I now want to answer the criticism about comparing Harry Potter to The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosycross or The Angel of the West Window by Gustav Meyrink.

If we look at these two stories we find, just like the Old Testament, they're full of sex and violence. In The Chymical Wedding there is a game in which the men can sleep with the women if they win. People are hanged, decapitated, drowned, branded with red hot iron, whipped, or beaten to death with rods. At least there isn't any sex in Harry Potter.

The Angel of the West Window is very sexual in nature, but with much less violence.

I would like to ask in return: where is the death, the resurrection, the transfiguration, the ascent to Heaven?

Certainly there is death and resurrection in The Chymical Wedding, but how does it end? It says the end of the story is missing and the author has come home. No ascent to heaven there! How does that compare with taking the White Rose to Platform 9¾?

There is no death and resurrection in The Angel of the West Window, yet Jan van Rijckenborgh tells us it is a wonderful symbolic tale of the Path. And how does it end? It ends with a newspaper article saying the house of the hero burns down to cinders. Where is the ascent to Heaven?

The point is that we wouldn't have known that these stories, and others, are telling us about the Path of Liberation if it hadn't been for Jan van Rijckenborgh telling us what the symbolism means! That's the real issue.

And I feel that it's my job to point out the Path of Liberation in Harry Potter.

As a conclusion I would like to say to you: become a child again and open your heart in purity and innocence to the refulgent symbolism in Harry Potter. Try to look beyond the superficial trimmings of the story that makes it so delicious to young people, and experience the heartbeat of eternity in the symbolism.

With Love from Hans