American Magics And The Mirror Of Erised

By Kenny Paul Smith

In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, a very young Harry stumbles upon The Mirror of Erised. This highly enchanted looking glass shows those who peer into it precisely what they most desire, for as long as they are willing to look, though it is unable to give them what it shows (hence the irony implied in the spelling of its name, “desire” backwards!). So treacherous is the Mirror that it is kept safely locked away and out of sight at Hogwarts. Who would not be tempted to fixate on visions of what they most long for but could not have? Harry, of course, is quickly drawn into a vision of his deceased parents, and only with Dumbledore’s guidance does he come to learn the Mirror’s lesson of letting go and moving on.

The magical images, ideas and aspirations that are so prevalent in the larger American culture are not unlike the Mirror: they reflect back to us what we most desire, namely, control over life’s ever-fluctuating circumstances. Let me explain.

In the world of Harry Potter, the spells wizards and witches cast yield specific results (e.g., levitating a book, repairing cracked spectacles, washing dishes, teleportation to a desired destination), essentially any task you can imagine, and they do so by way of exact patterns of thought, emotion, speech, hand gestures, and material components. In teaching Harry to banish Dementors, for instance, Professor Lupin guides Harry through precisely those internal psychological states he must evoke and sustain, else the spell fail.

Indeed, so thoroughly mechanical is magic here that Michael Ostling, a scholar of religion specializing in the history of magic in European cultural history, believes that the Potter mythology further disenchants, rather than re-enchants, our world. Rather than showing us a universe in which the super-natural is once again mysterious, opaque to human reason, yet palpable and powerful, magic here is entirely lawful, predictable, and readily summonable “by anyone with a bit of talent, proper training, and the correct ingredients.”

This is what I call high-agency magic, in which human beings get to be in charge, wielding super-natural power to create precisely the outcomes they desire. In nearly every Hollywood production, this sort of magic represents the ideal prize to be gained, though we can find this kind of magic virtually everywhere in American popular culture, even in places it’s not supposed to be. 

Take, for instance, the complex case of Rick Warren (1954-present), the founder of, and up until 2022 senior pastor at, Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, currently ranked among the ten largest churches in America. Warren has authored a number of books, at least two of which suggest magical dimensions.

In the opening pages of God’s Power to Change Your Life (1990), Warren asks his readers, “what would you like to change about yourself? Would you like to be more confident and relaxed… more outgoing, less anxious, or less fearful?” 

Throughout this book, the attainment of virtues such as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” is primary. But worldly success and material prosperity are not far behind, and ultimately linked to the attainment of such positive inner states. The person who truly “dwells in the Lord,” Warren holds, “is like a tree planted by streams of water, which sheds fruit in season but whose leaf does not whither. Everything he does prospers.” So too the person who is “faithful,” that is, a person who is “reliable, trustworthy, dependable, consistent,” and who regularly tithes ten percent of the wealth that comes to them. For “God rewards faithfulness… [and] the Bible says that the faithful person will be richly blessed” both in this life and in heaven.

The achievement of all this, however, cannot be had solely by human effort. When we try to solve our problems and live good lives “with our own power,” Warren explains, “we fail. We fall back into the same ruts” and as a result “we are tired all the time.”

Instead, Warren teaches, “God provides the power, but we must flip the switch to turn the power on.” ‘Flipping the switch’ involves religious practices historically associated with evangelical Protestantism, such as accepting Jesus as one’s personal savior, daily Bible reading and prayer, joining and contributing to a local church, asking the Holy Spirit to work within oneself, examining one’s life circumstances for lessons God is trying to teach, and sincerely doing one’s best to be a morally good person. These things create “a new beginning with a big difference. We now have a new nature and the indwelling Holy Spirit, and a set of ‘spiritual batteries’ is included to provide the power.”  

Warren is best known for his later book, The Purpose Driven Life (2002), said to be the best-selling hardback nonfiction book of all time. It offers a forty-day course, with brief readings scheduled for each day, helping readers to discover for themselves the meaning of their lives. That said, Warren himself considers The Purpose Driven Life an ‘anti-self-help’ book, in that it locates meaning not in human interests and agendas, but in the plans and purposes God has established for human beings.

“It’s not about you,” the book’s opening sentence disappointingly declares. “The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this earth, you must begin with God.” 

Insofar as The Purpose Driven Life is concerned, ‘beginning with God’ means accepting not only the authority of the biblical text, but Warren’s reading of it, and this turns out to be a more or less traditional Southern Baptist theology cast in the upbeat language of megachurches. Here, the purpose of life is to “join God’s family” by worshipping in a manner that pleases God (i.e., as conservative, white, suburban, American evangelicals tend to worship), learning to “think like a servant,” cultivating honesty and kindness to others, overcoming temptation, and avoiding the dangerous spiritual waters of “other religions” and “New Age philosophies” which teach that human beings are able to create for themselves, as if by magic, whatsoever it is they desire – precisely what Warren himself taught just ten years earlier. Human beings, Warren admonishes ten years later, are lowly creatures: “we will never be the creator.”

But The Purpose Driven Life does advance a kind of magic, only one of a different kind. Here, it is human obedience to God’s commands that opens up the floodgates through which God’s power may flow into the world. However, this is not about producing outcomes that we might desire, for that is never really God’s aim. His aim, according to Warren, is to advance and further His cosmic plan, not our plans for our own lives, and this might well be to our detriment – think, for instance, of the many biblical figures who come to terrible ends! 

What should we make of Warren’s diametrically opposed magics? In the first, by taking up a traditional Christian identity, we can reach into God’s coffers and pull out what we desire. In the second, obeying God’s commands summons God’s power, but we have no control over what happens and little reason to believe it will get us what we want. Surely Warren’s thinking changed over the decade separating these two books, but there are broader cultural currents at play as well. 

For, if American culture is awash in the magical, mystical, and supernatural, this Super dimension of culture is itself rather complex. There are many examples of high-agency magics (such as Harry Potter and the Warren of the early 1990s). There are also other ways of thinking magically, in which human beings might trigger the unleashing of super-natural power, but have little hope for thinking that they themselves can direct or manage this power. If high-agency magic reflects back to us our deepest desire, do low-agency magics reflect back our greatest fear?