Commenting on Schnoebelen's at al:s comments on HP

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Were the Inklings a Forbidden Society? No. · HGL'S F.B. WRITINGS : Craig Crawford's view on Harry Potter (feat. réprise of his view on Tolkien and CSL, feat. Dan Brown) · CSL Not Arian · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Commenting on Schnoebelen's at al:s comments on HP · Brian Holdsworth's take on HP · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : One Good Thing about Harry Potter : Honest about School

Hidden Evil in Harry Potter - Bill Schnoebelen
BRMinistries | 21.I.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0k770S37Tk

I

Two questions:

• 1) Would you say the same things about Narnia or about LotR?
• 2) Do you think Rowling is a believing occultist planning this, or do you take her word for it, she doesn't believe it and that is why she thinks it is harmless, even if she is wrong?

One answer on my part: Ron Weasley in upper case in ASCII adds up to 777 - a number of perfection - and so much, of what I have heard about the books/films is about perfection being taken away from him, his being debased by sexual feelings misplaced due to coed teen school setting and some more bad stuff.

I think the "love triangle" in Harry, Hermione and Ron is somehow bad enough, even if there were no occultism or even if all occult was approached purely by ridicule (as in "magic school Abracadabra" which I think she used parts of, it's a comic book), and in ways which would not be instructive to the curious, that alone would be corrupting reading for the young.

The writer and book critic who warned me of Harry Potter back in the nineties, was a Catholic priest and a fan of both CSL and JRRT - he says Rowling is very different - learning "discretion" and keeping disobediences secret even by lying and so on was so much part of HP ethos.

I never read one, never borrowed one on the library.

Dan Brown, I read two, and I dislike his world view. Or the one voiced by Robert Langdon and masons. But it is arguably one he is himself promoting, especially as he is known to be an apostate. HP, not one. I read scraps on the internet or summaries, not one book.

As to HP, I think I was even allergic in advance after four years on a boarding school.

Before going to boarding school, I could read two novels from Austria about that kind of thing, after the four years, I have trouble rereading them.

19:56 HP being rebellious, liar and cheating is obviously one of the things the Catholic priest (it could have been Monsignor Williamson) brought up.

II

23:22 In this context, it is not just Harry Potter.

I saw one Pirates of the Caribbean and had enough. The solution to the curse was, a man holding a coin from cursed treasure was shot through the hand and his blood dripped over the gold, obviously first touching the coin he held.

And the beings that had cursed and then lifted the curse were - Aztek gods.

Greek gods make a certain point in the Psalms of David come home if you study them close enough ... when I was a child, I liked Poseidon or Apollo as imaginary figures. Then comes a day when I study their actions in Greek tragedy at University ... I came to conclude, Poseidon posing as father to Theseus and Apollo manipulating Laius, Oedipus, Iocasta into making that family a total misery of kinslaying and incest, yes, they were real and they were real demons, and that is how powerful demons were before Calvary and before the Catholic Church converted the nations.

HarmonicWave

The Greek gods were fictional characters based on true stories of Nephilim hybrids, part fallen angel, part human. The fallen angels who fathered them were punished (in part) by watching their children kill each other off (where the Clash of the Titans came from).

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@HarmonicWave Laius, Oedipus and Iocasta are not nephelim, they are just people.

Apollo of Delphi who plays a major role in their ill fate is arguably also not a nephelim, but simply Apollyon or at least a Pythonic spirit.

He never acts on stage, he is always represented by a seer or by the oracle of Delphi.

So, it could very well be the real story of a demon fooling gullible pagans. I think it is.

III

25:40 Now, one could argue there is a difference between fantasising of kissing a cheek and fantasising of a fullblown visual coitus.

Similarily, one could argue there is a difference between fantasising unrealistic and non serious magic and fantasising of sth very close to the "real thing".

Obviously, one should distinguish if the thing envisaged is really magic (if Gandalf is supposed to be a spiritual being having taken body, he has powers of spiritual beings without compact with bad ones, and the one thing which looks like a spell is in fact looking for a password to a door opening automatically to that kind of thing).

And also if the magic envisaged is portrayed as attractive (Frodo's being drawn to the ring is not an attractive thing, it's porttrayed as a danger to the soul).

I think these criteria would come down fairly hard on HP.

IV

26:28 "he loves Jesus - he did, I mean he's dead now"

If he's in either Heaven or Purgatory, he still loves Jesus.

Only if he's in Hell has he ceased doing so ...

As he was not a Catholic, I put him in a category comparable to Terence (who died a Montanist, also a heresy), that is, not everything he said or wrote is good.

V

27:52 Correction : runes are not inherently pagan.

In early centuries of Christianity in Sweden, clerks wrote Latin in the Latin alphabet, but peasants or large farmers wrote rune Swedish in runes - with often Christian content, like recently they found the oldest Hail Mary, or when such and such a stone asks for prayers for a deceased one, or when it says such and such one died as a pilgrim or crusader.

VI

30:34 Nicholas Flamel being an alchemist in the Medieval sense doesn't make him an occultist in the modern sense.

He may well have been Christian, certainly professed it.

His birthday being 666 years before 1996 is a simple fact of history and mathematics, which probably drew Rowling to the occult as a subject matter - treating him as less Christian than he was, for instance.

He is in Europe sufficiently well known to be on wiki both French and English (but wiki is after that book was written) and arguably quite a few encyclopedias too.

30:43 Some overdo the extent of channeling, by ignoring the extent of humanly available learning.

Rowling needed no channeling to know about Nicolas Flamel, for instance.

(Some may have pretended either my language skills or my historic knowledge or my capacity to write music could be channeled, they are not, they are all within learning that was humanly available to me).

And some might also overdo channeling as opposed to simple creativity.

VII

30:54 How she knows the Scriptural part?

She's part of formerly Church of England, later Church of Scotland.

These British "communions" have a very modernist attitude as to actually believing Scripture, but they do know them.

Another "mystery" that can be solved without either conspiracies (more secret than British Liberal Theologian Protestantism, that is) or channeling.

Scandinavian Liberal Lutheranism is much the same, there is a reason why I had to leave it, becoming Catholic.

VIII

35:04 If everyone was reading HP anyway back then ("fortunately" not the case) Jesus would perhaps have made parables about situations in the books - but without actually endorsing them as such.

I think, for instance, Woden had practised witchcraft and drawn men like Tewe with him into posing as idols - and even so, Jesus seems to reference how they were maimed (Woden had pulled his right eye out, Tewe had sacrificed his right arm as hostage in the mouth of a wolf monster, according to the myths, now, I don't think Tewe had actually made such a deal with a person actually in the body of a wolf, but he would have lacked his right arm).

Btw, if you are uncertain of whom I am talking about, I hesitate between them being Druids and them actually being the Yeshu of the earlier parts of the carreer of the Talmudic Yeshu ("who" is if so a conflation between that man and Our Lord being compared to him, at least in Toledoth Yeshu literature - as to the Talmudic passages, they could be referring to two different men, with the execution passages taking notes from Crucifixion and martyrdoms of Apostles, but without the Romans).

Bonus : Thunor may have repented, gone back to Holy Land, settled as a fisherman. Boanerges in the vocative does not mean "you are sons of thunder" it means "you make moans like mooing oxen" and what would that have to do with "because sons of thunder" unless they were moaning about being teased on family history of the less reputable type?

IX

37:26 If you ask me, the Devil will not by himself retain that much power over them.

He'll try to take some back with Abaddon and Antichrist, but he is losing the powers he had.

Why?

New blog on the kid : Fatima in Portugal was 102 years ago
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2019/10/fatima-in-portugal-was-102-years-ago.html

X

40:20 Why would someone want to go to a school of witchcraft?

Two possibilities?

• 1) To learn witchcraft.
• 2) Or because they are basically taught witchcraft (abortion, contraception, psychiatry, psychology) anyway in most "normal" schools.

Part of the attraction may be less (to many school age readers) the witchcraft as such and more the satire it provides on ordinary modern school life and boarding school life, which many young people are exposed to unvoluntarily and without the fun. These may have been the readers Rowling herself had in mind.

Abortion, contraception, psychiatric medication = potion mixing, potion lore.
Psychiatry, psychology, the kind of forecasts by which abortion and contraception are recommended = divination.

XI

41:21 Unmet needs - some of them come with certain sacraments, like marriage.

You know, today's society are holding young adults unproductive, infertile and celibate longer than they would naturally need to, and both higher legal marriage ages and longer school compulsion (legal and practical) are part of that.

Now HP does not only talk of witchcraft, it also talks of love and friendship in a setting were three people old enough to be in love are considered as too young to marry. Rowling is preaching what you preach : let friendship prime over love, as long as society bans marriage. Only, she is showing what it takes - her Ron Weasley has more humility over not just the Dumbledores but also the Harry Potters when it comes to not marrying Hermione.

In the end, he does marry her after all - but Rowling after publishing the book said it was a mistake.

As said, I have not read HP. I know such details from second hand sources.

Some of the things that are wrong with Hogwarts are also so wrong with today's society.

Here are three posts featuring what's wrong with these things - from a not purely Christian pov:

25 Things That Are Wrong With Harry Potter (That We All Choose To Ignore)
BY ZOOEY NORMAN – ON MAR 10, 2018 IN LISTS
https://www.thegamer.com/things-that-are-wrong-with-harry-potter-that-we-all-choose-to-ignore/

Things we realised about Harry Potter when we became older and wiser
https://www.wizardingworld.com/features/things-we-realised-about-harry-potter-when-we-became-older-and-wiser

20 Things Wrong With Hogwarts We All Choose To Ignore
BY JORDAN PHILLIPS – ON MAR 06, 2019 IN LISTS
https://screenrant.com/hogwarts-everything-wrong-trivia/

These reactions could have been just as much Rowling's intention as the clearly disclaimed one of getting young into witchcraft. I'm not saying this as publicity for HP, I'm saying it as a defense of the person of the writer.

And examplifying that "unmet needs" may be driving readers, because they are unmet in Hogwarts as much as in mundane life, just in a funnier way.

XII

42:25 [Galatians chapter 5] [19] Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, luxury, [20] Idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths, quarrels, dissensions, sects, [21] Envies, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like. Of the which I foretell you, as I have foretold to you, that they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God.

Note St. Paul is talking of sexual immorality first.

And yet, so far, this Christian rant on HP has not mentioned how Ron, Hermione and Harry relate.

If Rowling takes it easy, perhaps that is because modern Protestant Christians do take it easy ... "they'll marry later and make it up with God then" - but what if they don't?

Cassie may have made up all her faults with God, when, famously, she said yes. I'm not sure all in her "Church" are going to Heaven - and the young people shot were more numerous than just a few Christian perhaps martyrs, that day when Klebold shot others and himself. How many of them are in Hell?

And how many ... well, there are arguably literature for young giving even worse advice in unhappy love than Rowling does. A certain Clinton was furious back in 1994 or 1995 because a 12 year old girl could legally quit school to marry an old man. What are you doing to reverse those policies?

43:35 As you mentioned hatred - how many young in schools are in situations when hatred is, barring very extreme heights of grace, impossible to avoid?

How many are, for instance, bullied? And not just a short while, but year after year?

Perhaps some parents who don't want their offspring to read HP should take a good look into the books to find out what they are already exposed to without HP. I am already aware of that, I don't really need HP to tell me that.

Modern education systems are damning young children by millions. Young adults (sorry) by millions.

XIII

46:58 I think this is the second time but it could be third or more this video Bill Schnoebelen uses the word "addicted".

It's a word based in a psychiatric world view, which is kind of ... divination.

The girl who had read the whole series in 12 months may need something even gorier and more witchcrafty next twelve months, but she may also have been studying the love triangle of Ron, Hermione and Harry, or how they defend themselves against the bullying of Malfoy, and she may also have been studying narrative structure ... it is obvious she loves the books, but we need not assume it is the witchcraft as such she is in love with.

If she then says she wants to be a witch and it's obvious she's serious, that is another matter, but just the twelve readings, not necessarily, no.

The power of magicians, once you imagine having or being able to easily gain it, may be very addictive. So is the power of psychiatrists, including addictologists. To my mind, that is divination way beyond the dabbling level.

XIV

47:40 When I was in preparatory year of IB, unless it was already ninth grade, I was around a cabbalist who definitely was into kabbalah and using hypnosis for séances, perhaps including Ouija boards.

I don't say I participated, but he and his pals made fun of me for not participating.

I was an outcast for other things (like one of the fattest and worst cases of pimples) and became an outcast for that refusal too. HP at least shows clearly, boarding schools can be schools of wizardry. Again, not saying young should read it, saying you should read it again from the angle "what if this is a way too realistic lampoon on what the young are going through anyway?"

XV

50:00 I notice, the video is from 2019, but the show was from back when HP was just four books, not all seven.

That makes it between 8 July 2000 and 21 June 2003.

No, I don't have this from channeling, I used wikipedia. And, as obviously mentioned, also not into Potter geekdom (beyond details that now or then catch my eye, like a post "16 things that are so wrong in Harry Potter" which I didn't find again, but was by a young lady).

50:11 When it comes to the modern school system, I think there is other light needing to come on too.

51:06 It seems HP like Daniel portrays "Voldemort" (alias Assyrian) as one armed (and one eyed).

As you mentioned.

So, she provides some literacy, roundabout way.