I’ve begun to wonder if J.K. Rowling became extremely interested in Christianity sometime between her 5th and 7th book. I was skimming through the Book of Revelations two days ago, and I noticed something interesting.

The Son of Man appears to John and says “I died, and behold I am alive for evermore; and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Rev 2:18 ). Harry gets blasted down with a Killing Curse, but he returns from death. He also holds the Deathly Hallows, which are “keys of Death.”

Voldemort takes control of England, and all the leaders fall down at his feet, which sounds and awful lot like “the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives for ever and ever” (Rev 4:10).

Voldemort creates six Horcruxes turn Harry into something like one. These seven things bind Voldemort to land of the living, so that he might live for ever and ever. The nicely mirrors “The seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth,” and a Lamb in inhabited by these (Rev 5:6).

Only this Lamb can break the seven seals. Lambs are a traditional sacrifice, this is were the line “lamb to a slaughter” comes from. Dumbledore utilized a multitude of manipulations to convince Harry Potter sacrifise himself before Voldemort like a lamb to the slaughter.

This made me wonder how well the destruction of the Horcruxes matches up to the breaking of the seven seals.

Do any of ya’ll seen any line up between the events of HP and Revelations 6?

 

Most likely she was always interested in that kind of theme because there was a horcrux in CoS (Riddle's diary).

Yes there does seem to be a criss crossing between the two books, like JKR's interpretation of an aspect of the Book of Revelations.


It could just be a coincidence - don't forget the similarities between Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter as well. Somebody once told me that there are only several original raw plots and every book is an elaboration on each plot.

In short, it is possible that JKR could have taken themes from other books such as the Book of Revelations.

The seven seals/seven horcruxes could hold some truth though...

Maybe somebody should ask JKR if she has read the Book of Revelations instead of how many bedrooms her house has.

Sorry I've kind of gone a bit off-topic here...

 

As quoted from the "The Telegraph":

Now I don't know if she specifically meant to reference the Book of Revelations, but your argument is pretty convincing.

I don't know if this is what you're talking about, but there is a book by Joseph Campbell called The Hero with 1,000 Faces that sort of deals with this idea. It argues that there are certain elements present in every heroic epic from the ancient Greek myths to the present. It's not always a concsious recycling of ideas on the author's part (though, in the case of Star Wars it was), but he argues that it's just a part of human nature (he was big into Freudian psychology). It's really kind of cool: You don't have to work to compare books like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings to it. They really fit into it well.

Sorry if I messed up the quotes. This is my first real post here.

 

JKR refers to many aspects of our history and legends, for example mythological beasts and names, the magic of certain numbers etc.
Christianity is a very big part of the foundation of our culture and our history and so it's not very surprising that you can find all sorts of parallels.

You would find the same if you would compare Harry Potter to Greek Mythology, e.g. Homer, to local legends or even to Marvel comics.
Everything in our culture is influenced by the same motifs, so there are always parallels.

 

Grab the Book of Revs off the shelf and flip through it. It's completely full of this sort of thing, a quarter metaphorical, a quarter symbolic, a quarter literal, and the last quarter made up of twisted hybrids of the first three. I'm not saying there's no deliberate link on JKR's part, I'm just saying it could all be coincidence.

I suppose you could also make an argument that the Dark Mark is the Mark of the Beast, and Voldemort's reign is the Tribulation, and his fall just might be Rapture... but this stuff's addictive. Before you know it, Harry's St Paul, Tonks is Mary Magdalene, Neville is the Archangel Gabriel and you gave up giving new titles to Lily three chapters back.

 

You can find similarities between every story. Sadly familiarity sells and I can't see that changing for quite some time.
It's the same with films: there are something like nine actual plots with a few rare exceptions and just variations of these plots are produced.
Does anyone else find it ironic that there are themes of religion in HP?

 

Not really. The Bible, the Koran, and whatever the heck Confucius ended up saying can be interpreted so many different ways because there is such a large volume of literature present.

A work the size of Harry Potter series will end up paralleling something just because the sheer size of it. This one just happened to end up close to your particular interpretation of the book of revelations. I'm sure if I looked hard enough, I could probably find someway to connect HP to Buddha.

Since I've never read the book of revelations, I honestly cannot judge your argument.

That being said, it is just a story. Take from it what you will.

 

Harry Potter is LONG. The New testament is LONG. Of course there will be some links, they run out of what to write about. Also, Harry is like a mini-Jesus [came back to life, can make water to wine, probably there is some charm to walk on water...], so maybe there's something to it.

 

What I found ironic is the inclusion of Veela into a religion-oriented series.

Essentially, you have irresistable whores corrupting all the young children.

This sounds a bit outta whack with the whole religion thing.

Veela in a way represent the decay of morals and ethics, whilst the entire story revolves around morals and ethics.

They represent free sex, lack of inhibitions...everything primal in a human.

Harry's morals wouldn't let him abandon the shitty isle in which he ahd been lambasted by the British Wizarding Society.

Harry's ethics wouldn't let him summon someone else to take a Killing Curse.

I mean, essentially with the whole prophecy, Harry is worth more than other people. If he dies, world goes bye-bye. If he lives by having someone intercept the killing curse, world goes Hi-Hi.