This was written in the spring of 1999. Many of my Sixth grade students were reading the book and I felt I should know what they were reading. I borrowed a copy and read, this is my evaluation. This was of course years before the movie which comes out this fall.
We meet Harry Potter in Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon Dursley's home. It is Harry's twelfth Birthday. Harry at 12 is already the most famous wizard around. On page 4, we find a wizard had cursed him at age one, and somehow Harry had survived. Now at age 12, he had beaten Lord Voldemort twice but had a lightening type scar on his forehead.
After a "house-elf" ruins dinner for special guests of the Dursley's, Harry is imprisoned in his bedroom. The room has bars on the window and door. His three friends come in a flying car to pick him up and takes him half way across England to their home. The father of the three boys is one of his teachers at Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Everything about the book is about magic and the occult. In Chapter, Five Harry and Ron miss the train so they drive the flying car across England to school. The car has problems and crashes into a tree, that gets mad and whomps them, it is called a Whomping Willow.
Soon after meeting Harry we find his uncle "spraying spit" and mentioning Harry's "abnormality" and the authors mention of "not normal" on page 2 and 3. By the end of the page, we find Harry enjoys playing Quidditch "which uses six tall goal posts, four flying balls, and fourteen players on broomsticks." It tells us on page 3 where all of Harry's "spellbooks, wand, robes, and cauldron were located in the house.
Harry in a very telling statement to Dobby says, "I don't belong here. [in the human world] I belong in your world-at Hogwarts." Pg. 16. There are only two known worlds, the natural and supernatural worlds. There are only two places power comes from: Jehovah and Lucifer.
In Chapter 2, we find Harry's conversation with a "house-elf" Dobby. Both Dobby and Harry are afraid. This is not a Biblical feeling. 2 Timothy 1:7. God has not given us the spirit of fear…"
In Chapter 4, Harry is at the three boys' home. Ron, George and Fred. We read there is a ghoul in the attic (page 29) and the garden needs to be "de-gnomed" or removed from the garden daily (35). Everyone seems to have an owl and they seem to be almost human. They write letters and can be quiet when it is important.
Their dad, Mr. Weasley, works with an old warlock named Perkins. Mr. Weasley enjoys taking Muggles things apart and putting a hex on them before putting them back together. This is why the house has a flying car and self-shuffling cards Harry has to step over on the floor of the home.
There is a complete list of jargon native to this book. A human is a Muggle. Mudbloods is half warlock and half human. A Squib is one "who was born into a wizarding family but hasn't got any magic powers.": All through the book words appear to be part of the language of the occult. I am not sure if these are fantasy words, or whether this is a occult primer. I chose not to include these words so as not to encourage use of them, whether fiction or reality.
One rather cute page (38) Mr. Weasley makes keys shrink. George asks why they would sell a shrinking key Mr. W answers, "Just Muggle-baiting,' signed Mr. Weasley, "Sell them a key that keeps shrinking to nothing so they can never find it when they need it"… "Bless them, they 'll go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it is staring them in the face."
There are flying brooms, flying balls. Distance is not a problem because they use Floo Powder which allows them to move quickly from place to place. In a later chapter they use a caldron over a toilet (using waterproof fire) to boil up a potion that allows them to have the bodies of another person. Harry and two of his friends go to the basement of the school to a deathday party. Everyone there is dead, except the three of them. This party was for "Nearly Headless Nick" who died 500 years before, to the day.
About half-way throught the book Harry begins to hear talking from the wall. In time, he (and everyone in the school) realizes Harry has the ability to talk and listen to snakes. Parselmouth is the jargon for this ability according to Ron.
Harry, like any good suspense story, puts the pieces of the puzzle together and finds the opening to the Chamber of Secrets in a girls bathroom. This is the room Harry, Ron and Hermione use to make the polyjuice potion, talk to a dead girl who haunts the toilet, read the black-arts book and do their discussion when they don't want others to listen.
Harry finds a book that has no words. After a week of looking at it he begins to write in it and finds it answers him back.. All through the book, students are turning "frozen and stiff". They are alive, but in a coma like state, more dead than alive. The book tells Harry his name is Tom Riddle. He was a student 50 years ago when the Chamber of Secrets was opened last. He threw Harry back 50 years into a holographic type vision where he saw Tom's' reality.
The book comes to a conclusion far under the castle that is Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. After finding the "door" to the Secret Chamber is in the girl's bathroom on a pipe, Harry taps it with his wand. The wand is always with Harry. It helps Harry see like a flashlight, cast spells and open pipes. Once tapped the pipe opens up and swallows them. They fall below the castle where they meet Lord Voldemort.
A very large green snake is to kill all three of them. Jenny, the quietest, nicest youngest sister of Ron disappeared one week earlier. They find her and find out that Tom Riddle is Lord Voldemort. They are the same doing duplicity against the students living above for at least 50 years.
Harry calls on the headmaster's name and his phoenix comes with a sword and a wizard's hat. With these two Harry kills the snake, and Tom Riddle and gets Jenny back and everyone is happy.
Except me. I found the book incredibly evil. At best it is a story that should not be told. The witches and demons are the good people. At worst it is the Prince of Darkness showing readers a window into the occult not unlike the opening into the Chamber of Secrets.. What better way to do this than to show a 98 pound weakling with large glasses how to win over the world. He is a hero. He is a warlock. This is evil.
There are only two pools of supernatural power. Jesus Christ came to save the world from sin. (Luke 19:10) He took the supernatural world seriously and cast out these demons. Moses in the last words he would speak on this planet said in Deuteronomy 32:17 "They sacrificed to demons who were not God, To gods whom they have not known, New {gods} who came lately, Whom your fathers did not dread.
The word 'Medium" is used four times in the NAS Bible. The King James uses the word witch.
Leviticus 20:27 Now a man or a woman who is a medium or a spiritist shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones, their bloodguiltiness is upon them.' "
God said, they should kill a witch just like a murderer. They should stone them to death, a horrible way to die.
Deuteronomy 18:11 or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. :12 "For whoever does these things is detestable to the \Lord;\ and because of these detestable things the \Lord\ your God will drive them out before you. :13 "You shall be blameless before the \Lord\ your God. :14 "For those nations, which you shall dispossess, listen to those who practice witchcraft and to diviners, but as for you, the \Lord\ your God has not allowed you {to do} so.
Verse 11 verse defines the term medium, and it fits Harry Potter and his friends quite well. Jehovah hates this behavior.
1 Samuel 28:7 Then Saul said to his servants, "Seek for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her." And his servants said to him, "Behold, there is a woman who is a medium at Endor."
1 Chronicles 10:13 So Saul died for his trespass which he committed against the \Lord\, because of the word of the \Lord\ which he did not keep; and also because he asked counsel of a medium, making inquiry {of it},
God communicates to us that Saul played with the occult and the next day he died in battle, in part, because he talked with a witch.
People that die, go to heaven or hell. They don't come back and haunt and have parties.
HEB 9:27 And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this {comes} judgment,
Philippians 1:21 For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. :22 But if {I am} to live {on} in the flesh, this {will mean} fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose. :23 But I am hard-pressed from both {directions,} having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for {that} is very much better;
Paul did not feel like he would stay on this planet, he was to die and be escorted directly into God's presence.
Conclusion: I believe this book is evil personified. If I was Lucifer, an Angel of Light, I would write a book that seemed innocent just like this book. It is antichrist. It would be full of humor and good reading. It would be so fun no one would take it seriously. And that is exactly what Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is all about, right down to the "12-point Adobe Garamond typeface based on the sixteenth-century type designs of Claude Garamond."