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August 18, 2005
Hogwarts as a Guide to Living
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.—Henry David Thoreau, Walden, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For"
It has been about fifteen years since a young single mother took a train ride from Manchester to London, during which a story of exploration, self-discovery, and magic was born to her consciousness. It has been eight years since the first published installment of this story appeared, with no powerful advertising or marketing machinery to move it before the world. Today, that struggling Mom of a decade ago stands on the greatest stage in the history of letters, this side of the Bible. How did this happen, and what are we to learn from it? How has a children's story—a mere fantasy tale of a boy wizard attending a school for sorcery—captured the readers of virtually every nation and culture on the planet, and made its author the first billionaire writer in history?
One answer, offered in The Tao of Hogwarts, is that the Harry Potter stories are neither exclusively children's tales, nor are they fantasy. Rather, they are the metaphorical embodiments of what Thoreau encouraged us to see as "fabulous reality." Mrs. Rowling herself has stated that her original vision of the Potter stories did not focus on them as children's tales, and polls of readers have established that at least 40% of people who purchased and read the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, are above the age of 18.
My own experience, which led to the creation of The Tao of Hogwarts, has served to confirm these statistical indications; it has also revealed how the Potter stories and their metaphorical landscape actually surpass the realm of simple fantasy. It all began as many creative projects do—by mere coincidence. I keep a somewhat sporadic and generally slender practice as a counseling psychotherapist based in Brooklyn, NY; and in the summer of 2003, I was attending a conference for psychotherapists and counselors at the I Ching Institute in Stow, MA. There, I heard a number of practitioners talking about how their clients were speaking in "Hogwarts language," of both their distress and personal healing. It was odd to hear one therapist talk of how a woman had made her first steps in overcoming agoraphobia through imagining herself in an "invisibility cloak," or how another client had referred to her depressive states as "dementors"; but when I later began to hear from my own clients in the same vein, I began to take notice. I also began to take notes. Ten months later, The Tao of Hogwarts was largely complete in draft.
But though this book may have been conceived amid somewhat clinical discussions, it evolved into a work of broad psycho-spiritual insight and guidance, which draws upon the Potter metaphors to inspire each reader toward his and her personal encounter with the inner teachings suggested by the allegory of the Hogwarts journey. In working with the Harry Potter material, I discovered messages and meaning that I had heard before in the great works of Eastern philosophy, from the I Ching to Shunryu Suzuki. I also found that Rowling's metaphor often evoked Western wisdom, from sources as disparate as Kierkegaard, C.G. Jung, Robert Bly, Plato, and Shakespeare. The idea behind it all is to draw upon the vast popularity of the Potter tales in teaching lessons of psycho-spiritual life that will help people to heal, to grow, and to feel fresh meaning in their lives and relationships, through the transformative experience of inner growth that is "the way of natural magic."
The Tao of Hogwarts is offered to both Harry Potter "fans" and people searching for a simple and familiar approach to psycho-spiritual exploration (I have found that there is considerable overlapping between these interests). It is intended to inspire each reader's unique inner experience, through a practical interpretive approach to Rowling's novels. It may also serve the incidental purpose of helping to reveal the deep inner dynamic behind the universal appeal and unprecedented popularity of the Potter stories. In an era of accumulation, competition, and the struggle for existence that is so often trapped within the realm of appearances and purely material progress, the Harry Potter stories evoke a natural wisdom of revealing inner resources that connect each of us to our Cosmic Source and to one another, through the practice of what Lao Tzu referred to as "the way of inner disburdenment." When we release from within ourselves the residue of institutional ideologies personified in the figure of Lord Voldemort, we unleash the magical force of cosmic attraction, the deep and enduring connection described by Professor Dumbledore at the end of Sorcerer's Stone:
If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love...to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin. (p. 299).
Posted by dumbledore at August 18, 2005 06:32 PM