16
J.K.
Rowling has captured a preponderance of the world’s attention in a veiled
assault on theism, with the guileful insertion of wizards in Harry Potter. Rowling juxtaposes hidden wizard-world
imaginary inside reality. Some theists
spouted off at the wrong target in the series of novels at ridiculous
insinuations of Satanism, witches, werewolves, vampires and other folklore as
the threat to their flavor of theism.
Rowling
stole a page from the theist playbook by inserting Christmas, absent any
utterance of the birth of Jesus, consistently in the winter time of multiple
novels. Monotheists added Christmas
trees to mask solstice festivals. Now
Rowling uses the word Christmas, the very same trees, and presents in a
universe where the word Jesus or religion is never muttered. This lets down the guard of the establishment
so that parents across the globe will see the memes carried in the stories as
non-threatening like fables of The Ant and the Grasshopper or The Emperor
with No Close. Rowling also hides
the theism inside the wizards theme, which looks like Western-European lessons
from WWII.
Rowling’s
use of Christmas is reminiscent of Father Christmas’ presence in C.S. Lewis’
Narnia universe. Lewis, who clearly
inferred the Christ metaphor with the Easter resurrection of Aslan, used Santa
like the Church does as an emissary.
Rowling’s gifts that magically appear coming from parents and not from
Santa, despite it being Christmas, are striking in a child’s universe to
present reality rather than the typical Christmas lie to a young audience. The juxtaposition is subtle, and brilliant.
What
are some of the themes of Harry Potter? The main character is a classic Christ
metaphor, as in most Disney and European fairy tales before him. Harry’s parents are murdered and he is
orphaned. Jesus is absent his true
father/self in heaven. Harry sacrifices
himself for the good of the coalition and is resurrected. In between he goes through trials and has a
mark on his forehead akin to the crown of thorns. He is famous across the wizard world (heaven),
yet unknown in his own. He is ridiculed
in the press and goes on trial for helping people. (Pontius Pilate/Passover.)
Harry
Potter faces an advisory Voldemort which the other characters dare not say his
name out of fear. Harry says Voldemort’s
name abruptly and consistently, as if unaware of the second commandment. He finds the fear of annunciation ridiculous. The others cringe in fear of the second
commandment. Harry teaches people that
fear of the word only spreads fear of the thing itself and empowers it.
Voldemort
is the darkest of dark wizards who used the cruciatus curse to torture his
victims, the imperious curse for mind control and the avada kedavra curse to
murder. The three forbidden unforgivable
curses are like mortal sins and a form of the Ten Commandments in reverse as a
mirror image. They are the hypocritical actions
of the god-figure Voldemort represents.
A
snake is always by Voldemort’s side. He
is part-snake to preserve a garden of Eden Satanic linkage. This in many ways conveys that god and Satan
are two parts of the same whole. Rowling
pokes holes in the same underlying untruth.
Voldemort’s
followers believe in pure-wizard blood a la Hitler and various racist and
religious cults. To become human again
Voldemort’s follower takes a blood sacrifice forcefully from Harry Potter and
willingly from the follower. Harry is
held by a statue in a graveyard as if up on a crucifix as his blood is taken
for this ritual.
This
is a parallel to religious, conflict, combat, and war from everything from
martyrdom to military service. This
shows the role of the good-soldier and the heathen advisory to be
interchangeable to some degree once one usurps dogma and patriotism. In a Christian vein this teaches humans to be
Christ-like and sacrifice for the authority of the Meme.
Voldemort
has his form of Christ-like resurrection and a link to transubstantiation with
the blood. The character is almost
impervious to death like Jesus. His
essence was trapped in objects like the Holy Spirit, which kept him from
experiencing a true-death. This mirrors
concepts like sacred grounds, holy water, churches, amulets, Mecca, etc. where
god is considered more present than a phone booth.
Voldemort
calls his followers with dark-snake signs appearing in the sky after his
resurrection. The sign is an allusion to
the swastika, which is a perverted crucifix, which is also stamped to his
follower’s skin. His death-eaters
(apostle-metaphors) profess faith or explanations for non-faith in his return
in a recreation of the Doubting-Thomas confrontation with Christ and a
conceptual “second-coming” and how the average Christian would react to that
question when proposed by Jesus. Voldemort
is quickly found out to be doubted, re-believed in, and ultimately found to be
fraudulent as just another human behind all his illusions.
Voldemort
murdered Harry’s parents. The two become
spiritually bound. Each can at times see
the other’s thoughts. This is like the
second commandment, god is always
watching. Harry in the Jesus/human role
to the Voldemort-Father does not understand this link fully. Harry is the only person capable of stopping
Voldemort’s conversion of the world into darkness.
Rowling’s
genius is the theist’s audience assumption that Voldemort is more the devil
rather than god. Open-minded children
reading the books, who should not be pressed to have a religion until maturity,
may see the opposite as the message sinks in over their aging. Ultimately the trinity of god/human/devil is
merged in place of father/son/spirit.
The god/human//devil translates to volition. (I.e. Humans choose good or
bad. We are not absolutes.)
Harry’s
dead father resembles a Joseph character.
Harry only has one mother, but he has Voldemort as a second
father-figure. Voldemort has granted
Harry powers through attempting to kill him.
Voldemort’s soul is split into multiple horocruxes to give Voldemort a
quasi-eternal life, saving him from death as long as the object is not destroyed. (I.e. God is eternal.) A horocrux can only be created through an act
of murder (a mortal sin). Voldemort
sought seven, the biblical god number. The
horocruxes include: a ring with the resurrection stone in it (a marital symbol
holding a Christ symbol), a cup (a Holy Grail symbol), a locket (a religious
totem akin to a crucifix), a diadem (a regal wealth symbol), a diary (a bible
symbol), his snake (a satanic and sexual symbol), and the last is Harry (a
Jesus as humanity symbol).
Voldemort
lives in Harry the way the Father lives in Jesus and is further split like the
Holy Spirit between the other symbols of the Church (gold, the chalice, the
books, Satan etc.) Voldemort entered
Harry through the murder of his parents and Harry’s attempted murder. (Herod attempted to murder Jesus soon after
his birth.) Harry was left with a
forehead scar akin to the sign of the cross marked on a baby during baptism
without the child’s choice. When
destroyed each of the horocruxes emits a dark spirit, the essence of
Voldemort. This is like the grip of the
Meme (religion) inside humanity and these symbols of religions’ influence in
our societies. Ultimately we, like Harry,
must accept death and choose to live and choose to remove such a taint living
inside of us.
Rowling
teaches the audience the danger of books in a book. A diary is possessed to
instruct Harry’s future bride to commit heinous acts. Books unveil dark secrets and wizards are taught
to be wary. In volume two, a
handsome-faced braggart has beguiled the populace with wild false tales and
found to be not only a fraud, but a cruel-hearted coward who eventually loses
his mind. (I.e. a false prophet) Characters research in libraries discerning
the value of good ideas from poor ideas based on verification and validity of
the idea rather than rhetoric.
In
the Tale of the Deathly Hollows folklore twists fable into reality with the
story of the elder wand like a nuclear weapon which in the wrong hands could
bring about the destruction of the wizard and human worlds. The reader is taught to examine folklore and
fables. This is a direct assault on
documents like the Bible and the Koran, although the author does well to refute
such motivations.
17
The
reader is taught to question everything, to not simply trust what one reads in
books. The supporting protagonist and
primary female character Hermione is a contrarian introvert probably modeled
after Rowling herself. She is ultra-intelligent,
advanced and quick to point out the misguided superstitious notions of the
Astrology-like predictions of the Divination teacher. The glass balls and substandard version of
hocus pocus are nonsense compared to magic which is a metaphor for
science.
Hermione
is constantly reading and appears ahead of her contemporaries based on her
willingness to explore thought rather than merely accept the status quo. The same character tries to initiate a labor
strike and uprising of house elves in a parallel to both the nadir of the African
American storyline and the indoctrination of menial laborers and the
religious. The elves only want to serve
and cannot imagine what they would do with freedom like pew squatting
masochists. Hermione exemplifies the
empowerment of females that is so often discouraged in the misogynist themes of
the Bible and the Koran.
The
gray-bearded father-figure as head-master of the school, Dumbledore, is quietly
gay in a parallel to a priest or clergy figure leading a religious school. The homosexuality can also be seen as
atheism. The man is kind, but absent. He leaves clues, but only direct help at the
last minute, preferring the younger characters to think, investigate and figure
out as much as they can on their own. One
does not become an atheist because one is instructed. One chooses to become an atheist based on
evidence or lack thereof and one’s personal internal digestion of the
universe.
Dumbledore’s
distance to allow Harry, Ron Weasley and Hermione to adventure and risk defeat
on their own is an example of this comprehension. Rowling keeps similar distance in that she
does not spell out atheist and anti-Meme messages overtly. Rowling allows those who wish to dive in to
find it and others to merely see a world of entertaining wizards. In the final Kings-Cross scene Harry
communicates with Dumbledore like the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter
Sunday. Dumbledore reiterates Harry’s
choice and volition to go back or go on leaving the idea of an afterlife as an
unknown and open ended. Voldemort is
seen as a week tortured being clinging to mortality and assumption never
understanding the power of love. Harry
chose his path. This is mirrored in the
epilogue of Harry and Jenny and Ron and Hermione shown as parents in a future
Kings Cross station.
A
religious character would be ready with specific-quick answers like Voldemort
and the aptly named Dolores Umbrage. The
secret-atheist would not try to force an idea, but lay the bread crumbs. If people choose to perk their interest in
exploring, they can do so. After that
people can decide for themselves what makes the most sense for their life. The idea of an afterlife is not crucial to
the anti-Meme, only the choices we make in the present.
The
Muggle (human) world is discussed with fascinating scientific contraptions
humans use because humans do not have magic.
Thus science equates to the wizard’s magic. Religion in the wizard world is in the
dominion of the dark arts speaking of resurrection, horocruxes, and curses. The message is clear that we are measured by
our choices, not by our house of origin.
Wizards of other lands are asked to bond together in Rowling’s books and
gender and race flow throughout characters inside the overlay of European-Caucasian
pretense.
The
Ministry of Magic serves as a gestapo-type governmental watchtower. The ministry is aware of the smallest
instance of underage magic, which in some ways serves as a parallel to
premarital sex. However it is not clear
if the parallel is intentional by Rowling.
The act simulates god’s knowledge
of the instance the penis meets vagina.
If the “infraction” occurs before the appropriate age wizards are
reprimanded after seventeen such a magical act would be commonplace and
permissible.
The
wizards live in a world where there is a surrogate caste-system of pure-bloods,
half-bloods, squibs, and muggles. One’s
fate is often tied to pre-birth criteria rather than volition. Rowling counterbalances this status-quo
through the power of volition. This
peaks in Harry Potter’s choice between being good or evil. Harry’s communication with the sorting hat is
key to his choice of individual path.
Magical
creatures and beings like vampires, werewolves, and giants are outcasts like
surrogate leaper colonies of pagans. A
werewolf-teacher presents lycanthropy as an AIDS parallel. In the fifth book a centaur teacher (an
anti-Meme symbol of a pagan) teaches the students that his priority was “not to
teach the students what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing,
not even centaurs’ knowledge, was foolproof.”
The centaur comes from a dangerous forest such a native-American
Cherokee. (Centaurs also use bows and
arrows.) The centaur’s humility is
anti-Meme.
Justice
in trials are often kangaroo courts which send the innocent and the guilty to
tortuous prison sentences like one of the main characters Sirius Black, Harry
Potter’s godfather. A paranoid ministry
of magic is incapable of facing the reality of the return of Voldemort in book
five. This parallels the rise of Hitler
in Europe or the return of fascism and a nation being in denial thereafter.
The
Vatican like the Ministry of Magic in the books cosponsored and failed to deter
fascism through commiseration and inaction as an equivalent to Voldemort’s
brand of magic. The Vatican acquiesced
to Mussolini in Italy and made a treaty for the education of German children
for concessions to Hitler on July 8, 1933.
This linked trend of Catholicism-the Meme-and-fascism also bled in
Spain, with General Franco’s La Crujada, Croatia, Hungary, Austria, and
Portugal. Also see the Action Francaise
in France and General O’Duffy in Ireland.
These movements appeared to prefer fascism to communism or aligning with
the Jewish-taint of Bolshevism. This
continued after WWII with the exportation of Nazi war criminals to South America
to dictatorship countries as part of the Meme.
The idea of systematic injustice from a surveillance state government is
a blatant assault on the Humans-are-not-Animals meme.
The
glaring anti-Meme message of Harry Potter is that magic exists, but a god is
never mentioned. There is a gap of a
wizard derivation of god. This void is
the ultimate rebuttal to the Meme.
18
We
hide the idea from ourselves that human differences do not actually exist with
the exception of what our memes instruct us to correlate with them. National borders, names, languages, and
religions are all manufactured constructs to organize human society. Complex aliens on other planets in other
galaxies most certainly practice similar codifications under different
iterations and create god or gods for similar reasons as humans. The urge to do so is part of the
psychological evolution of complex life.
Understanding god as a concept highlights the absurdity of applying
specificity to god as a psychological device.
Ideas
like racism, fundamentalism, homophobia, sexism and religion are less likely to
continue in a species capable of recognizing why it created the Meme and
effectively uses tools of global communication to eradicate the Meme. A deeper level of empathy, understanding and
love is possible. Our collective doubt
of the solidity of such a common-compassion pulls us back to the basic
organisms we evolved from.
These
rudimentary beings will always be part of us, but to participate in our next
stage of evolution, we must recognize that the paradigm for evolution is far
more mental than physical. For once we
dare to enter such mental arenas we free ourselves to include the exponential
power of selfless common interest of the species without the crippling
interruptions that our current fear stemming from memes like the second
commandment spread.
The
hurdle is to understand that national identity fueling patriotism and religious
persuasion fueling fundamentalism are entirely voluntary illusions meant to
bring order from chaos. No one is
watching to ensure that one actually be and perform the pantomime of flag or
cross waving or civil rights along with them.
Fear has populated militaries and rabbled war-cries. Fear of hell lurks behind every Pascal-wager
gambled in minds willing to compromise killing, lying, theft, destruction of
natural resources, and various other violations of “commandments” in order to
keep another group’s religious or patriotic dogma separate from their own. This separation preserves the Meme’s dogma from
question.
This
is the true danger of the second commandment, humans are taught not to
question. Without questioning we truncate
our evolution and decay. We expedite our
extinction. Humanity’s global economic
markets, divergent fundamentalisms, widening wealth gap, diminishing
sustainability of our planet, and overall level of fear are glaring testaments
to this process.
We
should be getting closer by greater communication with the internet. In many ways we are, as the internet is a
major conduit of human uprising.
Unfortunately the same platform is used to spread the messages of
not-questioning, of higher fundamentalism, of more zealous religiosity, the
expansion of theatrical mega-congregations tithing billions from our tax bases,
and non-empirical rhetoric juxtaposed against empirically validated science to
create the illusion of equivalence.
The
internet threatens the Meme more than ever.
People are talking across the world at greater unfiltered levels. The Meme is panicking in unprecedented
fundamentalist tantrums.
The
inundation of counter-information the Meme produces in response can often drown
minds requiring humans to break rank with the second commandment in order to
survive. We must question, read,
investigate, and research between Woody Guthrie’s false and true in his Rubaiiyat. If we fear the very idea of saying a name, we
fear the idea of questioning why it is wrong to criticize the name. Thus we are expected to accept the name
absolutely. We are expected to accept
authority absolutely. We are expected to
accept what those in positions of authority instruct us to do, think, and be
absolutely.
If
we can overcome this fear then we begin the true responsibility for our
choices, actions, and beliefs from an internal culpability that does not answer
to fear, but to the love and respect we have for a common life we share in our
universe within the auspices of volition.
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