Discover the myths, legends and customs that served as inspiration for the ‘Harry Potter’ saga
Mix beliefs from the Middle Ages and the Modern Age, add mythologies from Antiquity and season with good pinches of invention: this is the recipe for Harry Potter’s resounding success.
Harry Potter is the most famous wizard in the world, right? Not exactly. His main characteristics, in fact, have more to do with those of the wizards of the Middle Ages, who held a prominent place alongside kings and queens (and have nothing to do with witches who fly on broomsticks).
Like the character created by the Englishwoman J.K. Rowling, medieval magicians also had great knowledge about supposed charms and sorcery. The difference is that young Harry’s magic works for real — not only in fiction, but in the literary and cinematographic market. The first five volumes created by the writer sold 250 million copies worldwide, 2 million in Brazil alone, and were translated into 62 languages.
Fans waited anxiously for seven books to see the final clash between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort. During the saga, Harry used the skills he learned at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This fictitious institution, in fact, gives us the first clues that J.K. Rowling he was inspired by historical facts to compose the settings, characters and situations of his plots.
The ancient Hogwarts teaches its students the secrets of alchemy, astrology and Kabbalah, as well as the arts of divination and spells and potions. Exactly as it happened in Toledo, a Spanish city that was the Moorish capital in Europe and became a center where magicians learned the so-called occult sciences and searched for the philosopher’s stone, which would transform any metal into gold and produce the elixir of life.
One of his most illustrious students was the Swiss Paracelsuswho lived between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th. He claimed to have learned a lot from witches and, because he created medicines and healing therapies, he is considered one of the founders of modern chemistry and medicine.
Paracelsus is an example of how, despite not performing magic, magicians had great cultural and social relevance, including taking care of people’s health. “The magicians were erudite, they studied to try to intervene in the forces of nature through secrets and occult practices”, says the historian Carlos Roberto Figueiredo Nogueiraprofessor at the University of São Paulo and author of Witchcraft and History: Magical Practices in the Christian West.
In addition to the wizards, linked to the nobility, there were also sorceresses. Important personalities in Middle Age communities were women who knew herbs, made potions, cast spells and spread superstitions.
Witches emerged later, in the Modern Age: they were women considered participants in a sect that had a pact with the devil.
“Witches represented evil and were persecuted and burned at the stake, where the sorceresses also ended up. Not the wizards, they continued to be respected”, says Nogueira.
Admirer of books J.K. Rowlingthe teacher Walnut points out that, although the writer did a lot of research, she often went to the wrong sources. “Harry is a young wizard, but he uses the witches’ broom and learns potions from sorceresses. The author made a collage of elements from the magical universe, but used things from esotericism that emerged at the end of the 19th century, when a lot of fantasy about the origins appeared of witchcraft.”
During the wizard’s adventures, J.K. Rowling mentions ancient legends, such as that of the alchemist Nicolau Flamel, who in the 14th century found the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of eternal life — in The Philosopher’s Stone he appears to be more than 600 years old.
Great personalities from the history of magic, in fact, are the subject of the sticker album that is a huge hit among Hogwarts students. Some true ones, like Paracelso and the Germanic Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (1486-1535) — doctor of the royal house of Savoy, France, he wrote De Occulta Philosophia, a book that attracted the attention of the Renaissance to Kabbalah and magic.
Among the figurines, which come as gifts in the packaging of a delicacy called “chocolate frog”, there are also fictional magicians, such as the Greek Circe, who uses her potions in Homer’s Odyssey. And the collection could not miss Merlin, powerful advisor to the British kings Uther Pendragon and Arthur.
Abracadabra?!
The most lethal spell described in the books of J.K. Rowling it is the Avada Kedavra, used by Lord Voldemort to kill Harry Potter’s parents (the young man becomes famous for being the only one to survive this spell, carrying only a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead).
According to the writer David Colbertwhich in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter analyzes myths and legends present in the series, the expression would come from the Aramaic abhadda kedhabra, which meant “disappear from this world” and was used by ancient wizards to cure illnesses.
++Read the full article on the Aventuras na História website, a partner of Recreio Magazine.
Source: Recreio
