In Praise of Bad Wizards Not From Slytherin

“There never was a wizard went bad that wasn’t from Slytherin,” says Hagrid in the first Harry Potter book.

Not a fan of that idea.  One of the major missteps in the moral psychology of The Potterverse.

The truth is, the courageous, the intelligent, the good…. They all can go bad.  Badness is a distortion of our best qualities sometimes.  Courage is a half-virtue if it’s in the service of a bad ideal, and no virtue at all if it serves the self.  Loyalty is commendable when we’re loyal to something really good; but when we’re loyal to ideals or people that are reckless or destructive, we’re better off dragging our feet.  And we’ve all seen intelligence turned to rotten purposes: manipulation, deception, bullying….  Even generosity in a person of weak character becomes distorted and manipulative.

But the good news is that character comes from failing in this way, and seeing the failure clearly, and correcting it.

Otter Gets Sorted

At the insistence of The Nightmare Child, my daughter, I have joined Pottermore.  I have purchased a wand and been sorted.

English oak, 10 3/4 inches, unicorn core.  Springy.

And Ravenclaw.  Wit Beyond Measure Is Man’s Greatest Treasure.

Perhaps not unpredictably, The Nightmare Child is also a Ravenclaw. 

Rock on.

Putting the "Whore" Back In "Horcrux": Splitting the Soul

Voldemort: To obtain badass immortality, he split his soul seven times. When he was done, the soul he called his own was a tiny, sickly, sniveling thing.There’s a transaction that happens when you invest your self, your soul, in a person or thing. You give it power over you. And only by killing that thing stone dead are you able to retrieve what it was you lost. Killing it requires at the least that you perform the sacrificial act yourself. You can’t have it taken away, you can’t cling to the hope that it will survive. You have to risk death to your soul to retrieve it.

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Crosses and Mistletoe: Paganism & Christian Fundamentalism

Two letters from RipChurch readers stir reflections on faith, paganism, tyranny, Christmas, and Harry Potter... "I desperately wanted our side to be Absolutely Correct. I needed to believe that all my choices made in an effort to follow God were right, so, well...I submitted my own judgment to that of The Powers That Be, and toed the party line, to my shame. This has been my pattern of proving my faith to God, since I was young. I figured if I was submissive enough, maybe He'd get around to filling my cruze of oil."

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The Soul Triptych: Harry Potter and Christian Literary Analysis

Sometimes we literary types are apt to shoehorn characters into boxes that don’t fit. We like symmetry. We like the feeling that there’s a plan, that writing is revealing something through the writer, that creative urges have the characteristics of revelation. Now and then, however, I feel that Christian literary scholars co-opt themes as “Christian” when in fact they are simply human. Are those two things synonymous?

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Haiku Movie Review: Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallow Part II

"There is something in your eye, Harry Pottah... The boy who lived... come to cry. Visinius Permanenta!"Geeks thick as starlings,

Script, direction labored breath:

Expell.  Meh.  Arm us.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Okay, Wizards.

Time for a break from all the real-life death and destruction to engage in some cinematic death and destruction.

Make you some butterbeer.  Get your tix.  Watch the flicks.  See those wizards wave those sticks. 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 at midnight...

Harry Pottah and the Deathly Hallows: Film Preview With Butterbeer Recipe

When my daughter and I stood in line (we were something like 13th in line, if I remember rightly) to get our copy of The Half-Blood Prince, a riot nearly broke out when some guy dressed as Darth Vader walked into the bookstore at nine o'clock at night (books went on sale at, yes, 12:01 A.M.). He was carrying a sign that said, "The REAL Dark Lord!" I could see the headlines: "Six Killed In Nerd-Brawl."

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One Year In The Shadow

"I had been speculating earlier this week as to why [Harry Potter author] J.K. Rowling never mentioned the presence of Dementors at St. Mungo's. I'm pretty sure they are responsible for slowing the rate of time in addition to their usual effects."

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