Harry Potter: Hated, Loved, Applied.

By Oliver Franklin

Harry Potter – Hated, Loved, Applied: Metaphysics, Theology & other Wizard things. In late 2002 I recall flashing red letters scrolling across lighted screens in the foyer of the cinema, advertising The Two Towers and Chamber of Secrets. Later the manager of another, failing picture house (since closed down) lamented how great it was when both these franchises were releasing at the same time. However this second dose of Harry on film, for me, was when the change occurred. I realised there was more to this Potter scene than I thought. So here am I writing a belated book. It is part commentary, part autobiography and includes lots of other material both esoteric and commonplace. It turns out the distinction between Science and Magic may not be so clear as one thinks and just what is really going on at CERN anyway? This along with many other questions are addressed. This book is for Harry Potter fans, Christians, Atheists and other interested parties who prefer descriptive writing to technical data. Hint – it’s not all Harry Potter but if you haven’t read about him, or at least seen the films, quite a few things won’t make sense.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oliver Franklin
• Release date: Dec 23, 2019

Oliver Franklin

You will read some of it in the books...

Book preview

Harry Potter Applied

Metaphysics, Theology & other Wizard things

by Oliver Franklin B.Sc.

Copyright © Oliver Franklin, 2018. The author has asserted his moral rights

First Published in 2018

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The right of Oliver Franklin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the copyright, design and patents acts pertaining. All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this work may be made without written permission from the author.

Introduction

I was brought up nominal Church of England – very nominal as almost every Sunday morning from aged six to aged sixteen I was playing rugby. When the vicar made noises about my getting Confirmed that was more or less that.

Then, much to the disappointment of Mr Clive Sercombe I quit Buckingham Rugby Club and worked for the next three weeks at the Wendy Fair market to earn money to buy a bass guitar amplifier from my double bass teacher, Elizabeth Harre. At aged sixteen I became a born again Christian. At nineteen I went off to university – yes, nineteen. I was a September baby, which meant that throughout my educational life I was the oldest in class. I do recall a boy in middle school who had the same birthday as me but that was exceptional.

During my university years I got caught up in a cult and learnt how things should not be done. I also graduated, in 1995, scraping a lower second-class honours and thereafter launched myself on the world.

From what I gather Harry began to be famous around 1997 when Bloomsbury took on the project and as kids in the school playgrounds were telling their friends about this great new book they were reading. Grass-roots recommendation is the holy grail of advertising. One immediate consequence of all this was that tens of thousands of children across the country were searching dictionary definitions of ‘philosopher’. We had no Internet then, it was still being developed. There was also a noticeable upsurge in interest in studying Latin but I don’t know if any schools or colleges managed to take advantage of this by reintroducing it to their curricula.

I myself was happily unaware of the whole Potter phenomenon until around the year 2000. My father bought a house on a buy-to-let basis and after a brief experiment with Youth Enquiry Service kids failed, my brothers and I moved in. My brother Ed’s then girlfriend, now wife, is a bookworm and was very much into Potter as it was all happening. So Harry and I were cordially introduced, but I quickly joined the massed ranks of those who condemned the books without even bothering to read them.

Come Christmas 2001, I was invited by brother and sister-in-law-to-be to the Warner Village cinema, now Vue, to see The Philosopher’s Stone. I was mildly intrigued but otherwise unimpressed, forgetting the whole thing until the following year.

When the Chamber of Secrets came out I recall flashing red letters scrolling across lighted screens in the foyer, advertising The Two Towers and Chamber of Secrets. Later the manager of another, failing picture house lamented how great it was when both of these franchises were releasing at the same time. However this second dose of Harry on film, for me, was when the change occurred.

It was strange but I know it took some time, perhaps ten minutes after leaving the venue and meeting the cold, night air, for me to readjust to normal time and space. I had been utterly engrossed in the film and was particularly intrigued by the wisdom that our choices show what we truly are rather than our abilities. That resonated perfectly with the theology of Charles G. Finney whom I was a student of at the time and, all at once, I realised there was more to this story than I first thought.

I wasn’t so much converted as addicted, even making myself late to work on one occasion watching a film I went on to see about thirty times. Some interesting discussions with my sister-in-law-to-be ensued and I recall teasing her about the fact she had spent £100 on a Harry Potter train set. The truth of the matter is that I had probably spent more than that on cinema tickets!

Being fairly new to the cause I only had to wait six months for the fifth book to come out. Others, long-standing fans had been waiting three years, anxiously resisting rumours that J.K. was suffering writer’s block. Thankfully she wasn’t and I was one of the many queueing at midnight in the centre of Plymouth one day in June. When I saw the extent of the queue for Waterstones and the fact it appeared not to be moving due to a technical glitch, I forwent my deposit (£2.00 I think) and joined the WHSmith line. I read the first chapter and went to bed around 2 am in the morning.

A piece of advice here for anyone considering reading a Potter book for the first time. First, read them in order otherwise lots of things won’t make sense. Second, when you get about three quarters of the way through, stop and consider whether you have enough time to get to the end before you have to go and do something else, such as eat, sleep, go to work or get married. For the latter books this equates to having about a hundred and fifty pages to go, and you will need to have several hours free to run through them in one sitting to get the maximum dramatic effect.

Having specifically arranged my work schedule to accommodate the necessary literary effort, I made the mistake of finishing Order of the Phoenix in the early hours of Monday morning after a heavy weekend’s read. Being so tired I could hardly take in all that bell jar stuff and so my enjoyment was tainted.

In the fifteen years since I have had routine Potter discussions with wife, brother’s wife, fans and opponents alike. But it was only a few days ago that it occurred to me to write a Potter commentary. It happened on the following wise: a scene from the seventh film kept coming to mind, the one where Harry and Hermione have an impromptu dance in the tent with Nick Cave’s O Children playing in the background. I found an HQ version on YouTube and watched it, my own Potter DVD set having been dumped years ago in one of my purges.

The scene is very intense, packed with unspoken emotion and some people regard is as the best in the movie. Of course it’s not in the book but that is not to say it didn’t happen – it’s just not recorded. Plainly there are millions of things happening all the time in Potter land that are not recorded. If they were all recorded your ‘box set’ would be a ‘library set’ and J.K. would be writing it her whole life.

I watched a few more clips the next evening on YouTube and realised I kind of missed the films. This is more or less when the idea came to me to write a commentary on the subject. This book incorporates extensive material from an aborted 2002 project so please excuse the juxtapositions in style. I wasn’t the same writer back then.

I am acutely aware of the extensive and sometimes ferocious debate over the values or lack thereof of the Potter books, and would like to state that I have absolutely no intention of getting into that debate, but recognise I might end up in it anyway.

‘Rubies blazing in the firelight’. Simple but beautiful. Language has an innate beauty. By that I mean proper language, not cursing, swearing or blasphemy. Language is God-given and everything God gives is good.

Oliver Franklin B.Sc.

30th May 2018

Chapter 1

Would you feel safe?

The best stories always are exciting unless you are reading ‘literary fiction’ where the artistic and technical merit of the novel is apparently more important. Personally I like to be both shaken and stirred, in other words adventure and literary merit. Martinis aside, while it goes without saying that Harry’s world is rather exciting, the more interesting question is: would you actually want to live there? Multitudes of fans and grown-up fans will probably answer ‘Yes’ at this point without hesitation or thought.

But let us think about the question for a moment. Every author has their own opinion. Every author has their own worldview. The same goes for their readers. You can feel how a story ought to go and, boy, when you guess right it’s exhilarating. I remember when, in Order of the Phoenix, Hermione first suggests that Harry teach them Defense Against the Dark Arts unofficially, I almost fell out of my chair for enthusiasm. It felt so right, so good! It’s as though J.K. were writing exactly what I would write. That accord between author and reader is really special.

However you can approach a book with certain expectations and not just by reading the blurb. A book written by an militant Atheist is unlikely to offer much encouragement to, or accord with someone of deeply-held religious convictions. Interestingly though, Harry has had rave reviews from religious and non-religious alike.

But why do we have these innate feelings of how things should be, of how a story should go? Is it not the fact that the Truth resonates with us? Are there not underlying things that we all believe, things like: good always triumphs over evil; things will ‘out’ in the end; what you sow you reap. Yes, these ideas have long since passed into folklore and proverb but where do they originally come from? Atheists have to perform all kinds of mental gymnastics in attempt to explain such universal ideas whereas the likes of Lewis and Tolkein would probably say, and might well have said the True Story is already in us, and as far as another story agrees with that inner one, it will feel right.

Another, rather esoteric way to put this is: we were created by the word of God, the spoken word, language. Every cell in our body is thus vibrating in accordance with this original Truth. We are a living testimony and when we hear things or read things consistent with this Truth, it resonates!

Clearly I had similar thoughts nearly twenty years ago when I wrote the following –

God is True. He operates only in Truth. There can be no deceit in Him. He created us in his own image. We were made to live in, and walk around in, a world of Truth. We were intended to live in, and function by, Truth. In other words, with everything in accordance with his will.

Even in this fallen world we retain the image of God in us. Therefore Truth is, to us, no less essential for life than the air we breathe. Therefore hearing a lie is rather like breathing in the foul air of a polluted city. It is damaging to us. Furthermore teaching someone an error will conflict with their spirit on a most fundamental level. Although the intelligence may be fooled, the image of God will not be. A spiritual disquiet will manifest within that poor person and, ultimately, if the falsehood be strongly urged – as in any cultic group – their conscience will be hurt.

Trying to force a vessel designed for Truth into an acceptance of a lie, is like trying to squeeze a plastic cap onto a container of the wrong size. It won’t fit. You may try to force the container into a different shape or stretch the plastic cap but that will only cause more damage. As the saying of old goes: you can’t squeeze a round hole into a square peg… or something like that. The first time I recalled this phrase to mind for the purposes of this book, it came out like this, namely wrong. However I decided to leave it wrong just to make the observation that, Mr Albert Einstein may not have disagreed with it and, certainly, he would not have laughed at it.

To continue, human beings are effectively containers made of a ‘Truth size’. To them then, Reality is the true-sized plastic cap and it fits – perfectly. Teaching errors and enforcing them is so destructive because it goes directly against their created nature. Saints and sinners were all created in the image of God and are all vulnerable to this imposition. The difference is that saints are returning to the original perfection God intended, while sinners are only decaying further.

Insisting upon an unscientific error on the one hand and teaching false religious doctrine are thus both alike. They amount to a flat denial of Reality, an opposition to all of God’s created world.

You can often see evidence that the Law of God is written in a child’s heart. For example, I once heard of a survey where a staggering proportion of young children believed that marriage should last forever. Where did they get this from?

Yes, Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but still they were made in the image of God. Why did Jesus say that we needed to become like little children if we were to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven? In the early years, children retain this knowledge of God. Although this does not exempt them from any other scripture, it does serve as evidence of where we came from – and it was not the apes!

The Godless and secular education system soon drives this Truth out of them and perhaps, considering my analogy of the containers and plastic cups, that is why we have so many screwed-up kids? Or, perhaps, it is just one of the many reasons why we have so many screwed-up adults? In any case, for me Truth is synonymous with Reality.

To tell the Truth therefore, is only to communicate what is Real. A lie is unreal, imaginary, against nature, in some respects a charade. This again is why true religion and honest science compliment one another perfectly. What a tragedy it is that, in schools, children are taught falsehood about religion and an evolutionary fairytale.

To understand and believe the Truth is ultimately liberating. The truth shall make you free – John 8:32. Truth is like fresh air: it awakens the mind to God. It is surprising how spiritual one can get when reading good theology. It is simply getting back in touch with our original image.

For those believers who continue to doubt, let me just add that I believe the bible is a more accurate description of the real universe than any secular textbook. Indeed the Good Book is light years ahead in terms of Science, Technology, Cosmology and just about everything else besides. Goodness knows, it has taken mankind about six thousand years and only now are we uncovering secrets, buried within the ancient text, that none but an infinite mind could have devised. The late Chuck Missler referred to the bible as an integrated message system that has its origins outside our domain of Time and Space.

Now in this world, and I don’t mean the Muggle one but the real one, we have the following certainties: the universe is governed by God; he is infinitely powerful, infinitely wise and infinitely good. Therefore the days of Evil are numbered. So we don’t just know how the story ought to end, we know how it will end. This should be rather comforting.

While there are many truths in Harry Potter, how does it compare to the Truth? I suppose that is one thing we shall examine as we go along though, like any other author J.K. Rowling has her own views and these are reflected in her writing.

According Wikipedia, she identifies herself as a Christian, and attended a Church of Scotland congregation while writing Harry Potter. Her eldest daughter was also baptised there. She is quoted as saying, I believe in God, not magic. Furthermore she felt early on that if readers knew of her Christian beliefs they would be able to predict her plot line.

There’s a thing! Readers might have predicted how the story would go. That’s because there is a way the story ought to go. Everybody knows that Harry ought to win in the end, that Frodo ought to win in the end and, yes, the Lord will win in the end. Voldemort, Sauron and the Antichrist all lose. The only question is how long will it take to conquer them and how much pain and suffering will they manage to inflict before they are taken down.

Now how about Harry’s world? It begins in a Muggle suburb and grows, throughout four books and about fifteen hundred pages to encompass more than one country by Book 4. Of course, after the hard work of building a world, you then get to play in it, which is the fun part of writing. This is also the strength of really long stories – you get lots of time to explore. Books 5 to 7 are where the playing happens.

But my original question was, would you actually want to live there? Would you really want to be Harry or one of his friends, a Magical extra in the background or just a Muggle in the street? You see, it’s not that simple. Does Harry know he’s going to win? Pretty clearly it’s a No. Does he assume good always triumphs in the end? I would hazard a Yes.

Rowling is sovereignly directing her characters lives but they don’t know that.

As far I as can tell, in Harry’s world it doesn’t matter how powerful you are, there is always someone more powerful, or there will arise someone more potent eventually. It doesn’t matter how much magic you know, there is always going to be something you didn’t know and, of course, new discoveries are being made all the time. It doesn’t matter how powerful your wand is either, because someone can slit your throat in the middle of the night and steal it, or else creep up behind you and shoot you in the back.

Supposing the Ministry had an army of Aurors protecting you day and night? Well, Voldemort could send an army twice the size to attack you, or your guardians might just get fed up one day decide to switch their allegiance. What then?

I think the problem is becoming obvious: how could you ever feel safe? How could you sleep at night without being safe in the knowledge that the ultimate power in the universe is Good? I suppose there is a partial answer in books themselves. The supreme force in Harry’s world is Love and is one of those phenomenon under investigation in the Department of Mysteries. Admittedly it seems to work pretty well in Harry’s life, for example it deflected the Killing Curse and prevented the Dark Lord from possessing him for more than a brief time.

To be honest though, I would feel safer living in a universe governed by an infinite Person rather than an infinite Power. But what do you think? What you really want to live there?

Combining two things Rowling has said about her world, they have all the same problems we have and a whole load more we don’t have…

Chapter 2

What’s happening to the children?

Having been in and around schools for several years due to my work, I was able to observe the behaviour of large numbers of children. It occurred to me that there exist two kinds of child and I believe there may be theological grounds to support this but do not intend to press the point now. The one sort display all the normal human selfishness common to Adam’s race. Beyond this however, they do not appear overtly evil or callous. These are the Gryffindors, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs if you like.

Sadly I have noticed others of a quite different kind. Let’s call these the Slytherins. These seem to me more like animals, bred not for themselves but for the purpose of their master. Speaking of animals, maybe that is why Salazar Slytherin himself has a monkey-like face? Notwithstanding this lot would rather take pleasure in someone in trouble than someone doing well. I have witnessed it with my own eyes: misfortune is their sport, hurt is their joy. Their behaviour is such that it is a fair question whether they yet possess a conscience. Certainly there is no hope for their souls without the direct intervention of Love.

This observation may come across as excessive or abhorrent but the weight of my words matches only the gravity of the situation. I am truly concerned about the plight of our children and hope to explain what, to my mind, the problem is. The coming Tribulation will see multitudes destroyed like cattle to the slaughter, an Old Testament-type description. If nothing changes then the young will not escape. Indeed, they are being fattened up for it.

This illustration is deliberately disturbing. I chose it to be that way. What does