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"Harry Potter as a Sacred Text" podcast series and site
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Mod
This project is more than a book club or a fan-podcast. By treating Harry Potter as sacred, we mean three things:
Trusting the text: We practice the belief that the text is not “just entertainment”, but if taken seriously, can give us generous rewards. Trusting the text doesn’t mean we understand the text to be perfect - either in construction on moral teaching - but that it is worthy of our attention and contemplation. A guiding principle is that the more time we give to the text the more blessings it has to give us.
Rigor and ritual: By reading the text slowly, repeatedly and with concentrated attention, our effort becomes a key part of what makes the book sacred. The text in and of itself is not sacred, but is made so through our rigorous engagement. Particularly by rigorously engaging in ritual reading, we believe we can glean wisdom from its pages.
Reading it in community: Scholars of religion explain that what makes a text sacred is not the text itself, but the community of readers that proclaim it as such. The same applies for us. We started reading Harry Potter in community in Cambridge, Massachusetts in September 2015 and are excited to be expanding that community through this podcast!
Mod
"A friend in my writers group liked this very much. She hadn't been brought up in a religion so the practice of reading a text in this way was new to her and she reported that it gave her a much clearer understanding of how and why religions use their holy books."
1. Has anybody else listened to them? Would folks like to discuss them here?
2. Does anyone know of similar dedicated podcast series for other books?
I'd appreciate it if people don't react to the mere idea of "Harry Potter as a sacred text" but rather only specifically to whatever it is that the people at that site are doing. Which would require first stating what it is that those people are doing. (Probably I worry too much.)