The Trouble with Trelawney

Sybil Trelawney, the Hogwarts professor, can be difficult character to defend if you’re going to say that the Harry Potter series is a good series, and especially if you’re going to say that it’s both a Christian and moral series of stories (which I do).

Spoiler alert—this post talks about the end of the Harry Potter series!

First, I’ll explain why there is some legitimate concern about Trelawney as a character

Then I’ll show you what I think Rowling is doing with her as a character in the story

And finally, I’ll show you how I did it, and how you can do the same thing that I did here with other characters in other stories, too.

Why is Professor Sybil Trelawney a Problem?

For parents and teachers who are concerned about the magic and the occult in the Harry Potter stories, her character can be a very difficult one to explain. That’s especially true when you take into consideration some of the other cultural movements that were popular when J.K. Rowling began writing the Harry Potter series.

Side note: If you want to know more about the spells and magic in Harry Potter, I've written separate blog posts on each of them. You can read them by clicking the links in this paragraph.

In particular, what was called the “New Age Movement”

The rest of this post is on my substack page here: https://amymackinnon.substack.com/