Mailbag: Help with Christian Harry Hater

November 7, 2025 by Leave a Comment
This plea for assistance or advice was in my inbox this morning:

Dear Mr. Granger,

I am asking for some advice on how to handle fellow Christians who are disrespectful towards people who enjoy Harry Potter.

I recently conversed back and forth on Instagram with a very condescending Christian who labeled me as “dense” for disagreeing with his arguments and muggle-like attitude–lol. 

I am curious how you would respond to the following claims he made:

  • Harry Potter contains pagan practices;
  • Real occult references and symbolism are in the books;
  • Harry Potter contains information about “magick”, sigils, and spells (that sounds like some Richard Abanes propaganda);
  • The Deathly Hallows symbol is designed from Solomonic sigil magick;
  • Incantations are bad (not fantasy) and are called “magick” (he conveniently ignores the fact that incantations and spells are present in both The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia and yet defends both of those book series);
  • Harry Potter promotes the heresy of gnosticism;
  • Harry Potter story elements are based on real occultic legends/people, i.e.; Alastor Moody based on Aleister Crowley, Cassandra Vablatsky based on Helena Blavatsky, the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Hand of Glory;
  • J.K. Rowling’s tattoo is demonic (I thought your argument posted on Hogwarts Professor sufficiently debunked this already); and
  • J.K. Rowling has not outrightly pronounced her faith (we already know that is false).

I tried recommending your book How Harry Cast His Spell to him and asked if he would give it a chance–but he’s so stubborn and pious that he can’t be open to another viewpoint. He claims to have been studying gnosticism and magick for ten years and says that all of these things while not directly involving invocational magic are how the Devil promotes sinful storytelling and rebellion against God.

As a conservative Christian and a Potterhead, how would you counter these bold arguments?

Thank you for all the work you’re doing and God Bless 🙂

Josh

Where to begin, Josh? I am an Orthodox Christian and a Perennialist-inclined literary critic rather than “conservative” or a “Potterhead” but I see your point that I don’t see the Hogwarts Saga as does this heresy hunter and Harry Hater.

Every one of these claims made by your Instagram sparring partner, as you noted, was made by Richard Abanes in his Harry Potter and the Bible : The Menace Behind the Magick(2001). That doesn’t mean that the claim is ipso facto in error; it actually means that there is evidence that the claim is true but the argument is wrong-headed. As you point out more than once that he was not receptive to discussion or “open to another viewpoint,” I don’t think you should spend any more time than you already have trying to persuade him.

I’d ask you to think about three things to prevent you from slipping into the pious surety of this internet maven you tangled with online.

First, my books on the Christian content and structure of the Harry Potter books and series were not written as ammunition to deploy against those who have decided not to read the book or those who campaign against their supposed “corruption of the youth.” My goal when talking about Rowling’s traditional artistry has been primarily to explain to readers who love the Wizarding World adventures why they love them.

Life is short and there is no end of books to read; there is no point in wrestling verbally with those who choose either not to engage with Harry Potter and friends or to make decrying Rowling’s fantasy fiction an article and touchstone of their faith. The exercise is not edifying to the For or the Against debaters and as often as not makes the Defender of Dumbledore begin to sound and act like his or her dismissive opponent.

Second, as rich as the books are in Christian content, symbolism, even narrative structure (and I hope to be revisiting this subject soon in light of remarkable insights from a professor in Illinois Who Must Not Be Named), there are elements in the books that most Christians would consider immoral, e.g., the torture of Slytherin bullies on the Hogwarts Express at the end of Goblet of Fire. Rowling herself has recently said she has changed her mind about the morality of assisted suicide, which makes Dumbledore’s sacrificial death at a friend’s hand lamentable. These books, uplifting and challenging and meaningful as they are, are not a postmodern Pilgrim’s Progress.

And, third, the work I have been doing consequent to Rowling’s ‘Lake and Shed’ 2019 interview suggests that the Harry Potter series can be read as the author’s prolonged feminist argument in Christian symbols for pre-natal infanticide (‘induced abortion’). See this conversation I had with Nick Jeffery for why that reading is credible and this discussion of alternative explanations for the ‘Lost Child’ Golden Thread in Rowling’s work.

We’re a long way, Josh, from the black-and-white reading of Harry Potter in which those with misgivings about the books are necessarily ignorant boobs and those who love them are by definition on the side of the angels. That’s especially true when you factor in the fandom leaders who now think of Rowling as the transphobic anti-Christ when they used to idolize her every thought and tweet and the one time Harry Haters who are now Team Rowling because of her stand against the surgical mutilation and chemical castration of children and adolescents.

The books haven’t changed but their Serious Readers have, for and against, and our appreciation of the Hogwarts Saga has been deepened and challenged simultaneously by all we have learned about the author since 2007 and about her children’s books consequent to her many post Potter publications.

To conclude, then, I’d leave you first with Twain’s advice not to wrestle with a pig (“you get filthy dirty and the pig likes it”) and then with my encouragement to read the Harry Potter novels with an open mind yourself. No, Richard Abanes’ ‘arguments by association’ remain logically invalid, but there’s a world of unanswered questions about this wonderful seven book series still to explore, most notably, “What unresolved trauma in Rowling’s life inspired her to write them?”

Thank you for writing and best wishes in your serious reading!

John

Filed Under: Golden Threads, Hog Pro Notes, Mailbag, Postmodern Polly, Pregnancy Trap, Traditional Symbolism

Rowling “Baptizing the Postmodern Imagination:” ‘Truth and Beauty’ (2017)

October 19, 2024 by Leave a Comment

The talk above is one I gave in 2017 at the Highlands Latin School in Louisville, Kentucky.

I’m not sure it has a lot of ‘Fourth Generation Rowling Studies’ material, but it has some challenging ideas that ‘hold up’ even after the passage of seven years.

If I say so myself! Let me know in the comment boxes what you think of what I said about Rowling before her ‘Lake and Shed’ revelations and the Trans-TERF War.

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes, Postmodern Polly, Traditional Symbolism

Postmodernism

December 25, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Pillar Post Place Holder for Sidebar Listing

Filed Under: Postmodern Polly

Harry Potter and Lolita: Rowling’s Rings and Vladimir Nabokov’s Story Mirrors (The Alchemy of Narrative Structure)

February 18, 2017 by 9 Comments

VVN1I promised in the post ‘Harry Potter and Lolita: J. K. Rowling’s Relationship with Vladimir Nabokov‘ to discuss the structure of Lolita in relationship to Harry Potter’s story scaffolding. I deferred it from that first JKR/VVN post because it was already over-crowded with discussion of names, alchemy, politics, and, most important, parody. As I hope you’ll agree after reading this piece below, the ‘parallelism parallel’ between the two authors is significant, fascinating, and even a revelation of sorts of the alchemical aim of their artistry.

Rowling may have drawn her ring writing artistry from a variety of sources: her training in Classics, reading in Scripture, familiarity with Inkling literature, even a close study of Robert Louis Stevenson or Jules Verne’s popular adventures. Today I will argue that, though these sources are possibilities, the most likely single source of Rowling’s structural wizardy is the work of Vladimir Nabokov.

Nabokov wrote eighteen novels. The only one Rowling has mentioned specifically in interviews is Lolita so today I will confine my discussion to Nabokov’s most famous work. This will involve, of course, discussion of what happens in that story, which is as close as I’m coming to a ‘spoiler alert’ for a book published sixty years ago and considered Western canon for half a century.

CirclesWe’ll test whether Nabokov was a ring writer in five steps derived from the qualities Mary Douglas tells us to look for in a ‘ring composition’: first, the latch of beginning and end, second, a story-turn, third, parallels side to side, fourth, rings inside the rings and other self-referencing, and last, a comparison with Rowling’s story and series structures. That ‘last’ will include my conclusions about why Nabokov worked-in the mirroring he has into Lolita and if Rowling’s meaning is similarly buttressed by her own ring work.

The Latch: Lolita’s Prologue and Part 2, Chapter 36

A look at Lolita’s table of contents reveals that it is made up of a foreword written by psychologist John Ray, Jr., a Part 1 of thirty-three chapters, and a Part 2 of thirty-six chapters, both of which are first person narratives that were written by Humbert Humbert in fifty-six days while awaiting his trial for murder. There is no epilogue or afterword, if every edition published since the early sixties does include Nabokov’s short essay ‘On a Book Called Lolita’ after the novel’s close.

The first tell-tale sign of a traditionally crafted story is how well the beginning and end match up. Lolita’s foreword and chapter 36 have six points of correspondence that latch the story’s circle tightly together at the close. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Postmodern Polly, Ring Composition, Vladimir Nabokov

Harry Potter and Lolita: J. K. Rowling’s ‘Relationship’ with Vladimir Nabokov (Names, Politics, Alchemy, and Parody)

February 15, 2017 by 11 Comments

f38696614It’s been fifteen years since I started thinking seriously and speaking publicly about the literary merits of Joanne Rowling’s Harry Potter books. I am still surprised at how much work there is to be done, how many mysteries and markers that have been neglected.

Take, as an obvious example, the matter of the author’s favorite books and writers. She says the three she enjoys reading most are Jane Austen, Colette, and Vladimir Nabokov. Go ahead and do a web search for ‘Rowling and Colette’ or ‘Rowling and Nabokov.’ You’ll find links to the various lists of Rowling’s ‘10 Most Loved Novels‘ and the like in which the same comments are re-rehearsed with different covers as click bait. But no discussion of Colette, Nabokov (or Roddy Doyle or Auberon Waugh, and, well, you get the idea) and their place in understanding what Rowling, the serious reader become writer, was after in the Hogwarts Saga.

BookshelfI wrote a book, Harry Potter’s Bookshelf, on ‘the Great Books Inside the Adventures of the Boy Who Lived’ and it’s a grand tour of Western Canon through the lens of Rowling’s septology. It wasn’t, however, despite frequent quotations from The Presence to justify my choices of texts to discuss, J. K. Rowling’s Library, a book by Karin Westman, chair of the Kansas State English Department. Prof Westman announced the imminent publication of this guide at Nimbus 2003 in Orlando, Florida, and her CV says it is “forthcoming, 2017” today (the University of Mississippi Press, her publisher, alas, does not list it among their titles soon to be in print).

This is a shame, if understandable given Prof Westman’s responsibilities, because, judging from what she has shared through the years about Jane Austen, Katherine Mansfield, and other Rowling favorites at conferences, no one is more qualified than she to write on this subject. While we wait for J. K. Rowling’s Library, though, let’s take a look at that “favorites” list again and see what we can figure out in anticipation of Prof Westman’s guidance.

Lolita 20The writer I’ve been reading, both his novels as well as books about his fascinating life, is Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov and I have a small confession to make. The experience of reading his Pale Fire and Lolita, considered among the best if not just the best American novels of the 20th Century (Lolita even makes the #15 slot on this Greatest Books Ever list) has turned my thinking about Rowling as novelist on its head, maybe even inside-out. If nothing else, I have a new “hidden key” to share.

First, though, let’s establish the Rowling-Nabokov link through her comments about the Man from St. Petersburg and the clear correspondences and probable hat-tips to his best known works in Harry Potter. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes, Literary Alchemy, Postmodern Polly, Ring Composition