The Old Magic

Like him or loathe him, I've started to read the Harry Potter stories. So far I've got through the first four, since starting them in July - but don't worry, it hasn't taken me that long - I read one, then wait til I have read about ten or so books before getting into the next one. Although I left it a bit longer for the fourth...

So anyway, I started it at the airport on Monday morning, very early. In fact, so early that the security screening hadn't even opened. And I finished it last night on the plane, just after we eventually took off.

But what I want to write about is the lingering notion of the substitutionary sacrifice. I can't find the exact page now, mores the pity, but when He Who Must Not Be Named (Voldemort to you and me, cos I'm not afeared of him) rises, he takes blood from Harry, his enemy to help him rise. Harry's blood is seen to be powerful, because he had been able to defeat Voldemort as a baby - due to the sacrifice of his mother. Voldemort had tried to kill Harry, but his mother gave herself in his place, and Harry survived. The power is said to lie in 'the old magic' (or is it the 'older magic'?).

When I read that, I thought of the 'Deeper Magic' in Narnia, when Aslan dies in place of the traitor. The Deep Magic which the witch appeals to demands the blood of the traitor. But Aslan's Deeper Magic allows the traitor to go free when one who has committed no guile dies in their stead. And Aslan rises to a new life.

Amazing that tales of fiction depend on the notion of sacrifice and substitution which remind us of the sacrifice of Jesus, who took our sins upon him, and died in our place - the 'Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me' (Galatians 2:20).