Last week, I wrote about the heart of Harry Potter, about the story’s concern with two ways of conquering death, represented by the conflict between the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters. This week, we confront an essential follow-up point. If using magic to conquer death violates the deep nature of the cosmos, if love—and it’s twin, beauty—are the deeper realities that save us—then it can be tempting to reject magical technology altogether. Perhaps a focus on love frees us to forgo all forms of magic, to focus solely on love.
Think of it this way: Magic can lead to a fate worse than death. Magic is, therefore, profoundly dangerous. Better to avoid it entirely.
This will not do. Not as a reading of Harry Potter, nor as a solution to the corresponding conundrum presented us in the modern world by our own forms of magic. Harry Potter asks us to wrestle with what magic is meant for, with its limits and boundaries, with where we are to draw the line. And correspondingly, Harry Potter asks us to wrestle with what we can use magic to accomplish.
Magic and the Moral
There are, in the Potterverse, uses of magic that are natively immoral. What I mean is that there are uses of magic that are aimed toward ends which are themselves immoral. In general, these are uses of magic to transfer human power or spirit from their natural homes to an unnatural location. This includes, of course, horcruxes. But also the creation of Inferi and the use of the Imperius Curse. Each of these represents a violation of the limits of human finitude and particularity.
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