Three different views on Harry Potter
Sympathy for the Devil
(excerpt)
By James Harrison
Ukiah Daily Journal 10 December 2001
Peter H. Gilmore is a soft-spoken New York Web designer. He is also the head or high priest of the Church of Satan, having inherited that title after the church’s founder, Anton S. LeVay(sic), died in 1997.
Gilmore hasn’t seen the Potter movie except for brief clips, but has read several chapters from the written saga aloud to children of church members. The books, he says, “are imaginative children’s literature. The way I see their use of magic and witchcraft is a metaphor for more mundane and real talents. Essentially they are written to sell to people. If you wrote a book about a child with musical ability going to a music conservatory, I don’t think you’d have the kind of phenomenon you would have if you chose to use fantasy elements in your literature.”
“I think it is very clear,” he concludes, “that the magic is treated as fantasy. The material in no way tries to present this as something that really exists.” Despite what the name of his church implies, according to Gilmore, its members don’t actually believe in an evil deity-or any deity at all, for that matter. Those who do, he says, are devil-worshippers-not Satanists.
“Devil worshippers,” he elaborates, “are Christian heretics. They believe in God and the Devil and opt to worship what is defined by that myth system as ‘evil.’ Satanists reject the existence of God, the Devil, angels, demons and all supernatural entities. Satan in Hebrew means adversary and we are the adversaries of all spiritual religions.”
Satanic philosophy, says Gilmore, makes man his own god. “We don’t believe that we are actually deities, but by being your own god you are the center of your own universe. There is no Satan. Satan is a symbol of the metaphor of the unfettered, carnal man.”
If that’s the case, why not do away with the term “Satan” altogether?
Because, says Gilmore, “In Western history, Satan symbolizes the rebel, the loner, the outsider and thus he is a symbol for we who like to see ourselves as independent individuals. Satan does not have a negative connotation for us.”
If Satanists have a core belief, he adds, it is that man is an animal, “like all the rest, and he lives only once, there is no afterlife-and he must take complete responsibility for his success and failures.”
Believing that man is just another animal, says Gilmore, “leads us to respect all kinds of animals.” Teaching children that respect, he adds, “takes them away from the contempt for animals that many spiritual religions have.”
Not surprisingly, Gilmore has nothing but scorn for those who believe a movie like “Harry Potter” might sway someone from their current faith. “If they really feel that their members are so trusting of Christ as their savior, why would they be so afraid of a Hollywood fantasy? Do they really think that people can be so easily brain-washed? If the answer is yes,” he concludes, “then they have a lot of contempt for their followers.”
