Muggles

I'm starting this blog because my phone has a really excellent Blogger app and a crappy app for Livejournal. Over time I may insert prime posts from the latter into the former.

Anyway, there is this word "Muggle" which I keep running into. An odd word which apparently has ties to marajuana use in the 1920s and '30s. I first ran into it as most people have in J.K.Rowling's Harry Potter books. In that context it refers to those without magical abilities or who are unaware of the magical universe.

It seems obvious that such a term would be adopted by the Wizards and Witches of the real world. Occult types have often felt a keen separation between themselves and those who either do not know or do not care for their field of study. What has surprised me is the adoptation by a number of niche or subculture groups. I've heard it in context with the Society for Creative Anachronism replacing the term "mundanes" as a reference to outsiders. I've heard it used by Geocachers who, also, refer to those who are not part of their group.

It is a sort of catch-all term for the 'uninitiated' of any group of like-minded individuals. The problem, of course, is that with such a usage one can be a muggle to one group and not in another. A Geocacher calling the other people in the park Muggles could be labelling SCA people, a Witch or other Occultist or any number of people who have picked up this term.

It promotes and "us vs them" mentality which, sadly enough, seems to be necessary in our society. Subcultures are not embraced by the masses as part of the whole and so humans tend to define themselves via in-group and out-group. I'm uncertain whether this tendency is a good thing, or a bad thing. I know SCA people who hated the use of the word "Mundanes" to refer to non-SCA folk as derrogetory. Muggle certainly has a derrogetory connotation within the Harry Potter series, especially with the Neo-Fascist movement in the later books.

Yet humans build communities and part of that construct is defining who is in and who is out. We probably developed this for security reasons when we were hunter-gatherers and during the foundation of the early civilizations. Athens guarded against Sparta, they both guarded against barbarian hordes, etc... Those who are not part of the group pose a threat, either physical, psychological or emotional. On the other hand, in-group members tend to be supportive of our ideals, dreams and personality giving us a safe place to be, explore and grow.

Muggles, in the Rowling terminology, have certainly been a threat to outsiders over the centuries. Mages, Witches and all sorts of magical types had reason to fear the Muggles. I myself have suffered persecution at their hands. This is not unique to those who follow High Magic's Way or the path of the Earth Mother, but has been meted out against people based on ethnicity, economic status, ideology and religion.

The Church of the Subgenius calles them Pinks, Food-Tubes, Normals, Consumers and Dumbasses. Perhaps Muggle is simply the new "normal person," the "Hoi-Polloi," the "great unwashed masses." Rowling has given us a term which has no other meaning (other than a very early connection to pot) than to define those who follow the life-scripts assigned to them without deviation. The normal people, the weekend wannabes, the people who buy the right jeans, who attend the right events, who listen to the right bands (mostly constructed by record companies to appeal to these Normals) these are the types of people who are most likely Muggles to anyone else.

But part of me is a little sad. To think that this word now refers to normal, boring people rather than to those who are not magically inclined seems like the word was made then immediately stolen. We who are the Magicians, Witches and Wizards of the world kind of liked having a work to define those who didn't walk our path. Yet it has become so popular that groups who have nothing to do with magic consider others to be Muggles, perhaps even the very people that the term doesn't apply to by definition. Certainly there is some crossover, most Pinks are also Muggles, but not all Muggles are Pinks.

I guess the bottom line is that, as an equal opportunity word in an equal opportunity world we can use "Muggle" to deride and sneer at almost anyone. Yay... somehow that doesn't feel like a great achievement.