by the occult. I’m familiar

with its lure, its caprice and its darkness. I have no interest at

all in going there again. So these charges did little to entice me to

read the books, or to see the movie.

One Jewish Web site finds Harry Potter in “violation of

Deuteronomy 18’s warning against necromancy,” a particularly

seductive means of divination achieved through the evocation of the

dead -- like a seance. A priest in Bulgaria has described the books

as a “spiritual AIDS” that diminishes the immune system of readers

against black magic and makes them more open to evil.

So, maybe I’ve been had, but I don’t think so.

A friend of mine once complained to me that the line between the

malice of the villains and the goodness of the heroes gets blurred in

“The Sorcerer’s Stone.” And I have to agree.

In fact, this is exactly what thrilled me in the story. This is

where the story becomes very real. In Harry’s world, just as in ours,

good and evil do not come in neat parcels.

Every character in Rowling’s tale, including Harry himself, has

good and evil in his and her heart. They each become who they are --

just as we do -- by their choices. They are not born good, or evil.

They are not made, by virtue of upbringing or education, to be good

or bad. They choose, one decision at a time, to become.

“Happy is the man, who looks into the mirror and can see himself

just as he is,” Harry’s headmaster, Dumbledore, tells him. And Harry

understands that this, too -- abandoning chimera for truth -- is a

choice.

“It is our choices, Harry,” Dumbledore says, “that show what we

truly are, far more than our abilities.”

Witchcraft in the world of Harry Potter is no more than what

science is in our world. It’s neither good by nature, nor evil. It

works its magic, or its mayhem, through the hands of those who wield

it.

Harry overcomes evil, not with magic or sorcery, but with

discernment, self-discipline and love.

Call me enchanted. And don’t be surprised if you hear more from me

about the business of Harry Potter.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer and graphic designer from

Huntington Beach. She has been interested in religion and ethics for

as long as she can remember. She can be reached at

[email protected].