strangemeta

[strangemeta]

Ever since the wizarding community separated themselves from muggles way back in the 17th Century, it has grown up independently, and in many ways continues to resemble a medieval, pre-industrialized society, rather than the modern Britain it exists alongside.

Before Separation, witches and wizards were integrated into ‘Muggle’ society; fulfilling important roles in their communities. Later demonization of the supernatural and persecution of people who clung to ‘pagan’ practices put an end to that. In order to ensure their survival in the new age, wizardkind withdrew from mainstream society, creating their own, hidden communities: see the Statute of Secrecy.

My take on the Wizarding world is that it exists in a state of chronic instability, and in a sense, fear: they are an extremely tiny demographic living in the shadow of a massive population of people who, albeit lacking in magickal power, outnumber them about 24,000 to 1 ( in Britain alone ).

Wizards separated from mainstream society because the Muggles were systematically executing them. Nowadays, you would never hear a wizard confess to being afraid of Muggles; and individually, no Muggle could present a real threat to a trained wizard. But most wizards will agree: it’s better that Muggles don’t know magick exists, and any smart, self-preserving wizard will keep himself well hidden.

Why—? I have a hard time believing that wizards are motivated to stay hidden simply out of fear of the Ministry. The Ministry does not have enough power to control the wizarding community through force alone! What does motivate people— entire groups of people—to withdraw in on themselves, to shun that which is Other? Fear. Survival.

Disdain for Muggleborn wizards may have emerged as a fear of a fox in the henhouse, so to speak: a dangerous outsider encroaching on our sanctuary. It trickled down over the years, along with the ‘fear’ of Muggles (as a group) and the sentiments behind Separation… until it eventually became what we see in the books: disdain for Muggles and anything to do with their culture, prejudice against Muggleborn wizards, and a sense of superiority over Mugglekind.

Meanwhile, the wizarding world remains reminiscent of a pre-industrialized society, especially when it comes to the socio-economic hierarchy. Aristocracy and nepotism seem to be alive and well in the wizarding world. Although the wizarding world has artisans, athletes, entrepreneurs, educators, government officials—who I’m presuming are paid through some form of wizard tax?— and other working class citizens, there is also a good deal of wealth passed down through families.

But being born into a well known household comes with more than just wealth. It comes with connections. influence. power. Names mean a lot in the wizarding world, not only among the Pureblood Supremacists, but in every corner of their society. Most wizards won’t get very far without making the right connections; and much of the wizarding world seems to operate on the opinion that some people ( the wealthy, the pureblooded, and those who have achieved success independently somehow ) are better than others ( the poor, half-bloods, working class wizards who didn’t “make something of themselves” or who weren’t talented enough to distinguish themselves ).

I also enjoy the theory that an influx of Muggleborns, due perhaps to the population / birth rate increase in the muggle population, meant more and more ‘half-blood’ wizards coming up in society. Old prejudices against muggles and all they beget, combined with the frustrations of a group of lower class Purebloods who were being forced to compete against these Muggleborn outsiders ( feeling a bit disenfranchised, perhaps )… could have created the fertile soils Voldemort needed to plant his seeds of violent rebellion, and provided him with a group of unsatisfied people he could manipulate.

So I like to imagine Voldemort was manipulating all these social and economical tensions to recruit members, and that lead to the start of the First Wizarding War.

[strangemeta]

The Most Feared Dark Lord

Exploring

War and conflict in the wizarding world

The history of Dark Lords and violent uprisings

Why Voldemort was so successful in terrorizing the population

Why the Ministry is so powerless against Dark Lords.

History on Loop

I have explained how the population structure of wizarding Britain is not the same as muggle Britain but closely resembles the demographics of a pre-industrialised country such as Britain in the 17th century: a high death, a high birth rate and a small, stable population (Demographics of the Wizarding World).

Disease is an important factor in maintaining both a high death rate in such pre-industrial countries but violent conflict is just as important and the wizarding world has no shortage of violent conflict.

I find it interesting that Lord Voldemort, despite all the terrible things he has done to himself and others, is only the most feared Dark Lord in the last 100 years. This means just two generations before and potentially within living memory there was someone even worse than Voldemort. More importantly, Lord Voldemort isn’t the only Dark Lord in a century; he is merely the most feared.

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[strangemeta]

The Magical World - Medieval in More Ways Than One

We have seen that the demographics of the wizarding world resembles pre-industrial Britain between the late middle ages and the early modern period (Wizards - an endangered species). 

I have discussed the burden of infectious diseases on wizarding society but traditionally disease is not the only problem facing pre-industrial societies (Magical Maladies).

Where death stalks the land, it does so in the twin forms of war and plague. The wizarding world may look advanced and sophisticated but behind the veneer of order: this society is always on the brink of anarchy. 

I explore:

Why the Ministry of Magic is nothing like a modern muggle government

Why wizarding society is inherently unstable and resembles more a medieval society than a modern one. 

Why injustice is so widespread in wizarding society

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[strangemeta]

Family Planning Magical Style

Exploring:

Infant mortality in the wizarding world and why there is so little evidence for it

How wizarding society functions

Why having a large family is beneficial

Why wizards/witches may have a very different attitude to family planning

In previous essays, I have explored how infectious disease can create high death rates in wizarding society. This does not just effect the population structure, it has huge consequences on how society functions and how the wizarding world approaches family planning. Draco Malfoy is probably not a single child by choice…

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[strangemeta]

Fantastic beasts and Gruesome Diseases

A discussion of

Purely magical diseases

Ways in which infections can jump from magical creatures to wizards

How the magical world controls the spread to muggles

Why the magical world doesn’t use modern medical techniques

In the previous essay I discussed how diseases contributes to the high death rate in the wizarding world and how the magical world has a different approach to curing the diseases that are very familiar to muggles. However the wizarding world doesn’t just have to contend with mundane illness, there are myriads of magical creatures and beings in Harry Potter that muggles never see or come into contact with. 

Magical creatures/beings most likely harbour their own diseases which can jump species and infect wizards. Dragonpox may actually come from dragons…

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[strangemeta]

Disease and Medicine in the Wizarding World

Exploring:

Illness and disease in the magical world

What kind of healthcare is available

Differences in treatment and medical technology

Why we can’t assume that wizards are more advanced than muggles in terms of healthcare. 

In the previous essays (Wizards - an Endangered Species) I have explained why the population structure of the wizarding world is much more similar to a pre-industrial country than modern muggle Britain.

High death rates in pre-industrialised countries reflect a large disease burden. Mostly this disease burden is due to infectious diseases that are endemic and also circulated as frequent, regular epidemics. With modern medical care, developed nations like Britain have managed to cut both the disease burden and death rate from infectious diseases but clearly the wizarding world is still being plagued with….plagues.

There is a possibility that purely magical maladies exist which can only affect wizards/witches, which will explain the discrepancies between modern muggle Britain and wizarding Britain. However given that wizards and muggles are all one species with the same immune system, it stands to reason that all diseases experienced by wizards must also be able to infect muggles, whether this is literally the case is a whole different question.

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[strangemeta]

Wizards - An Endangered Species

Witches/wizards are very rare when you think in terms of the world as whole. JK Rowling has stated that there are “about 3000” witches/wizards in the UK and there are around 72 million people in the UK. That means magic has a prevalence of 0.0042 in 100,000 people or 42 in 1 million. Given that most genetic diseases have a higher prevalence than magic (cystic fibrosis: 125 in 1 million, sickle cell anaemia 139 in 1 million), we must ask the question: why is magic so rare in humans?

This is series of essays I will explore:

The Demographics of the Wizarding World

Magical Disease and Medicine

War and Dark Lords

The Genetics of Magical Inheritance

In order to discover why the wizarding world is so different from our own and why there are so few wizards/witches.

Demographics of the Wizarding World

JK Rowling originally estimated the number of students in Hogwarts to be around 1000 [1]. Although this seems too high compared to the evidence we have in the books based on Harry’s year in Gryffindor, there is very little point in second guessing these figures because of all the things we simply don’t know. The low number of students in Harry’s year may reflect a corresponding crash in birth rate at the height of Voldemort’s terror campaign and/or a magical epidemic. Gryffindor may be generally a smaller house than the other three. There is no reason to believe that the sorting hat does proportion students out evenly. Rowling clearly intended Hogwarts, in the time frame that we see it, to be a big school even by muggle standards and children were supposed to represent a significant proportion of the wizarding world. Many people will bend over backwards to disprove that Hogwarts is so large and the wizarding population so small because they wish to impose the demographics of modern muggle Britain onto Harry Potter’s world. This is entirely fruitless, as the wizarding Britain is a completely separate society developing along a completely different trajectory.  It may looked like a developed society by muggle standards but one cannot impose the definitions of muggle development: low birth rate/death rate, and long life expectancy, on a magical society. There is no logical reason to believe wizarding society is structured in anyway like muggle Britain. 

These seemingly “skewed” figures may be the key to understanding the wizarding world. 

Keep reading

[strangemeta]

Here it is, canon evidence that Salazar Slytherin was NOT a racist bigot. He was concerned for the well-being and safety of the magical community, which could have been compromised by letting the “common people” know that wizards and witches existed.

datvikingtho