"It would be quite false to believe that the symbolist outlook consists in selecting from the exterior world images on which to superimpose more or less far-fetched meanings. This would be a waste of time incompatible with wisdom. On the contrary, the symbolist vision of the cosmos is a priori a spontaneous perspective based on the essential nature - or the metaphysical transparency - of phenomena, which are not detached from their prototypes"
(Schuon, 'The Symbolist Outlook', Tomorrow, Winter 1966, pages 52-53).
Oil on paper, 18 x 17, 2014
A Counter Spell to the Enchantment of Modernity.
In other words, the hidden 'dark wisdom' in our children's schoolbooks is transforming them from something human into people who are somehow less than human. Because of their having grown up "having read the wrong sort of books" (see Eustace Scrubb in Lewis's Voyage of the Dawn Trader), they are incapable of the sentiments and emotions that buttress and create courage and the other moral excellences. Rowling communicates this real danger of the vacant naturalism and godlessness in textbooks through the mind of Tom Riddle hidden in Ginny's Transfiguration schoolbook. This danger is so much more real today, having won the day, if you will, that it is perhaps less apparent to us than it would have been in Lewis's time. Which is, I think, also part of Rowling's intended response to the objections to Magic in her books. We have already read Lewis's response to his own Christian critics; magic, he explained, can be a counter spell and magic in edifying fiction is just that - a counter spell to the enchantment of modernity.
- Granger
