I am a former Harry Potter fan. I got into it a bit later than most, as an early adult rather than as a child, but I was in it pretty deep... hell, for a while I had my (alleged) Hogwarts House in my email address. Like... my professional one, the one I used to send resumes to places. And I self-identified as a fucking Slytherin. Embarrassing!
I'm also a trans man, and over the years I've grown to really resent Harry Potter a lot. At this point, you're probably expecting me to lecture you about how cis people who keep engaging with Harry Potter fandom are horrible and you cannot consider yourself an "ally" if you have any sentimental feelings for the series at all, and... well, I'm not here to do that. Sure, I am really disappointed when people continue to put money into the franchise, but I actually made a really solid effort to try doing the "Harry Potter fan without continuing to support the franchise financially" thing myself, and the reality here is that I have yet to find any large group of trans people that isn't full of people who refuse to get over Harry Potter, even though most of them honestly should know better by now. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a group of queer people and somebody initiates a conversation about this stupid series, starting off with "I don't support J.K. Rowling, BUT..." I fucking hate this shit, but I'm not going to hold cis people to a standard so many trans people also fail miserably at.
So yeah... it's true that I don't believe people should support Harry Potter at all, on the basis that by now we all should know that J.K. Rowling is transphobic and her books are full of racist, anti-Semitic, and otherwise bigoted messages. But that's not what we're going to talk about, today. We're here today to talk about why as Witches we need to suck it up and get over our collective Hogwarts addiction.
Because Harry Potter is not Pagan-affirming, pro-Witchcraft series people seem to think it is.
Years ago, during an interview, the subject of religion came up, and Rowling explained that she viewed Hogwarts as a multi-cultural, multi-religious institution, where all religious traditions were represented... except one.
The religion J.K. Rowling felt the need to specifically point out is not represented at Hogwarts? Wicca. You can read about this in the Independent article Harry Potter author JK Rowling says Wiccans 'cannot co-exist' with witches and wizards at Hogwarts.
The way she rationalizes this is by saying, "It's a different concept of magic to the one laid out in the books, so I don't really see how they can co-exist." What I got from this is that, because in the wizarding world people are accustomed to just waving a wand and zapping things into existence, they would not see the utility in doing the kind of magic that Wiccans do.
Now, this doesn't make sense if you think it through even a little bit. First off, whatever your opinion about Wicca in particular is, it is a whole religion, with a cosmology and clergy and celebrations and Gods and Goddesses, it is not just about practicing Witchcraft. Second, even if it were, it is far from the only religion that makes use of magic. In addition to the many Pagan religions that use it, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all have folk magical traditions within them that are relatively similar to the kinds of magic used in Wicca, and all of these religions are canonically represented at Hogwarts. That said, if you have a society where people can wave a wand and poof things into existence, why would they practice any religion? Why would anyone pray for anything in that environment? Finally, it's canonical that witches and wizards in the Harry Potter universe can't even use magic to get their basic needs met--like food or money--because J.K. Rowling needed poor people to exist for the plot to happen. Why would they not use more typical Wiccan spells for those things the fictional Harry Potter magical system doesn't allow you to do? There just isn't any really good practical reason why Wicca would not be represented at Hogwarts when all other faiths from Christianity to Hinduism are.
So this begs the question: Why did she even fucking say anything? J.K. Rowling has a long history of just pulling random "fun facts" about Hogwarts straight out of her butt when confronted about things, like making up random "diverse" witches and wizards when criticized, but this was essentially an unprompted dig at a tiny minority religion that tends to have a specific love for her series. Why just randomly decide to alienate a bunch of your fans like that?
Of course, there is always a chance that she just doesn't know how to shut the fuck up and didn't mean anything deep by it, but I also strongly suspect that there's another level here... I don't think J.K. Rowling likes how much her work resonates with Wiccans and other Pagan Witches. Despite her indication that Hogwarts is religiously diverse, Rowling herself is a Christian, and her books have a lot of Christian influence in them. This isn't inherently bad by any means, but keep in mind that the Harry Potter series has long been a target of ire for fundamentalist Christians who argued it would encourage children to practice real Witchcraft, so I would imagine that the fact that so many real Witches do identify with Harry Potter at the very least annoys the hell out of her. So she throws in this little "fun fact" about Wicca, probably just to vent her frustration, but potentially hoping this statement would get Wiccans to, I don't know, cool it a bit.
But even if I'm wrong about her motivations here (and believe me, I'm not claiming that part with 100% certainty), the fact still stands that this woman went on record claiming that there are no Wiccans at Hogwarts, using an explanation that implies she believes Wicca is a bunch of silly people playing make-believe, as if the same could not be said for any other religion. Hogwarts is canonically devoid of Wiccans, and this whole thing just flew under the radar of most Wiccans. Nobody ever seems to remember that this happened except for me, which is honestly super frustrating.
Finally, I know some of you may be thinking, "But Wolfpeach, I'm not a Wiccan, I practice [insert Witchcraft here], so she clearly wasn't talking about me!" Listen, I get it: I'm not a Wiccan either, and I find the centering of Wicca in Pagan community affairs to be wildly frustrating, but it's important to recognize that when non-Witches talk about "Wicca," they are very often talking about all of us. This is a perfect example of that, because Rowling may have used the word "Wicca" here, but nothing about what she said is actually unique to Wicca at all, it definitely applies to the rest of us.
I'm going to leave you with this food of thought for a conclusion: Why continue to patronize a franchise started by somebody who talks about your religion and those like it the way J.K. Rowling does? You should consider, frankly, just letting it go, but if you can't... can you at least consider leaving the merch at home?
Happy Trails,
Wolfpeach