Wow, that Satanic Harry Potter article was totally crazy. What I
love is that they're so concerned with their creepy esoteric
symbolism that they seem to have forgotten the entirety of the
moral message of Christianity. They've lost the thread
somewhere.
WRT the religion of the wizarding world, my general assumption is
that it's more or less the same as that of non-wizarding Britain -
nominally Christian, but not very. They celebrate Christmas and
Easter, for instance. They have a hospital named for a saint. But
no one is particularly religious. Perhaps in the eighteenth and
nineteenth century things were stricter - students at Hogwarts had
to be CoE, and dissenter wizard kids had to go to their own
schools, and so forth. But it seems likely Rowling hasn't thought
about it very much.
Beyond that, the whole world-building aspect is somewhat confused,
and I'm fascinated by the question of the exact provenenance and
nature of the ministry of magic. The connection with the muggle
prime minister appears to be complementary - the Minister of Magic
isn't part of the Muggle Cabinet, or something (he isn't like a
magical equivalent of the Lord Chancellor, where he's some
politician who's a member of the government party, but also has to
be a practicing wizard). How he's chosen, though, seems completely
unclear. As others have suggested, it appears to be through some
kind of Byzantine internal maneuverings. None of the three
Ministers of Magic we see appointed - Scrimgeour, Thicknesse, and
Shacklebolt - seem to be elected. They just emerge as minister
after the fall of the previous minister. The question I always
wonder about is relationship to the monarchy. Are they appointed by
the Queen? Do they have to kiss hands? If there's no connection to
the muggle United Kingdom government/crown, why does the Ministry
of Magic's purview appear to extend to exactly the borders of the
UK? I think wonder particularly about the situation wrt Ireland -
did Ireland's wizarding community get its own ministry of magic
when the Irish Free State was established in 1922? If so, why? Was
there an equivalent struggle in the wizarding world over Ireland in
1918-1922 that there was in the muggle world?
There also doesn't seem to be any kind of wizarding parliament.
There's the Wizengamot, maybe, but it's unclear exactly what this
does, and how it works. Overall, the governmental structures of the
wizarding world don't really make any sense. The Wizarding World
seems to be autonomous and more or less completely separate from
the muggle world, but yet international boundaries seem to function
in more or less exactly the same way in the wizarding world that
they do in the muggle world.
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