Folk-Cultural Tradition
Naturally, to discuss fanworks, and their implementation of religion and folk traditions, one must have evidentiary fanworks as reference material. Thus, I have selected said material. The first, being used with the author’s permission, is “The Breaking of Glass”, authored by Archive of Our Own user Arkodian, the work being their fourth in her “What Goes Around (Comes Around)”.
The primary examples I shall be using for this section from their work come from Chapter 27: “The surprises keep coming”, the chapter featuring a celebration of Samhain, and Chapter 49: “With great power”, which features an Imbolc celebration. The chapter finds Harry invited to the celebration being hosted by the residents of Knockturn Alley where, the majority of whom are present and, upon arriving, he proceeds to ask
“[…]Oh, and do I just put the stuff I brought onto the pyre or are there any rules?”
a line that is furthered by noting that Harry
[…]went towards the stack of flammable things. Méabh had at least warned him about that tradition, so he had looked through the Room of Requirement and gotten a broken chair. It popped up next to him, brought by an invisible Kreacher, and Harry wedged it in between part of a bed frame and some mouldy bookshelves.
Thus far, two primary aspects are notable. The first is the large nature of the festival and the gathering of the entire community, an aspect that finds itself rather absent in what works I have encountered which feature the Wizarding Religion trope. Whilst the proponents of these “Olde Ways” will find themselves espousing the importance of community for this celebration, more commonly it is isolated to their chosen few, instead of the entire community.
The second notable aspect thus far is the “pyre” itself, or more accurately the bonfire. Per McNeill, the Samhain bonfire tradition began as a need-fire, with that tradition eventually falling out of use. Need-fires were, traditionally, lit as a means of combatting or warding away epidemics of illness, or witchcraft. Whilst this specific incarnation would die out as a practice, within the alternate history that is inherent to the premise of Harry Potter, we find that The Breaking of Glass takes the base and evolves it, adapting the need-fire into a communal need of cleaning, an evolution that would be quite logical for a society capable of curing the illnesses warded against and combatted with the original tradition.
We also find a backing of religion, with the celebrations Harry participates in being one of a number of communities that celebrate, led by their respective high priest, or high priestess. One such high priestess is an acquaintance of Harry’s, and an original character, Méabh. Ritual garb is also worn. Whilst the presence of ritual attire within pre-Christian Samhain traditions is unknown, and none recorded post-Christianization, it is still relevant to note, as we must examine this within the realm of religion, not just folk tradition, as fanworks tend toward the former, as well as tending to neglect the presence of ritual attire, an attested phenomenon in pre-Christian religions. The description of the attire is thus:
[…]thick golden ring around her neck, made of many twisted strands of gold. Her robe flowed to the floor in waves but left her arms bare so you could see the runes, stylised stars and constellations painted on them with blue paint. […] Most of her arms, shoulders, face and neck were covered with the dark blue paint that reminded him of the night sky that was rapidly turning the same colour. In her hand was a wooden staff with metal fittings and what looked like amber stones that seemed to glow slightly from within.
Ritual garb and painting (through the use of makeup) in pre-Christian religion tend toward the elaborate and expensive, according to archaeological records we have. Garb and ritual makeup is documented in Mycenaean Greece and Minoan Crete, for instance, as determined through what artifacts and frescoes still remain, with what scholars believe to be an example of said ritual attire seen on the “Minoan snake goddess figurines” excavated in 1903 from the palace at Knossos by Arthur Evans.
Méabh makes note that the bonfire both lights the way for lost spirits, as well as acting to banish what monsters might lurk in the dark, along with the “dark half of the year” being ruled by the “Goddess of Winter”, departing from the Light-Dark dualism of popular fanworks, as well as the God-Goddess of Wicca.
Ritual chanting is present within the celebration as well, the language being used being Old English, with Harry noting that the wording sounded to be
something about the harvest, remembrance, letting those who had come before guide you.
Harvest, and remembrance of the dead. The latter is rather more emphasized within fanworks, with Samhain’s chronological location within the harvest season being discarded. Shortly afterward, we have the sacrifice of an ox at the base of the bonfire by the high priestess, which becomes used for the meat of the festival’s feast. The festival itself primarily consists of bread and the meat from the ox, food items that would be consumed after a harvest.
With regard to the Imbolc celebrations, the first tradition presented is that of weaving wish knots, a tradition that might have evolved from the practice of Brigit’s cross, once more displaying how the presence of provable magic might have altered the traditional practices whilst maintaining elements of the preceding tradition. Whilst the traditions linked to Brigit, either through the lens of a saint or a goddess, are missing, others are kept.
Bonfires are absent, as they are with the practice in the real world. In The Breaking of Glass, Imbolc centers on wishes, and the clootie well. Otherwise known as holy wells, the tradition of journeying to a clootie well and leaving a clootie as a means of making your wishes for good health and prosperity were a practiced tradition. Within Chapter 49, we receive the following:
There was no flickering fire this time, only an ancient well in the middle of their circle[…].
There were Celtic knots not unlike the one in Harry’s pockets hanging from some branches. Others were draped with tiny tapestries of fabric or plant weaves. Most were simple strips of cotton cloth, tied with a single knot[…].
The Breaking of Glass is the singular instance I have encountered of a clootie well being featured within a fanwork that posits a magical religion. Harry is described as wearing a shirt of white cloth, and unbound hair, reflecting the procession of Brigit. It is also noted that, when the gathering walks around the clootie well, it is sunwise, the specific wording used when clootie wells are discussed in relation to Celtic folk traditions.
Something that is noted in Chapter 27 is the nature of pre-Christian festivals as post-Christian folk traditions as somewhat of a… cultural patchwork.
“There is no one, true religion. Not even mine”, she told him. “We practise the Old Religion, yes, but every one of us believes in a slightly different way. There are differences depending on region, and cultural ones, but because there are so few of us, we celebrate together. Does it matter that we call our gods by slightly different names? Does it matter if they’re male, or female, or neither? We celebrate the old festivals, we do the old rituals. Everyone can pray to their god on their own.”
The wording is very… deliberate. Many “Olde Ways” depictions lionize pre-Christian traditions, taking an adversarial stance in relation to the notion of Abrahamic faiths. A rather humorous standpoint given what shall be touched upon later, but an understandable one. Abrahamic faiths, more specifically Christianity, have been wielded as the reasoning for many an atrocity. And those authors may, themselves, have religious trauma. But it must be noted that the reasoning of the few is not representative of the majority. Awful people are simply awful people because of the… choices of their lives, the circumstances they’ve found themselves in, the echo chambers they may have entered. It was not the belief in a monotheistic Creator God that happened to have a prophet named Abraham that made them so.
Méabh notes something that I shall leave unabridged:
“The purebloods like to gloat about bits and pieces of the Old Religion to set themselves apart from muggles, but the truth is that Christianity was brought to these parts 500 years before Hogwarts was founded. Even your so-called Purebloods have forgotten more about the Old Religion than they want to acknowledge. And we… we are so few that traditions have become mixed and distorted over time. We have stopped caring whether a tradition came from Ireland, or Scotland, whether the Welsh or the English name of a god is the right one. We are all born. We all die. We are similar enough that we have decided not to care what names we call our gods.
“We were all influenced by others. The Romans. Vikings. Religion is never just one thing, but a mix of many. It is as changeable as the people who practice it. It is as much culture as it is belief and many practices stick around long after people have forgotten what they were for.
The Breaking of Glass, I feel, understands something I find many other representations and authors, do not. Religion, ritual, and belief are all able to adapt, they are not stagnant and stuck in the forms we have found. Pre-Christian beliefs, I feel the author understands, were not scriptural, they had no holy books, and no dogma. There were traditions that were held to, for they were believed to bring things, such as a good harvest, or ward against bad things, such as illness, and that the latest generation was present was taken as proof that they worked, thus they would keep to it, but they would adapt if they no longer seemed effective. Perhaps the harvest was not bountiful one year, so they sacrifice an extra bull, and the next it is bountiful. The tradition adapts, but it is still, at its core, the same form.
If I were to present a work as a model of accuracy, in any degree, to the pre-Christian traditions we have reconstructed, and those that survived yet intermixed with Christianity, I would choose The Breaking of Glass. This is not to say others are bad, merely a variation that does not place historical tradition as being an integral aspect of the story.
The emphasis that The Breaking of Glass places on the community aspect of the celebrations present in the chapters that have been posted at the time of writing is, I find, key in presenting the traditions as a folk-belief system with elements of religiosity, where even those that are not initially from said community but joined it are still brought into their practices if they are trusted, just as one who moves to a new location might be brought into the community’s practices.
The crucial aspect of this lens is research and making certain to avoid presenting one tradition as being inherently superior or more moral and correct.