Material Religion

The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief

ISSN: 1743-2200 (Print) 1751-8342 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfmr20

Harry Potter, Magic, and Mirrors

Sophie Page

To cite this article: Sophie Page (2020): Harry�Potter,�Magic,�and�Mirrors, Material Religion, DOI:
10.1080/17432200.2020.1756647

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2020.1756647

Published online: 09 Jun 2020.

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outlook
 harry potter, magic, and because it is fun to do so (Figure 1). Alongside
mundane physical anxieties, fantasy and imagina-
mirrors tion have always been part of magic’s appeal;
medieval manuscripts record experiments to turn
review of: invisible, acquire a flying horse or talk to animals,
harry potter: a history of magic (british library, but also remedies for baldness and methods to
october 2017–february 2018) keep away mice.
spellbound: magic, ritual and witchcraft All four exhibitions play on a childish sense of
(ashmolean museum, august 2018–january 2019) wonder, but how does a modern belief or disbelief
in magic affect how we look at historical magical
smoke and mirrors: the psychology of magic objects? One answer is that we ‘think magically’
(wellcome library april 2019–september 2019) whenever we believe that our thoughts and wishes
staging magic: the story behind the illusion might influence the world around us, or that one
(senate house library jan–june 2019) event happens as the result of another with no
plausible link of causation. In Spellbound: Magic,
In recent years England has seen four separate Ritual and Witchcraft (of which I was co-curator) we
exhibitions – three in London, one in Oxford – began the exhibition with questions intended to
about magic, with intriguing similarities and some provoke visitors to reflect on their own magical
startling differences. This bounty reflects magic’s thinking: Do you have a lucky object? Do you
appeal in both mainstream and alternative cultures. believe in mysterious forces? Can an object bind
Over two decades J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series love? Do little rituals stop you feeling anxious?
has popularized magic and encouraged children to Could you stab the image of a loved one? Do you
love reading, books, and films on magic have worry about tempting fate? Most people have
appealed to our eagerness to retain and revisit the thought magically at some time, but in ways
wonder and uninhibited imaginations of childhood. influenced by culture, education and personal
Practitioners of Wicca, neo-paganism, folk horror, experience. Visitors to the exhibition might find it
and mindfulness are attracted to magic’s mysteries hard to identify with demon conjurors, people who
and deceptions, its detachment from mainstream were anxious about witches, or monks using magic
science, politics, and religion and its potential for to speak to angels, but they often recognize the
artful play. Magic is used for lightly transgressive emotions behind the creation of magical objects:
acts, as it has been in all periods, from the medieval fear, love, longing, anger.
cleric trying out magical techniques to have a vision A significant challenge for any curator of an
of God, to the early twentieth-century Methodist exhibition about magic is how to identify and
minister Rev. Ted V. Voorhees using conjuring tricks display magical objects that appear ordinary or
to draw younger audiences to his church, or the unimpressive. Until recently, for example, objects
witches hexing Donald Trump in 2017. ritually concealed in homes to protect against fire,
Harry Potter: A History of Magic marked the vermin, and witches – withered bull’s hearts pierced
twentieth anniversary of the publication of Harry with nails, candlesticks, horse skulls, and children’s
Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and was the shoes – were often discarded as rubbish by both
British Library’s most successful exhibition ever. J. K. homeowners and archeologists. Now they and
Rowling’s drafts and drawings were displayed other tools of ephemeral, illicit and secretive rituals
alongside a rich selection of the Library’s occult are more likely to be identified, recorded and
materials: ancient Chinese oracle bones, medieval analysed (see for example https://theconcealedre-
herbals, horoscopes, magical handbooks. The vealed.wordpress.com/; https://www.concealedgar-
exhibition was structured around the Hogwarts ments.org), and this makes possible such exhibi-
2
curriculum, with a beguiling design in which tions about real ritual practices. The designers of
cauldrons swung from ceilings and shadow Spellbound used striking visual settings, modern
creatures flickered across the walls. It avoided recreations of objects (like a witches’ weighing
unpleasant historical truths like the persecutions of scale) and recordings of trials and magic experi-
witches; instead, modern magical objects (many ments to evoke the lost emotional, ritual, and
from the Boscastle Museum of Witchcraft) cosmological contexts in which magical texts and
encouraged visitors to enter the fantasy of magic: objects were created. Sometimes the accompany-
to respond emotionally to something extraordinary ing label is enough by itself: a small silvered glass
flask from the nineteenth-century was displayed
with its original label that quoted the woman who
Material Religion volume 00, issue 0, pp. 1–4 once owned it: ‘They do say there be a witch in it,
and if you let un out there’ll be a peck o’ trouble’
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group (Figure 2). Spellbound also included texts and
 FIG 3
Smoke and Mirrors: Box of Tricks, 1843. British Magic
Museum (photo: Wellcome Collection.).

hunts from the fourteenth- to eighteenth-centuries

(or about 10,000 people) were men, which
complicates contemporary eagerness to harness
the witchcraft persecutions to a feminist agenda.
Illusionist or performance magic is a form of
entertainment depending on the tension between
a performer creating an impossible or otherworld-
ly effect and an audience who delight in their
ignorance of how it is created. Recent exhibitions

Outlook
at the Wellcome and the Senate House Library,
both drawing on the extraordinary magical library
FIG 1 of the psychical researcher Harry Price, brought
Harry Potter: Unicorn head pharmacy sign, part of the together posters, objects, films and books from
Wellcome Collection, cared for by the Science Museum the post-1500 history of performance magic.
Group (photo: Science Museum Group.). Staging Magic revealed a publishing history
moving from revelations of the secrets of
large-scale stage magic to tricks that could be
performed at home and in other, sometimes
surprising, contexts. Tricks for the Trenches and

Volume 00
Wards was written for convalescing troops in the

Issue 0
first world war and features on its cover a soldier
with a wand rather than a weapon, while The
Conjuror in Church (1928) explains how to use
conjuring tricks to dramatize sermons. Smoke and
Mirrors exhibited the tools of both magicians and
mediums: spirit trumpets and bells from the
floating world of séances (so-called because they
were mysteriously suspended in the air) and a
wonderful set of ghost hunting and magic kits
3 FIG 2
from the nineteenth-century to the present
Spellbound: Witch in a bottle (photo: Pitt Rivers
Museum.). (Figure 3). These exhibitions on illusionist magic
were best combined with the accompanying
magic performances to experience at first hand
images that reflected historical condemnations. The the delight and cleverness of magical deception.
occult is currently fashionable and this drives large The relationship between ritual magic and
visitor numbers, but serious exhibitions cannot illusionist magic has always been close, playful and
reveal what many visitors want – a representation combative. Nineteenth-century stage illusionists
Material Religion

of a hidden but continuous tradition of women drew on the fantasy, exoticism, and mythologies of
practising white magic – since this does not exist in magic to give their performances drama and
the historical record. Similarly, nuanced and spectacle, but often used their skills in the art of
research-based history of the witchcraft persecu- deception to expose fraudulent practitioners of
tions will note that a fifth of the victims of witch magic, spiritualism and superstition. Much of the
 focus of Smoke and Mirrors is on the potential for daily delights of the Harry Potter exhibition was to
performance magic to reveal how the mind works, see the long lines of primary school children waiting
and how our reasoning and memory, not just our to enter in dedicated schools-only slots, undertak-
senses, are manipulated by the performer. Although ing a visual journey among the strange, curious and
the moral and academic benefits of the application beguiling objects and images that also drew them
of science to magic to learn more about how the further into the world of books.
mind works and how it is deceived are persuasive,
we should not lose sight of the idea of magic as sophie page
artful play. In younger audiences, its mysteries and history, university college london, london, uk
deceptions – when enabled by a willing suspension sophie.page@ucl.ac.uk
of disbelief – stimulate the imagination. One of the DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2020.1756647