Check out this site. It's called (or was called) HarryPotterMagic... It's not what you think, and perhaps? Worse than you think.
No longer online, it's carefully preserved on the Wayback Machine from it's heyday of the 2000s. It used to feature a castle glowing with lightning, beckoning visitors to click amid heavily glowing torch gifs. It's long long gone now, but this is the introduction from the 2000s...
LEARN THE TRUTH ABOUT MAGIC; THE DARK SECRET OF SORCERY; THE POWER BEHIND PSYCHICS; THE ACCURACY OF ASTROLOGY; THE LAST WORD ON WITCHCRAFT; THE WHO'S WHO OF WIZARDS; THE ORIGIN OF THE OCCULT!
The tantalizing introduction to the HarryPotterMagic site lays it on thick.
What's HarryPotterMagic, though? Not a Harry Potter fansite, to be sure. The domain didn't belong to any fans, and probably would've been plucked by Warner Bros. if not for the squatter.
And it wasn't even an occult site, either. Despite the introduction, whoever ran it was no fan of witchcraft, astrology, etc. This old site and others like it showed a different mindset, one that shunned the occult and treated it as the villain in stories.
There's many aspects to that, of course. Usually, such groups like to ban stories and media. When it comes to the American fundamentalists of the 2000s, they really loved that, though.
To me, it seems like those (particular) moral crusaders loved to hate and hated to love fiction. Not just the wizard boy stories. Not just "fantasy" fiction, but all fiction. Sound unlikely? I'm going to argue just that, and maybe it'll make some sense?
How could this possibly all come together? And why would high-control American (mostly) Evangelicals have a weird relationship with fiction of all things? Read on. This article is me, a non-Christian observer hedging a little guess.
First, though, I need to give some background. In the 1990s and 2000s, American Evangelicals crusaded against what they saw as a “Satanic” or “occult” influence in children’s media. In fact, in some cases, they were crusading against all occult fiction, not just for kids.
Children’s books seemed to be at the forefront, and gee, I wonder why. It even involved outright public bonfires of fantasy novels like Harry Potter as late as the 2000s.
Now, don't mistake me. This article focuses on some of the religious effects of Harry Potter's popularity way back then, prior to J. K. Rowling deciding to fully unmask and nosedive. It really does not have to do with her or Potter at all, save for Potter being a catalyst. I'm not receptive to the Potter stuff usually and no longer follow it.
Nowadays, hopefully people think critically about things if they're reading, rather than burning them, but it's been quite the fixture. For America, especially back then. According to Daniel Schwartz with CBC news (Canada, yeah) in an article called The Books Have Been Burning:
Harry Potter books were a "flashpoint" for book burners in the U.S. in 2001. One of those burnings was in the Harvest Assembly of God Church in Pennsylvania. "We got some people mad at us, but it's good to have publicity," said Rev. George Bender.
Besides the Potter series by J.K. Rowling, books by actress Shirley MacLaine and psychic Edgar Cayce were also torched.
There have been at least six book burnings involving Potter books in the U.S.
While extremely New Age in my opinion, both MacLaine and Cayce are actual metaphysical practitioners, not fantasy authors. These things did brush against real pagan communities in various ways, and weren’t just limited to witchfinders howling at imaginary phantoms, either, but that might be best for another article.
In any the witchfinders seemed to congregate. They could join forces around the mutual goal of resisting Harry’s Satanic influence. And all their articles gave plenty of reasons to believe that the Harry Potter (and occult) influence was vast. Just look at those sales figures! I remember suggestions that demonic intervention had actually caused the book phenomenon itself!
It’s no surprise that picking at Hogwarts was a popular trope from tracts and sites in the early 2000s. The plainest of these simply argued that the series was wrong to read because (whatever, Biblical) reasons. Like a traditional tract. Some, though, were rather elaborate, featuring their own little narratives where characters learn the dangers of occult books as a cautionary tale.
Fun, huh? I bet you're thinking of that Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles almost-parody from a bit ago? Naah, this goes back waaay further than that, and has less ties to the Slytherpuffinstuff fans or whatever. I'll be focusing on the older panic-writings!
Famous comic book tract artist Jack Chick penned The Nervous Witch in 2001. You can read the tract in full on that page. It’s drawn in Chick’s inimitably-awful style, and makes about as much sense as anything else he’s done, I guess.
Jack Chick usually writes a similar story in every one of his comic book tracts, where a "sinner" character becomes Christian after hearing a vague bit of Bible. It just takes place in different settings, with different reasons for their sinfulness.
In this witch-y little comic, a character cites reading about Diagon Alley as the start of her descent into sin and occultism. An older, experienced Christian explains the dangers of the occult. A lot of what "occult" means gets left nebulous, but the Nervous Witch does repent from it. Then, the two of them burn everything tainted by the magic…
“Tell me, how did you get into the craft?”
“Through Harry Potter books! But we wanted real power. Other books told us to call for spirit guides. And they came! They led us into other stuff: curses, magic spells, potions, ouija boards, and crystal balls…"
“Samantha, the Potter books opened a doorway that led untold millions of kids into hell.”
Perhaps the most elaborate Christian warnings against occultism were whole fantasy stories in and of themselves. Almost all of these are difficult to find these days (except the archived online ones). Some probably qualify as “lost media,” or something close to it.
There's probably new ones I've never heard of that are still circulating, but these were the ones I ran into during the 2000s. Most I did not read for normal reading, but actually got just to see what they authors had to say about "us" (ie, occultists). And believe me, in most cases, I ended up wishing I hadn't...
Among them are Grasping at Moonbeams, which was a novella part of the larger brio girls series aims at adolescents.
In it, a young girl is gaslit into joining a Wiccan coven, who tricked her into thinking it’s a Bible study. She, like Jack Chick’s protagonist, ends up symbolically burning the things that remind her of the coven after dramatically leaving it behind.
There was also 2004’s Dewitched, by Tim Baker. That was more like a fantasy novel If I remember right, a strange girl happens into the protagonist girl’s youth group and befriends her, but seems unable to quite fit in.
Ultimately, she admits to some pagan beliefs and slowly initiates a wave of occultism throughout the town. The Christians manage to escape, I think, or something like that. There is animal sacrifice in this one.
Another Christian book for kids, Hangman’s Curse by Frank Peretti, also kinda tackled the issue of the occult. Peretti is the author of a small series of novels. The main characters were two children working as detectives for the government, but as Christians. Somehow.
True to the name, in Hangman’s Curse, Elijah and Elisha investigate what seems like a curse in a small school. The book, unlike the others, shies away from actually claiming curses have any power but does suggest the concept of the occult leads to ruin.
Now, let's look at that site mentioned in the header of this article: HarryPotterMagic. Why? It's a great example of all this, turned up to eleven for sure.
Some stripe of anti-occult Christian, it seemed, had scored the enviable domain name of harrypottermagic.com. I’m marginally sure that they were some kind of independent Adventists or something? They sure like animated gifs!
I can show you on the Wayback Machine. Mild warning for flashing gifs. You cannot access it live. The domain name now belongs to some kind of domain clearinghouse or something. Back then, though, the evangelical something-or-the-others owned it. And they were ready to save us all from Harry Potter’s particular flavor of occult influence with the power of their very own fantasy didactic novel!
Yes, that’s right. Brio Girls and Frank Peretti had some online competition. This site had put a short novella of sorts online. It was all about how the evils of the occult could be resisted with the power of Christ and proper prayer.
It was called Larry Grant Destroys the Sorcerers’ Stone. It featured protagonist, Larry, doing just that by the end, but in a way Christians can’t complain about.
Heavy on preachiness as you mind expect, the story follows Larry to a boarding school where witches try to entrap the students. Larry, seemingly the only Christian, manages to free them all over the course of a semester. In the process, he also dumps a lot of “occult information” at the reader.
They admitted it wasn’t as “literarily delightful” as Harry Potter, but thought it would teach kids important values. Half of the book is basically just discussing how to live (the author’s brand of) a Christian life, so there’s that. You can read some of it still:
Utterly beside himself with terror, Draco burst forth with the worst curse he could pronounce, “In the name of Lord Satan, the king of the gods, may you die on the spot!”
As Larry approached the podium, he held the hammer higher as he cried, “In the name of Jesus Christ, the Creator God of heaven and earth, I smash your little gods!”
With a powerful leap, Larry jumped up onto the side of the podium on which the witch was standing.
Then, with a mighty swing, he brought it down on the top center of the Sorcerer’s Stone. The heavy sledge went through the top stone and on through the bottom one as well. Pieces of both stones flew everywhere.
At this, Cliodna Vetala seemed ready to faint. “Ahhhhh! Death strikes the gods of Wicca!” she cried, “We perish, we all perish!” Yet she managed to regain enough strength to run out the side door, after Chaos who was just in front of her.
Weirdly, and while I can't find it again, there was once a note on the HarryPotterMagic page answering criticisms about Larry Grant Destroys the Sorcerers' Stone. One had apparently been that the hero was too pious, and I believe it. That said, the site had mumbled something about "Larry Grant" being based on a real person, and something about the events being based on real occurrances.
It's obviously clear that there was never a creepy boarding school ran by witches blackmailing drug traffickers. So, if I'm remembering that chestnut right, I think maybe the author was, ironcially, indulging in fantasies. In these, presumably Christ-approved fantasies, I guess a person can still be the hero or heroine.
Except, the protagonist is at odds with the rest of fiction. So, our main character is destined to pulverize sorcerers' stones in a fine mist, maybe even to exorcise the Pokémon and presumably snap the light sabers in two. But all for the Christ, I guess, and with a sermon to pad it out.
Why so much effort to rewrite all this occult fiction? I think a lot of these people weren's worried because occult fiction held demons. Maybe they convinced themselves that. Really, though, they were afraid of fantasy fiction because it was a distraction from their Gospel stuff. Some kids would rather read The Giver or even The Chronicles of Narnia instead of the Bible. Maybe they also noticed that watching The Smurfs distracted kids from prayers.
Can’t have that, right? So, just blame the stories themselves (they must be Satanic!). Heck, maybe getting bored is demonic or something? Is that why people seek fiction? I've heard IRL Evangelicals talk about "evil spirits" making people restless, dissatisfied and weird...
Anyways, does anyone come right out and say this about fantasy fiction, though? Funnily enough, though, HarryPotterMagic’s dear protagonist, Larry Grant, has us covered on this one! Keep in mind, Grant (err, the people writing him) are only one kind of Christian, and I'm not sure what kind, but...
“Fairy tales may seem harmless and apparently produce no harmful effects. Yet they are unreal and, although obviously about imaginary creatures, prepare the mind to like reading such things. The person who reads them will later be more favorable toward the reading and enjoyment of stories more openly about witchcraft. Later still he will be more susceptible to astrology, hypnotism, and contacts with spiritist mediums, today called channelers.
“Fairy tales lead young people away from a love for God’s Word. Later, when the Gospel is presented to them, they may be harder to reach. They prefer living in an unreal world.
There are so many things today which cause young people to continually crave greater excitement, that it becomes easier for for Satan to lead them into various addictions. They have become disssatisfied with everyday living.”
True, the whole thing is a “novel” of sorts… but it comes with warnings. Too much fiction ruins a Christian and all that, apparently. The “novel” provides a weirdly-fantastic, much deeper articulation of the (supposed) why, too, right near the end. It explains that there’s different worlds to live in. To dwell too close to fiction is to be far from God or something, I guess?
THE REAL WORLD
The highest level is the Holy Bible. This book can prepare you for heaven.
Next to that are stories of great Christians and missionaries, along with stories of Christians who have been faithful in earlier centuries. These are always helpful. Reading them encourages you to want to live like them, true to God to the end.
The next level down is current events. Here we have the news of the day, much of which is worth learning about. Also included here is history, and scientific facts. (Not included here is evolutionary theory, which is a form of fantasy.)
THE FICTITIOUS WORLD
The next level down is fiction. The best type consists of books and articles which try to warn of spiritual dangers, and encourage you to live a better Christian life. The book you are now reading falls into this category. But this is not the best level of reading. God’s Word is.
Below this comes a variety of fiction which is bad for you. There are millions of books which belong here. Although the stories is generally set in the real world, they encourage you to like vicious, licentious, and all kinds of evil things.
People who read fiction find it harder to handle the duties and problems of everyday life with Christian patience and trust in God.
THE FANTASY WORLD
Now we drop still lower to the world of fantasy. These are stories about impossible things in make-believe worlds, inhabited by giants and gremlins, talking animals and strange creatures. This is an unreal world, and learning to like it is not good. The reading of fairy tales prepares you to for the next level down, which is witchcraft.
In this category, we find Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.
Both in this category and the next, we find many of the Andersons’ and Grimes’ fairy tales, the Oz stories by Frank Baum,—which are about actual witchcraft.
This is coming from whatever small sect wrote the book, obviously. I believe this little snippet really gives us a good summary of what’s going on here. Other narratives against fantasy (or, as they’d call it, occult) fiction from Evangelicals hint at this kind of thing. They believed fantasy fiction in particular distracts a person from God.
They worried people would prefer a fantasy world to our real one. God only offered salvation in the latter. Furthermore, there was the concern of fantasy as a corrupting agent. Did these books make people want ungodly things, like the “real power” that Jack T. Chick’s Nervous Witch had been worried about? 
The thing is, it’s hard to stop there. Fiction (nowadays) is often actually a form of marketing (or influenced by it). Even without that, people will often romanticize or desire what they see in fiction, if only subconsciously at times.
I’ve read enough sobbing accounts of relationships disintegrating because partners expect a romance novel. I know this can in fact, be a problem. It can also be a good thing (some fiction is meant to inspire us!) or just neutral. Kids watch Indiana Jones and want to become intrepid archeologists, after all. Things like that.
The people writing HarryPotterMagic might see that as toeing a line. Here, what the story inspires you to do just doesn’t seem that important. They seem to think any worldly narrative has the potential to draw a person from Christ unless the narrative is specially designed to fit with Christ’s teaching. Even then, the story’s sparing compared to lectures and Bible verses.
As "saved" members of the "body" of Christ, I guess they saw themselves as wedded to His narrative, and couldn’t be caught cheating with any others? I guess I could respect that if some (really strange) group made that part of their beliefs, so long as they weren’t witchfinders about it.
The moral media crusades at the tail end of the Satanic Panic included many different people for tons of reasons. Not denying that. I still maintain that the fiction-hate thing is a factor. It goes beyond just the above one site that finally articulated it.
I also believe that, despite this, a lot of people really, really need stories for one reason or another, whether or not they want to admit it. The stories also have to be, y’know, good, and not just didactic, so this is why the weird, over-the-topic Christian fantasy fiction about fighting witches got written. None of these were really good, but they were trying to give people what they craved without sacrificing their souls.
What a dilemma. I'm not a Christian. So, praise God, I don't have to worry about it in that way. I know people might grow up in bad or high-control fundamentalist environments, though? They might absorb this kind of scrupulosity thing unwillingly. I have sympathy there, knowing how it can go.
The best solution is, of course, to shut these people down when they start claiming stuff is demonic. That's not easy, though, because they're loud! They come after unrelated people, as I noted before, and not just occultniks like me. They're not wrong about everything, but they seem to use their insights to do harm...
The media you consume is important, sure. They're not wrong about that! Aesthetic choices like genre (elves over cowboys, spies versus wizards) aren’t much like that, though. Does the media explore important and interesting themes? Fulfill some healthy/important purpose to the person enjoying it? That’s a little more complicated and debatable than just picking a piece of media apart for occult references, so some people took the easy route, I guess…
I'm not a Christian, but I do know a helluva lot about occultism, occult fiction, and the history of that. I don't have beef with most Christians. They often have major issues dealing with moral crusaders and fundamentalists, too and in unique ways. Oh, and while I'm not a Rowling fan, her work isn't Satanic, just mediocre and bigoted at times. Naturally, I doubt books can be demonically-charged.
This page was last updated on September 14th, 2025.