Feminism and Neopaganism

Frequently mixed up with and within any given fan fiction work’s conception of “good” and “evil”¹ there is often a narrative about either the relationship between the sexes or religion going on as well. Sometimes this happens explicitly, the author uses the narrator’s voice to describe in a nominally objective way how the world works, at least within that fan fiction.² Other times it happens less explicitly, but still overtly, a character’s voice is used to instruct a child, or an ignorant adult (perhaps a non-magical parent) asking questions. This character may or may not be objectively correct, he or she may simply be usefully stating what a common opinion is – even if the character personally believes the stated view to be objectively factual. Still other times it is something more subtly crafted into the characters' interactions with each other. Into word choices that imply and suggest, but do not definitively tell us that something is going on.

When an author has characters complain that “the old holidays of Yule and ” have been suppressed and/or replaced by “muggle” or (more rarely) Christian holidays, the author is making a statement about religion in the magical world even if nothing else is ever said. There’s an implication that the old families, most of whom are pure-bloods, practice some form of Neopaganism. Except that the author is, generally, actually asserting that they practice paganism; failing to realize that it in fact has to be Neopaganism. The backstories for both Nearly Headless Nick and the Malfoy family demand that the magical world, prior to the Statute of Secrecy, must have been highly integrated with the non-magical world. That means at least nominally shared religious practices and beliefs that Hogwarts graduates would have been expected to be conversant with. Graduates not reasonably conversant with the Christianity of the 1400s or 1600s would not have been successful at integrating themselves in either as a courtier in the royal court (Malfoy), or even in the household of the lesser nobility (Nearly Headless Nick). Nor is the fact that Sir Nicholas was in fact executed a counter argument. He was executed not because he was magical, but because he used magic poorly and (arguably) with poor judgement.

So if the common practice of the older families is, at the time of the books, a form of paganism, then it is a return to some belief structure based on their understanding of Celtic practice. They may not have come to the same form of neopaganism that the non-magical world would, but this reconstruction of a religion that was entirely and successfully eradicated centuries earlier, such that it is difficult to find scholarly sources about actual historical Celts (at least as a non-scholar), is the very essence of the “neo” in “neopaganism”.

Many of the works that do this include the idea that embracing the neopagan belief structure will empower the hero (usually Harry). The neopagan religion will either grant the practitioner extra power(s) or provides access to hidden lore that is (inevitably) far more powerful than modern magic, despite having been lost and abandoned for \.

Frequently works that introduce some form of neopaganism also introduce, either intentionally or unintentionally, an element of feminism. By this I do not mean the type of fully justified feminism that any right minded person supports, demanding equal rights to own property, gain employment, support themselves and any family dependant on them, and so on (equality in other words). I mean the type of feminism that asserts that women, and femininity, are necessarily better than men and masculinity. That men and/or masculinity are responsible for all that is wrong in society, and women and/or femininity responsible for creating and preserving all that is good. The less virulent version of this is only subtly different, asserting that women are necessarily smarter than men, (with a few exceptions that are exceptions) both in emotional intelligence and in the types measured by the standard “IQ” test.

Some works do this by associating magic and the neopaganism of their fan fiction universe as coming from and ruled by a goddess. There is often, but not always, an implication that the men of the magical world are less willing to acknowledge this reality, and that many of society’s ills are because the goddess has in turn abandoned or even been injured by (not just emotionally but in essence/ability to act and despite the fact that this contradicts the true definition of what it is to be divine) the failure to properly worship.

Some works do this by creating a distinction between “witchcraft” and “wizardry.” The former is “women’s magic” and the latter – despite the fact that both men and women can somehow learn it – “men’s magic.” Many of these works end up being at least partly contradictory even beyond the fact that women use “wizardry.” They end up needing at least one male character to learn something from one of the girls, which means the guys can in fact use “women’s magic.” Which means there are not, in fact, any sex based distinctions to magic at all, just societal conventions, and we end up with some version of a “good” and “evil” debate where inevitably there are two different (the male dominated ministry has one and the oppressed girls secretly have another) definitions of “good” and “evil” – and the guys are inevitably wrong bringing us full circle back to the women are simply inherently better thesis.

I find all of this triggering, to different degrees depending on how blatantly it is present in a given work. I will not necessarily abandon stories just because they have a strong neopagan component, because they have a strong feminist component, or even both. But I find I am far more critical reading these stories. I am more easily annoyed if they are inconsistent to themselves. I am less tolerant of poor editing (spelling, obvious homophones and homonyms, and the like). I will get tired of the work and start looking for a different one more frequently, and if I do come back to it, I am less likely to restart it.

To be fair, Mrs. Rowling tells us that as the Statute of Secrecy was passed, magical society did in fact do a fair amount of historical revisionism.³ It is entirely believable that, as part of this reinvention of self, some families did resurrect a reconstructed version of Celtic practices. My criticism here is that this sort of reconstruction does not appear to be what authors envision, they appear to strongly believe that a version of paganism persisted across the clearly very integrated period of magical and non-magical history.