A good friend last week wrote to me saying that he had been invited to give a talk about Harry Potter at a local bookstore and he was flummoxed about how to introduce the ring composition idea without using PowerPoint slides projected on a screen. The bookstore didn’t have a projector or a screen or even a blank wall.

I was in exactly the same position in 2012 when I gave a series of “Ten Things You Didn’t Know About [Each of the Harry Potter titles]” at Oklahoma City’s wonderful independent bookstore, Full Circle. Incredibly, that talk was recorded and I still have a copy to embed here to illustrate my solution to the problem: hook your laptop up to a large flat screen television set and put it on the table next to where you’re speaking. For a crowd of thirty or less, if you’ve made the slides with a large typeface, it works like a dream.

I post this tonight to say to my friend, “If I could do this in 2012 without any technical assistance while maintaining full Luddire status, you can do this in 2025 while standing on your head and juggling” (he is very accomplished at all things technological and computers).

And, no, I have not watched this video through, and, yes, I disavow everything I said that is contrary to what I have learned and said in the almost decade and a half since I put that talk together!

I asked a group of Potter Pundits earlier this week if they’d ever heard or read about a connection between author J. K. Rowling and the word “manifesting”? I didn’t recall anything about in her work but thought maybe she had in an interview. I got several responses, most of the “Nope, never” sort — and one with the link to the YouTube video above from ‘Mystica Finance.’ That’s not a typo; there’s no ‘l’ intentionally. Here’s how the site describes what they do:

Dive into a universe where the mysteries of the cosmos align with the dynamics of the monetary world. Here, we explore the ancient secrets and energies that influence our financial decisions, intertwining fate with finances. From historical tales of wealth and prosperity to modern financial strategies infused with mystical insights, Mystica Finance is your guiding star on a transformative journey to financial enlightenment 🌌💰

Here at Mystica Finance, we blend cutting-edge AI technology with expert human oversight to bring you unique and insightful content that merges cosmic themes with financial expertise. This innovative approach ensures accuracy, creativity, and a touch of cosmic wonder in every piece we present. Content on Mystica Finance is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not intended as financial advice. Always consult a professional for personalized financial guidance before making any decisions.

I highlighted their “blend” above because the video does indeed display some “cutting-edge AI technology” in its likenesses of Rowling, images that suggest she participated somehow in this project. I suspect that will be more and more commonplace but it is still jarring to me.

I asked my team of Backchannel Moderators about “”manifesting” because I had been asked the same question by a researcher looking into the work of Baptist de Pape, a writer most famous for a 2014 book titled The Power of the Heart: Finding Your True Purpose in Life. For more on that book, see its website, watch the trailer for the documentary movie based on it, or read the Simon and Shuster promotion page for it. In brief, de Pape’s thesis is:

With exciting spiritual and scientific insights, The Power of the Heart presents fascinating evidence that the heart is more than a physical organ. It possesses its own intelligence, capable of transforming your views of money, health, relationships, and success. Mindfulness exercises and contemplations guide you to activate the heart’s special powers—including intuition, intention, gratitude, forgiveness, and love.

As an Orthodox Christian and Perennialist, outside of the money bit and New Age exercises, I’m sympathetic to books about the cardiac intelligence rather than the cranial, discursive kind. As a charter member of the Royal Society of Rowling Readers, I’ve had to give a lot of thought to the power of the heart or at least the meaning of it as a symbol, cf., my Ink Black Heart and Deathly Hallows: The Heart is Not About Emotions and Affection but the Human Spiritual Center.

The man who wrote me, though, wasn’t writing about de Pape’s first book but his latest, a book published today by Inner Traditions and Simon and Schuster, Manifestation Perfected: Six Steps to Embody Your Soul. He wrote to ask me about the J. K. Rowling content in this book. From Perfected‘s Amazon blurb:

HAVE YOU BEEN WONDERING how to realize your dreams more effectively? In Manifestation Perfected, Baptist de Pape gains insight from the lives of three of the most important personalities in the realm of manifesting—Oprah, J. K. Rowling, and Anita Moorjani. From vital health to professional standing and fame to financial success, he examines their similarities, differences, and life lessons to provide a full set of guideposts for our own manifestation process.

How have these three master manifestors become so successful while following what is essentially a path of spiritual trust? Building on their inspiring examples, Baptist guides us through the process of successful manifestation, removing it from the unrealistic realm of magical thinking and grounding it fully in the mechanics of creating the life each of us was born to live. You will discover how to align yourself with your soul’s intentions, how to stay aligned no matter what anyone says, and how to develop spiritual trust to know that the universe will support you so you can proceed with confidence. As you adopt a series of six easy-to-follow intuitive steps, you too will enter the boundless flow of creativity and become the master creator of your life and happiness.

Join me after the jump for a discussion of Rowling’s repeated and dismissive statements to readers about the the supposed “secrets” or “rules of writing” that explain her success, what those “rules” are according to her and according to click-bait marketers, and how de Pape probably uses those “rules” as the foundation to his claim that Rowling is a “master manifestor” whose model you can and should imitate. [Read more…]

Life as a Potter Pundit is a curious thing. I woke up this morning determined to draft an introduction to a long overdue book project. I wound up, as you’ve probably guessed from the post title, well afield of that good intention on the hunt of two supposed sources for Rowling’s character names in the Hogwarts Saga.

It wasn’t a wasted effort, in fact, there was a reward at trail’s end I never would have expected, but it was still a day gone sideways.

It started with a note in e-owlery from a Serious Reader named ‘Mia.’ She believes that John Nettleship, Rowling’s chemistry teacher at Wyedean Comprehensive and the model for Severus Snape per comments the author made in October 2007 on the Open Book Tour, is also the model for Jonny Rokeby in the Strike-Ellacott novels. I asked her to make an argument for that remarkable claim and she obliged me with a compelling list of coincidences today. Having asked for that evidence, I felt obliged to check out her list and verify what I could. [You can read our back-and-forth on the comment thread here.]

Which required a deep dive into the life of John Nettleship. If you want to review my effort, here are the best links I found to material about the remarkable man’s life: his Wikipedia page, ‘This Is Gloucestershire’ Nettleship profile (2009), Southwest Wales Argus obituary (2011), and a Wales Online obituary (2011). The best resource I found for other resources was the WikiWand Nettleship page, which had in its references three treasures:

• “Rowling’s teacher who inspired Harry Potter’s Prof Snape dies at 71”. Western Mail. 17 March 2011.
• “Rowling’s ‘spell’ on science teacher”. BBC News. 28 December 2001.
• Jordan, Claire M. “A true original: John Nettleship and the roots of Severus Snape”. madasafish.com.

That last piece, the one by Claire Jordan, is of epic length for an online post and is all over the map. Nettleship had a variety of interests, from the history of south Wales and western England and a cappella singing in ancient churches (hear Snape sing!), to a lifetime of participation in Labour Party canvassing and campaigning — and, of course, after he learned that he was part of Rowling’s inspiration for the Potions Master Severus Snape, with all things Harry Potter.

Jordan’s piece makes a few remarkable claims that I had not heard before and which I hope Nick Jeffery, our man at the Welsh-English border, will be able to confirm or deny. Most notably, Nettleship claimed that it was known among the Wyedean Comprehensive faculty that young Rowling was writing whilst a student a schoolboy story using her teachers as models. He also told Jordan, one of “the Sisterhood” of Potter fans that corresponded with Nettleship frequently in the last five years of his life, that Rowling had signed up for a voluntary astronomy class with him; this was part of his argument in his own defense that he wasn’t the sadistic monster that Snape could be.

Most disturbing to me — and I have no idea how Nick Jeffery will be able to check up on for veracity — was the sheer brutality in the Comprehensive classrooms of that era. Nettleship, aka “Stinger,” if he is to be believed, was something of a punching bag and pin cushion for his students and his supposed “bullying” was little more than self-defense in an environment crowded with bi-pedal wild animals.

I hope to be reading Mr Jeffery’s take-aways from all that in the coming weeks, especially if he can get a copy of Nettleship’s Harry Potter’s Chepstow, a booklet he sold locally and in which he shared many of the local sources for Rowling’s Wizarding World.

Today, I want to share the search I made through two books that Claire Jordan’s mini-biography of Nettleship suggested I should read. She wrote:

I know that some fen feel that it is some sort of crime to suggest that there might have been real life inspirations for some people and events in the Potterverse, but you only have to compare Rowling’s own drawings with the real staff at Wyedean to see that it was so, and the books are full of in-jokes about real items of British politics and folklore and sly clever references to other authors – Tinworth, for example, is the name of a fictional Cornish village in the murder-mystery Safer Than Love by Margery Allingham, which takes place in a boys’ boarding school, and Umbridge and Tonks are the names of two of the teachers at St Trinian’s. In any case this essay is about John, and it is a fact that John made a very active hobby out of spotting likely real-life inspirations for the books, lectured about it and wrote a book and many essays about it, and that at least three other members of the Wyedean staff shared his interest.

I was able to read Safer than Love online today (via the Web Archive) and then the online St Trinian book by Ronald Searle which wasn’t just a collection of his cartoons, The Terror of St. Trinian’s (also via the Web Archive), a story written by Timothy Shy, pen-name for D. B. Wyndham Lewis. Join me after the jump for my findings! [Read more…]