Source: thinkprogress.org – Monday, December 23, 2013
On an idle whim over the weekend, I picked up Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone , and certain as a curious teen is drawn to the chance to wander round any person else’s ideas in a Pensieve, I discovered myself reading all through the series. I’ll have some more prolonged ideas on certain elements of the sequence, specifically pass-species family members, after we return from the vacations. But given the time of yr, I wished to linger on one facet of J.K. Rowling’s series: the significance of Christmas. The wizarding world of which Harry Potter learns that he’s a member on his eleventh birthday is a particularly secular position. There are wizards who appear to serve in officiant capacities at important events like weddings and funerals, however what we hear of those proceedings suggests a humanist center of attention reasonably than a divine one. We by no means hear a wizard articulate any sort of theological framework, and even profess a perception in a better energy, until it’s Voldemort’s simple task in his personal capability to transcend the limitations related to human mortality. The Deathly Hallows quest does rely on the idea that Death exists in some type, but what we know of the belief device around the Hallows means that the focal point of the quest is less on venerating Loss of life than human capability itself. And while there’s a commonly identified category of Mysteries in the Harry Potter novels, from the arch and the veil in the Department of Mysteries, to

Go to Information Source