This paper explores mythic symbols in Harry Potter as battlegrounds of allegorisation, psychology, sacramentalism and mystic power. J.K. Rowling draws upon the treasure store of 'collective' mythic materials, the universally familiar special symbols, images and archetypes that she immerses in the broken imagery of contemporary psychology. Her use of myth and symbol has suffered scathing criticism since it often seems that her mythic symbols are not quite mythic enough to satisfy readers who enjoy J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis or Ursula K. Le Guin. Key among Rowling's archetypal structures is the basic opposition of good and evil with Harry championing good whilst Voldemort functions as the shadow or dark side of the ego, a view supported by their similar powers, half-blood lineage etc. Each is the other's antithesis, rather as though Harry is stalked by a monster from his own Id. His deepest desire when before the mirror of Erised is to lose the painful reality of his older self through re-integration back into the womb of the family from which he was cruelly separated by Voldemort. This childhood trauma emerges through his struggle with the forces of repression and desire. Also, Rowling has spoken of her experience of the mental illness of depression that she used as an inspiration for the creation of the Dementors who consume human emotions and are an archetypal evil and an expression of the artist's negativity. There is a sense that the writer is unburdening herself by bringing these archetypes to consciousness. However her use of symbols contrasts with that of Lewis and Tolkien who saw myth and symbol as a way to evoke spiritual experience. Metaphysical implications emerge in the transition from psychology to higher illumination and Rowling uses sacramental symbolism in her use of Fawkes as a Christian symbol of the Resurrection. The great serpent deep under ground embodying poisonous evil and the symbols for the Hogwarts Houses also reflect insight into Rowling's formal structures. However there is an inherent tension between Christian, pagan and psychoanalytic symbols which promote transcendent or reductive readings. Whilst ancient mythological materials are re-fashioned within Rowling's modern fantasies, the creation of a 'higher' or Tolkien-like Secondary World in which we encounter mystic realities is undercut in Potter's wizard world by the intrusion of Muggle reality and the satirical mirror that Rowling holds up to the world of the reader. The wizard world is Harry's wish-fulfilment for escape from Muggledom and is populated by mythical creatures such as merpeople, centaurs, unicorns, giants and pixies that recall popular myth, classical and Northern literature, and the poeticised divine or mythical eras. Mythical beings in Harry Potter are made into character types by Rowling, a process that goes some way to reduce their mythic quality despite the fact that mythic symbols inevitably retain vestiges of their function as talismans or carriers of ancient mythic power. Similarly they serve to manifest the wizards' magic world, the reality of which is denied by Muggles. Rowling's mythic symbols carry both psychological, inner experience and the holistic, transcendent power to grasp the world beyond the visible, empirical domain.