That’s not a direct quotation but a summary of the argument in the book One Election Please...How J.K. Rowling Bought British Politics, Hid Her True Self and Hoodwinked the World—an Unauthorised Biographical Exposé by Bruce Masters. I have not read the whole thing (the author offers a free look at the first seven chapters online) but I confess to being astonished at what I found there and in the free excerpts from another Masters book, How Not to Get Sued by J. K. Rowling.

I learned, for example, that Rowling as a teenager carved “Joanne Rowling slept here” into her bedroom window frame. It checks out. Masters makes that a crime of defacement which may make you wonder if her father would have taken her to court for this crime as owner of the house.

And I read for the first time of the Rowling, Inc., lawyers suing a Hindu Festival in Kolkata, India, for creating a replica of Hogwarts Castle. Sound like the recent repressive acts against American street festivals with Harry Potter themes? Of course it does. The story survives an internet search for verification, as well. (Rowling’s lawyers lost the suit.)

How about Rowling owning a $30,000,000 yacht that she bought from Jonny Depp? That’s a stunner. It is sort of true, too. Variety reported in March, 2017: [Read more…]

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone has been translated into a multitude of languages, from Urdu and Arabic to Latin and Mandarin Chinese. For the longest time, the total number of acknowledged translations was stuck at 79 languages. I learned only last week, though, that the eightieth language threshold had been breached in 2017 when a Low Scots version of Stone was published, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stane by Matthew Fitt, Itchy Koo Press.

Here’s a taste of what it’s like, courtesy of Brian Basore, the HogPro All-Pro who alerted me to the existence of this new version:

A little more after the jump. What do you think? How many of you plan to purchase a copy for reading aloud on the next long car trip you’re planning with a Potter-phile or Scots expatriot? [Read more…]

A note from an old friend in Australia, Sharon Jackson:

Hi John,

I was listening to a podcast by highly popular psychologist, author and speaker Jordan B. Peterson today and was interested to hear him give an interpretation of Harry Potter (the second movie) identifying it as an archetypal Christian story, as you’ve been maintaining for years. I thought you might be interested.

Here’s the link: https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/podcast/s2-e5-lecture-sacramento-june-27-2018/  (The speech was old but the podcast is recently released. He’s releasing recordings of his talks from his speaking tour in his podcasts at the moment). The relevant comments begin at 1:33:20 and go to 1:37:05.

Petersen also comments on the series as a whole as a retelling of the Christian story, the battle against evil; he identifies Voldemort as “Satan, for all intents and purposes” and says this “makes the whole fundamentalist Christian assault on Harry Potter pretty comical in my estimation.” “In order for Harry to finally defeat Voldemort he has to die and be reborn, that’s how the book ends … She’s telling a story that everyone knows. But no-one knows they know it.”

Sounds like something you’ve written, doesn’t it?

These comments fall within Petersen’s answer to a question about Petersen’s beliefs on the physical reality of Christ’s resurrection. This question and the rest of his answer begins at 1:26:05 and goes to 1:37:30. His summary, “I’m not going to answer it casually.”

Just thought you might be interested.

Oh, yeah! Peterson is a rock-star psychologist and he loves Harry Potter, especially the Chamber of Secrets mythology (Peterson is an unapologetic Jungian). Check out this riff:

Does it echo pretty much everything I wrote about Chamber in Hidden Key to Harry Potter in 2002 (now How Harry Cast His Spell), a chapter excerpted and available online since 2003? You bet it does, right down to the mistaken interpretation of Ginny’s name as ‘Virginia’ rather than ‘Ginevra/Guinevere,’ a name derivation that Rowling had not yet told us when I wrote Hidden Key.

I wish, given his popularity today that he’d given me a shout out, but the odds are very good that he came to this “Brilliant In-Depth Analysis” all on his own. Once you see the mythic and Christian allegorical elements, things a Jungian psychologist will surely pick up, you don’t need a Potter Pundit to guide you. Gail Grynbaum, another Jungian, wrote this stuff up years ago also without referencing me because this is the way a Jungian-steeped-in-mythos reads.

Fun, though, to see a celebrity saying what I’ve said for fifteen years as if it were a revelation!