" Harry Potter's Magic as a Mystical Force in Pop Culture The latest Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, was ranked #3 in summer box office receipts through August 9, 2004, with $244.6 million (Bowles, 2004), according to USA Today
" Meantime, while the books are certainly entertaining, even mesmerizing, to readers young and old, the movies are mind-bending and so innovative as to be addictive to some viewers. As one more example of how riveting the Potter series is to moviegoers, Current Science ran an article (Davy, 2000) titled, "Could Scientists re-create the magic in J
Kundun was seen by some as a radical departure from his other films, like The Exorcist, The Omen, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver; it was also seen as incongruous for Scorsese, a Roman Catholic Italian-American. But a thoughtful article in Film Netribution Network (Enright, 2001) points out that although Scorsese's films, "on the surface," have seemed to be fully "Christian" - as references to the Bible, the Virgin Mary, and images the Crucifix are plentiful - "his characters and worldviews and his own philosophical orientation often seem to owe more to Hindu and Buddhist mysticism
" Why are people who are part of the American pop culture so fascinated with witches, by the way? In an article published by the Continuum Publishing Group Ltd. (Goldenberg, 2004), the writer, an instructor in the Department of Religion at Central Michigan University in Mt
com. Fresh or not, the newest Potter film, on top of the sensational reviews and acceptance of first two movies, has become what an article in First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion & Public Life calls "the Harry Potter Phenomenon" (Jacobs, 2000)
The media clamored for photos of the Beatles hanging out and drinking in the good vibes of this holy man in white robes who preached peace through self-awareness and higher consciousness through meditation. But in addition to the media, tens of thousands of Beatles' followers arrived in northern India, swept up not only in curiosity about transcendental meditation and the Maharishi, but in fact, "most of them really made the trip to pay tribute to the Beatles" (Lacayo, 2001)
" It is important to remember that the normal experience of mysticism is not intellectual, but rather, that experience focuses on a kind of cosmic enlightenment, where deep thoughts about the reality of the world give way to mind-clearing moments in search of a higher consciousness, in pursuit of a loftier, less mental state where the possibility of magic and telepathy come into clearer perspective. And when lining religion and theology up side-by-side with mysticism, in a very real way, "all theology is mystical, inasmuch as it shows forth the divine mystery: the date of revelation" (Lossky, 2004)
Goldenberg's shrewd strategy answers the question perfectly.] Another article examining the issue of witches and magic in Harry Potter appeared recently in Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature (McVeigh, 2002)
According to Hanh and other religious scholars, this sutra is "the essence" of Buddhist teaching. The Heart Sutra is recited daily in Buddhist communities throughout the world (Hanh)