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Spirit of Ma'at: "Sacred Sites" — Vol 2, No 6 by Susan Barber
It was just about a quarter of a century ago that Luke Skywalker erupted upon the silver screen to a world of awed children. Between George Lucas's incredible new sound and special effects, his totally innovative storytelling approach, and his startling subject matter, filmmaking has never been same.
Today, Harry Potter, in a film of comparable scope, influence, and popularity, and with a parallel story, is capturing the hearts of children everywhere. Yet unlike that of brother Skywalker, Potter's debut has sparked a great deal of controversy. And at first glance, this seems strange — for the two young heroes and their stories are more than somewhat alike. In fact. . . The Similarities Are Amazing Luke and Harry are both orphans, growing up with an aunt and uncle who took them in after their parents were killed. As their story begins, both boys are trying to make the best of a repressive home environment. Also in both cases, the boy has grown up in total ignorance of his past, with an uncle who is deeply prejudiced against magical forces and tries to prevent him from pursuing his destiny.Both films serve up the nemesis of powerful wizards seduced by the Dark Side — Darth Vader, and Voldemort. And in both films, this dark wizard was responsible for the destruction of the hero's father! In both Star Wars and Harry Potter, an old guru-sorcerer — Obe Wan Kenobe and Albus Dumbledore, respectively — contacts the young protegé in order to tell him of his powers and take over his education. Both contacts are arranged through strange and magical means: R2D2, programmed with a hologram, arrives by spaceship; Hagrid's spaceship is a flying motorcycle, and his arrival is heralded by an avalanche of magical, letter-carrying owls. In the leading roles, both adventures feature two guys and a girl. And in both films it is the girl who is the "brains of the outfit." Hermione and Princess Leia are both wisecracking, take-charge types from wealthy families who order the boys around without mercy. Leia is actually a princess. Hermione is just very rich. Ron seems quite different from Han Solo at first glance, but both are rebels from the "wrong side of the tracks," and both have a love-hate relationship with the female lead, a sparring contest that sparks many one-liners and creates the necessary dramatic conflict within the heroic trio. Both films are liberally peopled by non-human characters who help the heroes (and incidentally the film, by providing comic relief). Star Wars features — amid a vast cast of aliens and robots — R2D2 and C3PO. Harry Potter and Ron live in a castleful of ghosts, and are helped in their endeavors by Hedwig the owl and Ron's scruffy rat, Scabbers. And let us not forget the two films' gigantic, furry, lovable sidekicks, Hagrid and the Wookie. But the most striking similarity between these two films is the story line itself, which can be summed up in a single sentence for both: "A young sorcerer's apprentice learns to use his inborn magical powers in order to defeat a dark wizard who is trying to destroy the world." So why is Harry being subjected to book-burnings, while Luke has apparently escaped unscathed? Harry Potter's Magic Setting aside the Old Testament fundamentalists who still hold that "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Ex. 22:18),[1] there is a profound difference between Star Wars and Harry Potter in their understanding of the meaning of magical powers and how they are to be mastered.In Harry Potter, apprentice wizards learn spells, incantations, and rituals. The "magic wand" is portrayed as a device possessing power in and of itself — without his wand, the sorcerer is helpless. In the Harry Potter works, magic is a matter of intense left-brain study. Hermione gets very good at doing magic because she has her nose in a book most of the time. And when the trio needs to master a situation, they seek the answer not within, through spiritual understanding or strength of character, but without, in the forbidden sections of the Hogwarts library. They are always looking for ever more potent spells. But even more threatening to those who fear him is that Harry Potter is in our face. He is up-close-and-personal. He lives not in some future science-fiction tale, but today, now, in England. He wears modern clothes. Although he prefers the Hogwarts Express, he has been known to arrive by car. And yet his experience reeks of that which has for centuries been forbidden in Western culture — newts and frogs boiled up in cauldrons, unicorns, dragons, castles, ghosts, magic wands, cloaks, peaked caps. No matter that both Harry and Luke are learning courage, discipline, and faith. No matter that they both are aligned with the Light against the Dark, and consistently overcome their opponents through qualities of faith, tolerance, and love. We are still the near-inheritors of a time when people who associated with magical potions and broomsticks were burned at the stake. The Magic of Star Wars In Star Wars, magical power comes from inside. It is a matter not of external learning, but of internal mastery, mastery of the self. For example, in his training with the Yoda, Luke Skywalker learns that there is no order of difference among miracles, that it is no more difficult to lift a spaceship from the swamp than it is to float a feather. Such a concept would be totally foreign to Harry Potter's training.The Jedhi Knight's magic tool is not a wand, but an energy that pervades All Life Everywhere. It is Chi. Prana. It is the Force. However, although many of us had heard about Chi before Star Wars, the use of it to achieve magical powers was still at that time considered the province of yogis — dedicated monks who might typically spend seventy years living on rice and water and chanting in a cave. We knew about psychic energy, but we never really thought about actually using it. But when Luke Skywalker turned off his autopilot and used "inner sensing" to thread his bomb into the Death Star, yogic power suddenly became an accessible idea. The acceptance of its development and use became part of our culture. And so I think George Lucas's great gift to us was that he took the Force to the children, with the brand new suggestion that it might be mastered for use in daily life. And he did it in a way that slid right past the parents and religious groups. After all, it applied to life in the far, far future, in a galaxy far, far away. Nobody ever even thought of calling it "witchcraft." Harry Potter's Gift If you read the books carefully and really get into what Harry's all about, you will see that although the paraphernalia of witchcraft abounds — it does, and it makes for a really great story! — the Harry Potter works are profoundly moral. Harry's life was saved by his mother's love. She was not a witch, she just had so much love that it didn't matter. And in the story, Professor Quirrel is defeated because he simply cannot survive this field of love that surrounds Harry.There is little difference between this concept and the one we are using now to Pray the world into Peace! Our premise is that the vibration of evil simply cannot exist in the energy field of love that we are creating. And in Rowling's subsequent books, despite all of Harry's study with potions and incantations, it is his tolerance, his caring, his basic goodness that leads to victory. He wins success not through hard work, but through sacrificing himself to the greater good. Yeah, he "summons" a broom all the way from the dorm to help him get past a dragon. But the idea to do this comes to him from a friend, someone he helped and treated with kindness. Throughout all of the books, it is Harry's friends and his greatness of spirit — not his magical prowess — that save him and help him defeat the powers of darkness. And Then There Are the Muggles I think that the truly great concept in Harry Potter, both liberating to our children and causing so much consternation to some of their parents, is that finally, finally, finally we have a nice, tender, simply descriptive, nonjudgmental term for all of the people in the world who don't believe in faeries.A word that children can use to explain what's difficult about some of their families and a lot of society and most of the government. To describe the people who don't grok Harry. Who don't have "soul." They're not bad. They're not evil. They don't mean to be destroying this planet in order to eat cheap hamburgers. They simply don't understand. They're just muggles. Footnotes:
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