Harry Potter's Invitation to the World
by Vickie Ewell
Chapter 12 – Getting Harry Off the Rock (HP Chapter 5)
Harry woke the following morning, convinced that Hagrid coming to rescue him was just a dream. He didn’t want to open his eyes, because he was sure he would find himself back in bed inside his cupboard. A loud tapping noise convinced him even further that Petunia was knocking on the door, so he still didn’t want to open his eyes – but the knocking didn’t go away.
We yearn and desire for liberation from our current situation, but it is sometimes hard to believe when help arrives. Luckily for us, the knocking is persistent. Harry finally relented and opened his eyes to a room full of sunshine. The storm in Harry’s life really was over.
As Hagrid’s overcoat slipped off, Harry realized the knocking came from an owl at the window, not his aunt. Harry opened the window, and the owl delivered a newspaper it was carrying to Hagrid. It then began attacking Hagrid’s coat. The owl wanted payment for delivery. Birds are often used by higher powers as spiritual messengers, but they still belong to the animal kingdom and behave in mechanical ways. In this instance, the owl had been trained to retrieve payment for delivering the Daily Prophet newspaper.
In a spiritual sense, the owl’s behavior reflects man’s tendency to want payment for everything he does and the lengths he is willing to go in order to get that payment. The owl even snapped at Harry when Harry tried to protect Hagrid’s coat from destruction. On one hand, the owl was reacting to the routine he had come to expect, his ideal, but it was also insistent that a sleeping Hagrid wasn’t going to alleviate him of his debt.
Most individuals refuse to do things for others unless there is something in it for them. Payment isn’t always demanded for current action such as this particular business transaction, but people do keep a mental tab of who owes them in some way. Later, payment is expected and sometimes demanded or used to make others feel guilty. Generally, we try and manipulate others into giving us what we want. Some individuals also refuse to do anything unless they can see personal benefit. In the physical world, power, control, money, or some form of riches motivates man to action.
Things are not different in the Wizarding World. Even among those who have function on the spiritual plane, reward continues to motivate. Payment may differ, but we do what we do because we believe our faith or our works will get us into Heaven. We believe we’ll achieve heavenly rewards. We may also expect others to return the favor when we need one.
These motivations are not coming from the heart. Spiritual rewards are still a demand for payment. When we do things from the heart, we do them out of love, expecting nothing in return.
The owl’s insistence caused Harry’s balloon of happiness to deflate. He had no money to buy school supplies. Mr. Durlsey had made it clear that he wouldn’t pay for them. But Hagrid revealed to Harry that his parents had plenty of gold in a Wizard bank. It was safe because they didn’t keep it inside the destroyed house.
Biblical scripture tells us not to keep our gold in a place where thieves can break into and steal it. It’s best to keep our treasure in Heaven, inside our heart. Within our heart is a roll of spiritual DNA that contains a record of our past lives’ experiences. When our house is destroyed and we physically die, that record leaves with our higher spiritual vehicles and remains safe.
If we’ve built up for ourselves a physical kingdom, we may have difficulty leaving it. Our desires don’t magically disappear when we leave this existence. Desire remains and still must be overcome or let go of before we can go on. For many, that results in severe suffering and keeps us attached to the physical world. We see a hint of that suffering when what’s left of Voldemort’s soul suffered throughout the entire, lengthy conversation that Harry and Dumbledore had at King’s Cross near the end of Book 7.
Harry was introduced to the spiritual world only as needed. Hagrid didn’t sit him down and explain it to him all at once. Harry learned about the Wizard bank and the goblins that run it because that was where he and Hagrid were going first. We also learn that Dumbledore often gave Hagrid important things to do. Hagrid was proud that Dumbledore trusted him.
This is the second time the word “trust” has been associated with Hagrid. Dumbledore would trust Hagrid with his life, and he trusted Hagrid with important errands.
When Hagrid and Harry stepped outside the shack, Harry was confused. He could see the boat that Uncle Vernon hired, but couldn’t understand how Hagrid got there. Hagrid flew, but they would have to use the boat because Hagrid couldn’t use magic now that he had Harry in his custody.
Hagrid doesn’t feel like following the rules. He’s impatient. He doesn’t want to do things the slow and tedious way. He asked Harry if he’d be willing to keep his use of magic to himself, so he could speed things up a little. Harry agreed, and Hagrid trusted him to keep his word.
Now, Gringotts was hundreds of miles below London in what’s known as the Underground. It was so far below the surface of the earth that a person who tried to rob the bank would not only have to face dragon guards, but would have difficulty finding their way back to the earth’s surface. Hagrid felt a person would be crazy to try and rob it. Yet, Dumbledore was still sending him there to retrieve the Philosopher’s Stone from one of the vaults. This infers that we already have the Philosopher’s Stone, but it’s locked away in our subconscious mind.
Hagrid sat back, reading the Daily Prophet, while the boat worked its way to shore. Harry had learned from Uncle Vernon that people like to be left alone while they read the paper. Harry was projecting his uncle’s demands onto Hagrid, but had trouble keeping that personal belief because he had many questions about his new life. When Hagrid mumbled something about the Ministry of Magic, Harry couldn’t keep quiet.
But Hagrid wasn’t nasty like Uncle Vernon would have been. He told Harry the ministry wanted Dumbledore to be Minister but Dumbledore would never leave Hogwarts, so they gave old Cornelius Fudge the job. Hagrid wasn’t impressed with Fudge. He didn’t know much and needed Dumbledore’s advice every day. Hagrid believed that made him somewhat incompetent. This raised serious questions in my mind about the proper use for prayer.
Harry wanted to know what a Minister of Magic did. According to Hagrid, a Minister’s main job was to keep the Muggle World from finding out about the Wizarding World. If a Muggle knew about the Wizarding World, he would want magical solutions to all of his problems. The magical world was better off being left alone.
We are not told if this was the general consensus among the witches and wizards or if this was Hagrid’s personal spotty opinion, but the Dursleys do NOT fit that profile. They know about the Muggle World. They don’t want magical solutions to their problems. They want the magical world to go away and leave them alone.
If you take Hagrid’s fear of discovery and couple it with man’s need to be in control of his own kingdom at all times, what Hagrid fears isn’t likely to happen. Materialists don’t think that way. For example, my ex-husband was literally thrown down the stairs and out the back door one evening by invisible forces that were protecting me from harm. Yet, that introduction to the spiritual world didn’t cause him to seek after magical solutions to our problems. It made him angry, so he rebelled against the higher world.
Most people behave like the Dursleys. They push away everything they don’t want to believe, whatever they don’t want in their lives. They go on as if their introduction had never happened. I know many individuals who have received spiritual introductions, but now lie to themselves about those experiences. I’ve watched people lie to others about their experiences. They do whatever is necessary to protect the kingdom they have created for themselves, because they see the spiritual world as a threat, not a savior.
I find Hagrid’s perspective a bit odd. He fears that Muggles will want magical solutions to their problems, yet when Hagrid didn’t feel like rowing in the Muggle way, he ignored the Wizarding rules and used a magical solution to fix his problem. It is the Wizarding World who uses magical solutions every day. What they actually fear is the loss of privacy and secrecy they have built their society on.
While mercy (introducing physical beings to the spiritual world) always needs to be tempered with justice (waiting until a physical being is ready to be introduced to the spiritual world), Hagrid has a real distaste for Muggles and Fudge. He even steals the boat the Dursleys paid for and left them stranded on the rock without a way to get home. Yes, he was reacting out of love for Harry, but he was not acting out of love for the Dursleys. He wasn’t acting as a Christ would act.
To me, he was talking and acting like a Muggle, so he’s probably a reflection of the spiritual condition of the Wizarding World. It all left me with the feeling that the Wizarding World is as much in need of a Savior like Harry Potter as the physical world is.