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To: VeritatisSplendor
"Dark magic" is magic which is generally used for evil... Good wizards must learn the same principles and techniques when studying "Defense against the Dark Arts", but do so from a morally correct orientation.

Based on his decades of experience dealing with demonic influence and possession on a daily basis, Fr. Gabriel Amorth opts to disagree with your position:

"He noted that the books attempt to make a false distinction between black and white magic, when in fact, the distinction "does not exist, because magic is always a turn to the devil."
Do you have some comparable experience upon which you base your opinion?
40 posted on 02/04/2003 1:06:04 PM PST by Maximilian
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To: Maximilian
I wrote:

"Dark magic" is magic which is generally used for evil... Good wizards must learn the same principles and techniques when studying "Defense against the Dark Arts", but do so from a morally correct orientation.

You wrote:

Based on his decades of experience dealing with demonic influence and possession on a daily basis, Fr. Gabriel Amorth opts to disagree with your position:

"He noted that the books attempt to make a false distinction between black and white magic, when in fact, the distinction "does not exist, because magic is always a turn to the devil."

Do you have some comparable experience upon which you base your opinion?

I respond:

Father Amorth clearly makes the mistake my previous reply describes. He says "Magic is always a turn to the devil". Here he is importing into the literary fantasy world an assumption based on his work in the real world. He doesn't seem to be able to conceive of a universe in which magic can be an impersonal technology.

Now I will admit that J.K. Rowling probably believes that in the REAL world, magic works NEITHER as an impersonal technology NOR as the invocation of supernatural spirits. If you believe that it is possible to magically invoke supernatural spirits, then you might be more careful about treating "magic" sympathetically; but the magic they teach at Hogwarts in the Potter books is always of the impersonal technological kind -- no supernatural beings are summoned, and the spells follow quasi-scientific laws and constraints.

Do I think that it is possible that someone who reads the Potter books might become a Satanist? Not if they ONLY read the Potter books. Of course it is possible to read OTHER, dangerous books about something going by the name of "magic" which involves invocation-of-supernatural-spirits, but that is not what Rowling writes and she shouldn't be blamed. Her books have a normal moral orientation, and magic in them is just a tool that can be used for good or evil, as it is in Tolkien's books (Gandalf was a good wizard, Saruman was a bad one) and C.S. Lewis's Narnia books (Coriakin was a good wizard, Andrew Ketterley was a bad one).

In your opinion, are Tolken's and Lewis's books also immoral because they do not treat all magic as inherently evil?

74 posted on 02/05/2003 7:34:48 AM PST by VeritatisSplendor
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