Robert Terry, long time friend and serious reader, wrote me today to say he’d found two interesting articles about the Hogwarts Saga on Johann Kurtz’ ‘Becoming Noble’ Substack page. The first is ‘The Last British Myth’ and the second is the conclusion of that essay, ‘Freedom.‘
Here is the introduction to give you a taste:
Ours is a windswept island. Time has carried many peoples and gods from our shores.
Peoples fade, and yet they linger, ever-present in an unspoken British folk communion. At the edges of our psyche, they’re all still there, dim but alive: the druidism of the ancients, the power of the Romans, the folklore of the Anglo-Saxons, the evangelism of the Christians. All live on as layers of psychic sediment which shift, flow, and resurface.
Our greatest king – Arthur – is to be found nowhere in the pages of earthly history. He lives in a different plane; yet it is one to which we also belong. Whatever we need him to be, he is – both chivalric knight of Christ and devotee of the wizard Merlin. Our patron saint – George – lives somewhere between ecclesiastical history and a folklore inhabited by dragons.
Our longest reigning monarch, Elizabeth II, was both ‘Defender of the Faith’ and initiate into the Gorsedd Beirdd Ynys Prydain – the Gorsedd of the Bards of Britain – revived on the principles of Celtic druidry.
We have always known secret worship: pagan priests on foggy hills, condemned Catholics in forest glades, witches burned for their heresy. Even now, silent prayer is hunted by the authorities.
Our churches are adorned with gargoyles; our nation is one of nations; our democracy adores its kings. Contradictions live in harmony. Our identity is certain and yet unresolved. We live in both earthly and eternal time, never certain which ancestors to honor and which eternity awaits us.
It is only against this background that one can understand the paradox of Harry Potter, the wizard who celebrates Christmas, the last of the great British myths. Like Britain itself, the tale of The Boy Who Lived is a pagan vessel out of which Christian greatness emerges, in a subtle and particular form.
J.K. Rowling’s mythopoetic masterpiece is an attempt at the resolution of the dying British soul. It is a final charge in the war for who we are and always have been. It amounts to a systematic defense of British culture, finding heroism in its eccentricities and beauty in its ways.
I believe that hidden within the work is an entire spiritual history of our land. My task here is to uncover that which lies beneath the surface, from druidic allusions to hidden scriptural quotations.
To do so, we must start at the beginning.
Enjoy — and thank you, Robert, for the tip!
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