Harry Potter and witchcraft: The history of magic throughout pop culture
The world of Harry Potter helped so many kids look to witches and wizards in a fun and exciting way but how did it change the world of pop culture in that same regard?
In a lot of ways, the Harry Potter series normalized witchcraft for an entire generation. So often throughout history, witches (primarily) were seen as evil figures that would come for children in the night or were burned at the stakes because they simply existed. Granted, we know that most of those witches that burned were just women the towns wanted to crucify but still, it was done under the guise of ridding the world of a witch.
But then came Harry Potter and suddenly an entire generation of kids wanted to be a witch or a wizard. We wanted to go ahead and go to Hogwarts and learn spells because it wasn’t about “evil” like we’d been taught. It was about using magic to make life just that bit simpler.
Plus, prior to the Harry Potter series we did have things like Practical Magic and Hocus Pocus but it wasn’t exactly the most positive of light to be shed on witchcraft. And, for the most part, magic was always associated with just women so getting to see Hogwarts include both witches and wizards was a fun new way to think about magic.
For so many of us, this series made magic cool and made us want to know more about witches and learn from them and that’s not a bad thing. Even if people did think this series was a bad thing because of magic (who doesn’t love magic?!).
dark. Next. The horrible characters of the Harry Potter series