I’m extremely interested in studying more about how those of us steeped in all the technological advances of the modern world can ever truly embrace mythical thinking as traditional people would have done. I’m not fully convinced that we really can. Literature seems like one of the ways we can get closest to it, and I believe Travis would argue that religious practices based on a sacramental theology would get us even closer.

As I noted, I only scanned the story and read the end. But from what I could see, the ring was not only an invisibility ring, but a ring of power with some curious and dark attributes. The way the story ended (which I will not reveal for those who have not read it yet) also had some echoes of LOTR – a much less destructive solution than the one found at Mt. Doom, but a pretty definitive one nonetheless. All of which makes me wonder if Bilbo’s ring is Nesbit’s ring, grown up.

There has been some recent speculation among Tolkien scholars as to whether Bilbo’s invisibility ring was influenced by the ring in The Enchanted Castle. In favor is the fact that we know Tolkien read other Nesbit books and spoke well of them; he called her “an author I delight in” in one (unpublished) letter and wrote about the “triumphant formula that E. Nesbit found in the Amulet and The Phoenix and the Carpet in drafts for “On Fairy Stories”. We know that The Five Children and It influenced his novel Roverandom; the “sand-sorceror” Psamathos Psamathides is clearly based on Nesbit’s Psammead. Also the scene where the ring made Mabel invisible, but not her shadow, is very Tolkien-like; and according to recent research by John D. Rateliff, there aren’t really very many examples of invisibility rings prior to Tolkien. But hard evidence is lacking, since no one knows whether Tolkien read The Enchanted Castle (he would have been 14 or 15 when it was published). The following URLs discuss the matter further (note my comment in the first):

http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2008/09/sixth-ring_18.html
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2008/09/seventh-ring.html
http://mysite.verizon.net/wghammond/addenda/guide_by_date.html

For me, Hermione’s disbelief is in the nature of a plot device. She rejects the potential existence of the Hallows because JKR needs someone to express incredulity that such objects exist so as to lend them with the aura of the supernatural. I would also like to point out – again – that there is no evidence offered by the author that these objects are in fact supernatural, whatever that term may mean in a fantasy tale.

I also think that in the ambivalent stance JKR takes towards the supernatural in her story, the Hallows can be interpreted as either naturally (!?) magical objects which are arbitrarily assigned supernatural powers by characters in the story, or as “truly” supernatural objects. And I think that the burden of the evidence is that their magic is natural.

This is not, for me, a rejection of the reality of King’s Cross. Harry dies and goes for a time a little bit past the veil, has a conversation, and comes back. He comes back because he gave his life willingly. Love, sacrifice, death, and resurrection. It is a deeper or older magic than the magic of wands and cloaks and even resurrection stones.

I also don’t think anyone denies the reality & benefit of empirical evidence or of inference & deduction, I think the argument comes to down to, is that all there is? Are those the only ways of knowing truth & reality? And I would come down on the side of, no, they’re not.

Whenever, I consider this deeply I’m always moved back to Professor Kirke’s talk with the children in the LWW or of Puddleglum’s conversation with the Green Witch in SC.

I am not sick of “therefore” and “since” and “because”. I live by inference and deduction. Without them, any one thing is as possible as any other thing.

Yes, precisely! Ever read chapter four of Chesterton’s Orthodoxy?

I think the conversation is worth having, despite our inevitable, and quite possibly permanent, disagreement on the matter. (Probably the same thing you think about our having the Dumbledore and the gender discussion.)

I know this isn’t precisely what you’re saying, but here’s Chesterton along these lines:

I found the whole modern world talking scientific fatalism; saying that everything is as it must always have been, being unfolded without fault from the beginning. The leaf on the tree is green because it could never have been anything else. Now, the fairy-tale philosopher is glad that the leaf is green precisely because it might have been scarlet. He feels as if it had turned green an instant before he looked at it. He is pleased that snow is white on the strictly reasonable ground that it might have been black. Every colour has in it a bold quality as of choice; the red of garden roses is not only decisive but dramatic, like suddenly spilt blood. He feels that something has been done. But the great determinists of the nineteenth century were strongly against this native feeling that something had happened an instant before. In fact, according to them, nothing ever really had happened since the beginning of the world. Nothing ever had happened since existence had happened; and even about the date of that they were not very sure.

Hermione disbelieved in both the origin of the Hallows and in the Hallows themselves. She disbelieved in the Hallows themselves, because the surrounding story seemed to fanciful, and she ended up being wrong, because she disbelieved a fairy tale because it was a fairy tale. Dumbledore’s plan worked – Hermione’s overly-logical mind slowed Harry down.

The story was less than 100% factually accurate (Dumbledore also thought the part about Death’s involvement was not factually true), but more than a teaching tale – it a story about true magical items, and it communicated a true philosophy of life. Hermione was more wrong than Xenophilius on this one, I think, because the central debate that took place after the story was read was not, “Did Death give these items to the Peverell brothers,” but “Do these items even exist.”

What she rejected was that Death had given three brothers three objects which were called the Hallows. She rejected the origin story of the Hallows. And I repeat that the author did not provide any evidence that Death – or any kind of supernatural force (which is kind of ironic, given we’re talking about a fantasy story) – had been involved in the creation of the Hallows. The story was a teaching tale, within and outside the story.

Yes, empirical evidence has been proven wrong many times. And that is part of the beauty of empirical evidence. It can be proven wrong.

I am not sick of “therefore” and “since” and “because”. I live by inference and deduction. Without them, any one thing is as possible as any other thing. The world is the center of the universe and rides on the back of a gigantic turtle while Zeus hurls thunderbolts from the sky and the stars control our destiny.

Anyways, we are obviously not going to agree on this, and that’s ok. It is a lovely story, however. And it does make me want to read her other stories. And it does make me feel a teeny bit of curiousity about the Fabians, as Wikipedia tells me Nesbit and her husband were co-founders.

It’s probably no surprise that I’m with Gerald (and G.K. Chesterton) on this. It seems to me little more than a bare assertion that empirical evidence is more reliable than faith in giving us truth, and anyway, you have to accept a certain definition of truth (truth is that which can be proved empirically!) to come to that conclusion. The whole thing begs the question. And empirical evidence has been proven wrong so many times.

Empirical evidence usually can’t prove anything supernatural. And even when something supernatural stares an empiricist in the face, they often deny it, because of the assumption that empirical evidence has already disproved the supernatural.

Now, an empiricist need not be this way, but the fact of the matter is, if there is supernatural involvement in the world, if humanity really is “fundamentally mythic” (Kilby), then empirical evidence, logic, rationalism, etc., are incapable of attaining this knowledge alone. Faith, myth, fairy tales, etc. are a part of grasping what it means to be human.

Kilby again, quoting Gide:

“Ah, how sick I am of ‘therefore’ and ’since,’ and ‘because!’ says a character in Gide’s Theseus. “Sick of inference, sick of deduction. On their horizontal plane I have wandered all too often. The infinite calls me! It calls me! I cannot define what it is that summons me, but I know that my journey can have only one end: in God.”

On the story itself – this is my first reading of it, and I plan to get through it in the next day or two. I’m looking forward to this ending! I’m just a chapter and a half in, and I already enjoy it far more than Five Children and It.

I’ll have to see if Tolkien references the story anywhere. I know it was a huge influence on Lewis.

Is she really though? Xenophilius believes in many things that obviously are not true, and Hermoine has shown herself to believe in many ‘fanciful’ things, including magic, because of the evidence given.