The Harry Potter series does a wonderful job for showing the difference between the traditional witch and the contemporary witch, you just need to look at Voldemort and his death eaters compared to Harry Potter and his followers.
The death eaters are cruel witches who fight and kill for evil, they are cruel in their ways but not only that they fight for their pure blood "class" and try to exterminate the mud-blood witches, or witches born from non-magical parents. Taking it a step further the death eaters worship and are led by Lord Voldemort, not unlike Palmer saying how traditional witches are worshipers of evil or the Devil. All of these instances can relate to Palmer's descriptions of the traditional witch, they are cruel, think of themselves as a higher class (role reversal to his description, but still valid), and they worship an evil leader.
However, Harry Potter and followers represent just the opposite they fight for the good in the world and don't care about class, they want everyone to live in unison with each other. They don't look creepy or evil, for the most part, just like normal humans, unlike Palmer's characteristics. And most of them, these contemporary witches, support Harry who is said to be the Chosen One in the series, unlike how traditional witches worship evil.
I definitely have the same thoughts on the Harry Potter franchise, and after reading your post, I now wish that I had talked more about how Voldemort and his followers are evil witches in the traditional sense. I only focused on how Harry was good and that he shows how drastic the change has been for the portrayal of witches. Not only did you address both sides, but you related them both to the Palmer reading! The only thing I would like more of is just more in general, for example, elaborate a little more on just how different or traditional Potter and Voldemort are relative to Palmer's reading. Another interesting topic to cover regarding this is the fact that Harry and some of his followers are males, while Palmer only describes female witches.
ReplyDelete~Ryan Lantz