Why Harry Potter missed his calling as a priest

Magic is without a doubt one of the most popular phenomena in Fantasy culture today. I myself am quite a fan of magic in its various forms. But many people overlook or are mildly ignorant of the fascinating history behind the origins and popularity of magic. My confession this week is part 1 of an eventual 2 part post on why magic is so fascinating.





So, magic. Everyone’s heard of it. Almost everyone finds it incredibly fascinating. And at some point during your lives, I’m sure you wanted to have magic powers. Don’t deny it. You know you did.

But magic isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I mean, even one of the unquestionably most popular children’s series shows the various downsides of magic. It’s hard to deny that Harry’s got problems.

Magic has become such a common occurrence in fiction that people often forget that it has a basis in human history. In fact, the literary archetype of the evil witch or evil sorceress can almost be directly traced to the Greeks being intolerant of a form of religion that wasn’t centered around the Greek gods. Don’t know how? Well, conveniently, I’m going to explain.

The earliest forms of magic were virtually indistinguishable from religion. The word magic, itself, comes from the term magoi, an ancient Iranian caste that specialized in various forms of rituals and religious knowledge. In fact, several members of the magoi caste were priests in the Zoroastrian tradition, which, for those of you who don’t know, is the earliest known monotheistic religious tradition. The earliest known magic rituals have been traced to a cult that worshipped/revered the ‘great earth goddess.’ You may have heard of her. Several scholars argue that magic eventually turned into religion. And that magicians and priests, in those day really were the same thing. Royal magicians tended to also be high priests, that’s even mentioned in the Bible. The story of Moses refers to the high priests of the pharaoh as the royal magicians, and they used their magic to replicate the miracles Moses was doing. They sing pretty well too. 


Over time, magic shifted from more of a religious role to one of a more scientific role. People in the Middle Ages would use all kinds of spells and charms, and magic, to try and create solutions to problems that were plaguing them. (Including the plague…..but that didn’t work so well.) But even then, there were still religious elements to magic. When a spell or charm would provide an answer, the cause was attributed to some sort of supernatural power, and not human reason.

Eventually, though, witchcraft and magic became something looked down upon. Well established religions didn’t like the idea of spells and charms being cast all over the place. It led people to attribute some other higher power responsible, rather than whatever god was most revered at the time. Even worse, the priests/magicians worshipping these other gods could potentially lead people away from the religion they should be following. That’s the logic, scholars believe, as to why Circe and Medea, the two earliest mentioned witches in literature, are portrayed in such a negative light. Circe and Medea were probably followers of the cult of Gaia, the great earth goddess. In other words, they followed a religion of which the larger Greek society did not approve. And because humans have a tendency to lash out at those things that are different, and that they don’t like…well…you can see where I’m going there. Circe and Medea get labelled as evil witches. Because, well, they’re doing things that aren’t approved of and practicing scary magics. The must be evil.


Unfortunately, the concept of evil witches continued throughout the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church became determined to stamp out practices of spell craft and charm and magic, for various reasons. (Probably because it had something to do with humans infringing upon God’s power.) Things like miracles started being discussed with more frequency, and funnily enough, miracles sounded an awful lot like magic. But people were still practicing magics. A lot of women were. There are some interesting records of medieval spells and charms used, by women, to accomplish all sorts of things. There was one that involved a fish. And it was supposed to help with fertility. Or something. So, a lot of people started denouncing witches, and accusing them of all kinds of terrible things. And you know, being convicted of witchcraft was enough to get you a death sentence.

But before we say all those witches had what was coming to them, because, they were clearly evil, let’s stop and look at things for a minute. First off, some interesting records are left by the medieval record keepers. A majority of the women who were executed as witches were unmarried, or widowed, childless property owners. Usually they were also somewhat wealthy, but as they were unmarried and childless, all of their land and money would go to the state upon their death. Well, that leads to some interesting implications now, doesn’t it…… Second: most of the women performing spells and in general witchcraft were doing so because they had so few options. Being a woman in the Middle Ages wasn’t the most ideal of situations. And in a lot of cases, there were far more options available for men. Women perhaps turned to magic because they needed answers. And magic was the only way they could seem to get them.

Fast forward to the 20th and 21st centuries, where the most common portrayals of magic show it being used far beyond its original purpose. But, more on that in part 2 of this post, coming in a couple of weeks. (I will return to it, but in the interim, I’m going to post on a couple of series that heavily focus on magic.)

Oh, and if you wanted to know a little more about magic in ancient times, here’s a pretty good book for you to check out: Who doesn’t want to learn about magic?

I also highly recommend perusing through the free Nook Books on Barnes and Noble, if you have a Nook or the ability to read one. There’s a bunch of really old, restored documents from as early as the 1600s about various things, including witchcraft.

Hope you found my post enlightening and informative,
Angel out!