Quantum Harry, the Podcast: Recent Episodes
B. L. Purdom
Why did Hagrid bring Harry to Surrey, or Hermione get a cat in her third year? Why are Ron and Dumbledore oddly similar? And why was there all that camping in the seventh book? Quantum Harry, the Podcast looks at the unifying theme of the HP series, shedding new light on JK Rowling's narrative choices and forever changing the way you read Harry Potter.
PUBLICATION NEWS: The Alchemical Harry Potter is now available for purchase from McFarland! (My chapter is in Part III, below.)
From the publisher:
When Harry Potter first boards the Hogwarts Express, he journeys to a world which Rowling says has alchemy as its “internal logic.” The Philosopher’s Stone, known for its power to transform base metals into gold and to give immortality to its maker, is the subject of the conflict between Harry and Voldemort in the first book of the series. But alchemy is not about money or eternal life, it is much more about the transformations of desire, of power and of people—through love.
Harry’s equally remarkable and ordinary power to love leads to his desire to find but not use the Philosopher’s Stone at the start of the series and his wish to end the destructive power of the Elder Wand at the end. This collection of essays on alchemical symbolism and transformations in Rowling’s series demonstrates how Harry’s work with magical objects, people, and creatures transfigure desire, power, and identity. As Harry’s leaden existence on Privet Drive is transformed in the company of his friends and teachers, the Harry Potter novels have transformed millions of readers, inspiring us to find the gold in our ordinary lives.
Chapters/Authors:
I—The Resurrection Stone and the Transfiguration of Desire
Why I Read Harry Potter Books Again and Again by Sophia Imafuji, age 8
The Literary Alchemy of J.K. Rowling by John Granger
Harry Potter and the Transfiguration of Desire by Anne Parker-Perkola
Re-Reading Harry Potter, Re-Creating Ourselves: Harry Potter as Resurrection Stone by Isaac Willis
Out from the Shadows into the Light: Persona and Shadow in Harry Potter by Alicia L. Skipper and Kate Fulton
An Anti-Oedipal Reading of Harry Potter and Alchemy by Robert Tindol
II—The Elder Wand and the Transfiguration of Power
My Harry Potter Journey by Ella Victoria Greer, age 13
The Missing Element: The Alchemy Experiment Inside the Chamber of Secrets by S.P. Şipal
On the Transmutation of Voldemort’s Love of Power into Harry Potter’s Power of Love by Lawrence W. Farris
Auror Magic: An Almost Alchemical Process by Lorrie Kim
Tapping on Just Another Brick in the Wall by Sean Paulsgrove
III—The Cloak of Invisibility and the Transfiguration of Self and Community
And All Was Well by Tamyra Dixon-Rankin
The Snitch, the Stone, and the Sword: Harry Potter the Alchemical Seeker by B.L. Purdom
Alchemy as a Metaphor for Learning by Mary Pyle
Harry Potter and the Root of All Evil by Charles M. Rupert
Soul Making and Soul Splitting: Alchemy of the Soul in Harry Potter by Julie Loveland Swanstrom
Ruddy Stargazers: Centaurs, Philosophers, and a Life Worth Living by Anne J. Mamary
Epilogue: Friendship Hallowed, Pure, and Ever-Present
Available in physical form (click HERE) or as an ebook (click HERE).
Enjoy!
The link to the podcast version of this essay.
JK Rowling has, of late, been digging an ever-deepening hole concerning her attitudes toward transgender people. As the parent of a trans son, as well as someone who co-led (for 10 years) an interfaith 501(c)(3) educational organization that educated the public and media about the existence of people of faith who support equal rights for sexual minorities, reproductive freedom, and separation of church and state, I have felt the impetus to respond to Rowling’s extremely damaging statements but felt too full of grief, initially, to do so.So, to begin to address this in terms of the most recent statement Rowling has made, I will examine some parts of her statement that particularly moved me to respond. I am working from a Google docs version of it.This is the first problematic statement I found:“…last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.”According to Andrew James Carter:This is the real reason that her employment contract was not renewed. (She was not an employee, but a contract worker, an important distinction.) Forstater refused to address trans people at her workplace using the pronouns of their choice, fostering a toxic work-environment. I’m sure that if she had been openly racist, few people would have come to her defense. She simply refused to show the basic civility expected of most people at their place of work. It’s a fairly low bar, and she not only couldn’t clear it, she argued against having to, and JK Rowling supported her.Rowling began to receive criticism because she “liked” a Tweet of Forstater’s, after this referring to it as her “accidental ‘like’ crime” as if she had accidentally “liked” the Tweet, though it is very clear that it was not an accident.That’s part of the problem (but hardly the only problem) with someone so high-profile taking a stance that puts lives at risk. For folks who don’t have the kind of platform she does, having her validate their views carries the same weight as when she was validating the views of people who were fighting for equal rights (which she still seems convinced that she’s doing, fighting for women’s rights and equality, despite women around the world also fighting for the same thing disagreeing strongly with her anti-trans stance). It is a stamp of approval from someone millions of people around the world look up to. When she approves of the continued marginalization and negation of a group of people who have to struggle daily to prove they deserve to exist, that is dangerous to them, because those who agree with her have repeatedly acted on that stamp of approval. So, to flippantly complain that someone wrote to her to say, “I was literally killing trans people with my hate…” as if that is a patently ludicrous statement is a complete dismissal of the power that her approval has in the world.This is what we’ve seen every day since the 2016 election. The day after the election, hate-crimes were already on the rise across the US, and have been ever since. After lying about George Soros financing “the caravan” at the southern border, which was classic stochastic terrorism, a Trump follower gunned down 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Words have consequences. This is not to suggest that JK Rowling is equal to Trump when it comes to hateful rhetoric; Trump targets groups with a clear intent to harm them, and panders to his cult by saying that he hates the same people they do. I believe that she believes sincerely that she is doing more good than harm, and I don’t classify what she is doing as pandering, either. But while the harm is not Trump-level harm—and hopefully it never will be—it is harm, nonetheless. Rowling has received a lot of support from other anti-trans folks; she says that she was overwhelmed by their support, because, surprise surprise, people like their bigotry echoed and reinforced by famous people of whom they are fans. (Such as, again, Donald Trump.) It tells them that they were right to think you were “their kind” of people. You are validating them by saying what they’re saying. Historically, bigotry has been cloaked in “worry”. In Rowling’s case, worry not just about women and girls (who have a lot more to worry about from a deeply misogynist culture than from trans folks) but also, supposedly, about trans youth, who are some of the most outspoken Harry Potter fans who have felt attacked and abandoned by Rowling for her statements supporting anti-trans bigots. She writes about: “…the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.”If anyone is fostering a “climate of fear” it is Rowling and others questioning the very right of trans people to exist. This is why it is laughable that she then complains about the TERF label, including saying, “Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.”That isn’t irony. That is just turning anti-trans attitudes against trans men for a change of pace, rather than trans women, by not recognizing that TRANS MEN ARE MEN. This may seem like a weird idea, but maybe folks identifying as feminists should regard all people who support feminism as their allies and not only the people they deem to be “female” based on their understanding of their biology. There are plenty of cisgender women who are hostile to feminism. It has become painfully clear in the last four years that one of our biggest obstacles to moving forward as a species are women who are misogynists and do not want equality for women, in spite of being women. Just as biology does not dictate to whom you are attracted or love and does not necessarily dictate your gender identity, it also does not dictate your ideology, so continuing to pretend this is true does not reflect reality. Conversely, many ardent feminists are men, cis or trans. Their biology is beside the point; their support of feminism is the point.Then, as if she thinks this doesn’t make her look even more anti-trans, she says, “Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species).”So, to break this down, she’s a) equating testicles with courage, a classically misogynist/sexist trope; b) acting as though trans men who’ve had bottom-surgery don’t exist; and c) acting as though intersex people don’t exist. Yes, the vast majority of the human species display particular biological qualities that make us, as a whole, a dimorphic species. But not all do. And again, trans men and intersex people exist, as well as non-binary people and those who are gender-nonconforming in their appearance, behavior, or both.Rowling lists five reasons why she is particularly worried now about trans activism. One is her charitable trust with an emphasis on women and children, as if she is concerned that trans women could benefit from this without being what she considers “real” women; the trust also supports survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, which is good, but trans women also suffer from this and also deserve support. She also cites her support of MS research as a reason; her mother lived for many years and then died from multiple sclerosis, which is, in Rowling’s words “a disease that behaves very differently in men and women,” but she fails completely to explain how acknowledging the existence of trans people puts MS research at risk.The second reason she cites for her interest now is that she has an interest in “education and safeguarding” as if trans people are not being attacked in educational settings and in places where their safety is supposed to be protected; the implication is that the trans folks are those from whom children need to be protected.Her third reason is freedom of speech, which she has in abundance; she has a worldwide platform on which to vent her spleen. As she herself has noted in the past, freedom of speech includes the freedom to disagree with someone else’s speech. I know for a certainty that I have in fact defended Jo Rowling’s freedom of speech when she has been attacked for doing things like criticizing Trump. Just because people disagree with her does not mean she no longer has freedom of speech; it just means the people disagreeing also have freedom of speech.Then she claims that the fourth reason is very personal, which I fail to understand; if anything, it is highly personal to me as the mother of a trans son. She talks about trans men who detransitioned due in part to regrets about losing their fertility. (And she fails utterly to note that trans men who have NOT lost their fertility do indeed still menstruate, and this is part of why the organization she mocked with her snarky response to the phrase “people who menstruate” used that phrase—to be inclusive and kind. Her response to that kindness, inclusion, and accuracy was to be snide and sarcastic.) She also claims that in some cases, trans men being attracted to women but being afraid of homophobia (in the form of attacks on lesbians) led them to conclude that to be in relationships with women but not subject to homophobic attacks, they had to transition to being men, and some of these trans men later realized this wasn’t what they wanted after all; they wanted to be with women as women. First, here is what Carter has to say about this part of the essay:And:And: Further down the thread:And:Now, there have been a handful of anecdotal studies, from the points of view of both trans men and trans women, testifying to how very differently they live in the world after transitioning. Trans women mainly report having to learn to do all of the things most women are accustomed to, feeling the burden of these behaviors to secure their safety and well-being against predators, as well as frustration with men who dismiss and disregard women on a daily basis. Trans men report people paying more attention to their opinions and valuing these opinions more, plus having the freedom to exist in spaces where they wouldn’t have felt safe before.If homophobia (specifically against lesbians) and misogyny sometimes make being male seem attractive, it shouldn’t be surprising; men still very much rule the world. This doesn’t mean the rights of people who genuinely feel that their bodies need to be male to reflect who they are inside should be disregarded because some people thought the prospect of moving through the world as a man was more appealing than doing so as a woman, specifically, as a lesbian. (And, again, this is a surpassingly small fraction of those who transition.)But even if, for argument’s sake, there are scads of trans men regretting their decision to transition instead of remaining lesbians (THERE AREN’T—see above), this means we need to fight harder against homophobia and misogyny. Being “concerned” about trans men who transition and regret it doesn’t mean we should make it harder to transition. It means we should support all of our youth and try to rid our society of the type of discrimination and oppression that could lead to someone who isn’t a good candidate for transitioning feeling like that’s what they need to do to have the life they want. That’s not a failure of trans-activism; that’s a failure to eradicate the oppression from which people are attempting to flee.Rowling goes on to talk about how rampant misogyny is right now. This is true, but not because of trans people. If anything, the testimonies we’ve had from trans people about how differently the world responds to them pre- and post-transition have been incredibly eye-opening and helpful to highlight how much work we still need to do. She writes, “From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.”First, in this passage she seems to be calling “trans activists” men, which means that she’s calling trans women activists men. She is so dedicated to the idea that trans women are not women (and that trans men are not men) that she seems to be incapable of not misgendering trans folks. (Is it any wonder that people are upset?) Also, anyone advocating against rights for trans folks does need re-educating (though punching is never an effective way of doing that.) Second, as mentioned earlier, one of the biggest problems in the fight against misogyny is that too many women are enamored of the status quo. If all women were in favor of equality, plus all men who identify as feminists, we’d be in a great position to move forward, but this is not the case.Then she writes: “I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body” which is her disingenuous way of coming back to her “sex is sex” argument. She is neglecting to acknowledge that for cisgender people, their bodies and brains match, but just because that is their experience, it is not everyone’s. This is like white folks claiming racism doesn’t exist because they don’t experience it. I’ve seen JK Rowling telling off people who have suggested exactly that. We all experience the world differently. I don’t know why this is so hard for her to grasp when it comes to this topic, since she has shown, in other cases, that she gets it. When those who are supportive of trans folks say trans people have a different experience of this, they are not saying (and I hate this term) “biological women don’t have common experiences.” Carter says this about Rowling’s choice of words:Asserting that trans women deserve to be recognized and affirmed is not synonymous with denying the lived experiences of cis women; if anything, as noted, trans women have provided a damning testimony of the misogyny that women live through on a daily basis from the perspective of people who did not always live that. This only supports the fight against misogyny from all sources. She refuses to acknowledge this, saying:“‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive. Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.”There’s so much horrifying stuff here to unpack. First, trans women know that ‘woman’ is not a costume, a ‘pink brain,’ or a liking for women’s clothing. Second, the organization she snarked at for using the phrase “people who menstruate” was being inclusive, kind, and accurate. It was the furthest thing from dehumanizing and demeaning, which she would know if she weren’t so against calling trans women women, trans men men, acknowledging the existence of non-binary people (who are also ‘people who menstruate’) and acknowledged that women who no longer menstruate or never did for whatever reason are still women, that menstruation is not the sole way to identify a woman. (She is a year younger than I am and I’m coming very close to no longer menstruating. When I do, I will still definitely be a woman. If this has not happened to her yet, it will eventually. And when it does, like me, she will still be a woman.)If you see someone else’s kindness and inclusion as hostile and alienating, that says a lot more about you than the people you are criticizing for being kind and inclusive (plus accurate). She continues:“If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you’d find solidarity and kinship. I have a visceral sense of the terror in which those trans women will have spent their last seconds on earth, because I too have known moments of blind fear when I realised that the only thing keeping me alive was the shaky self-restraint of my attacker.”Now, it is horrifying for anyone to experience this. It is also horrifying to say that you have experienced solidary and kinship with trans women who have experienced this after saying the things she has said that dehumanize trans women. She refers to a serious sexual assault, something no one should ever have to live through; I know far too many people who have, and I have come terrifyingly close more than once in my life, knowing that it is only through sheer luck that I escaped, because there is only one cause of rape: rapists. Just like black folks who experience police violence, you can do everything “right” and it can still happen. What I fail to understand is how living through that seems only to have cemented her dedication to attacking the vulnerable instead of doing more than giving lip-service to standing in solidarity with trans women. Every attack she makes on trans folks negates her claim of solidarity and kinship.She also writes: “Late on Saturday evening…I forgot the first rule of Twitter – never, ever expect a nuanced conversation – and reacted to what I felt was degrading language about women.” Again, viewing language that was kind, inclusive, and accurate as “degrading” says more about her than the people she snarked at. I believe that if someone is in need of seeing “nuance” here, it is JK Rowling. She seems particularly offended—and I think that was the point—by this, “You are Voldemort said one person, clearly feeling this was the only language I’d understand.” While that may seem an extreme response, let me, as she says, attempt to speak a language JK Rowling might possibly understand.In the seventh Harry Potter book, the Ministry undertook a pogrom, essentially, to eradicate Muggle-born magical people from wizarding society. People who knew for a certainty that they were magical were deemed inauthentic pretenders and stripped of their wands. How could anyone who didn’t have at least one magical parent be a magical person? Rowling depicted this very clearly as an injustice, a failure to recognize that sometimes magical people cropped up in non-magical families, that your parentage/biology may have absolutely nothing to do with your magical ability, and yet, still, YOU ARE MAGICAL. (She also depicts “Squibs” in the books, people of magical parentage who, despite this, are NOT magical.)While Rowling may have meant readers to see this pogrom as analogous to the Third Reich (it works pretty well for that) plus “one-drop” laws around the world that decreed that people who had even one-drop of blood from an ancestor who was not considered Caucasian could not access the rights of white people, it also works well as a critique of her own bias against trans people. She continues:“It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags – because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter – scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There’s joy, relief and safety in conformity.”In this passage, she’s being snarky again, but she also already spoke quite warmly of the love and support she received from people who, like her, are against recognizing that “trans rights are human rights” and “trans lives matter,” no matter how much she slaps these slogans onto an essay that states, over and over, that this is absolutely not what she believes. There is indeed “joy, relief and safety in conformity,” but she’s made it abundantly clear which community she chooses to conform to, whose approval she seeks and revels in, and it is those who agree with her when she demeans people for being kind and inclusive, when she reacts to that kindness with snarkiness, when she misgenders people and, yes, fails to comprehend the message of inclusivity in her own work.She continues: “Huge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists; I know this because so many have got in touch with me to tell their stories. They’re afraid of doxxing, of losing their jobs or their livelihoods, and of violence.”There’s a meme that regularly makes the round on the internet that goes something like, “Trump supporters were against Obama because they are racists; we’re against Trump because he’s a racist.” This draws the distinction between someone being targeted because of identity versus being targeted because they hold a particular belief. One of these things can be changed; one cannot. If you choose to target a vulnerable demographic like trans people, if you choose to be biased against that group and actively fight to erode their rights, you can also choose to stop believing those things. If you are trans—or gay, or non-binary, or black—that is who you are. Being attacked for who you are means there’s never an escape. This is why black folks march with signs saying, “My black skin is not a weapon.” Being attacked for what you believe, especially when what you believe is that you should have the right to attack another group for their identity and deny their humanity—that’s another story.We like to believe we are all tolerant of others’ beliefs, but that tolerance cannot extend so far as to tolerate the belief that someone’s identity makes them less than human, less than worthy of equality, less than worthy of existing. Maya Forstater could have behaved professionally. She could have been respectful of her colleagues and had her employment contract renewed. She could have refrained from attacking trans people on Twitter (as Rowling could have also). She chose not to, as Rowling chose not to.Rowling also writes, “None of the gender critical women I’ve talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth, and they’re hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives,” but being “sympathetic” in occasional statements is not the same as putting actions behind those words, or even ceasing to spout words that wound and that justify policies that make life harder for trans folks. Plus, the reason they seem to be concerned about trans youth is that they want to stop them from transitioning. That is not “concern.”At the moment, the world is convulsing due to demonstrations all over the world in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. We have seen and heard, every day, the stories of black lives being at risk for simply LIVING, for existing, sometimes in spaces where white people in particular do not wish anyone not-white to exist. For years, various ethnic groups have been stereotyped in a way designed to make them seem frightening, Othering them, keeping them on the margins and somehow “justifying” (it didn’t) the treatment they received for merely existing. That happened very memorably with LGBTQ+ people during the Stonewall riots, a response to persistent persecution by the police against sexual minorities. Trans women of color led that rebellion, and JK Rowling used the name Stonewall High for the secondary school Harry Potter was to have attended, if he had not gone to Hogwarts. Evidently, she didn’t know of the connection between Stonewall and trans women or she might have chosen something else.Demonizing all members of any demographic for the behavior of a few people in that demographic is what we are fighting against. A particularly vocal group that has been dedicated to this is the HP Alliance, inspired by the principles of equality Rowling enmeshed in the Harry Potter series. The HP Alliance has repeatedly made statements refuting Rowling’s anti-trans stance and does not wish anyone to think that they share that stance because they evidently believe that it is antithetical to the values of the Harry Potter series.They are not alone when it comes to people linked to the series, whether it’s people, like me, who have written books or created podcasts about it, or actors from the franchise’s films. Below are a number of links to helpful articles and statements from people, who, like me, are disappointed in JK Rowling’s doubling-down on this issue, not least because, in the new essay, she indicates not only a stubborn refusal to consider, for a moment, that her stance might hurt people (especially those who thought a great deal of her and feel that her work changed their lives for the better), but an even more stubborn refusal to try to learn, to see that the way she speaks about trans people is indeed not dissimilar from Umbridge’s work to have “inauthentic” magical people banished from the wizarding world. That time, Harry set them free. Would that Jo Rowling could see the similarities and follow the example of her creation. Until that day comes—if it comes—many of us will continue to delve into the Potterverse on many levels—as independent scholars, literary analysts, podcasters, fanfiction authors, wizard rock bands, and HP alliance activists, among other things—because it is bigger than its creator now. Harry belongs to all of us, and we won’t let anyone take that away from us with divisiveness and bigotry.Even JK Rowling.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Links:Daniel RadcliffeEmma Watson and Bonnie Wright
Rupert Grint
Chris Rankin
Evanna Lynch
Katie Leung
Jackson Bird
Jackson Bird’s author pageThe HP Alliance
Further reading:J.K. Rowling and the White Supremacist History of "Biological Sex"
Everything Wrong with JK Rowling's Open Letter
How JK Rowling Betrayed the World She Created
Addressing the Claims in JK Rowling's Justifications for Transphobia
Opinion: Harry Potter's Magic Fades When His Creator Tweets (NPR)14 Harry Potter Things to Love that Have Nothing to do with JK Rowling
Thread unroll: Andrew James Carter’s Thread: “Since JKRowling has blocked any reply to this litany of half-truths and transphobic dogwhistles, I thought I’d catalogue them properly here”
On Hermione transforming into Harry via Polyjuice Potion in Deathly Hallows
On sex as a social construct
Stop Using Phony Science to Justify Transphobia
Why these Harry Potter fans are standing with the LGBTQ community against a JK Rowling Tweet
How British Feminism Became Anti-Trans: A surprisingly mainstream movement of feminists known as TERFs oppose transgender rights as a symptom of “female erasure.”
JK Rowling is so worried about men using women's bathrooms that she...wrote a book about boys using a girls' toiletRobert F. Kennedy Organizational Statement About JK Rowling's Transphobia
A SPECIAL EPISODE OF QUANTUM HARRY, THE PODCAST:
JK Rowling and the Essay of Doom
- Blog version *
~ EPISODE GUIDE ~
In the grid of Tarot Major Arcana cards numbered one to twenty-one, the sixth column, which aligns with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, has the Lovers (#6) at the top of the column, Death (#13) in the middle row, and Judgment (#20) at the bottom.In the book with the most romance, it’s fitting that the Lovers card is prominent here. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, love moves to center stage. Harry and Ginny’s relationship, foreshadowed by the Lovers being a sequential card in the second book, and by the Lovers card being linked to a sequential card in the previous book, finally blossoms in the sixth, but they are not the only Lovers in the sixth book of the series. A person torn between two partners is shown on many versions of the card, and we can see the torn person as more than one character: for instance, Ron’s romantic choices are Lavender or Hermione; Hermione’s are Ron or Cormac McClaggen; Ginny’s are Dean or Harry; and Harry’s are Ginny or Romilda.The Lovers card doesn’t just depict a choice between potential partners, however; the women on the card could be a Mother and Maiden, with a Youth, the ruling mythic archetype for the sixth book in the series (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 7: Fountain of Youth), choosing between leaving childhood and dependence on a parental figure behind, moving to the next stage of development, when his mother will no longer be the central figure in his life, or staying with his family and postponing choosing a romantic partner.Faced with a choice of his mother on the one hand, representing his family, or Pansy, Draco chooses Narcissa, protecting her and his father. His mother doesn’t want Draco to have to bear this burden, though, which is why she goes to Snape to ask him to take it from her son’s shoulders. It would be easy to read about this and respond by saying, “But he’s from a rotten family and he’s being asked to murder to keep them safe!” However, Dumbledore is sympathetic to Draco’s plight. He wants to protect the entire family and offers his mercy to Draco not to avoid his own death, since he has already asked Snape to kill him, but so Draco will not rip his soul by committing murder. Dumbledore does not fear death; he knows he is dying and is attempting to control the manner of his death as much as possible. He fears Draco irrevocably damaging his soul more than his own demise.Harry has a choice similar to Draco’s: his duty to the wizarding world or romance with Ginny, which he calls “blissful oblivion”. After experiencing a little happiness with her he decides he cannot turn his back on his duty, so he breaks up with her to protect both her and the rest of the Weasleys. The archetypal Youth growing up and away from his family is a necessary, healthy development, but needs to be well-timed; first he must fulfill his obligations. The Youth on the Lovers card is on the cusp of that very choice.The card linked to the Lovers (#6) is the Devil (#15), which is Voldemort’s chief Tarot archetype. This was the last sequential card for the fifth book (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 38: The Order of the Heretic) and is at the bottom of the column aligned with the first. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 31: The Devil You Know.) Voldemort is tied to both Harry’s and Draco’s choices; everything they consider must take into account what he has done and might do.Death (#13), in the middle of the sixth column, is also at the center of the sixth book. Voldemort has ripped his soul repeatedly, creating Horcruxes through murder so that he can use them to hold fragments of his soul. In the memories in Dumbledore’s Pensieve, Harry sees one victim after another, not realizing that Dumbledore is also slowly dying because of the cursed ring that is both a Horcrux and a Hallow; ironically, a stone that brings back the shades of loved ones to an undead existence is killing the headmaster. Dumbledore wields the Elder Wand, another Hallow, and it is possible that this is the reason that he wants Snape to be the one to kill him. Since Snape would be doing Dumbledore’s will, Dumbledore would not be defeated by Snape, and therefore the true master of the Elder Wand would be dead and the wand without a master. Snape grows more and more reluctant to perform this duty, though it is a mercy-killing for someone already slowly dying. It is also the only way, short of Dumbledore killing himself, for the wand to be without a master upon his death. More importantly, it is the only way to keep Voldemort from becoming Master of the Elder Wand, since he would be defeating the headmaster if Dumbledore were to die from the cursed ring, and Voldemort would then be the wand's master. Both Snape and Voldemort embody the Tarot archetype of Death, the one who cuts the thread of life, in addition to their other Tarot archetypes, but Snape does so only reluctantly.The cards linked to Death (#13) are the Emperor (#4, because 1+3=4) and the Fool (#22, because 2+2=4), even though the Fool does not fit into the grid of twenty-one Tarot cards laid out in three rows and seven columns; the Fool makes his presence felt from time to time despite this, and in fact he can pop up at any time, just as the Fool card can be played at any time during a Tarot game; it functions as a “wild card” in games of trumps. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 30: Harry and Tarot.) As with Cedric in the fourth book (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 37: The Goblet of Memory), Harry plays the Fool to Dumbledore’s Emperor, obeying his orders without question in private lessons, but especially when they go to the cave to seek the locket Horcrux. But, also like Harry and Cedric, Harry and Dumbledore trade places; Dumbledore becomes the faithful retainer to Harry’s Emperor, preparing him to take his place after he is gone. This swap does not take place once—Harry and Dumbledore go back and forth in these roles throughout the book. Dumbledore has embodied both the mythic archetype of the Wise Old Man and the Tarot archetype of the Magician (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 2: This Old Man and Episode 31: The Devil You Know). Despite some people thinking that he has foolish ideas, and his loving jokes, toys, sweets, games and fairy tales, Dumbledore has not embodied the Fool before. He takes Harry, again playing the Emperor (as he did after Cedric’s death) to visit Slughorn, the Potions Master before Snape, to ask him to resume this position while Snape becomes the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in Harry’s sixth year of school. A Fool is not always utterly foolish; sometimes he is “…like a Zen master who clarifies with riddles and cuts through misconceptions with ease,” as Robert M. Place writes in The Tarot: History, Symbolism and Divination. [New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2005, p. 90] This aptly describes Dumbledore seeing through Slughorn’s deception at the beginning of Half-Blood Prince, when he tries to fool Dumbledore into thinking he has come to an empty Muggle house, only to have Dumbledore reveal his hiding place, and again when Dumbledore and Harry penetrate Voldemort’s defenses at the cave where they seek the locket Horcrux.Harry as the Fool who sees through artifice to aid his Emperor is a theme running throughout the book; he echoes Dumbledore’s earlier actions when he successfully convinces Slughorn to give Harry the real version of the tampered memory he originally gave to Dumbledore, a memory that confirms that Voldemort first began pursuing information about Horcruxes while he was still the Hogwarts student known as Tom Riddle. Because Dumbledore is slowly dying throughout the sixth book, it is fitting that the Fool is linked to both the Emperor and the Death cards. It is also fitting that Harry, in the role of the loyal Fool, follows Dumbledore’s orders faithfully, and, like the Fool in King Lear, he witnesses his sovereign’s “fall”. Afterward, he is heir to the task of bringing down Voldemort, the mission for which Dumbledore has been training him.On the Judgment card (#20), at the bottom of the sixth column, an angel blows a trumpet, calling the dead to rise. In the cave that formerly held the locket Horcrux, the dead rise horrifyingly, and Dumbledore and Harry must fight Inferi grasping at them from the churning water. The Judgment card is also about finding a true calling, as Harry does by the book’s end, but it is about letting the past go as well, which he does after seeing the past in the Pensieve and learning from it. The cards linked to Judgment (#20) are the High Priestess (#2, because 2+0=2) and Strength (#11, because 1+1=2). Ginny, who embodies both the archetypal Maiden and archetypal High Priestess, is a huge Strength for Harry (“his best source of comfort”) and is the choice he must set aside now. Instead he chooses a quest (another sort of game) that Dumbledore has bequeathed to him before he can be concerned with romance and his future.The sequential cards for the sixth book are the Tower (#16), the Star (#17) and the Moon (#18), which have also influenced previous books. Here the Tower in question is above-ground, not inverted, underground, as the Chamber of Secrets was in the second book and the entrance to the Shrieking Shack was in the third. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 33: The Inverted Tower of Secrets and Episode 35: Prisoner of Time). Draco confronts Dumbledore on a Tower and disarms the headmaster, becoming master of the Elder Wand. However, Snape, embodying both the archetype of the Crone (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 6: A Murder of Crones), and the archetype of Death, the center column card for this book, is the one who kills Dumbledore, who falls from the Tower like the figures on the “The Lightning-Struck Tower” card, a common name for the sixteenth card of the Tarot Major Arcana and the title of the twenty-seventh chapter of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.This is also the name Professor Trelawney gives the sixteenth card of the Tarot Major Arcana when she rants about it turning up in her readings repeatedly, presumably upright and not inverted, which points to doom and gloom (and which is probably why she goes through so many bottles of sherry in Half-Blood Prince). It cannot be easy to believe that you are Seeing a future that is so very gloomy and feeling like you cannot do anything about it—it will come, regardless of whether you tell people about it or not. JK Rowling did not choose to include Tarot in the curriculum Trelawney taught to Harry in his third, fourth and fifth years, but she evidently could not resist pointing very clearly to her own personal game of Tarot with the title of this particular chapter. Though “the Tower” as a symbol seems self-evidently to refer to the Tower from which Dumbledore falls, it can also symbolize Hogwarts as an institution, since Hogwarts is under attack from Death Eaters at the end of the book. Because of that, it can also symbolize Dumbledore himself, a god-figure, an axis mundi, a link between worlds, just as Trelawney teaching Divination in her tower is a symbol of her being a link between worlds in a slightly different way, since she is an archetypal Crone who sees what others cannot. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 6: A Murder of Crones.)Thus, while Dumbledore embodies a god-figure, in the sixth book it is a specific god: Odin, the All-Father of Norse mythology, in which gods can die. In Chamber of Secrets,Harry echoes the actions of Thor, Norse god of thunder, simultaneously slaying a supernatural serpent and being poisoned by its venom. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina.) Dumbledore’s death in Half-Blood Prince is nothing less than JK Rowling’s Götterdämmerung, the twilight of the gods, a story from Norse mythology that also involves a cursed ring. While Dumbledore speaks to Draco on the tower, Harry sees him grow weaker and weaker, either from the potion he drank in the cave or that and Dumbledore having been dying all year from the cursed ring, whose deadly effect Snape only manages to slow down, not halt altogether.Götterdämmerungis German for Ragnarök, the name for the story in Old Norse. In this tale, Thor kills and is killed by the world-serpent, but Odin is swallowed by the great wolf called Fenrir. Rowling does not have her werewolf, Fenrir Greyback, kill Dumbledore, but it seems uncoincidental that she includes this exchange when Death Eaters join Draco on the tower:“Is that you, Fenrir?” asked Dumbledore.“That’s right,” rasped the other. “Pleased to see me, Dumbledore?”“No, I cannot say that I am.”
Greyback also suggests that he will physically attack the headmaster, saying, “I could do you for afters, Dumbledore.” And when Draco hesitates to kill Dumbledore as Death Eaters egg him on, Fenrir volunteers to do it. When Snape finally arrives, Dumbledore pleads with him, a clear request to kill him, which Dumbledore already asked him to, but now it also seems like a plea to save him from Greyback’s brutality. Though as a Master of Death he has chosen the time of his dying, Dumbledore seems to dread repeating Odin’s death too precisely. The Tower card also symbolizes old, false beliefs falling apart, suddenly and violently, so that the protagonist of the Tarot story can build afresh on truth. A prominent role in this book for an upright Tower card, rather than an inverted one, implies that we cannot expect the inverted meaning, a bad situation ending well; Dumbledore’s death means that there is no way Harry can consider this to be a happy ending, which is clearly why Trelawney is alarmed by the card turning up repeatedly in her readings. A new, unknown world is the result of pushing past the upheaval of the Lightning-Struck Tower.The card linked to the Tower (#16) is the Chariot (#7), a fitting card for Harry’s travels with Dumbledore, since the Chariot is the Tarot equivalent of the archetype of the Liminal Being. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 8: Have You Tried Not Being Liminal? and Episode 9: We’re Here, We’re Metaphorically Queer.) When Harry and Dumbledore are together, the young Metaphorically Queer Liminal Hero is with the old (not-just) Metaphorically Queer Liminal Hero, two axis mundis, links between worlds, who will both, during their lives, conquer a Dark Lord. In the third book of the series, when it was the first sequential card, the Chariot was about travel and transportation. Harry learns to Apparate in the sixth book, which is the final type of magical travel he experiences. This foreshadows the Chariot being at the top of the column for the next book, which is ruled by this card, a book in which travel is an almost constant activity for Harry, the Liminal Being embodying the Chariot card, who spends the book journeying “home” to Hogwarts.The Star (#17) follows the Tower in the sequence of Tarot cards and points to Harry needing to find his path, follow his star, find his true calling. This is more likely now that the (metaphorical) Tower of Lies is gone. The Star card shows a young woman with vessels of liquid that she pours evenly on land and into a body of water, and potions, poisons and other liquids—such as the Pensieve—play a key role in this book.Someone Harry has never met also embodies the Star: Sirius’s brother Regulus Arcturus Black. Like Sirius, which is the name of the Dog Star, Regulus is named for a star, one that happens to be in the “heart” of the constellation of Leo the Lion. Thus, while Sirius is a Gryffindor with a Slytherin background, Regulus may be a Slytherin with the heart of a Gryffindor. Regulus has stolen the locket Horcrux before Harry and Dumbledore go to the cave to retrieve it, though JK Rowling does not reveal this until Deathly Hallows. Like Harry, Regulus was the Seeker on his house team, but though he catches the locket “Snitch” and is a Slytherin, he cannot say “Open” in Parseltongue and destroy it, just as only Harry can speak the “magic words” to the Snitch from his first match to open that and receive the Resurrection Stone before going to his death. The card linked to the Star (#17) is Justice (#8), an issue that arises repeatedly in the Pensieve memories Dumbledore shows to Harry. This was also true when Harry entered Dumbledore’s Pensieve in the fourth book. All of the memories Harry witnessed then took place in courtrooms in the Ministry of Magic. Voldemort commits many crimes to make Horcruxes, but this card does not only point to Justice in terms of comeuppance for Voldemort, delivered by Harry-as-Justice.Dumbledore seems to feel that it is just that he is slowly dying after he puts on the ring with the Resurrection Stone, since he yielded to temptation. In a similar vein, Harry is appalled by the result of his cursing Draco in the bathroom with Sectumsempra, though Draco is someone he has hated for years and believes is working for his mortal enemy. In spite of this, Harry accepts the Justice meted out by Snape: a long series of detentions. Voldemort, in contrast, not only does not feel that he is escaping Justice, but that his actions are justified by his goal: everlasting life. He also believes it is just for him to expel all Muggleborns from the wizarding world, and anyone who sympathizes with them. Dumbledore and Harry recognize that they are in the wrong, though Harry does not give the Potions book to Snape as he demands, instead hiding it in the “Junk” Room of Requirement. He eventually remembers seeing Ravenclaw’s diadem there when he hid the book, so it is actually a flaw of Harry’s that helps to bring about Voldemort’s defeat. The landscape that Harry and Dumbledore encounter on their way to the cave could come straight from the third sequential card, the Moon (#18), with dark waters separating them from their goal. The moon, wolf and dog on this card can also point to Fenrir Greyback, the werewolf who bit Remus and who bites Bill Weasley when the moon is not full, making him a pseudo-wolfman (in other words—a bit like a dog). The Moon’s reflectiveness also links to the watery Pensieve, with its many memories.The card linked to the Moon (#18) is the Hermit (#9), which again could point to Harry and Dumbledore leaving the school, a place of scholarly pursuit, and going into the world, like the card’s wandering hermit. The Hermit is one of the depictions of a holy man in the Tarot Major Arcana, which both Harry and Dumbledore have been since the first book; Dumbledore, the old Hermit, trains his heir to hunt Horcruxes to make Voldemort vulnerable to death. It is an esoteric education conducted in secret, on a soon-to-be Lightning-Struck Tower, under a merciless Moon, with Death (and Death Eaters) poised to strike at any moment.As with all of the previous books, there is again a link between the Horcrux aligned with the sixth book in the series and the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher for the sixth book that can be illuminated by the Tarot cards aligned with this book. The Horcrux aligned with the sixth book is one of two that Voldemort made from living beings: the snake Nagini (the other being Harry). Paired with Nagini is the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in Harry’s sixth year: Severus Snape, head of Slytherin house, whose symbol is a snake. Harry’s ability to speak Parseltongue re-enters the plot in Half-Blood Prince when he understands the snake-language spoken in the Gaunt house in the Pensieve memory that introduces Voldemort’s family to Harry, including Voldemort’s mother, and when Harry first sees their house, a dead snake hangs on the door like a horrible talisman that the Gaunts no doubt hope will ward off potential visitors.The Lovers card (#6), linked numerically to the Devil (#15) can refer to both Nagini and Snape. She is a symbolic mother to Voldemort, her venom serving as mother’s milk to nourish him before he regains his body. Voldemort clearly feels more connected to his mother’s heritage than his father’s and it is through her family that he can speak to snakes. Plus, on some versions of the Lovers card there is not a Youth choosing between two women but Adam, Eve, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, around which a snake is twined. This represents the serpent form that Satan used to speak to Eve, convincing her to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, which led to the Fall in the Genesis story, bringing us back to Voldemort embodying the archetype of the Devil.Severus Snape, on the other hand, seems to be using a Tarot deck with a Lovers card showing the Youth and two women. In his life choices, he opts for the younger woman: Lily Evans Potter, the reason he faithfully serves Dumbledore and spies on Voldemort. However, Snape’s mother is also important, since she is where the title Snape creates for himself comes from, “the Half-Blood Prince”, based on her maiden name being Prince and Snape’s father being a Muggle, which makes Snape a half-blood, like Voldemort. Also, when Hermione discovers Eileen Prince in an old library book, without knowing that she was Snape’s mother, the reason Eileen Prince is in the book is her membership in the Gobstones Club—a club dedicated to a game, a link, once again, to the central theme of the series. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 1: The Kids’ Table.)The Death card (#13) is at the center of the sixth column, and Nagini is how Voldemort kills Snape. Thus, both Snape and Voldemort are linked to at least one mother figure, seen on the Lovers card (the version with a Youth and two women). Snape kills Dumbledore at the top of the Lightning-Struck Tower, the first sequential card for this book. As he is a Slytherin, one could say that Snape was channeling Nagini, the real, not metaphorical serpent, who eventually kills him. The one Snape kills, Dumbledore, has been his guiding Star (#17), the second sequential card for this book. On this card, the woman pouring liquids onto land and into a body of water, treating them equally, sends a message about balance and duality. This could be another reference to Snape’s proficiency with Potions, but perhaps also a reference to his dual life, in which he pretends to be a loyal Death Eater while working as a spy for the Order of the Phoenix. Nagini has another link to potions; in ancient Greek the same word is used for potion and poison, and Nagini’s venom seems to share this dual nature. To most people her venom is fatal, but while Voldemort is on the path to again having a corporeal body, it is the equivalent of a balm for him, of mother’s milk. Finally, while he is dying in Deathly Hallows, Snape gives Harry memories, which are linked to the Moon, the last sequential card for the sixth book. Harry views these memories in Dumbledore’s Pensieve, a body of liquid from which one can see bodies rising, like those on the Judgment card at the bottom of the sixth column. This means that Snape and the snake that kills him, a living being that is a Horcrux, like Harry, both connect to all of the column cards and all of the sequential cards aligned with this book. The relationship between these cards, this book’s Horcrux and the DADA teacher makes it even easier to see why Snape’s death occurred the way it did, though it was entirely wrong-headed for Voldemort to think killing Snape was the only way for him to be Master of the Elder Wand. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 25: The Wand Game.)JK Rowling could have written a DADA teacher in the first book who was not pursuing the Philosopher’s Stone, protected by the Mirror of Erised, a double for the ring with the Resurrection Stone, the Horcrux for the first book; this book aligns with the first column of Tarot Major Arcana cards, at the bottom of which is the Devil card, showing minions in chains made from linked rings.In the second book she could have written a DADA teacher who did something prior to working at Hogwarts other than write books, the Horcrux for Chamber of Secrets being a book, also seen on the Tarot Major Arcana card at the top of the second column of cards, which rules the second book.Rowling could have had a DADA teacher in the third book who was not connected to the dictatorial round of time represented by the starry diadem on the Empress card, a diadem like that book’s Horcrux.There could have been a DADA teacher in the fourth book who was not convicted of committing a crime with the family whose bank vault hid Hufflepuff’s cup, that book’s Horcrux, and Harry could have learned about that trial through some other medium other than Dumbledore’s Pensieve of memories, memories being intimately linked to the Moon, the card at the bottom of the fourth column of Tarot Major Arcana cards.And Rowling could have had the Slytherin locket, the Horcrux for the fifth book and a symbolic Sun (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 28: The Grimm Campaign), the bottom card of the fifth column of Tarot cards, end up anywhere in the world other than with the fifth book’s DADA teacher, Dolores Umbridge. Likewise, Rowling could have had Voldemort use the Killing Curse, or poison, or any number of murder methods, such as setting Greyback on Snape. But no—he chose Nagini, the Horcrux aligned with the book in which Snape is the title character other than Harry, and in which he is the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Instead she connects Snape with the Horcrux for the book in which he holds that position and to the Lovers card at the top of the sixth column that shows a snake entwined around the tree in the Garden of Eden, continuing her elaborate Tarot game and again bringing us back to the theme of games, toys, fairy tales, children and childhood in general that unifies her seven-book series.Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 39: Love, Death, and Judgment. Copyright 2017-2019 by Quantum Harry Productions and B.L. Purdom. See other posts on this blog for direct links to all episodes of Quantum Harry.~ PREVIOUS ESSAY ~
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Part I of The Tarot Hallows essays: Horcruxes and King’s CrossesIn the last ten Quantum Harry essays I’ve been writing about each of the seven columns in the grid of Tarot Major Arcana cards numbered one to twenty-one, with three rows and seven columns (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 30: Harry and Tarot) aligning with each of the seven books of the Harry Potter series, as well as the seven sets of sequential cards (1-3, 4-6, 7-9, etc.) also aligning with each of the seven books, in order. The last essay will actually be four essays, as this is the blog version of the final episode of Quantum Harry, the Podcast, which is an extra-long installment. This will be the first of four essays.The seventh column, the one aligned with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, has the Chariot (card #7) at the top, Temperance (card #14) in the middle, and the World (card #21) at the bottom. In the first book of the series, the Magician (#1) was the top column card and first sequential card. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 31: The Devil you Know and Episode 32: The Mirror and the Stone.) In the fourth book of the series, the column and sequential cards intersect at Force or Strength (card #11), forming a cross. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 37: The Goblet of Memory.) There is a final intersection: the sequential cards for the seventh book, the last set of three in the cards numbered one to twenty-one, are the Sun (card #19), Judgment (card #20), and the World (card #21). All roads lead to the World card in this book, symbolizing wholeness, completion, and home.The Chariot card being the ruling card for this book sheds new light on the seemingly-endless travel in Deathly Hallows: it shows a figure who might be a prince, king or magician using a wand, not reins, to drive a chariot with dark and light draft-animals, sometimes shown as a black sphinx and a white one, but often as a red horse and a blue horse. In addition to representing the opposing forces shaping Harry, making him Liminal (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 8: Have You Tried Not Being Liminal?), these horses can stand for Hermione and Ron, Harry’s best friends, who are opposites in some ways but learn to “pull together.” He could not make the journey without them, and when Ron is away for a little while, Harry and Hermione are nearly killed at Bathilda Bagshot’s house in Godric’s Hollow. Red also happens to be Ron’s emblematic color and blue is Hermione’s, while Harry’s is green, like his eyes and the Killing Curse that repeatedly fails to kill him. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 7: Fountain of Youth.)The light and dark horses can also symbolize Harry’s journey to wholeness; he cannot achieve this by ignoring his “dark side,” the Voldemort in him. He carries a piece of his enemy; his understanding Voldemort helps him to succeed, even as it sometimes frightens Ron and Hermione. The Chariot is another archetype Harry embodies, a union of opposites, a Tarot version of the archetype of the Liminal Being, as well as pointing to the extreme level of travel in the seventh book. But in addition to symbolizing the archetypal Liminal Being and travel, the Chariot may also be a link to the Horcruxes.The word “Horcrux” was coined by JK Rowling, and could have multiple origins. In a paper presented at Phoenix Rising in New Orleans in 2007 (“Of Horcruxes, Arithmancy, Etymology and Egyptology: A Literary Detective’s Guide to Patterns and Paradigms in Harry Potter”), Hilary K. Justice suggests that one possible etymology combines hors, a French root meaning “out of” or “outside of” with crux, meaning “essence,” as in “the crux of the matter.” This gives us an object holding part of one’s “essence” (or soul) “outside of” the body. I engaged in some etymological digging of my own and found that the hor part of “Horcrux” is close to the hora, a circle dance in Israel and Romania, which may relate to hor also being the Latin root for hour, pointing to another circular image: a clockface. Crux means “cross” in Latin, and combining a circle and cross results in a simple wheel with four spokes (like the logo for Quantum Harry.)This circle divided into four quadrants has long been a symbol of the Earth, suggesting a compass and the cardinal directions: north, south, east and west. It is the symbol used for Earth by astronomers, including those at NASA, who prefer to say that the cross represents the equator and a meridian. This is also the shape of an ancient race game that evolved into Pachisi, Parcheesi and Ludo, among others (it is also the format for an early Harry Potter trivia game, pictured above). All of these games share the goal of reaching the center of the cross, a center often called home, which relates again to the Chariot card because this card is linked to the astrological sign of Cancer, which is focused on issues related to the home. This symbol is also reminiscent of medieval labyrinths, like the cross-and-circle design of the labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral, seen in the photo below. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 18: The Wide World.)Earth is the element out of the four alchemists recognized—Fire, Air, Water and Earth—linked to Voldemort, since his birth-sign, Capricorn, is an Earth-sign. Earth is also the element of the Devil archetype, which Voldemort embodies, and in turn, Capricorn is the astrological sign linked to the Devil card in the Tarot Major Arcana, which depicts a rather goat-like Devil. (Capricorn means horned like a goat.)In another combination of opposites, the circle with an embedded cross was also called a Sun Cross, Solar Cross or Solar Wheel; it is linked to prehistoric cultures, particularly the Neolithic to the Bronze Age periods in Europe. Thus, a wheel with four spokes can also be linked to the Sun card and therefore to death, resurrection, and the phoenix. Voldemort’s wand, until almost the end of his life, contains a feather from a phoenix, and the purpose of his making Horcruxes is to make him like a phoenix, one who cannot die. For a symbol that could mean “Horcrux”—a circle with a cross—to be equated with the Sun also fits with the locket Horcrux being a symbolic sun, like the golden ball in the Grimm fairy tale of the Frog King. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 28: The Grimm Campaign.) The locket happens to be the Horcrux aligning with the fifth book, Order of the Phoenix, the one aligned with the fifth column of Tarot Major Arcana cards, which has the Sun card at the bottom. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 38: The Order of the Heretic.) Finally, this symbol is also called a “Chariot Wheel” because of the Sun god’s chariot linking heaven and earth in the myths of many ancient cultures, connecting this both to the ruling column card for the book, the Chariot, and its first sequential card, the Sun. This is another reason that the Tarot archetype of the Chariot is the equivalent of the mythic archetype of the Liminal Being, one who crosses thresholds and is an axis mundi, a link between worlds.Thus two possible etymologies for Horcrux may both be something Rowling intended: a word meaning that a person’s essence is elsewhere, outside their body, and a word combining circle and cross, pointing to the Earth, which Voldemort hopes to rule over; the Chariot, a Tarot archetype embodied by both Harry and Voldemort, as it is the Tarot equivalent of the Liminal Being; and the Sun, which in turn is linked to the phoenix, once a source of Voldemort’s power, and an entity he wishes to emulate by creating Horcruxes, so that, like the phoenix, he will be impervious to death.The card linked to the Chariot (#7) is the Tower (#16, since 1 + 6 = 7). In Deathly Hallows, the Lightning-Struck Tower, the title of the Half-Blood Prince chapter in which Dumbledore dies, is least symbolic of all. Hogwarts is under attack; giants are literally tearing down the walls. It is a cataclysm, a violent rupture in the fabric of wizarding reality. However, we can see the Tower card as both upright and inverted here, since Hermione and Ron visit the Chamber of Secrets, the inverted Tower of the second book, to retrieve basilisk fangs. (See Quantum Harry, Episode 33: The Inverted Tower of Secrets.)Below the Chariot in the seventh column of cards is Temperance (#14), which was also a sequence card for the fifth book. The back-and-forth of the liquid between the vessels on this card shows the mixing of water and wine; watering wine ‘tempers’ it, makes it less potent, and wine makes water morepotent. It is another union of opposites, like the Chariot’s dark and light draft animals, and, as such, it is also about balance. Voldemort, in contrast, would eject all Muggleborns from the wizarding world, seeing no value in diversity. He is clearly incomplete because he has repeatedly ripped his soul to make Horcruxes, but also because he rejects both the Muggle part of himself and his link to Harry; as a result, he can no longer send even misleading images to Harry’s mind, as he did in Order of the Phoenix, because he recoiled in horror when he was exposed to Harry’s prodigious power to love. This ability to bridge worlds is the power Harry has that Voldemort does not, and is well summed-up by love.Luna is again the Angel Temperance, an archetypal Crone, when she helps Harry cope with Dobby’s death, as she helped him cope with Sirius’s death in Order of the Phoenix. However, Harry also embodies the Angel Temperance in Deathly Hallows; the ‘third eye’ on this card links to his “seeing” through his enemy’s eyes, an ability he integrates into his skill-set. Harry’s being a Pope or High Priest (card #5) is linked to Temperance as well (#14, since 1 + 4 = 5). He has been a holy man ever since he was a bishop in the life-sized chess game; here he transcends worlds by seeing through the eyes of the Other (Voldemort) and by dying and returning to life, an intercessor for the entire wizarding world. As Master of Death, Harry understands the cycle of life, instinctively summoning the shades of his parents, godfather and Remus Lupin with the Resurrection Stone, presenting himself to die because it is necessary to save his world, to protect those he loves and those he doesn’t. Harry-the-Hero does not just die for people he loves; his love protects everyone. Harry, High Priest, Liminal Charioteer and Angel Temperance, refuses to run, as Aberforth suggests; the Master of Death transcends life and death and bestows his grace on all.The first sequential card aligned with the seventh book in the series is the Sun (card #19), symbolizing another integration of opposites—life and death, since the Sun daily dies and is reborn, linking this to the dying-and-reborn phoenix. Harry dies and is resurrected in this book, but a doppelganger for him, Neville, also evokes the twin children seen on some versions of the card.Neville could have been the Prophecy Boy, and after Harry returns from death, he echoes Harry’s actions in the second book by stating his faith in Dumbledore as Harry did, with a cry of, “Dumbledore’s Army!” Instead of Fawkes bringing the Sorting Hat, Voldemort summons the Hat, which he plans to destroy because he only wants there to be Slytherins at Hogwarts in the future. He puts the Hat on Neville and sets it on fire, a substitute for Fawkes, who was the symbolic fire of the Holy Spirit on Harry’s head in the Chamber, evoking the story of Pentecost. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina.) The Hat is described as looking like “a misshapen bird,” again evoking Fawkes, a phoenix representing the Holy Spirit, instead of a dove, another bird symbolizing the Holy Spirit, who appears when John the Baptist baptizes Jesus. After this symbolic confirmation, Neville’s coming-of-age ceremony, he breaks free of the curse binding him and slays Nagini, whose head spins “high into the air”—imagery suggesting again a similarity to a ball, like a Snitch, which all of the Horcruxes resemble in some way, large or small, physically or symbolically. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 29: The Horcrux and Hallows Game.)The cards linked to the Sun (#19) are the Magician (#1) and the Wheel (#10). Throughout this book, the influence of the archetypal Magician, Dumbledore, is keenly felt. His backstory’s extremes are given before the truth. First Rita Skeeter gets her say in a vitriolic biography, then Elphias Doge gives his version. The truth is worse than Doge’s hymn of praise and not as bad as Rita’s smear job; Harry finally receives a complete picture of the man in whose footsteps he has walked on the path to death from his brother, Aberforth. The archetypal Magician dogs Harry’s footsteps from the beginning, when he reads excerpts from Rita’s biography, and he is with Harry at the end, at King’s Cross, which was always where he crossed a boundary between the “real” and numinous worlds. Now he finds himself on the platform in a misty afterlife where he speaks to Dumbledore (who may or may not be just in his head).Rowling’s choice of King’s Cross for Harry’s brief afterlife could be anothercircle-and-cross reference. A sovereign’s orb in Latin is globus cruciger, part of the British Crown jewels. A globe symbolizes the earth, a 3-D circle, and the orb is topped by a cross, another union of circle and cross, on an orb that could be called a King’s cross. This is an alternate earth sign to the circle with the cross inside it and both are used as Earth symbols by astronomers.The lore surrounding King’s Cross may offer clues as to why Harry goes there after his death. Where the King’s Cross-St. Pancras Station sits today may have been the site of a crossing for the Fleet River in Roman times, outside the Roman settlement of Londinium. In Christian lore, dying is often spoken of as “crossing the river” (Jordan). This may also have been the site of a battle between Queen Boadicea and Roman invaders; legend has it that she is buried beneath Platform Nine in the station—rather close Nine and Three-Quarters.However, the name “King’s Cross” didn’t arrive until the nineteenth century, when a statue of King George IV was erected at the Battle Bridge crossroads. In folklore, crossroads are places where the fabric of reality is “thinnest”, where travelers may meet spirits and have paranormal experiences. It is a place of liminality. In Greek myth, crossroads were associated with Hecate and Hermes, both psychopomps, entities who accompanied spirits to the Realm of the Dead. Food was left for Hecate at crossroads during the new moon; one of her titles was “goddess of the crossroads,” and she was a goddess of witches and magic as well. Combining this intersection of roads with the king’s statue gave it the name King’s Cross, which persisted even after the statue was pulled down. After he dies, when Harry is at King’s Cross with Dumbledore, who seems to serve as his psychopomp, it is clear that this isa crossroads for Harry; he can choose to “go on”—which ghosts like Nearly Headless Nick never did, so Nick has no idea what comes next—or go back (not as a ghost). This place has always been a threshold, inherently liminal, where Hogwarts students leave the mundane world and enter the world of magic (even if they are from magical families). Thus it is the perfect place for Harry to make his choice. Once again, nothing is carved in stone for Harry; his choices make him who he is, in life and in death, and Harry, the liminal charioteer, chooses to return to the world to save it.Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 40: The Tarot Hallows. Copyright 2019 by Quantum Harry Productions and B.L. Purdom. See other posts on this blog for direct links to all episodes of Quantum Harry.~ PREVIOUS ESSAY ~
Which Tarot cards are aligned with the Deathly Hallows and why? What are the three Hallows with which JK Rowling begins the first book? How are Horcruxes linked to the Chariot, Wheel, and Sun cards? And why is the Battle of Hogwarts on the second of May?
Episode 40: The Tarot Hallows
Watch the Episode 40 video on YouTube.
~ EPISODE GUIDE ~
Harry Potter is a bishop in the life-sized chess match in the first book of the series, the fourth obstacle to the Philosopher’s Stone. He is a holy man and intercessor again in the Chamber of Secrets, when he has his spiritual coming-of-age (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina), a symbolic confirmation or bar mitzvah, embodied by his statement of faith in Dumbledore bringing Fawkes-the-Phoenix to him (a symbolic Holy Spirit). In Order of the Phoenix, Harry is on the front lines of a political and religious war, a church-state conflict. He is still loyal to Dumbledore, the High Priest or Pope figure; both he and Harry are labeled heretics and traitors, fighting in the spirit of the perpetually burning and reborn Fawkes—both Dumbledore’s pet and his namesake, the most notorious traitor in British history: Guy Fawkes.In the grid of Tarot Major Arcana cards numbered one through twenty-one, the column of cards aligning with the fifth book in the Harry Potterseries has the Pope, #5 at the top of the column, the Hanged Man, #12, in the middle row, and the Sun, #19, at the bottom of the column. In the second book of the series, cards 4, 5 and 6 were sequential cards, and the fifth card in particular, the Pope or High Priest, was linked to Harry’s spiritual coming-of-age and his role as an intercessor for others, a link between worlds. The figure on this card sits on a throne with two monks or priests kneeling, facing him. These figures are even more important in this book than the second, with a metaphorical pope-figure who is also a rebel leader; they are his comrades, his lieutenants in the rebellion.Harry and Dumbledore both fill the role of High Priest at different times in the fifth book. Dumbledore’s death in the sixth book is foreshadowed as he segues from filling this role himself to Harry doing it, something for which Dumbledore trains him formally in Half-Blood Prince, though Harry has started to play the role of Dumbledore’s successor in Order of the Phoenix. The role Dumbledore fills and passes on to Harry is notably not that of a political or military leader, like the Emperor with the symbols of war on his throne, but that of a religious leader.Harry trades places with the headmaster as spiritual leader of Hogwarts when Dumbledore departs the castle upon Dolores Umbridge’s discovery of Dumbledore’s Army, the “evidence” the state needs to label Dumbledore as a traitor, a role in which the Ministry’s propaganda has already cast him. Umbridge also hopes to expel Harry from Hogwarts, but the group’s name—Dumbledore’s Army—means that the headmaster is able to take the fall for Harry. As metaphorical Pope of the “old religion” Dumbledore is the one to whom Harry owes his loyalty. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 20:The Order of the Rebel; Episode 21: Remember, Remember; and Episode 22: The Phoenix Games.) These are the book’s themes, now in Tarot form.Harry and Dumbledore are not just Popes/High Priests but also Hanged Men. Sallie Nichols writes in Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey:...any person whose individual conscience is in opposition to the collective viewpoint can appear as a traitor to the Establishment. Such an individual is subjected to many trials, the least of which is that held in a court of law. [p. 218]Fudge tries to have Dumbledore arrested, but the headmaster has no intention of “coming quietly” and goes on the lam. He knows that the last thing the Ministry will do is give him a fair hearing, and he must continue to operate behind the scenes as head of the Order of the Phoenix. Harry is on trial at the start of the book and is cleared thanks to Dumbledore. However, defending himself for performing magic in front of a Muggle and outside of school is soon the least of his troubles.Dumbledore and Harry each embodying card #5, the Pope/High Priest/Hierophant, and both embodying card #12, the Hanged Man merges into one archetype: The Heretic. They are both seen as apostates who embrace beliefs that run afoul of the establishment, making their conflict with the Ministry more like a religious war than a political one. Harry is specifically in trouble with Umbridge because he is not willing to alter his beliefs. With the zeal of a martyr, he goes to one detention after another consisting of actual torture, which is designed to convince heretics to recant heretical beliefs. Harry takes on the role of a heretical revolutionary leader when he heads Dumbledore’s Army and Dumbledore accepts this mantle when he learns of the group’s name; he’s eager to shift blame onto himself, more willing to be a martyr than to make Harry into one. He no doubt feels that Harry being literally martyred will happen soon enough.Nichols describes the clerics on the fifth card as near-twins. In Chamber of Secrets, when this was a sequential card, the Weasley twins, Fred and George, come to Privet Drive in a flying car, to rescue Harry from his metaphorical Hermitage, which relates to the Hermit, the middle column card for that book. Rowling now uses the Weasley twins, loyal to Harry and to Dumbledore, as able lieutenants in a rebellion against the “new religion”. Umbridge’s reign of terror includes the confiscation of artifacts, such as the Quibbler with Harry’s interview (the “gospel” according to Harry Potter). This is similar to the English Crown confiscating rosaries and “popish” items before and after the discovery of Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder beneath Parliament in November of 1605, the event commemorated ever since as Guy Fawkes Day or Bonfire Night. Fudge and Umbridge also spy on Ministry employees friendly with Dumbledore, just as the English Crown spied on known Catholic sympathizers, especially those suspected of hiding renegade priests who still declared that their first allegiance was to Rome, not to the Crown.The Weasley twins make Umbridge’s job impossible as their parting gift to Hogwarts. Their “weapons” in this war are linked to a central element of the celebration of Bonfire Night: fireworks. The unpredictable influence of the Fool card, which can be played at any time, adds to this chaos when the Fool incarnate, Peeves, does his bit, escalating the mayhem abetted by Professor McGonagall, a woman who embodies the Father archetype. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 5: Our Father.) The Father is equal to the Emperor in the Major Arcana, who is in turn numerically linked to the Fool (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 34: Emperors, Fools and Angels), so perhaps we should have expected all along that McGonagall and Peeves would turn out to be kindred spirits.The card numerically linked to the Pope (#5) is Temperance (#14), the Tarot equivalent of the archetypal Crone. This is why the Crone is the fifth mythic archetype, which rules the fifth book in the series.(See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 6: A Murder of Crones.) The figure on a Temperance card is often winged, like an angel, and this figure has a “third eye” in the center of the brow, indicating that this person can see across barriers, like the archetypal Crone. The character who best embodies the Crone in the fifth book is Luna Lovegood, who also “sees” what others cannot, including Thestrals and that they are the best way to quickly reach the Ministry of Magic when Harry believes Sirius is in danger. It is significant that Harry, a Pope/High Priest/Hierophant, and Neville, who takes Harry’s place as intercessor at Hogwarts for anyone at Hogwarts who doesn’t follow Voldemort, are the others who go to the Ministry to rescue Sirius who can see Thestrals. Luna is also instrumental in helping Harry cope with Sirius’s death near the end of the book.The Crone archetype and the Tarot archetype of the Pope as interchangeable entities makes sense historically, since “Wise Women” in many communities sometimes continued to observe holy days and rituals dedicated to local gods or other supernatural entities after the advent of Christianity in Europe, and as a result were often accused of being witches. The Wise Women in most villages were healers and links to the Mother Goddesses in many pre-Christian religions. The “new religion”, Christianity in this case, often displaced Crones/Wise Women who were links to the “old religion”, so Rowling making the Crone the ruling archetype in the fifth book is another case of an “old religion” triumphing over a new one, in addition to the allegorical church-state battles in the book also depicting this type of conflict. Rowling effectively reinstating the Crone in the Realm of the Gods, the first row of seven cards, as the equal of the Pope, rounds out the six gender-and-age-related archetypes. The creators of the Tarot Major Arcana relegated her to the Realm of Equilibrium, the second row of cards, but it’s worth noting that her placement in the fourteenth position means that she “trumps” or triumphs over Death, at number thirteen.Other connections between the Pope and Temperance are Harry’s role as heretic/rebel and his link to Voldemort. In each case he sees what others don’t, like a Crone, or someone with a third eye. However, what he has seen—Voldemort’s resurrection—works against him, since Umbridge forbids him to tell the truth about Voldemort’s return. Voldemort also takes advantage of his link to Harry—the meaning of which seems to escape him, that Harry is a Horcrux—by making Harry believe he is torturing Sirius at the Ministry, a lie designed to lure Harry to the Hall of Prophecies.The cards linked numerically to the card in the center of the fifth column, the Hanged Man (#12) are the Empress (#3, because 1+2=3) and the World (#21, because 2+1=3). As the best embodiment of the Mother archetype and equivalent Tarot archetype, the Empress, Hermione helps Harry establish Dumbledore’s Army. Cho Chang, another Mother/Empress, is linked to another Hanged Man: Marietta Edgecomb, who betrays Dumbledore’s Army.The World card, a symbol of integration and completion, points to Harry’s opposition to Occlumency, at which he was bound to fail because it required him to divide his mind. His Occlumency tutor, Severus Snape, embodies both the archetype of the Crone (though he is neither female nor elderly, at only 35 years of age) and the archetype on the Temperance card, which shows not only a messenger, as Snape is when he spies for the Order of the Phoenix, but a figure pouring what could be considered “potions”, Snape’s specialty, between two vessels. However, Harry is whole and integrated; he cannot and shouldnot be dividing his mind, despite both Dumbledore and Snape being convinced that this is necessary. Harry’s inherent wholeness and love for Sirius, symbolized by the World card, protects him and drives Voldemort from his mind. The fifth column’s bottom card, the Sun, #19, has not been a column or sequential card in previous books, though it is numerically linked to the Magician and Wheel. The Sun links directly to the title of the book, since the phoenix is a symbol of the sun in ancient myth due to the sun metaphorically ‘dying’ each night and being ‘reborn’ in the morning. Phoenix lore includes tales of a reborn phoenix sealing its ashes in an egg that it takes to the altar of the sun god, Ra.Pages from the Aberdeen BestiaryIn the Middle Ages, the phoenix entered Christian lore as a symbol of the Resurrection and emblem of immortality. Fawkes-the-phoenix, named for Guy Fawkes (a traitor or freedom-fighter, depending on your perspective), provides Dumbledore’s escape. The historical Fawkes was sentenced to death because of his loyalty to a literal pope, while Rowling’s Fawkes is loyal to a symbolic Pope, a Guy Fawkes figure. On Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes is burnt in effigy, and the holiday was also called “Pope’s Day” or “Pope’s Night”, when it was common for the pope’s effigy to also be burned (or for his effigy to be burned instead of Guy Fawkes’s). George Washington was so worried about alienating the largely Catholic French-Canadian troops who joined in the fight against the British during the American Revolution that he banned the practice of celebrating Pope’s Day/Night and burning an effigy of the Pope amongst the troops of the Continental Army. This probably contributed to the holiday not being observed in the United States, though it also makes sense for the leader of a rebel army to discourage an observation that grew out of a squashed rebellion.The Sun card could be called the Phoenix card. Many modern decks show a phoenix on this card and call it the Phoenix; the image above is one example. On older versions of the Sun card, there are two children who appear to be twins, making twins prominent in the top and bottom cards in the fifth column. This can, again, point to Fred and George’s roles in the war on Umbridge, especially since their fireworks can look like suns rolling through the sky, particularly their Catherine Wheels, named for a martyred Catholic saint. A phoenix is reborn from its ashes. At the Ministry, Fawkes takes the brunt of the Killing Curse for Dumbledore while he duels Voldemort, and Fawkes is reborn from his own ashes. Sirius, in turn, is a symbolic phoenix. Named for the Dog Star, a minor sun, Sirius is killed by the life-ending archetypal Crone Bellatrix Lestrange, and Harry is reborn from Sirius’s ashes. His love for Sirius ejects Voldemort from his mind, ensuring that he will never again venture into Harry’s thoughts, lest he encounter the overwhelming love that is integral to Harry.The Sun card (#19), at the bottom of the fifth column, is numerically linked to the Wheel of Fortune (because 1 + 9 = 10, and 1 + 0 = 1). It is also linked to the Magician (#1). The Wheel card brings us back to Fred and George’s rebellion-by-fireworks, in which they make prominent use of Catherine Wheels, named for the patron saint of fireworks, because of the “breaking wheel” that was used to torture her. In heraldry, a Catherine wheel in a coat of arms points to a willingness to undergo great trials for one’s faith.Harry encounters a horizontal wheel in the Department of Mysteries, a circular room of doors that spins, disorienting Harry and his friends and making forward progress or escape difficult. Hermione marks doors they’ve gone through with flaming crosses (an obvious Christian symbol) and once they’re marked, the spinning flaming crosses become another Sun or a Catherine Wheel—a wheel of light with Harry and his friends at the center. Each time they try an unknown door they’re playing a real-life Wheel of Fortune game. Dumbledore is the epitome of the Magician, Pope of the “old religion”; because of this, the Sun card evokes not only death, resurrection and phoenixes, but the archetypal Magician himself, as well as spinning wheels of light (evoking the Sun and Wheel cards), both at the Ministry and cavorting through Hogwarts’ corridors in a rebellion with game-like qualities.The sequential cards for this book are Death (# 13), Temperance (#14), and the Devil (#15). Sirius Black dies in this book, which seems like an obvious link to Death, but this card is also about new beginnings. Like a phoenix. Harry rises from Sirius’s ashes by the end, no longer a Hanged Man, heretic, and traitor, which is what people once thought Sirius was.Death is a constant companion for Cho Chang in the fifth book, who doesn’t cope well with Cedric’s death. This comes between her and Harry almost as much as her sympathy toward her friend Marietta, who betrays everyone in Dumbledore’s Army. In contrast to Cho, Harry’s eyes aren’t veiled by tears due to witnessing death; instead they’re opened to the new, to Thestrals.In addition to the third eye, the winged figure on the Temperance card, #14, often called the Angel Temperance, holds two goblets with a stream of liquid flowing between them. An angel is a messenger (the meaning of ἄγγελοςin Greek, which is where “angel” comes from) and a “messenger” is a good label for Luna Lovegood, the means for Harry’s interview to appear in The Quibbler. She is a messenger in another way when she helps Harry cope with Sirius’s death by talking about her late mother; though chronologically a young woman, Luna, an archetypal Crone, is an apt representative of the Angel Temperance. The third sequential card, #15, is the Devil. This obviously refers to Voldemort, but another character also fills the role: Dolores Umbridge. Like Voldemort, Umbridge requires everyone to be in agreement with her; no diversity of opinion or deviation from what she deems acceptable is permitted. She is not a Death Eater but isa kindred spirit to Voldemort, despite her fearful denials that he has returned to power. In the seventh book, she fully supports the campaign against Muggle-born wizards; when Harry meets her again it is in a hellish underground Ministry courtroom where she is in the process of condemning Muggle-born wizards for a lack of magical ancestry.The card linked to the Devil (#15) is the Lovers (#6, because 1+5=6). One version shows a young man, a woman who might be his mother, and a young woman. This could be seen as Harry choosing between Cho and Ginny. Cho and Hermione are repeatedly contrasted in this book as permutations of the Mother/Empress, but Cho and Ginny are also contrasted: Cho comes up with ‘DA’ for the name of the secret society Harry is asking people to join, but Ginny suggests it stand for ‘Dumbledore’s Army’, rather than ‘Defense Association’. Ginny dates Michael Corner at the beginning of the book but by the end he’s seeing Cho Chang. Most significantly, in the Quidditch final, Ginny catches the Snitch, a symbolic Harry, from “under Cho’s nose”, winning the match and Quidditch cup, but also winning Harry. He hasn’t chosen yet, as the young man on the Lovers card is still choosing, but this card shows what his choices are; in the next book, with this card is at the top of the column, he does choose.The Horcrux aligned with the fifth book is Slytherin’s locket, which first appears in Order of the Phoenix (when Harry, Hermione, Sirius, and the Weasleys spend the summer cleaning Grimmauld Place). The Sun card is at the bottom of the column aligned with the fifth book, and the locket is another reason that the symbolism of this card is central to the book, since it plays the role of a metaphorical Sun in Deathly Hallows when Harry, Ron, and Hermione go to the Ministry to retrieve it from Dolores Umbridge, the DADA teacher in this book. Umbridge is consistently described as “toad-like” in the fifth and seventh books, and Harry has no doubt that she has the locket when Mundungus Fletcher, who bribed Umbridge with it, describes her this way. For him to know her name is unnecessary; Harry knows it cannot be anyone else. The incident in which they take the locket from her in a courtroom JK Rowling compares to a well (where one usually finds water) is a retelling of part of the Grimm fairy tale of the Frog King/Prince, which begins with a princess getting help from a frog to retrieve a symbolic sun from a deep well. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 28:The Grimm Campaign.)The locket Horcrux could have ended up anywhere after it was stolen, but it went to Umbridge, the fifth book’s DADA teacher. In one of Rowling’s many ironies, Umbridge bans Harry from Quidditch for life, but he still “catches” the locket from her. Like the other Horcruxes, including Harry, it is a symbolic Snitch, proving that no one, not even the High Inquisitor, can keep Harry from playing Quidditch, real or metaphorical, or from being the ultimate Seeker. As the last of the three middle books in the series, this book, like the previous two, has five more alignments: #3 - its house is Slytherin and #4 - its element is Water; #5 - Sirius is the Marauder aligning with this book; #6 - Ron is the Trio member aligning with the book; and #7 - Viktor Krum is the Champion of whom Ron was jealous.There are many pointers to Slytherin being this book’s house, alignment #3: the locket Horcrux was Slytherin’s; Umbridge puts only Slytherins on the Inquisitorial Squad; Sirius, who dies in this book and is the Marauder aligning with it is a virtual Slytherin, just as Viktor, alignment #7, the Champion for this book, was a virtual Slytherin when he sat at that table in the Great Hall. In fact, until Sirius went to Hogwarts, all members of the Black family were in Slytherin. Sirius’s Slytherin cousin Bellatrix kills him; and his Slytherin brother Regulus—another Seeker—stole Slytherin’s locket from the cave where Voldemort hid it.Water, the element for this book, alignment #4, is also linked to Sirius, alignment #5, the Marauder for this book, because he is Harry’s Godfather and an embodiment of the Godfather-variant of the Wise Old Man archetype. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 2: This Old Man.) In the book with Water for its element, which is used for baptisms, Harry loses his Godfather, which is reflected in the fifth threshold that Harry crosses with Hagrid or with his help in the first book: crossing the lake upon arrival at Hogwarts, a symbolic baptism. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 20: The Order of the Rebel.) Harry and Dumbledore (and Regulus and Kreacher before them) must go through both water and the potion in the bowl in the cave to reach the locket that is the Horcrux aligned with this book (or its doppelgänger, since Harry and Dumbledore discover that someone else has already taken the locket). The obstacle to the Philosopher’s Stone aligned with this book, the troll, is conquered by Quirrell for Harry, but he and his best friends are bonded together earlier by an interchangeable troll incident, in a girl’s bathroom, with quite a lot of spraying water. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 22: The Phoenix Games.) And, as mentioned above, the courtroom where they must go to obtain the locket is described by Rowling as a well, a place where one obtains water, though she uses this description for Ministry courtrooms at no other time in the seven-book series.The third book’s element of Air links to the destruction of that book’s Horcrux, since Harry flies on a broom in a mock-Quidditch match to destroy the diadem; the fourth book’s element of Earth relates to the destruction of Hufflepuff’s Cup, that book’s Horcrux, since Harry, Ron and Hermione go underground to the Lestrange vault to retrieve it, and Ron and Hermione then go underground to the Chamber of Secrets to retrieve a basilisk fang to destroy it. When Ron, the member of the Trio aligned with this book, alignment #6, returns to Harry and Hermione in Deathly Hallows, he must go into Water, this book’s element, to save Harry, who is being strangled by the chain on which he wears the locket, the Horcrux aligned with the fifth book (alignment #1). Ron retrieves both Harry and the Sword of Gryffindor from the water, Harry and the Sword again being equated here, as they are both necessary to destroy the locket. After Harry speaks the word “Open” in Parseltongue, Ron uses the Sword to destroy the Horcrux. In this episode, Ron morphs from being a plain archetypal Wise Old Man to the Godfather variant of the Wise Old Man, like Sirius; he plays John the Baptist to Harry’s Christ-figure when he pulls him out of the pool.
| Alignment | Prisoner of Azkaban | Goblet of Fire | Order of the Phoenix | | Horcrux | Diadem of Ravenclaw | Hufflepuff’s Cup | Slytherin’s Locket | | DADA Teacher | Remus Lupin | Barty Crouch, Jr. | Dolores Umbridge | | House | Ravenclaw | Hufflepuff | Slytherin | | Element | Air | Earth | Water | | Marauder | Remus Lupin | James Potter | Sirius Black | | Trio member | Hermione Granger | Harry Potter | Ron Weasley | | Champion | Fleur Delacour | Cedric Diggory | Viktor Krum |
Each of the three Champions who are not Harry have a link to a Snitch-equivalent analogous to the Horcrux for each book; Viktor, a Seeker, catches actual Snitches, and the locket is a mock-Snitch captured in a mock-Quidditch match (in a courtroom); Cedric, another Seeker, takes the Tournament cup with Harry in the book whose Horcrux is Hufflepuff’s cup; and Fleur wears a tiara/diadem at her wedding to Bill Weasley, who is equated with Remus Lupin at the end of the sixth book, after he is bitten by Fenrir Greyback. Remus is the DADA teacher for the third book, with the diadem as its Horcrux. Through the cards at the bottom of each column for these three books, the Star, the Moon and Sun, the Horcruxes can be matched to each book, though other cards also provide links between the aligned items and these books. Rowling again juxtaposes three with seven, like the three Deathly Hallows and seven Horcruxes, but here it is three books and seven items aligning with each book, another part of her incredibly complicated Harry Potter Game.Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 38: The Order of the Heretic. Copyright 2017-2019 by Quantum Harry Productions and B.L. Purdom. See other posts on this blog for direct links to all episodes of Quantum Harry.~ PREVIOUS ESSAY ~
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How does JK Rowling explicitly link the Tarot to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? Which Tarot archetype do Snape and Voldemort share? And what links Dumbledore’s death to Harry killing the basilisk?
Episode 39: Love, Death, and Judgment
Watch the Episode 39 video on YouTube.
Related Essay:
The Half-Dead Headmaster
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What links the World card to Harry's Occlumency lessons? How does Luna Lovegood embody the Temperance card? And why is the locket the Horcrux that aligns with Order of the Phoenix?
Episode 38: The Order of the Heretic
Watch the Episode 38 video on YouTube.
Related Essay:
The Crone and the Heretic
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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire begins in a setting that does not, at first, seem to include Harry. The opening description of Little Hangleton is similar to the introduction of the town of Pagford in The Casual Vacancy, JK Rowling’s first post-Potter novel. The village in Goblet of Fire is also a conservative, hide-bound outpost of prejudice and social stratification; in this village, a man accused of murder fifty years earlier is still a pariah, tormented by teenage vandals, forever guilty in the court of public opinion, despite a lack of evidence linking him to the murders of his former employers.The village pub in Little Hangleton is THE HANGED MAN, the name of the twelfth card in the Tarot Major Arcana and the third sequential card for Goblet of Fire, the group of three cards, in order, aligned with this book. (The first nine cards, in three groups of three, were aligned with the first three books in the series.) This is the first overt mention of a Tarot card in the seven books; there was abundant evidence in the first three books that JK Rowling was aligning the vertical columns of the Major Arcana with each book—due to the High Priestess being at the top of the second column, with her open book (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 33: The Inverted Tower of Secrets), and the Wheel of Fortune card aligning with the book in which Harry begins to study Divination, among other things. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 35: Prisoner of Time.) Calling the Little Hangleton pub the The Hanged Man implies that she is also aligning each book with the sequential cards for each book, since the Hanged Man is in the fourth set of three cards and she names it explicitly. The only other card she mentions in the series—the Lightning-Struck Tower, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince—is also named in the book that corresponds with where that card falls in the sequential cards. (It is the first card in the sixth set of three cards, the set of three aligning with the sixth book.)Frank Bryce, de facto caretaker of the Riddle House, is a Hanged Man in his community, a presumed traitor to the Riddles and persona non grata, which shows that the twelfth card of the Major Arcana would be an apt description for him even if it were not the name of the village pub. This is just one way in which Tarot relates to the fourth book of the Harry Potter series.In our grid of twenty-one Tarot Major Arcana cards, laid out in three rows and seven columns, the column of cards aligning with the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, has the Emperor, #4, at the top, Strength, #11, in the middle row, and the Moon, #18, at the bottom. When the Emperor was the first sequential card for the second book, Arthur Weasley, an archetypal Father, embodied the Emperor archetype in that book, which is equivalent to the Father archetype. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 34: Emperors, Fools, and Angels.) He was largely responsible for acquainting Harry with the wizarding world outside of the scope of the first book. Now Harry is exposed to even more of wizarding society, learning about other countries and schools, coming into contact with witches and wizards from those countries, with their own governments and laws. This fits with the number four, the Emperor’s number, also being the number that has governed how humans describe the world—North, South, East and West. It is the number of the major regions of the British Isles at the time Hogwarts was founded: England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, which also align with the four Hogwarts Houses. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 18: The Wide World.) The number four is associated with the four seasons, four elements, the four Evangelists, the four suits of the Tarot Minor Arcana, and so on. Four is used to describe the world and is a number of completion. It is therefore appropriate that Harry is the fourth Triwizard Champion, making the roster more complete than when there were only three, though that would usually seem to be a complete set of Champions for a competition called The Triwizard Tournament.Like Arthur Weasley, a literal and archetypal Father, Cedric is an archetypal Father as well, and thus also embodies the Emperor archetype. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 5: Our Father.) The spirit of the Emperor colors the entire fourth book. The war-imagery on this card is important: rams’ heads are on the arms of his throne on some cards, which links the Emperor to the astrological sign of Aries, as well as linking the Emperor to the Greek god Ares, the god of war, known as Mars in Roman mythology. In the first book, Harry and Hagrid grow increasingly impatient with Centaurs who repeat, “Mars is bright tonight,” over and over. This was clearly meant to indicate the advent of war.The Emperor is the first of the three sequential cards aligned with the second book, when Hogwarts is under attack from the Basilisk; in the fourth book, which is ruled by the Emperor, Mars is not just bright but flaming hot. War is no longer just on the horizon: war is here.As the epitome of the Emperor in Goblet of Fire, Cedric, a sixth-year Hufflepuff, is painted in broad, grand terms: he is handsome, the captain of and Seeker on his house Quidditch team (which Harry will also be in his sixth year), a prefect, and the son of a Ministry official. Cedric has conquered the world of school academically, athletically and socially. He is popular with faculty and students. The Goblet of Fire itself rules that he is the best person who put his own name into the Goblet to be Hogwarts Champion in the Triwizard Tournament.The Emperor card (#4) is numerically linked to the Fool (which, when it is numbered at all is labeled #22), hovering above the grid of twenty-one cards. Many depictions of the twenty-two cards in the Major Arcana show most of them in a three-by-seven grid with the Fool in its own row, right above the Emperor. In the Harry Potter books, the Fool is often embodied by Peeves, though Arthur Weasley also had a Fool/Emperor aspect in Chamber of Secrets. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 34: Emperors, Fools and Angels.) However, in Goblet of Fire, the Fool is often embodied by Harry. Shakespeare depicted close, symbiotic relationships between kings and their Fools, who are almost like “shadow kings”, responsible for advice that may take their countries into war or alliances that change the course of history. The superficially derogatory term “fool” belies how valuable this person is to the ruler, how much wisdom is brought to the job of the Fool.King Lear and the Fool in the Storm by William Dyce (1806-1864), oil on canvas, circa 1851When Harry’s name comes out of the Goblet after everyone believes that the Champions have all been named, he becomes a “shadow Champion”, Hogwarts’ second Champion. Draco Malfoy was unlikely to be the only one who considered Cedric to be the “real” Hogwarts Champion; everyone in Hufflepuff no doubt felt that the “real” Hogwarts Champion came from their house. In Goblet of Fire, Cedric embodies the Father archetype, which rules the book, and is the character best embodying this archetype in the book. Harry, the protagonist, steps into his shoes during the climax, which he does with all of the characters who best embody the ruling archetype in each book. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 5: Our Father.) Cedric also embodies the Emperor, the ruling Tarot archetype for the fourth book. It is fitting that someone who bears the title of “Champion” should play this role, since a king or emperor should be a Champion for his people. At first Harry feels like a Fool and a pretender to the “Champion” title, living in Cedric’s shadow, including learning that Cho Chang, whom he had hoped to take to the Yule Ball, is going with the “real” Champion. Harry becoming the second Hogwarts Champion comes out of the blue, like the actions of the archetypal Fool, who does not fit into the grid of twenty-one cards. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 30: Harry and Tarot.) Harry could no more have predicted his name coming out of the Goblet, since he did not put it in, than he could have predicted the Tournament cup being a Portkey.The Death card (#13) is also linked to the Emperor (since 1+3=4), and this is how Cedric’s reign ends: with Death. As a loyal retainer, a royal Fool (in the best sense), Harry brings Cedric’s body back to Hogwarts after fighting valiantly as Cedric’s “second”, effectively. Harry uses the Disarming Charm against Voldemort, which some might consider the act of a Fool, to not go for the kill. It is also the act of an anti-soldier, one of Harry’s chief roles, a key part of his being a holy man and intercessor throughout the series.The middle column card, Strength or Force, #11, shows a woman holding a lion’s jaws open, bending it to her will. The figure on this card takes control, as Harry must to survive the Tournament. As a Gryffindor, he could be the lion or the woman; he repeatedly takes steps to control situations in this book, using his broom in the first task, and attempting to save all of the hostages in the lake, which was considered the act of a Fool. He asks Cho and then Parvati to the Ball; he takes the cup with Cedric; and he steps out from behind a tombstone, casting the Disarming Charm, of all things, against Voldemort’s Killing Curse. Harry’s choices show his strength of character, which is why his wand, when linked to Voldemort’s, forces the other wand to produce shadows of its previous spells.The shadows that emerge from Voldemort’s wand bring to mind the Judgment card, #20, which is numerically linked to Strength (1+1=2 and 2+0=2). The Judgment card shows the dead being resurrected, but when the shades of Cedric, James and Lily Potter and Frank Bryce appear, they are judging, not judged; they judge Voldemort, they distract him and this helps Harry to escape.The other card linked to Strength is the High Priestess (#2, because 1+1=2). This Tarot archetype is again embodied by Ginny, but not just Ginny. Parvati is also an archetypal Maiden, like Ginny (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 3: Iron Maiden) , who goes to the ball with Neville and does the same things as Harry’s date Parvati. This includes meeting up with a boy from Ravenclaw, while Parvati meets with a boy from “virtual” Ravenclaw, the French school, Beauxbatons. This parallel structure foreshadows Harry’s and Ginny’s eventual relationship in the sixth book and makes her growing friendship with Harry in the fifth book possible.The center cards in the first three columns—Justice, the Hermit, and the Wheel— were intercessors between the top and bottom cards in those columns, and Harry’s Strength/Force is the intercessor between the darkness of the bottom card, the Moon (#18) and the top card, the Emperor (#4), which is chiefly embodied by Cedric. The Moon is an omen of dark times but is also important for the series’ overall structure as well as applying to details in the fourth book. The lobster or scorpion emerging from water in the foreground on this card felt like a symbol for Snape in the previous book, pursuing the dog and the wolf also depicted on the card, embodied in the third book by Sirius and Remus. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 36: Chariots of Justice.) However in the fourth book, for no obvious reason—or rather, no other obvious reason—JK Rowling introduces Blast-Ended Skrewts. The creature on the card looks remarkably the way the text describes a Skrewt, which are at first small, disgusting things, but later a monster-sized lobsterish creature Harry confronts in the last task’s maze. There are again towers in the distance on the Moon card, looking rather like a castle, but also looking a bit like tombstones in a graveyard, where Cedric meets his fate and Harry confronts Voldemort.The Moon is a fitting symbol for the fourth book because it functions as a mirror in the series, as the moon reflects sunlight; there are many inversions between the second and sixth books, the first and seventh books, and the third and fifth books. Likewise, many elements are mirrored between the beginning and end of this book. At the beginning, Harry takes a Portkey with Cedric Diggory to a wizarding competition (the Quidditch World Cup) that at one point includes Death Eaters. At the end, Harry takes a Portkey with Cedric from a wizarding competition that also has an international flavor: the Triwizard Tournament. Harry encounters Death Eaters in the graveyard, but rather than seeing the Dark Mark, conjured using his wand at the World Cup camp, he encounters the human incarnation of the Dark Mark: Voldemort. The Dark Mark was conjured by one servant of Voldemort, Barty, Jr., while it is as if Voldemort was conjured by another servant: Peter Pettigrew. Rowling has used mirrored book structures before, notably in the first book, when representatives of the seven obstacles to the Philosopher’s Stone are introduced earlier in the book in reverse order. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 28: The Grimm Campaign.) This structure is particularly fitting in the central book of the series, with the Moon card at the bottom of the column of Major Arcana cards ruling the book. The Moon is also connected to sleep and dreams. The opening scene at the Riddle House in Little Hangleton is witnessed by Harry while he seems to be dreaming, though he really sees it as it is happening due to the link between him and Voldemort, because Harry is the accidental Horcrux. The Moon represents a dark night of the soul, watery and mysterious, dangerous and scary. This points to the resurrection of Voldemort, someone who is the opposite of the Emperor, a symbol of civilized order, which Voldemort wants to topple.Linked to the Moon (#18) is the Hermit (#9, because 1+8=9). This wandering mendicant, wearing what could be an invisibility cloak, might point to Barty Crouch, Jr., the imposter who pretends to be Mad-Eye Moody, the ex-Auror hired by Dumbledore to be the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in Harry’s fourth year. Barty Jr. hides under an Invisibility Cloak at the World Cup, though he is usually more of a home-bound hermit, hiding under this cloak in his father’s house. Now he is out in the world, like the card’s wandering Hermit. During most of the book he uses Polyjuice Potion as a cloak, to hide his true identity, and despite being an imposter, teaches the students some useful things, the light of the Hermit’s lantern being a symbol of wisdom. (Barty Crouch, Jr. was accomplished academically; he received twelve OWLs, like Bill and Percy Weasley.) The Hermit card could point to two people: Barty Crouch, Jr. and the man he displaced, Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody, described as an eccentric loner, as Hermits often are: alone, paranoid, but also possessing a store of valuable wisdom. Moody was returning to the world when he accepted Dumbledore’s job offer, but Barty Crouch, Jr. did this instead, relegating Moody to the shadowy, hermit-like existence he formerly endured at his father’s home.The fourth set of sequential cards, aligned with Goblet of Fire, are cards 10, 11 and 12: the Wheel of Fortune (#10); Strength, (#11), which is also a column card; and the Hanged Man (#12). The Wheel of Fortune reflected Harry’s up-and-down fortunes in the previous book, when it was the center of the third column; Harry hardly ever seemed in control until he overcame his desire to hear his parents’ voices and conjured a Patronus that saved him, Hermione and Sirius. His fortunes rise and fall again in quick succession in the fourth book, but the double influence of card #11, Strength, points to his having better control now. He is less at the whim of fortune, handling what fate throws at him with confidence, even when he is caught out of his dormitory with his golden egg. Another link between the Wheel card and this book is that a sphinx rules over the Wheel. Like Oedipus, Harry answers a riddle posed by a sphinx in the maze during the last task, and, like Oedipus, he desires an archetypal Mother (Cho Chang) and contributes to her partner’s death, the archetypal Father Cedric Diggory. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 5: Our Father.) Unlike the father of Oedipus, Harry is not caught up in a fate he enacts while trying to avoid it; that is Voldemort’s role.The Wheel (#10) is linked to the Magician (#1, because 1+0=1) and to the Sun (#19, because 1+9=10 and again 1+0=1). The Sun card is associated with the phoenix; some modern decks have Sun cards depicting a phoenix. Phoenixes were also associated with the temple of the Sun god at Heliopolis, which means "City of the Sun". (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 14: The Devil’s Game.)A Sun card depicting a phoenix (not in the public doman).Source: PinterestDuring Harry’s duel with Voldemort, Harry is thoroughly master of his wand, like an archetypal Magician (#1) and like someone channeling the formidable woman on the Strength card (#11). The linked wands, which both have phoenix-feather cores, create a golden cage of light resonating with phoenix-song, as if channeling sunlight. As a result, the last four people killed by Voldemort’s wand—Cedric, James, Lily, and Frank Bryce—appear in the graveyard, virtual resurrections, foreshadowing Harry using the Resurrection Stone before he walks into the forest to die.During the final task Harry becomes Master of the four elements of fire, air, water and earth, and master of the four corners of the earth, symbolized by the maze growing on the Quidditch pitch but also in his mastery of the “point me” charm, a compass spell he uses to navigate the maze. By doing this he becomes master of the cardinal directions and finally embodies the Emperor, having evolved into a true Champion, not just a shadow Champion/Fool, as well as the archetypal Magician, master of the four Tarot suits linking that card to the four elements, four cardinal directions and four Hogwarts houses, which is fitting for a true Hogwarts Champion.The column and sequential cards for this book intersect at #11, Strength, creating a cross in the grid of cards. This is appropriate for Goblet of Fire because Harry is symbolically crucified in the graveyard when he is bound to a tombstone. However, it is not the time for him to submit to literal death; that will come in Deathly Hallows. His use of the Disarming Charm in the graveyard foreshadows how he ultimately defeats his enemy and is an echo of Viktor Krum’s sacrifice play in the Quidditch World Cup at the beginning of Goblet of Fire, which is in turn an echo of Ron’s sacrifice during the life-sized chess game, the fourth obstacle to the Philosopher’s Stone, which aligns with the fourth book. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast: Episode 19: Not Playing to Win.)The Hanged Man points to another symbolic but temporary crucifixion. As with many things mirrored at the beginning and end of the book, there are characters who embody the Hanged Man at each “end” of the story. Frank Bryce, the loyal Riddle family servant, was the most likely suspect when the Riddle family was killed, though Muggle authorities could not build a case against him. The Hanged Man, also called “The Traitor”–Il Traditore in medieval Italian decks—shows a figure hanging upside down, which was called “baffling”, an Italian punishment for traitors. Frank was considered a traitor to the Riddles. In Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, Sallie Nichols writes that hanging a traitor upside down “...is a mark of ignominy, of censure and public ridicule.” [p. 216] This was not unlike crucifixion under Roman rule; the imagery on this Tarot card is also associated with St. Peter, who was crucified upside-down.The Hanged Man at the end of the book is Harry, who witnesses Frank’s murder at the beginning through his connection to Voldemort. Like Frank, who reappears as a ghostly figure, Harry is upside-down compared to the rest of the world; he knows he did not put his name in the Goblet, but most people do not believe him. He is also literally upside down at one point in the hedge maze, another image from a Tarot card that figures in the last task (the others being the Skrewt-like creature on the Moon card and the Sphinx on the Wheel card). Frank Bryce knows he did not kill the Riddles but no one believes him. Unlike Frank, Harry does not die. This is another case of the Moon as a magical mirror, flipping elements at the book’s start and finish. And while the Hanged Man is significant in Goblet of Fire, it is even more so in Order of the Phoenix, when it is the middle column card for that book. Harry’s inability to convince Fudge of Voldemort’s return prepare the reader for his almost-constant inverted state during the fifth book of the series, when he is the Hanged Man incarnate.Cards linked to the Hanged Man (#12) are the Empress (#3 – because 1+2=3) and the World (#21, because 2+1=3). Again playing the Empress, Hermione prepares Harry for the Triwizard Tournament tasks. Cho Chang also embodies the Empress, an archetypal Mother desired by Harry, which Hermione is not, Rita Skeeter’s muckraking notwithstanding. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 4: Mother, May I? and Episode 5: Our Father.)The World card, whose figure holds two wands, is key during the climax of the fourth book, when the cage of golden light vibrates with phoenix-song and Harry is master over his own wand and in control of Voldemort’s. The linked brother-wands represent another moment of wholeness and completion for Harry, as well as foreshadowing Harry being master over both his and his enemy’s wands at the climax of the seventh book in the series.In the previous essay, I began to write about how, in the three “middle” books of the series—Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, and Order of the Phoenix—the Tarot cards aligned with each book help to illuminate the relationships between seven alignments that occur in each of these three books, another case of a three-by-seven grid, like the grid of Tarot Major Arcana cards numbered one to twenty-one. To recap, these alignments are: 1- a Horcrux aligned with each book; 2 – the DADA teacher for the book; 3 – the non-Gryffindor house aligned with each book; 4 – the element aligned with that house; 5 – the Marauder aligned with each book; 6 – the member of the Trio aligned with each book; and 7 – the non-Harry Champion aligned with each book (the Champion of whom the Trio-member was jealous).In Prisoner of Azkaban, the Tarot cards that help to illuminate JK Rowling’s narrative choices also illuminate the alignments for that book: the Empress card points to the diadem Horcrux; the Hermit card points to the aptness of Remus Lupin being the DADA teacher; both the Empress and the Justice card point to Ravenclaw being the non-Gryffindor house; Justice, linked to the astrological sign of Libra, an Air sign, points to Air being the element for third book; the Moon card links to Remus Lupin being the Marauder aligned with the third book; the Empress points to Hermione being the member of the Trio aligned with this book; and the Empress and Star point to Fleur Delacour, of whom Hermione was jealous and who wears a diadem/tiara at her wedding, being the non-Harry Champion aligned with this book. Hufflepuff’s Cup is the Horcrux aligned with Goblet of Fire, which is somewhat obvious due to the “goblet” in the title, and Cedric, the “real Hogwarts champion”, being from Hufflepuff. However, there are many other cups and virtual cups in the book. There is the Tournament cup Harry takes with Cedric. The Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Barty Crouch, Jr., the second alignment, carries a flask (a kind of cup) with Polyjuice potion to maintain his disguise as Mad-Eye Moody. This is not the only link between the Cup Horcrux and Barty, Jr. When Harry goes into Dumbledore’s Pensieve (another large cup) Harry sees Barty Crouch, Jr. on trial at the Ministry with Bellatrix Lestrange, her husband, and brother-in-law. And where does Harry find the cup Horcrux in the seventh book? In the Lestrange vault at Gringotts.Dumbledore uses a Pensieve to “reflect” on memories. Memory is also linked to the Moon, a key tie between Barty, Jr., the Lestranges, and Hufflepuff’s cup. The fourth column of cards has the Emperor at the top and Moon at the bottom. The gang of four that was Barty Jr. and the Lestranges went to prison for torturing the parents of Neville Longbottom (an archetypal Father/Emperor) so severely that they lost their memories. Neville, who embodies the same archetypes as Cedric, is also linked to Hufflepuff: he excels at Herbology, taught by the head of Hufflepuff, Professor Sprout, whom he will eventually succeed, and his future spouse is the Hufflepuff Hannah Abbot.Rowling reveals in the sixth book that Voldemort acquired Hufflepuff’s cup to turn it into a Horcrux by altering the memory of a house-elf to so she believed she had killed her mistress. The Moon card, a mirror to the Sun and the entire series, as well as symbolically linked to dreams and memory, links the Cup to this book and to Barty Crouch, Jr., who also sees Dumbledore, McGonagall and Snape coming for him in Mad-Eye’s “foe glass”, another non-mirroring mirror, one of many that appear throughout the series.The third alignment, due to the cup Horcrux, but not that alone, is the house for this book: Hufflepuff. At the Leaving Feast, Dumbledore lifts his cup to a Hufflepuff, the Father/Emperor figure Cedric Diggory, and bids us all to remember. The moon, memories, Hufflepuffs and virtual Hufflepuffs, cups and a DADA teacher who stole the Longbottoms’ memories are all linked indelibly to the Moon card at the bottom of the column for this book. It reappears as a sequential card in the sixth, which is the next time Harry will explore Dumbledore’s memories, this time with permission.The fourth alignment, the element for this book, is Earth, the element for Hufflepuff. James Potter, another archetypal Father/Emperor, reappears at the end of the book as a shadow emerging from Voldemort’s wand. He is the Marauder aligned with this book, the fifth alignment. Finally, Harry himself is the member of the Trio aligned with the central book in the series, and Cedric is the Champion of whom he was jealous, the sixth and seventh alignments. Earth is not only the element of Hufflepuff but of the final task, held in a hedge maze grown in the earth of the Quidditch pitch. It is the element of death and graveyards, where Harry and Cedric go via the Tournament cup. James, Harry’s father, is a doppelgänger for Cedric; they are both Father/Emperor archetypes, and Cedric’s death is a re-enactment of James Potter’s death.All of these alignments are easiest to discern through examining the Tarot cards linked to this book, especially the Emperor and Moon, the top and bottom cards in the fourth column of Major Arcana cards, the one aligning with the fourth book of the series: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 37: The Goblet of Memory. Copyright 2017-2019 by Quantum Harry Productions and B.L. Purdom. See other posts on this blog for direct links to all episodes of Quantum Harry.~ PREVIOUS ESSAY ~
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The first seven cards of the Tarot Major Arcana depict age-old archetypes, and with one exception, each aligns with a gender or age archetype (the Wise Old Man, the Maiden, the Father, etc.) plus the ageless and genderless Liminal Being. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episodes 2-9.) The only card in the first seven that doesn’t align with one of these archetypes has for its only numerically-linked card a Tarot archetype that does align with the remaining “missing” archetype, as if those two are interchangeable. In other words, each book is ruled by a mythic archetype that has an equivalent in the first seven cards of the Tarot Major Arcana in the exact same order. This is unlikely to be a coincidence; instead, it is highly probable that JK Rowling intentionally inserted Tarot imagery and symbolism in the series in a specific, structural way. She seems to have deliberately included imagery from the Tarot Major Arcana, but not randomly, instead utilizing two approaches to accomplish this: aligning one of the seven columns of cards with each book, in order, and also aligning one of the seven three-card sequences with each book, also in order. (Aligning cards one, two, and three with the first book, cards four, five, and six with the second book, etc.) This means that the column cards for the third book in the series are cards 3, 10, and 17, while the sequential cards for this book are 7, 8, and 9. There are also six additional cards linked numerically to these six column and sequential cards.Since the Tarot was originally created for playing games, this once again ties in with the overarching theme of JK Rowling’s seven-book series: games, toys, sweets, fairy tales and childhood in general, meshing perfectly with her hero not only being a child but with Harry’s chief enemy being contemptuous of him specifically because he is a child. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 1: The Kids’ Table.)The first seven cards of the Tarot Major Arcana, or the top row in our grid of twenty-one cards, is called The Realm of the Gods. Prisoner of Azkaban is the first Harry Potter book in which Harry is not rescued by a deus ex machina at the climax (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina), but since the first of the three sequential cards for this book, the Chariot (card #7), comes from the Realm of the Gods, the last of the first seven cards, there is one more deus ex machinathat helps Harry in this book, though it is not during the climax. This “god from the machine” seems very clearly linked to the Chariot card, just as the Flying Ford Anglia was in the second book, when the Chariot card was linked numerically to the card at the bottom of the second column, the Lightning-Struck Tower. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 33: The Inverted Tower of Secrets.)When Harry is on the run in Prisoner of Azkaban, theKnight Bus just shows up out of the blue, sparing Harry having to fly on his broom to run away from Privet Drive. He does not expect it or even know that this exists, and he does not knowingly summon it. Knight Bus appearances in later books do not carry the deus ex machina vibe of its debut; however, as a Liminal Being and an axis mundi, a link between worlds, this “Chariot” is the most appropriate transportation for Harry to use in this situation. Harry, a Metaphorically Queer Liminal Being, like many literally queer youth, has left home and is in danger of being homeless specifically because of his difference from his family and their subsequent rejection of him. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 8: Have You Tried Not Being Liminal? and Episode 9: We’re Here, We’re Metaphorically Queer.) This also happens to Sirius, another Metaphorically Queer Liminal Being, when he is young, though the difference between him and his family is that he is not a blood supremacist, rather than the difference between Harry and the Dursleys: that he is magical and they are not.Many versions of the Chariot card show two horses pulling the Chariot, a red one and a blue one. If you combine these colors you get purple, which is the color of the Knight Bus. Other cards show two sphinxes pulling the Chariot instead, one white and one black. This is a visual presentation of the same theme; the creatures of different colors represent the Chariot being pulled in opposite directions, and the driver must balance and reconcile these opposing forces, guiding the vehicle magically. The Chariot driver does not hold reins but a wand, like the Magician, the card at the beginning of the Realm of the Gods. And like the Moon card, the Chariot is connected to the sign of Cancer, which is all about home. The Chariot’s destination is ultimately home. In Chamber of Secrets, Harry flew in the Ford Anglia, a symbolic Chariot, to two of his emotional homes: the Burrow and Hogwarts. In addition to bridging worlds and reconciling opposing forces, which is what Liminal Beings do, another theme connected to this card is a journey home—which may be a new, chosen home—and discovering your true self by learning about where you came from, like Harry in Prisoner of Azkaban, when he learns about the Marauders’ backstory. These themes mesh with the mythic archetype linked to this card, the Metaphorically Queer Liminal Being, and to the color purple, the color of the Knight Bus, which happens to be an emblematic color in the LGBTQ community. Harry, a Metaphorically Queer Liminal Being, is treated as a pariah in his own home, but after he is “Outed” and learns about his true self, he goes to his spiritual home, to live with a chosen family.Another meaning attached to the Chariot card that is somewhat obvious is travel. Travel and transportation are key themes in the third book of the series. Harry’s first experience of dementors is while he is traveling on the Hogwarts Express. He is later convinced that he must learn to fight dementors to play Quidditch, his usual mock-war, which is played on brooms, a mode of transportation. The Knight Bus and the Hogwarts Express are both virtual Chariots, taking Harry home—the bus going to the wizarding world in general, and the train to Hogwarts.When he arrives at Hogwarts, Harry encounters so-called “horseless carriages” for the first time, which are really pulled by Thestrals, skeletal winged horses that are invisible to most people, including Harry, in his third year. Having flown to school in the previous book, he did not previously see these carriages, which, like Tarot Chariot, do not require a driver to steer them with reins. The eerie Thestrals Harry sees two books later are there, however, and these creatures combine black and white, like the sphinxes on some Chariot cards, with their black bodies and wings, and white eyes. In addition to the bus, the train and the school carriages, another mode of transportation Harry uses to play a game, his broomstick, is destroyed and he gets a replacement, a Firebolt, which is an especially apt name for a broom owned by Harry Potter, with his lightning-bolt scar. The new broom is hotly debated, with Hermione, backed up by McGonagall, convinced that it is from Sirius and therefore jinxed (which makes her half-right). Harry also rides Buckbeak the hippogriff, first during a lesson with Hagrid, later to save Buckbeak and Sirius from the Ministry’s version of “justice”. However, the Chariot is not just about Harry’smany journeys, literal and metaphorical, including his journey to understanding who he is and where he comes from. Sirius, also a Metaphorically Queer Liminal Being, travels “home” from Azkaban, back to being Harry’s godfather, a role he would have filled at his friends’ deaths if he had not gone to prison, and, like Harry, he also travels back to Hogwarts, his spiritual home. Sirius is Metaphorically Queer in his own family, due to his ideological differences with them, but he is also a Liminal Being because he is an Animagus.Another character linked to the liminality of the Chariot is the werewolf Remus Lupin, someone who, rather than changing into another creature at will, like an Animagus, becomes a ravenous wolf during the full moon, quite unwillingly. This works neatly with the sign of Cancer being linked to the Chariot card, since those born under Cancer are called “Moon Children”.Other symbols on some Chariot cards are wings and the Hindu symbols for the union of positive and negative, which is equivalent to the yin/yang. Sirius escapes from the Ministry’s clutches on Buckbeak, another Liminal Being and a mode of transportation (for Harry, Hermione and Sirius) that is a union of opposites. Even Buckbeak’s name speaks of his dual nature, since “bucking” is something a horse does and a “beak” belongs to a bird. (His later alias, “Witherwings” also speaks to his dual nature; a wither is the ridge between the shoulder blades where a horse’s height is measured, and wings obviously refer to another major anatomical feature of birds, as well as being a symbol on the Chariot card.) The fear that a boggart feeds on is defeated by laughter, and the despair brought on by dementors is fought by hope, love and thoughts of happiness. The Chariot embodies these and other dualities in the third book of the series and takes Harry, the protagonist in this Tarot story, to the end of the Realm of the Gods.The card linked to the Chariot (card #7) is the Tower of Destruction or the Lightning-Struck Tower (card #16, because 1+6=7). In addition to the Firebolt being Harry’s new broom, an obvious link to Harry’s lightning-bolt scar, in this book the Tower card can be linked to the literal tower from which Harry and Hermione rescue Sirius. This is what may make the tower from which they rescue him “lightning-struck”, since Harry has a lightning-bolt scar, so, like the inverted Tower of the Chamber of Secrets, it is also a “Harry-struck” tower.Harry begins studying Divination in Prisoner of Azkaban, lessons he attends at the top of a tower, even having to climb a ladder to reach the top. This is also the residence of Professor Sybill Trelawney, her tower being a physical manifestation of her identity as an axis mundi, a link between worlds, an archetypal Crone. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 6: A Murder of Crones.) She is also a genuine Seer, though Harry and his friends scoff at her predictions. However, Harry is less sanguine about the prediction she gives during his Divination final, about the servant of the Dark Lord returning to his master, which Harry initially believes means Sirius, though he later realizes that it refers to Peter.There is another crumbling “tower” in this book, accessed from underground, like the inverted tower of the Chamber of Secrets: the Shrieking Shack. A confrontation and a number of revelations occur in this virtual “Tower”, which, like the Chamber of Secrets, can be considered “inverted”, with a meaning that seems to be the same in this book and the second: a time of change and upheaval that nonetheless ends well—which it generally does, with Sirius and Buckbeak rescued and the dementors leaving Hogwarts. The only fly in the ointment is that Peter escapes, which makes it impossible to clear Sirius’s name with the Ministry and also leads, eventually, to the resurrection of Voldemort, a development predicted by Trelawney in her literal Lightning-Struck Tower.Justice (card #8) is the second sequential card for this book, and it is linked to a column card, the Star (card # 17, because 1+7=8). Justice is nearly always shown in a negative light in Prisoner of Azkaban, unlike when Harry embodied the archetype of Justice and mediated between Dumbledore and Voldemort in the first book. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 31: The Devil You Know.) This reflects the up-and-down influence of the Wheel of Fortune card in this book, and that one of the characters embodying the Star archetype, Sirius, gets short shrift in terms of Justice. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 35: Prisoner of Time.) Harry tries to rectify this, helping Buckbeak and Sirius to escape miscarriages of Justice, but Harry is not the only one working on this; Hermione does research to secure an acquittal for Buckbeak, and when she is unable to continue, Ron picks up where she left off. All three are keenly interested in seeing Justice done.Dementors are as blind as Justice should be, but not in a good way; they do not care if they suck a soul from someone innocent. They are indiscriminate, unswayed by arguments about who deserves punishment and who does not. Buckbeak is also “railroaded” by the so-called wizarding Justice system, merely because Lucius Malfoy is friendly with the Minister for Magic. A Time-Turner looks like an hour glass and is about balance, since the sand can only go from one end of the glass to the other and back. Using the Time-Turner, Harry administers Justice and saves Sirius and Buckbeak, after hearing Lupin’s and Sirius’s “testimony” in the Shrieking Shack and having heard Pettigrew’s side of the story. Harry, again embodying the archetype of Justice, even offers a stay of execution to Peter. He wants to turn Peter over to the Ministry for a trial, perhaps sensing that letting Remus and Sirius murder him would damage them as well as Peter. He does not want them to do this to themselves. He does not yet know about murder ripping a person’s soul, but seems to know instinctively that it will change his father’s best friends forever. Harry wants to protect them from the blowback that he expects to be the result of this vigilante “Justice”.The third sequential card for Prisoner of Azkaban, the Hermit (card #9), a wandering holy man or scholar, can refer to multiple people in this book, like the Hanged Man and Star cards. Harry is a candidate for this archetype when he is briefly homeless and must stay at the Leaky Cauldron. Sirius is in this role as a fugitive. He engages in a lonely trek to see Harry in Surrey, then goes north again to Hogwarts. Another archetypal Hermit is Remus Lupin, who leads a lonely, insular life, due to his lycanthropy, and has to lock himself up monthly to avoid hurting others. Plus, as a teacher, he also fits the “scholarly” aspect of the Hermit archetype.The Hermit is an archetypal holy man, one of the intercessor roles that Harry played in the previous book, Chamber of Secrets. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 34: Emperors, Fools, and Angels.) He is again an intercessor in the third book, now for Sirius and for Peter. Sirius and Remus are also intercessors and holy men, of sorts; Sirius is literally Harry’s godfather, and Remus gives Harry spiritual tutelage that leads to his being able to conjure a Patronus to keep his soul whole and intact.The card linked to the Hermit (#9), is the Moon (#18, because 1+8=9). Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the book in which Remus Lupin is introduced, and Sirius Black, a dog Animagus, is also a major part of the book and the other title character besides Harry. On a typical Moon card, the most prominent creatures in the center of the card are a dog and a wolf baying at the moon! In the foreground, a scorpion or lobster sort of creature emerges from a body of water (the element of Slytherin house). This could point to Snape’s pursuit of Sirius, though he must settle for “outing” Remus Lupin as a werewolf instead. This creature seems to be creeping from the water to pursue the wolf and the dog, which is how Snape behaves in this book, creeping around, trying to get dirt on Lupin, who he suspects is helping Sirius. This is also reflected in the incident from their youth, when Snape was nearly killed because Sirius lured him to the Whomping Willow when Remus was on the verge of transforming into a werewolf, before Snape’s life was saved by James Potter.To return to the third column of Tarot Major Arcana cards, the one aligning with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, at the top of the column is the Empress card, #3, which rules the third book and is the main link between the Horcrux aligned with this book and the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in this book: Remus Lupin. However, all three “middle” books of the series—the third, fourth and fifth books—also have five other alignments (for a total of seven each). The remaining seven alignments are:3. Each book has a non-Gryffindor house matched to its Horcrux (Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff or Slytherin). 4. The element for the house aligned with each book is important, thematically, in each book. 5. There is a Marauder who accompanies Harry to his death who is aligned with each middle book of the series.6. A member of the Trio—Harry, Ron or Hermione—is aligned with each of these three books.7. There is a non-Harry Champion who inspires jealousy in the Trio-member who is the 6thalignment, during the fourth and central book in the series.The Empress wears a crown of stars, a kind of diadem, the Horcrux aligned with this book: Ravenclaw’s diadem, whose story JK Rowling tells in Deathly Hallows. This is the first of the seven alignments in this book: the Horcrux. Remus Lupin is the second of the seven alignments, as the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher for this book. He is also linked to the Empress’s starry diadem, a symbol of her dominion over time and of women’s monthly cycles, like Lupin’s monthly cycle. This is also connected to the Moon card, numerically linked to the third sequential card for this book, the Hermit, a Tarot archetype embodied by Remus Lupin, among other characters.In addition to these connections, Ravenclaw’s diadem confers wisdom upon the one who wears it, and Lupin is the first DADA teacher Harry has who teaches him useful things and is a credit to his job, in addition to giving Harry dementor-fighting lessons that impart wisdom to him about his fear of fear.Ravenclaw’s diadem is the Horcrux aligned with this book, and thus Ravenclaw is the house aligned with this book, the third alignment. The diadem was Rowena Ravenclaw’s, but the Grey Lady, the Ravenclaw ghost, is Helena Ravenclaw, her daughter, who stole the diadem from Rowena, an archetypal Empress and archetypal Mother. Helena’s romance with the Bloody Baron is also linked to Justice, a key theme in this book, since it is the second sequential card and related numerically to the Star, at the bottom of the third column. The Baron killed Helena, then himself, and will forever wear his chains in penitence.The fourth alignment is the element for the House linked to this book, the element of Ravenclaw: Air. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 18: The Wide World.) This element is key in Prisoner of Azkaban on multiple levels. The backstory of the diadem Horcrux is one example of the importance of Justice in this book; this card, #8, the second sequential card, shows a woman representing Justice, holding scales. The Justice card is also linked to the sign of Libra, an Air sign. However, in a more tangible way, Air is linked to how Harry carries out Justice in this book: by flying through the air on a Hippogriff to save Sirius. The element of air is even significant in minor details. Of all the things JK Rowling could have had Harry accidentally do to Aunt Marge, for instance, she chooses having him inflate Marge with air, so she floats into the air. He plays a full Quidditch season in this book, for the first and last time, and where does he play Quidditch? In the air.Another minor link to Ravenclaw and the element of Air is that in his third year Harry first notices the Ravenclaw Seeker, Cho Chang, during a Quidditch match, which is, again, played in the air—the element aligning with Ravenclaw and with this book. This fourth alignment, the element for Ravenclaw, the House aligned with this book, repeatedly plays a role in Prisoner of Azkaban and is tied to one of its most significant cards: Justice.Another link between the diadem and the element of Air is that when the diadem is destroyed, it is the only time in one of the seventh book’s mock-Quidditch matches when Harry rides a broom, as he would in a real match (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 27: Legacy). This is an echo of the first book, because the only time Harry rides a broom while overcoming the obstacles to the Philosopher’s Stone is when he tries to catch the flying key, the third obstacle, which happens to be the one created by Professor Flitwick, head of Ravenclaw. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 16: The Seeker.) Thus, something close to Quidditch, which is played in the air and shapes the third book, is a fitting end for the Horcrux aligned with this book: the diadem.Remus Lupin, in addition to being the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in this book, is also the Marauder who accompanies Harry to his death, the fifth alignment. Sirius is Harry’s godfather, and in turn, Harry becomes godfather to Remus Lupin’s son Teddy, orphaned in the final battle against Voldemort. Remus is the Marauder whose mythic archetypes are the same as Harry’s—he is an archetypal Youth and a Metaphorically Queer Liminal Being. Remus and Harry were both attacked at a young age and changed by becoming a little like—but not completely like—the ones who attacked them: Fenrir Greyback, the werewolf, and Voldemort. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 9: We’re Here, We’re Metaphorically Queer.)Hermione, whose archetypes rule this book, both the archetypal Mother (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 4:Mother, May I?) and the archetypal Empress, is the rather obvious member of the Trio aligned with this book—the sixth alignment. In addition to Hermione being a near-Ravenclaw—she reveals in Order of the Phoenix that the Sorting Hat considered putting her in that house—her counterpart amongst the Champions in the fourth book, the one of whom she is jealous, is Fleur Delacour. And finally, alignment #7: the three non-Harry Champions. Fleur is from the pseudo-Ravenclaw school, Beauxbatons (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 18: The Wide World). Fleur will later wear a borrowed tiara—another type of diadem—at her wedding in Deathly Hallows to yet another character who, like Remus Lupin, shares the same mythic archetypes as Harry: Bill Weasley, both a Youth and a Liminal Being, who is bitten in the sixth book by the same werewolf who changed Lupin.All of these alignments are easiest to discern through examining the Tarot cards linked to this book, especially Justice and the Chariot, but also the cards linked numerically to both the sequential cards and the Major Arcana cards in the third column, the one aligning with the third book of the series: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 36: Chariots of Justice. Copyright 2017-2019 by Quantum Harry Productions and B.L. Purdom. See other posts on this blog for direct links to all episodes of Quantum Harry.
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Why is it fitting that the pub in Little Hangleton is called The Hanged Man? What links the Tarot Emperor card to the Hogwarts founders? And how does Harry embody the Tarot archetype of the Fool in Goblet of Fire?
Episode 37: The Goblet of Memory
Watch the Episode 37 video on YouTube.
Related essay:
The Spirit of the Emperor
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In Alfonso Cuaron’s cinematic interpretation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, time is a recurring theme. This extends to the visual joke of a wizard at the Leaky Cauldron pub reading a copy of A Brief History of Time by the Muggle Stephen Hawking. There are numerous lingering shots of clocks in the film, large and small, and the Whomping Willow’s progress through the seasons is also used by Cuaron to illustrate the passage of time. Unlike many film versions of the books, this manner of shaping the story is perfectly in tune with the book, since JK Rowling shaped the story around a complete Quidditch season, the only one Harry plays in the seven-book series. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 15: Prisoner of Quidditch and Episode 16: The Seeker.) Using Quidditch to mark time prepares readers for the time-travel sequence at the book’s climax. Rowling chose to use a game, not the Whomping Willow, as Cuaron does, and her choice is obviously going to be more in tune with the overarching theme running throughout her seven books. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode1: The Kids’ Table.) But Time is still of the essence in the third Harry Potter book, as the Tarot card at the top of the third column shows.The third column of cards in our Tarot grid of three rows and seven columns, the column aligning with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, has card #3, the Empress, at the top, the Wheel of Fortune, card #10, in the center and the Star, card #17, at the bottom of the column. Hermione Granger is the character who best embodies the Mother, the ruling archetype for the third book. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 4: Mother, May I?) She also happens to be the character who best embodies the Tarot archetype of the Empress in Prisoner of Azkaban, which is the Tarot equivalent of the archetypal Mother. Hermione’s actions drive much of the book and she is a key player during the climactic time-travel sequence.As a young woman now, Hermione is subject to time in a way that Harry and Ron are not: her monthly cycles. As a werewolf, Remus Lupin, who is introduced in Prisoner of Azkaban, also has a “monthly cycle” of sorts, though his is slightly different, and, ideally, when he has taken the Wolfsbane Potion brewed by Severus Snape, it involves less blood.
A typical Empress card depicts a matronly woman on a throne; there may be a shield in the shape of a large heart by her side, with the symbol for woman (a circle with a cross descending); or she may hold a shield with an eagle on it, which matches the shield seen on the card of her counterpart, the Emperor. In Hermione’s case, this is another link to her almost being Sorted into Ravenclaw, which she mentions in Order of the Phoenix, and this version of the Empress also usually wears a blue tunic; blue is both Hermione’s emblematic color (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 7: Fountain of Youth), and the chief color of Ravenclaw house, as well as traditionally being associated with Mary, the mother of Jesus. Some versions of the Empress card show her with a crown of twelve stars for the months of the year, over which she rules, linking her to monthly cycles and to time. If her throne does not resemble the wings of an angel it may be in a field backed by a stand of trees, linking her to nature and growing things. (In the first book of the series, Hermione is the one who has the knowledge needed to conquer the plant called Devil’s Snare because she pays attention in Herbology.) The Empress card is linked to the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven—another meaning for the crown of stars—and to the astrological sign of Virgo, which is Hermione’s birth sign, since her birthday is 19September. The Empress is also linked to the Greek goddess of the harvest, Demeter. Many versions show a field of wheat growing at the Empress’s feet. She is also linked to the goddesses Venus and Aphrodite and therefore to love, which makes sense, due to the heart-shaped shield and the symbol for woman on it. The Empress card is linked to Isis as well, the Egyptian goddess of the Dog Star, which is where Sirius, also introduced in this book, gets his name.The Empress both gives and takes; she gives fecundity/fertility but she also withholds, such as when the goddess Demeter withheld spring while her daughter Persephone was in the Underworld with Hades. Hermione keeps information from both Ron and Harry—the fact that Lupin is a werewolf—which is partly payback for their snubbing her after she has Professor McGonagall confiscate Harry’s new broom, the Firebolt that Sirius sends to him. She credits Snape assigning the third year Gryffindors an essay about werewolves when he is their Defense Against the Dark Arts substitute teacher, but it is logical that Hermione, who is attuned to her own monthly cycle, should work out Lupin’s secret even without this, a secret that flies over Harry’s and Ron’s heads. The links between the Empress, the goddess Isis, and the Dog Star are also fitting for the book in which Sirius Black is the title character, other than Harry. Hermione becomes a literal Mother in this book, rather than just an archetypal or figurative one, by adopting Crookshanks the cat, who becomes the bane of existence for Scabbers, Ron’s pet “rat”. She is protective of Crookshanks and for a little while is no longer friends with Ron when he believes that her pet ate his. She also researches legal cases in hopes of saving Buckbeak the Hippogriff, who is in danger of being executed in this book. A Hippogriff combines an eagle—depicted on the Empress’s shield on some cards—and a horse—which is an animal linked to the Empress’s element, Earth. This legal activity could also foreshadow Hermione’s eventual career in Magical Law, which is hinted at in Deathly Hallows.The cards linked to the Empress (card #3) are the Hanged Man (card #12, because 1+2=3) and the World (card #21, because 2+1=3). The Hanged Man is called The Traitor, or Il Traditore, in Italian Tarot decks, in which the figure is sometimes pictured with a bag or two of money, “suggesting Judas with his thirty pieces of silver,”according to Sallie Nichols in her book Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey. Hanged Man cards usually show a man being hung upside down by one foot, a practice called baffling that was reserved for traitors. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 30: Harry and Tarot.) This card could point to the character of Sirius Black, who Harry believes betrayed him and his parents. He hears about this while eavesdropping on a conversation between Hagrid, Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick and Madam Rosmerta at the Three Broomsticks. But this card could also point to the real traitor, Wormtail, Peter Pettigrew, the true identity of Ron’s pet rat Scabbers. Sirius and Peter swap places by the end of the book after Rowling reveals that there is more to this “rat” than meets the eye and that Sirius was framed for both the betrayal of the Potters and for Peter’s so-called “murder”.Ron and Harry also feel deeply that Hermione has betrayed Harry by telling McGonagall about Harry receiving a new broomstick, sent to him anonymously. This is fitting, as Hermione embodies the Empress, whose card is numerically linked to The Hanged Man. The Hanged Man isn’t a card in the Tarot story that is definitively always linked to betrayal, though; Nichols cites the apostle Peter, who shares a name with Peter Pettigrew, being crucified upside down as a “mark of humility”. She also writes: As history has repeatedly shown, any person whose individual conscience is in opposition to the collective viewpoint can appear as a traitor to the Establishment. Such an individual is subjected to many trials, the least of which is that held in a court of law. Often upside down in relation to his friends, his family, and his government, such a nonconformer can even be branded criminal. [p. 218] We will see this with Harry’s character in the fifth book, Order of the Phoenix, in which he is in fact considered to be “a traitor to the Establishment”—the Ministry of Magic. The fifth book will be ruled by the fifth column of Tarot cards, in which the Hanged Man is the center card, between the fifth card (the Pope or Hierophant or High Priest) and the nineteenth card (the Sun). But this is another way that Sirius can be seen as the Hanged Man in the third book; he is not an actual traitor but is in opposition to the Establishment, and has been branded a criminal because of this, not because he actually did what he was accused of.Harry is also briefly in this role in the third book. His aunt and uncle tell Aunt Marge that he goes to St Brutus’s Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys—that he is in juvie, essentially. As if fulfilling this “prophecy” of his criminal tendencies, he accidentally inflates Aunt Marge and immediately decides to go on the run, fleeing with his broomstick, trunk of magical books, and other school supplies, intent on becoming a fugitive rather than having his wand broken or suffering whatever punishment Vernon wants to inflict on him after this incident. Harry also later breaks the school rule about not going to Hogsmeade without having his permission slip signed. He has been a rule-breaker before, but does it far more often and with less trepidation in the third book, in which Snape also cites Harry’s father James as someone who repeatedly broke rules. This rule-breaking culminates in Harry helping a prisoner of the Ministry—Sirius—to escape, as well as aiding the condemned Buckbeak, another Hanged Man who was not actually guilty of the crime for which he was convicted and sentenced to death.The World card, #21, the other card linked numerically to card #3, the Empress, is about completion and wholeness. The figure on it holds two wands, and is surrounded by symbols of the Evangelists, which align with fire, air, water and earth. This links the card to the suits of the Tarot Minor Arcana and to the Hogwarts houses, which are also each aligned with fire, air, water or earth. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 30: Harry and Tarot.)In Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry masters conjuring a Patronus. To do this, he must think happy thoughts, and what he chooses is revealing: Hagrid telling him that he is a wizard, when Harry learns the truth about himself and feels complete and whole because of this. Harry also thinks about being with his best friends, Ron and Hermione, who make him feel complete and whole as well. After he wins the Quidditch Cup, he experiences a euphoria that he believes could help him to conjure “the world’s best Patronus”, but he does not use this thought to later conjure the Patronus that will save him, Hermione and Sirius from an army of dementors. Harry comes to equate his Quidditch training with this skill, with conjuring a Patronus. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 15: Prisoner of Quidditch and Episode 16: The Seeker.) He first goes to Lupin to ask for help fighting dementors in order to succeed at Quidditch, after dementors make him fall from his broom during the first match of the year. Since Harry’s very first match, when he collided with and became metaphorically entangled with all Snitches, Quidditch has been an activity of wholeness and completion for him, and catching the Snitch is like Harry reuniting with a missing piece of himself. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 1: The Kids’ Table.) When he first sees a figure conjuring a Patronus to save him, Hermione and Sirius from the dementors, he believes he is seeing his dead father, James. While he is time-traveling he realizes that he has to have been the one to conjure the Patronus to save the non-time-traveling versions of himself, Hermione and Sirius. We can think of these two Harrys coming together to form the figure on the World card, armed with two wands, and surrounded by symbols of wholeness and completion, the epitome of the spiritual wholeness necessary to conjure a Patronus.Harry begins to take Divination as a subject in his third year at school, in Prisoner of Azkaban. While the first book had an oblique connection to the Wheel of Fortune Tarot card, #10, which is numerically related to card #1, the Magician, the card at the top of the first column of cards, the column linked to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, this is the first book in which the Wheel of Fortune is a column card, one of the main cards linked to the themes of the book. It is in the middle of the third column, between the Empress card and the Star card. There are many versions of the Wheel card but virtually all of them show a wheel going round, taking two or more creatures who are attached to it either up or down, depending upon your perspective. The wheel is usually ruled over by a sphinx, a mythical composite creature, a type of tetramorph made of the symbols for the Evangelists: a human, a lion, an eagle and a bull. Some Wheel of Fortune cards have these symbols in the corners of the card, which again links the card to fire, air, water and earth and thus, again, to the Tarot Minor Arcana suits also linked to these elements, and to the Hogwarts houses. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 18: The Wide World.) The symbols for the suits of the Tarot Minor Arcana are also on the Magician, card #1, which is linked to card #10, and the symbols for the Evangelists are also in the corners of the World, card #21, which is linked to the Empress, at the top of the column for this book. Instead of or in addition to the symbols for the Evangelists, some versions of the Wheel have the alchemical symbols for fire, air, water and earth somewhere on the card, but both the elemental symbols and the angel, lion, eagle and bull are collectively one symbol of wholeness.On many Wheel cards, letters have been drawn on the wheel. When this occurs, it is usually four Roman letters alternating with four Hebrew letters. The Roman letters can spell T-A-R-O, which is TAROT without the final T, or we can think of them as R-O-T-A, rota, the Latin word for “wheel”. The Hebrew letters on the wheel are yodh, he, vav (sometimes transliterated waw) and he again (יהוה). This is the Tetragrammaton, which means “four letters” in Greek). It is derived from a Hebrew verb meaning “to be” and is considered to be the proper name of God. (“I am that I am” or “I am becoming that I am becoming”.)This four-letter Hebrew word is not usually pronounced in Hebrew; when people encounter it, they say “Ha Shem” which means “the name”. It has variously been pronounced by others as Yahweh, Yehovah or Jehovah, among other things, when it is considered appropriate to pronounce it at all (and not everyone agrees on if or when it is appropriate to do so). In addition to the Wheel of Fortune card being especially appropriate in the book where Harry begins the study of Divination, Harry’s fortunes also rise and fall in this book in a dizzying progression. He is down when he is with Aunt Marge. He is on the upswing when he has the pleasure of seeing her inflated. He is down again when he runs away, but his luck is on the rise when he summons the Knight Bus. He is afraid that he will be expelled for inflating Marge, but he is instead brought under the protection of the Ministry of Magic and permitted to stay in Diagon Alley for the rest of the summer holiday.The Wheel can also apply to the prisoner of Azkaban himself, Sirius Black, who is one of Harry’s doppelgängers in the third book. They are both prisoners at the beginning of the book, Sirius in Azkaban, and Harry on Privet Drive. They both “break free” at about the same time and they are simultaneously on the run. Harry also gives Stan Shunpike, the conductor on the Knight bus, a false name (Neville Longbottom), which is something a fugitive might do. When it looks bleakest for Sirius (and for Buckbeak) Harry saves them both, thanks to the Time-Turner, which, in its turning, evokes the image of a Wheel. JK Rowling’s theory of time-travel in this book—though it isn’t hers alone—is also wheel-like, requiring time-travelers to merely walk through the time to which they have traveled and come full-circle back to the present, not necessarily having changed anything but with a different perspective on past events, perhaps better understanding how and why those events unfolded the way that they did.It is strongly implied in the text that Dumbledore has an epiphany about Buckbeak’s so-called “disappearance” before his scheduled execution. This is probably why he tells Harry and Hermione to use the Time-Turner. Dumbledore seems to already suspect that this is how Buckbeak was saved, so when he tells them to use the Time-Turner, the goal now is to fulfillthe timeline that has already occurred, from his perspective, not to change anything. This makes Dumbledore, the archetypal Magician, a card numerically-linked to the Wheel card, crucial to the climax of the book. The other card linked to the Magician and to the Wheel of Fortune is the Sun (card #19), which is associated with both death and resurrection because the sun sets each evening but rises again the next day. Harry, Ron and Hermione believe, incorrectly, that Buckbeak was executed, so when Harry and Hermione time-travel and find that they have the opportunity to rescue him, to them it is as if Buckbeak has been resurrected. Harry also believes that he sees his own dead father conjure a Patronus to save him, another virtual resurrection, until Harry realizes that he did it.Just as the Hanged Man card, or Il Traditore, the Traitor, could have one of two connotations in this book—or it could have both, referring to those merely considered traitors or opponents of the state, as Harry and Sirius are at various times, or to an actual traitor, Peter Pettigrew—there is another card connected to this book that can also refer to traitors: card #17, at the bottom of the third column—The Star. One of the best-known stars in myth and folklore is the Morning Star, Lucifer, who was a traitor to heaven. The traitor to Harry’s parents, Peter, AKA Wormtail, is unveiled in the third book of the series after having lived with the Weasley family for many years, first as Percy’s pet and then as Ron’s. Sirius’s given name is also the same as the Dog Star, another quite famous star.Thus once again, a card could refer to traitors and to two characters: Sirius, thought to be a traitor, and Peter, the one who really was a traitor. It is as if Peter and Sirius are tethered to opposite sides of the Wheel of Fortune; Peter goes from being protected, hiding in his rat form, his true identity unknown, to being on the run, and being known to Harry and his allies as the real traitor, while Sirius goes from being considered possibly the biggest traitor the wizarding world has ever known and a fugitive on the run to having his name cleared, as far as Harry is concerned, who rescues Sirius. Plus, according to Trelawney’s new prophecy, the one she gives to Harry while he takes his Divination final, Peter is probably the one who will help Voldemort to rise again, so he will have an opportunity to again betray Harry, and betray Ron, too, since he was a member of the Weasley family for the past twelve years and is also betraying them by helping Harry’s enemy.On many Star cards, a woman holds pitchers in each hand, pouring liquid from one of the pitchers into a pool of water and from the other onto the land beside her. There are eight stars in the sky above the woman and the stars have eight points each. The Star is card #17 in the Tarot Major Arcana and numerically linked to the Justice card, #8 (1+7=8). Eight is a very balanced number and the equal treatment of the liquid being poured into water and onto land makes this card about balance again, like the Justice card, which shows a woman holding the scales of justice and which is also a sequential card for this book (to be addressed in the next essay). The number seventeen is also important in the Potterverse; it is the age when wizards are considered to be adults, the time when young magical people must decide who they really are. They must find a “guiding star” and forge ahead into their futures. Another interpretation of the Star card is that the protagonist of the Tarot story has stopped clinging to traumatic memories through discovering who they really are as a person. There could not be a much better description of Harry being tempted to continue hearing his parents’ voices when he is near a dementor, but later learning to resist this temptation and trusting in his ability to conjure a Patronus, particularly when he realizes that he is the one who already did this, not his miraculously-resurrected father.The Star card can also point to a generous spirit, someone who shares bounty to improve others’ lives. Sirius (the name of a star) offers Harry a home at the end of the third book, though in the short term he must settle for signing Harry’s permission form to enter Hogsmeade, since he is still a wanted man and on the run from the Ministry of Magic. But he makes this offer to Harry, and makes it to Dumbledore as well, giving him number twelve, Grimmauld Place to use as the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix in the fifth book.The Star, card #17, at the bottom of the third column of Tarot Major Arcana cards, points to Harry leaving behind the temptation to wallow in his parents’ deaths, to continue to hear their last words, and instead he is given a new family: Sirius, who was given the Potters as his new family when he left home as a teenager. Harry discovers the truth about his godfather and that he, Harry, not his father, James, conjured the Patronus that saved him, Hermione and Sirius. In so doing, Harry takes another step on the path to wholeness. Adapted from the script for QuantumHarry,the Podcast, Episode 35: Prisoner of Time. Copyright 2017-2019 by Quantum Harry Productions and B.L. Purdom. See other posts on this blog for direct links to all episodes of Quantum Harry.
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Which Horcrux aligns with Prisoner of Azkaban? What links Remus, Sirius, Buckbeak, the Knight Bus and Harry to the Tarot Chariot card? And how does Harry embody the archetype of Justice in this book?
Episode 36: Chariots of Justice
Watch the Episode 36 video on YouTube.
Related Essay:
The End of the Realm of the Gods
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The Tarot Major Arcana cards numbered one, two and three— the Magician, High Priestess and Empress—are the sequence cards aligned with the first book of the Harry Potter series. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 32: The Mirror and the Stone.) The next three cards—four, five and six—are the Emperor (the “seed card” for this book), the High Priest (also called the Hierophant or Pope) and the Lovers card. These are the cards aligned with the second book in the series: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.In Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, Sallie Nichols writes: “Culturally as well as personally, the Emperor’s number four heralds a new beginning”. The Emperor is usually depicted sitting on a throne with symbols of his office: a scepter and sometimes also a shield, which may display an eagle (though if there is no shield there may be a statue of an eagle or the image of a live bird present with the Emperor). There are also often rams’ heads on the arms of his throne, which connects the Emperor to Ares, the Greek god of war, as well as to the astrological sign of Aries, just as the Justice card is related to the sign of Libra and the Moon card to the sign of Cancer. The number four is how humans have described the world for a very long time: the four corners of the earth, the four cardinal directions, the four elements of fire, air, water and earth, etc. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 18: The Wide World.) Since the Emperor on the fourth card is the symbolic ruler of the entire world, the symbolism on this card is concerned with the protagonist of the Tarot story going out to confront the world.Arthur Weasley is just one character who embodies the Emperor; he is also a Father, the archetype that is equivalent to the Tarot archetype of the Emperor. Arthur is the person responsible for much of Harry’s new experience of the wizarding world outside of Hogwarts in Chamber of Secrets. After Ron and the twins arrive at Harry’s house in the magical car/Chariot that Arthur Weasley created, they take Harry-the-Hermit, who is no longer locked up on Privet Drive, to the Burrow, home of the Weasleys. Here Harry finds countless magical gadgets, talking mirrors, dishes washing themselves, and knitting needles that seem to be on autopilot. Harry also meets Arthur at last, a literal as well as archetypal Father. Harry’s horizons will be broadened even more as the series continues, especially in the fourth book, which is ruled by the Father archetype as well as being ruled by the Emperor card, but he witnesses something new and important in the second book: daily life in a wizarding home, the type of home in which he would have grown up if his parents had not been murdered.Harry travels by Floo for the first time in Chamber of Secrets, which is something most wizards seem to take for granted—and which can be considered another sort of Chariot, the card numerically linked to the card at the bottom of the second column, the Tower, since the Floo network is a way of traveling that is controlled by magic, like the Chariot on the card.Harry shops with the Weasleys in Diagon Alley and witnesses Arthur, who shares a name with the legendary King Arthur, fighting with another archetypal Father/Emperor: Lucius Malfoy. Malfoy uses the ensuing chaos as an opportunity to slip Tom Riddle’s diary into Ginny’s cauldron. Ron and Harry also go to Hogwarts in the Chariot that is Arthur’s magical car when they cannot get onto the platform to board the school train. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 33: The Inverted Tower of Secrets.) Even when he is not present, Arthur’s influence runs deep in Harry’s life in the second book of the series.
The cards that are linked to the Emperor (card #4) are Death (card #13, because 1+3=4) and the Fool (since, when it is numbered, it is labeled 22, and 2+2=4). The Fool card being involved here, though tangentially, is particularly interesting because of the tight link, historically, between a ruler and the court jester, or the Fool, who is often the only one able to offer counsel to the ruler without losing his head if his boss disagrees with him; there is a symbiotic relationship between a ruler and a Fool. Peeves usually embodies the Tarot archetype of the Fool, but at times Arthur is both Fool and Emperor, asking Harry many strange questions about Muggles on the one hand, but also giving Ginny sage advice about not trusting something that can think for itself if she cannot see where it keeps its brain.King Lear and the Fool in the Storm by William Dyce, 1806-1864 (oil on canvas, circa 1851) The link that the Death card, the other one adding up to four, has to this book takes us back to the basilisk’s Petrifaction victims, frozen statues who seem to be dead. Death is in fact stalking Hogwarts’ corridors and its victims are frozen in an imitation of death. Ginny is also in a virtual death until Harry destroys the diary Horcrux that has sapped her life-force, after which she awakens. Death appears in many other forms in Chamber of Secrets. The roosters at the castle all mysteriously turn up dead because when Tom Riddle possesses Ginny, he has her kill them, since the rooster’s crow is fatal to the basilisk. Myrtle, gatekeeper to the Chamber of Secrets, is dead, as is Nearly Headless Nick. Harry goes to Nick’s “Deathday Party” and encounters many ghosts there. And finally, Harry is pierced by a basilisk fang at the same time that he kills the basilisk, but is saved from death this time by phoenix tears, by Fawkes.The High Priest (or Pope or Hierphant) on card #5, the second sequence card aligned with Chamber of Secrets, is yet another “holy man” Harry embodies in this book, which is fitting, since he has his spiritual coming-of-age here, foreshadowed by Ron making him a bishop in the life-sized chess game in the previous book. In the Chamber, Harry voices his faith in the god-figure, Dumbledore, which brings Fawkes to Harry, a symbolic Holy Spirit. Unlike in the story of Pentecost, however, Harry doesn’t receive the ability to speak to the Other at this time; he can already do this, having used his Parseltongue ability to access to the Chamber. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina.) Like the High Priestess, the High Priest sits between two pillars, an indication that he is the gatekeeper to another realm. He holds up two fingers, leaving two pointing downward, symbolizing his being a bridge between heaven and earth, a Liminal Being. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 8: Have You Tried Not Being Liminal?) A triple crown sits on his head—a reference to the Trinity—and the keys to heaven are at his feet, another mark of a gatekeeper. The threshold-guardian Hagrid, for instance, another Liminal Being, is known as “Keeper of the Keys”, also a title of St. Peter, who is supposed to be waiting for the newly dead at the “pearly gates” of heaven. On many High Priest cards, two monks kneel facing him; unlike the Devil’s companions, they are not chained. They have chosen freely to be with the High Priest, just as Ron and Hermione choose to be Harry’s friends and allies.As a Liminal Being, Harry is repeatedly in an intermediary role in the books, which is the job of a holy person, though he isn’t the only one who fills that role in this book or in the fifth book, Order of the Phoenix, which will be ruled by the fifth card in the Major Arcana. He regularly intercedes for others, such as when he frees Dobby. Dumbledore, another High Priest, also intercedes on behalf of others. Grimm’s version of “Little Red Riding Hood”, into which Wilhelm Grimm inserted the character of the woodsman to save Red from the metaphorical hell of the wolf’s belly, is retold with Harry as that woodsman, Grimm’s Christ-figure, a holy man and High Priest, while Riddle is the wolf and Ginny is Little Red Riding Hood. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina.) Dumbledore also being a High Priest positions Harry to succeed him; just as Dumbledore intercedes for his people and serves Hogwarts as its leader and head teacher, Harry will take on that role in the fifth book as head of Dumbledore’s Army.The card linked to the High Priest (card #5) is Temperance (#14, because 1+4=5). The “Angel Temperance”, as it is often called, shows an angel with a “third eye” on the brow, which points to Temperance also being an intermediary between worlds. This card is the Tarot equivalent of the archetype of the Crone. Harry, as a speaker of Parseltongue, is also symbolized easily by the Angel Temperance, and the liquid usually depicted on this card freely flowing between the vessels in the angel’s hands could be symbolically linked to the Polyjuice Potion Harry and Ron use to infiltrate the Slytherin common room, another act of bridging—they infiltrate a world they usually cannot enter. Harry and Ron going to the Slytherin common room foreshadows both their foray into the forest, when they encounter the giant spiders and must be rescued by the Flying Ford Anglia, and when Harry later enters the Slytherin-created Chamber of Secrets, which can only be accessed by someone who can say “open” in Parseltongue. Harry does this naturally and without effort now but Ron also learns to do this in Deathly Hallows, allowing him to repeat Harry’s coming-of-age from the second book, though Hermione is the one to destroy a Horcrux in that sequence of events.The symbols for the four evangelists seen on more than one Tarot Major Arcana card as a collective symbol of wholeness link each evangelist—Matthew, Mark, Luke or John—to each Hogwarts house. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 31: The Devil You Know.) The symbol of the winged man, or angel, is linked to Slytherin, and Snape, head of house for Slytherin, is an archetypal Crone. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 6: A Murder of Crones.) It is easy to see why the Tarot equivalent of the archetype of the Crone is the Temperance card when we look at the liquid flowing between the angel’s vessels as potions, and Snape, the Potions master, is one of the most important archetypal Crones in the series.On the third sequential card, the Lovers, there is often a picture of a young man choosing between an older woman and a younger woman; there is also a Cupid-figure armed with arrows in the sky above him, instigating the romantic story on the card. Some versions depict Adam, Eve and a tree with a large winged angel in the sky above; a serpent is entwined around the tree—the serpent who tempted Eve, which could be another link to this book being a retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood”, since the little girl is supposed to represent “prelapsarian innocence”, or the innocence that Adam and Eve had before the Fall, before they knew the difference between right and wrong, according to G. Ronald Murphy in his book The Owl, the Raven and the Dove (Oxford University Press, 2000).Whether it’s the version with the young man choosing between two women or Adam, Eve and the serpent, this card is about choices. Near the end of Chamber of Secrets Harry is worried about having been Sorted into the wrong house, but Dumbledore says, “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”The Lovers card also links Harry and Ginny, who play counterparts here but are not a couple until the sixth book. However, the most romantically sought-after character is Gilderoy Lockhart, with whom numerous people in this book are openly smitten, including Hermione, the embodiment of the Empress; on some Empress cards, beside her throne, is a large heart. It is easy to surmise that Hermione sends Lockhart a Valentine because when Harry and Ron ask her if she did, she turns red and stammers. Mrs. Weasley (another Mother/Empress) is also quite taken with Lockhart. Adding to this theme, Ginny accidentally finds Percy and his girlfriend Penelope kissing, which explains Harry and Ron discovering them sneaking about the dungeons, separately, before or after a tryst.The presence of the Lovers card here foreshadows events in the sixth book, which mirrors the second in many ways, not just by having a Tower thrusting out of the earth rather than inside it. (It is also highly likely that any Freudian symbolism anyone wants to attach to either of those is probably entirely appropriate.) The idea of Ginny and Harry being romantically involved is introduced here and comes to fruition in the sixth book. There is even a Cupid involved in Harry and Ginny’s relationship in the second book, and there is a Cupid figure on the version of the card with the young man choosing between two women. Lockhart hires dwarves dressed as slightly-sinister Cupids to run around the castle delivering cards and gifts on Valentine’s Day, and one of these Cupids delivers Ginny’s singing Valentine to Harry. Plus, the first time that Ginny speaks in front of Harry she defends him from Draco Malfoy, who responds by telling Harry that he has got “a girlfriend”. When Harry is confronted with evidence that Ginny fancies him, he always regards her favorably, though receiving a singing Valentine in public could be rather embarrassing for a twelve-year-old boy. When he rescues her in the Chamber, it is in a place of abundant sexual symbolism. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina.) The Chamber is also where Ron and Hermione go before they kiss for the first time in the seventh book of the series. Harry as someone involved in romance is only a tangential part of the second book, but this introduction to the issue prepares us for the sixth book to be ruled by the Lovers card. This card (#6) is also linked to the Devil (#15, because 1+5=6), bringing us back to Tom Riddle, snakes-as-wolves and wolves-as-snakes, and the “Little Red Riding Hood” theme that permeates the entire second book and is repeated more than once in the narrative.Harry is entangled with Snitches from the time of his first Quidditch match. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 1: The Kids’ Table and Episode 11: Wargames.) In Chamber of Secrets Harry collides with and becomes entangled with another item Dumbledore bequeaths to him: the Sword of Gryffindor. Of the six Horcruxes Voldemort meant to make, four were to have links to the Hogwarts houses: Ravenclaw’s diadem, Hufflepuff’s cup, Slytherin’s locket, and the Sword of Gryffindor. Instead Harry metaphorically “collides” with the sword in the second book of the series, and by virtue of becoming entangled with it becomes, in essence, a human Sword of Gryffindor himself. Ironically, Harry, the ultimate Gryffindor, is also a Horcrux, a vessel containing a piece of Voldemort’s soul, and the same sword Voldemort sought to make into a Horcrux becomes the destroyerof more than one Horcrux, like Harry, who is the means by which more than one Horcrux, including himself, are destroyed. Harry’s lightning-bolt scar marks him as a human sword; Joseph Campbell calls the sword “the counterpart of the thunderbolt” (by which he seems to mean a lightning-bolt). In the end Voldemort does make a sword of Gryffindor (Harry) into a Horcrux—just not the sword of Gryffindor.In the second book, the Horcrux that Harry destroys, Tom Riddle’s diary, is dispatched by a doppelganger for Gryffindor’s Sword: a basilisk fang. Aligning this Horcrux with the second book may seem overly obvious, since it definitely drives the action, but that is not the only reason that the diary is the Horcrux aligning with the second book. On the High Priestess card, the ruling card for Chamber of Secrets (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 33: The Inverted Tower of Secrets) she holds a book, which we can see as the diary. The High Priestess’s book can also be a link to Chamber of Secret’sDefense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockhart, who is famous for writing books. Like the diary in which Ginny and Harry write, Lockhart’s books mislead people; he did not perform the feats in them but he found those who did, interviewed them, and used memory charms so that they no longer remembered what they had done. This is a reversal of the scene from the past that Harry observes through the medium of the diary, in which young Tom Riddle does not take credit for what he has done (releasing the basilisk), and instead deflects blame onto Hagrid. Riddle’s “memory” (the piece of his soul in the diary) is then destroyed by the fang of the animal Riddle attempted to use as a weapon against others, while Lockhart’s memory is destroyed by his own spell when he attempts to use Ron’s malfunctioning wand to cast a memory charm on Ron and Harry. As Dumbledore puts it, “Impaled upon your own sword, Gilderoy!”When he hears this, the confused Lockhart immediately says that he does not have a sword but Harry does, since he is still holding the Sword of Gryffindor. This allows the reader to equate the Sword of Gryffindor with the basilisk fang that destroys the “memory” of Tom Riddle—just as basilisk fangs and this sword are equated during the Horcrux hunt in the seventh book. That parallel is first presented at the end of Chamber of Secrets. Thus, in the second book of the series, ruled by the High Priestess, an archetypal Maiden, the book on her lap ties together a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher credited with many books and the diary Horcrux, both of whom lose their “memories” by being impaled upon their own swords, literal and metaphorical.Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry,the Podcast, Episode 34: Emperors, Fools, and Angels. Copyright 2017-2019 by Quantum Harry Productions and B.L. Purdom. See other posts on this blog for direct links to all episodes of Quantum Harry.~ PREVIOUS ESSAY ~
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Which famous physicist’s work appears in the third Harry Potter film? What links the Tarot Empress to Hermione almost being a Ravenclaw? And how do Sirius, Peter and Harry all embody The Hanged Man?
Episode 35: Prisoner of Time
Watch the Episode 35 video on YouTube.
Related Essay:
Traitors, Rebels, and Hanged Men
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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets being JK Rowling’s retelling of the Grimm version of “Little Red Riding Hood” is possibly one of the cleverest things she has done in the series. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 12: Grow Up Now, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina, and Episode 14: The Devil’s Game.) However, Rowling doesn’t just use myth and folklore to shape her seven-book series. When the Tarot Major Arcana cards numbered one through twenty-one are placed in a grid of three rows and seven columns, each column contains cards whose symbolism allows us to see that each column aligns with each book in the Harry Potter series, starting with the top card in each column aligning neatly with the archetype ruling each book. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 2: This Old Man.) Each book also aligns with a set of three “sequential cards” that take our hero through a Tarot journey from card #1 to card #21, a Tarot story, going back to the origins of the Tarot, which were created to tell stories and play games, rather than for divination. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 30: Harry and Tarot.)Having addressed the way that the first column and first three sequential cards align with the first book of the series in previous essays, this essay will be an examination of the second column, which is aligned with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The High Priestess is at the top (#2), the Hermit is in the middle (#9), and the Tower of Destruction or the Lightning-Struck Tower (also called just “the Tower”) is at the bottom of this column (#16).Of the six gender- and age-related archetypes (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 7: Fountain of Youth) the Maiden is the ruling archetype for the second book in the series and Ginny is the best embodiment of the Maiden in Chamber of Secrets both because Ginny’s actions set the plot in motion, and because, during the climax of the book, Harry must step into her shoes in order to resolve the plot (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 3: Iron Maiden). This follows the pattern JK Rowling established in the first book of the series, when Harry stepped into Dumbledore’s shoes to resolve the plot of that story, Dumbledore being the character who best embodies the ruling archetype for that book: the Wise Old Man. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 2: This Old Man.) The Wise Old Man’s corresponding Tarot archetype is the card is at the top of the first column of Tarot Major Arcana cards: the Magician (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 31: The Devil You Know). In turn, Ginny Weasley, the character who is the best embodiment of the ruling archetype for Chamber of Secrets, the Maiden, also embodies the corresponding Tarot archetype at the top of the second column of cards: the High Priestess.The Waite-Smith Tarot deck has a High Priestess card showing a woman on a throne between two columns representing the “symbolic pillars that in the account in I Kings 7:15-22 are said to have stood to the north and the south of the door of Solomon’s temple”, according to Sallie Nichols, in her book Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey. [Weisner Books, 1980]The Priestess holds an open book and a crescent moon is near her feet, linking her to the tripartite goddess, the one who combines the Maiden, Mother and Crone, though the crescent moon is specifically linked to the Maiden aspect of the Great Goddess. This card was first called the Papesse, but was changed to the High Priestess, probably because the idea of a female pope was heretical to many Catholics.
Behind the High Priestess there is often a tapestry depicting pomegranates; the goddess Persephone, Demeter’s daughter, ate pomegranate seeds when she was taken to the underworld, the land of the dead, by Hades. These are also symbols of fertility found carved into Solomon’s temple. The Priestess could be considered an embodiment of Sophia, wisdom personified (for which Solomon was also known) or Persephone. Persephone’s imprisonment by Hades and her eventual (temporary) release is one of the Greek myths JK Rowling has enmeshed in the plot of Chamber of Secrets, since Ginny is taken down to the Chamber (a symbolic underworld) by the one who rules the Chamber (Tom Riddle), who is equivalent to Hades, the god of the underworld, and the world (Hogwarts) was in danger of ending after Ginny is taken (Hogwarts is on the verge of closing).The columns flanking the High Priestess mark her as a gatekeeper, like Moaning Myrtle in the girls’ bathroom, which is where the Chamber of Secret’s entrance is located. Harry, who plays the role of a Bishop during the life-sized chess game in the first book, is the holy man, the Hermit (card #9), who speaks an esoteric language (Parseltongue) that allows him to pass into that realm. Myrtle, like Ginny, shows an interest in Harry, an archetypal Youth, which is expected for someone in the role of the Maiden/High Priestess, the female counterpart of the Youth.Harry passes through multiple gateways to reach the “temple” of the Chamber. It is treated by Tom Riddle as a holy place, a sanctum sanctorum. In The Hero with A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell writes:...the approaches and entrances to temples are flanked and defended by colossal gargoyles: dragons, lions, devil-slayers with drawn swords, resentful dwarfs, winged bulls. These are the threshold guardians to ward away all incapable of encountering the higher silences within.... They illustrate the fact that the devotee at the moment of entry into a temple undergoes a metamorphosis. His secular character remains without; he sheds it, as a snake its slough.Harry even finds a literal sloughed snakeskinimmediately inside the Chamber, as if Rowling had been reading her Joseph Campbell when she wrote this part of Chamber of Secrets. In addition to the seven thresholds Harry crosses with Hagrid or with his help in the first book (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 11: Wargames), he encounters threshold guardians in each book: the Whomping Willow that guards the entrance to the tunnel leading to the Shrieking Shack; the dragons of the first Triwizard Tournament task; the entrance to the Ministry of Magic in the fifth book, and so on. Each one is similarto what Campbell writes about but is also subtly different. Myrtle is the threshold guardian for the Chamber of Secrets.The High Priestess on the card holds a book on her lap, and Ginny’s relationship with a book is the impetus for the plot of Chamber of Secrets. The book on the card is supposedly the Torah, and in the second book of the series, Harry has his symbolic confirmation or bar mitzvah—his spiritual coming-of-age. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina.) Another meaning associated with the High Priestess card is “esoteric religious experience”, so it is fitting that Harry has his spiritual awakening in the book ruled by the Maiden/High Priestess, both embodied by Ginny.Each Tarot Major Arcana card has at least one other card linked to it numerically. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 30: Harry and Tarot.) It may seem oddly random at first to add up the digits of a card to link it to another card, but this method of linking the cards numerically is a longstanding connection between Tarot and Arithmancy, Hermione Granger’s favorite subject, ironically (since it is a form of Divination). The cards linked to the High Priestess (#2) are Strength (#11, because 1+1=2) and Judgment (#20, because 2+0=2). A woman wrestling with a lion (Strength) could be seen as Ginny again (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 32: The Mirror and the Stone), but in the second book she is struggling against an adversary poised to overwhelm her at any moment. She temporarily gets the upper hand when she throws Tom Riddle’s diary in Moaning Myrtle’s toilet to get rid of it, but she later sees it fall out of Harry’s bag when he is accosted by the dwarf/cupid who delivers her singing Valentine to him, so she steals it back, probably to prevent Tom Riddle from telling Harry about her role in what has been happening in the castle. After retrieving the diary from his dorm, Ginny again falls under its spell, and this is almost fatal to her. Rowling shows readers firsthand in Deathly Hallows how dangerous it is to regularly be in close proximity to a Horcrux, and it must have been even worse for an eleven-year-old girl who did not know what she was handling. Harry, Ron and Hermione were of-age during the Horcrux hunt and knew the danger each time they took turns wearing the locket Horcrux.The Judgment card could be linked to a plot point a bit more cheerful than the struggle depicted on the Strength card; it shows bodies rising from their graves on Judgment Day. The equivalent of this in Chamber of Secrets is the Petrifaction victims awakening after the Mandrake potion returns them to their original states before they all encountered the Basilisk.The Tower of Destruction or Lightning-Struck Tower (the name Sybill Trelawney uses for it in Half-Blood Prince) is at the bottom of the second column of the Tarot Major Arcana. The importance this card will have to the sixth book, when it reappears, is somewhat obvious: Dumbledore dies on a tower. However, its role is less clear in reference to the second book of the series: this book includes an inverted tower, the Chamber, thrusting down into the earth, rather than toward the sky. According to Sallie Nichols, each time this card appears, the Tower carries the same meaning: “transformation, the shattering of illusion, and sudden change”. In Tarot readings, it is considered important whether a card is right-side-up or upside down. The Chamber being, in essence, an upside-down Tower, could point to its meaning being that of an upside-down (inverted) Tower card. When this card is upright in a reading, also called a Tarot spread, it is only considered to be bad news, which is why Trelawney is so alarmed about the card turning up repeatedly in her readings. Thus, an inverted Tower card could mean that someone in a bad situation will experience a good end to all of the chaos and strife. This is a fitting description of the end of Chamber of Secrets: Harry prevents Ginny from being expelled, the diary is destroyed, the Basilisk is slain, the Petrifaction victims wake up, Hagrid returns from Azkaban, Dumbledore is returned to his post, and Harry frees Dobby.The Tower card is also linked to the story of the Tower of Babel, which some theologians say “prefigured” (theology-speak for “foreshadowed”) the events that occurred at Pentecost, when Jesus’s disciples found, after the flames of the Holy Spirit appeared on their heads, that they could speak in languages they never could before, the better to evangelize. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina.) Thus, in addition to the High Priestess being linked to religious initiation, the Tower card can also link to this book’s Pentecostal theme, epitomized by Harry stating his faith in the god-figure, Dumbledore, and flames appearing on his head in the form of Fawkes-the-Phoenix, a stand-in for the Holy Spirit. After this Harry is spiritually mature and able to slay the Basilisk. The link to the Tower of Babel can also be a reference to Harry’s ability to speak Parseltongue, the language of the Other. Sallie Nichols also says that the Tower card is linked to “Kundalini experiences”, which is a yoga reference.“Kundalini” happens to mean “coiled”, like a serpent (or perhaps a basilisk).A tower in myth, folklore or literature often serves, like Harry himself, as a symbolic link to another world, an axis mundi. However, in the physical world, towers are quite literal links to the sky because tall structures, like towers, attract lightning (which led Benjamin Franklin to invent the lightning rod). However, in the Harry Potter series, one might metaphorically say that (lightning-struck) towers—upright or inverted—attract Harry, who bears a lightning-shaped scar. In Chamber of Secrets, it is as if the inverted tower of the Chamber is “struck” by Harry when he crosses the threshold into the sacred temple Slytherin created.In each of the first six books of the series, Harry harrows a metaphorical hell, and in the seventh he literally dies and rises from the dead. This is another reason that his confrontation with Voldemort in the first book is with a metaphorical Devil: he must pass a Cerberus-like three-headed dog guarding the entrance to a symbolic underworld. In this book the Chamber is Harry’s metaphorical hell, which meshes nicely with the High Priestess’s link to the goddess Persephone, who becomes Hades’ consort and co-ruler in the underworld. The Tower depicted on most cards is damaged and under attack; this manifests in Chamber of Secrets as the cave-in caused by Harry, Ron and Gilderoy Lockhart when they go into the Chamber, which puts Ron and Lockhart on one side of the fallen debris and Harry on the other. Harry chooses to enter the inner sanctum of the Chamber alone; Rowling must have him experience his spiritual coming of age on his own, without anyone else accompanying him into the forbidden precinct.The Tower card (#16), is linked to the Chariot card (#7, because 1+6=7). The Chariot, at the top of the seventh column (which aligns with the seventh book of the series), is the Tarot equivalent of the archetype of the Liminal Being, the ruling archetype for Deathly Hallowsand one of Harry’s two non-Tarot archetypes, the other being the Youth. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 8: Have You Tried Not Being Liminal? and Episode 9: We’re Here, We’re Metaphorically Queer.) This is yet another card linked to the second book of the series that points to Harry’s status as a holy man, like the Hermit, someone who can cross thresholds and access mystical realms. In Chamber of Secrets, Harry is on the cusp of adulthood, he is an initiate, which is what liminality is all about. In Bernadette Lynn Bosky’s article, “Liminal Places and Liminal States in Big, Little by John Crowley [New York Review of Science Fiction, November 2012], Boskey wrote:…one of the goals of ritual is to turn boundaries into thresholds, as when a shaman crosses the barrier between our world and the other world and then personally forms a bridge between them… Roads and paths can be liminal also; they lead from one place to another, joining them, but also help define, for instance, what is safe versus what is not, as in the story “Little Red Riding Hood.” The Chariot being linked to the Tower card reinforces Harry’s status as a Liminal Being, as someone who speaks the language of the Other and bridges worlds, who goes to the Realm of the Gods, the metaphorical underworlds he encounters in each book, and either returns with a boon or having lifted a curse from the world, which is the best way to describe his slaying the basilisk.The Chariot also has an equivalent in Chamber of Secretsthat is a literal mode of transportation: the Flying Ford Anglia. This unusual car takes Harry from captivity in Surrey to the Weasley home and then from London to Hogwarts. It is not operated like most cars but is controlled by magic. A driver is depicted on the Chariot card, but he does not hold reins to control the creatures pulling the Chariot; he holds a wand to control them instead. The driver uses magic. Just as Harry embodies the archetype of the Liminal Being, whose Tarot equivalent is the Chariot, the Ford Anglia also embodies a threshold-crossing Liminal Being, a “woods-car” instead of the “woods-man” of Little Red Riding Hood, when it rescues him and Ron from the giant spiders in the forest. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 14: The Devil’s Game.) Harry is rescued by this “hero” before he goes into the Chamber, and later becomes the embodiment of this type of savior himself to rescue Ginny from the metaphorical wolf embodied by Tom Riddle.In the center of the second column of Tarot Major Arcana cards, between the High Priestess and the Tower, is the Hermit. Harry is in multiple Tarot roles in this book, but all of the roles are religious figures, intercessors. (The third intercessor, after the Hermit and the Chariot, is one of the three sequence cards for the second book, which will be addressed in the next podcast episode/essay.) Most Hermit cards show an old man with a beard, wearing a hooded cloak, sometimes described as an invisibility cloak. The Hermit stands in a bleak, perhaps snowy landscape, holding a staff, but whether the staff is a walking stick or a wizard’s staff (an oversized wand) is unclear. He also has a glowing lantern that occasionally bears a Star of David. Hermits are by their nature shut away from the rest of human society, and Harry begins the second book in captivity, unable to leave his room or to access his magic books and equipment. He is even completely cut off from communication with his friends because he is not permitted to use his owl for post and Dobby the house-elf has been intercepting all of the post his friends have been trying to send to him. The Hermit on the card is not shut away, though, as a true Hermit should be; he is a wandering mendicant. Early in the second book, Harry is likewise on the move, in the Weasleys’ flying car (their Chariot). The lantern with the Star of David could also point to Harry’s spiritual enlightenment or coming-of-age in this book.The card linked to the Hermit (#9) is the Moon card (#18, because 1+8=9). A typical Moon card shows two towers looming in the distance; a dog and a wolf that seem to be baying at the moon; and a crab or a lobster-like creature emerging from water in the foreground. This last image is a connection to the astrological sign of Cancer, the Crab; those born under this sign are also called “Moon Children”. A crescent Moon is on the High Priestess card, an aspect of the three-faced goddess, specifically the Maiden in the Maiden/Mother/Crone trio (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 3: Iron Maiden). However, the aquatic animal in the water on the Moon card could represent two fearsome creatures in Chamber of Secrets, one of whom fears the other: the basilisk and Aragog, the giant spider. In the second book there is a trip into a forest primeval, one of the many re-enactments of the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood in Chamber of Secrets, when Harry and Ron follow the spiders into the forest and meet Aragog, nearly becoming a tasty snack for him and his family. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 14: The Devil’s Game.) Such a trip is easily linked to the Moon, which represents the unconscious mind. Symbolically, the Moon is the flip side of the Hermit’s lantern; the Hermit pursues conscious enlightenment, but the Moon is tied to unconscious enlightenment and intuition, which is linked to the High Priestess as well. Both have their place in this book.The Moon is also linked to memory; Sallie Nichols writes aboutA legend which tells that each night Lady Moon gathers unto herself all the discarded and forgotten dreams of mankind. These she stores in a cup till dawn. This use of a cup or vessel to store dreams/memories is reminiscent of Dumbledore’s Pensieve, which is appropriate for the card that will be at the bottom of the fourth column, the one aligned with Goblet of Fire, the fourth book of the series, in which Rowling first shows readers Dumbledore’s Pensieve.Memories are also important in Chamber of Secrets, or rather, a lack of memories, which is what Gilderoy Lockhart’s victims suffer after he learns how a variety of talented witches and wizards achieved the accomplishments Lockhart now claims. He steals their memories of these experiences, just as he attempts to steal Ron and Harry’s memories of his confession of fraud. When the memory charm he attempts to cast on the two boys with Ron’s broken wand backfires, he becomes unable to access his memories, and therefore his very identity, his concept of selfhood. That “selfhood” happens to also include a great deal of looking into mirrors to admire his appearance, and aside from the Moon symbolizing memories and unconscious enlightenment, it is also a literal mirror, reflecting the sun’s light; mirrors are undoubtedly amongst Gilderoy Lockhart’s most prized possessions.In terms of the Tarot story, the Moon card also represents “the dark night of the soul”, the bleakest moment of the hero’s saga. In Chamber of Secrets, Harry has never felt worse in his life (so far) than when he and the other students are informed that Ginny has been taken into the Chamber. Ginny, his best friend’s sister, is lost, it seems. He literally feels like he has nothing to lose by trying to save her. In the first book of the Harry Potter series, Harry-as-Justice is the intercessor and axis mundi who mediates between Dumbledore-the-Magician and the Philosopher’s Stone on the one hand, and Quirrell, the servant of the Devil, along with Voldemort, the embodiment of the Devil, on the other. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 31: The Devil You Know.) In Chamber of Secrets, as an axis mundi, a holy man/intercessor, a Hermit and Liminal Being, Harry again mediates between the character embodying the top card in that book’s column, Ginny, the High Priestess, and the Chamber, the inverted Tower card, a literal and figurative underworld, the realm of a Devil equivalent: Tom Riddle. Harry then uses the faith of the Hermit, the intuition of the Moon, and the language of the Other (linked to both the Tower and the Chariot) to defeat the master of the inverted Tower, resurrect the High Priestess, and bring his dying world back to life.Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 33: The Inverted Tower of Secrets. Copyright 2017-2019 by Quantum Harry Productions and B.L. Purdom. See other posts on this blog for direct links to all episodes of Quantum Harry.~ PREVIOUS ESSAY~
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What links the Tarot Emperor card to Harry exploring the wizarding world? When does JK Rowling first equate basilisk fangs and the Sword of Gryffindor? And how is Harry a human Sword of Gryffindor himself?
Episode 34: Emperors, Fools, and Angels
Watch the Episode 34 video on YouTube
Related Essay:
Upon Your Own Sword
EPISODE GUIDE
How is Harry like a Hermit at the beginning of Chamber of Secrets? Why is it symbolically important for him to find a basilisk skin in the Chamber? And what links the Flying Ford Anglia’s Tarot archetype to Harry?
Episode 33: The Inverted Tower of Secrets
Watch the Episode 33 video on YouTube
Related Essay:
Harry and the Priestess
EPISODE GUIDE
Each of the seven columns of cards in the Tarot Major Arcana can be aligned with each of the seven books in the Harry Potter series. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 30: Harry and Tarot.) However, the cards of the Major Arcana that do not include The Fool (numbered 0 or 22, depending upon the Tarot deck) can also be divided into seven sequential sets of cards: the first three (one, two and three), the second three (four, five and six), and so on. This is because the Major Arcana was not originally created for divination but for storytelling, and each set of three cards heralds a new stage of the Tarot story. These sets of three cards can also, in order, be aligned with each of the books in the Harry Potter series.The first sequential card for each book is called the “seed card”. The card that fills this role for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first book in the series, is the Magician, card number one. The Magician is often depicted with an infinity sign somewhere on the card, whether it’s floating over his head or he’s wearing a hat that looks like a squashy sideways number eight. Many versions of this card also show the Magician wearing an ouroboros belt, which is the Greek word for the image of a snake eating its own tail, a symbol of infinitude. These symbols point to the Magician being the epitome of both wholeness and potential power. In the first Harry Potter book, Quirrell says, “There is no good and evil, only power, and those too weak to seek it,” though we see throughout the series that it takes more strength to refrain from seeking power than to pursue it, which Dumbledore knows—and at which he ultimately fails when he puts on the cursed ring Horcrux because it is set with the Resurrection Stone. Power being neutral, needing someone to use it in a “good” or “evil” way, with potential for good or evil, is epitomized by the Magician card, with its many powerful symbols. The Philosopher’s Stone can also be used for good or for evil; on its own, it is morally neutral and not inherently good or bad. Dumbledore, the archetypal Magician and head teacher at Hogwarts, which has houses that can be represented by the wand, sword, cup and coin suits of the Tarot Minor Arcana, worked with Nicolas Flamel on alchemical experiments. Of the two, only Flamel uses the Stone to make the Elixir of Life, which allows him and his wife to live for over six hundred years. Dumbledore’s life does not seem to be artificially prolonged, and there are other quite elderly witches and wizards in the books, one of whom is so old that she oversaw Dumbledore’s O.W.L. examinations at the end of his fifth year at Hogwarts. It is unlikely that her longevity is due to the Elixir of Life.Dumbledore being the epitome of the archetype of the Magician, who is shown with symbols of all of the Tarot suits, makes sense because Dumbledore, as the headmaster of Hogwarts, is also linked in some way to each of the Hogwarts houses: Dumbledore is a Gryffindor by Sorting and was the Gryffindor head of house and the Transfiguration professor before McGonagall was.Dumbledore’s first given name is Albus, a link to Alba, the Celtic name for Scotland. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 29: The Horcrux and Hallows Game.) Scotland is linked to Ravenclaw (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 18: The Wide World), and hence this is connected to Dumbledore’s scholarly nature. Like Helga Hufflepuff, Dumbledore has a cup, of sorts: the Penseive, in which he examines memories, using these to educate Harry. And like many Slytherins, in his youth he supported a philosophy favoring wizards over Muggles, along with his friend Gellert Grindelwald. The symbol of the Deathly Hallows has for its Tarot equivalent the disk or coin depicting a five-pointed star drawn with five lines, the pentacle, which is the fourth Tarot suit shown on the Magician card, and which is the suit linked to Slytherin house.The three sequential cards for the first book in the Harry Potter series, the Magician, card number one, the High Priestess, card number two, and the Empress, card number three, can be thought of as matching up with the three people in Harry’s generation to whom he will eventually be closest: Ron Weasley, Ginny Weasley and Hermione Granger. Dumbledore is the best representative of the Magician in the first book when examining the column cards for the book, but Ron has many things in common with Dumbledore. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 2: This Old Man.) It is no coincidence that they both embody the archetype of the Wise Old Man, the ruling archetype for the first book, which is equivalent to the Tarot archetype of the Magician. Ron introduces Harry to new information and experiences in a world familiar to Ron, but in a less didactic and pedantic way than a teacher would. He is also the chess master, as opposed to the headmaster; this ability and his selfless sacrifice during the life-sized chess game distinguish him in the first book of the series.Ginny doesn’t appear much in the first book, but when she does, waving goodbye to her brothers and to Harry on the train, she is the embodiment of the High Priestess, the second card, which is equivalent to the archetype of the Maiden. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 3: Iron Maiden.) At the train station, Ginny, representative of the archetypal Maiden, is seeing Harry off on a new part of his life. Her introduction at the start is key because she is, in the long run, his equal and counterpart. In Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, Sallie Nichols writes: “The High Priestess is the epitome of Woman, spiritual descendent of goddesses like Isis, Ishtar and Venus, of the Virgin Mary and Sophia, Divine Wisdom.” Though Ginny barely exists in the first book she will rule the column governing the second book in the series, the book ruled by the archetype of the Maiden and also ruled by the equivalent Tarot archetype: the High Priestess.Each Tarot card in the Major Arcana has at least one card linked to it numerically through the simple Arithmancy method (Hermione’s favorite subject) of adding up the digits in a number to “reduce” it to another number. The cards that link to the Magician card are the Wheel of Fortune, card number 10, because 1+0=1, the number of the Magician card, and the Sun card, number 19, because 1+9=10 and then 1+0=1. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 31: The Devil You Know.) There are also links between the next sequential card, the High Priestess, and two others: Strength (card number 11, because 1+1=2, the number of the High Priestess) and Judgment (card number 20, because 2+0=2). The Strength card usually shows a woman taming a lion, which could be considered another image of the formidable High Priestess. Alternately, we could focus on the Lion, the symbol of Gryffindor, and the way that it is being held in check and controlled by this unknown person, just as Harry must learn to control his magic in the first book and follow school rules to learn what he needs to know to join the wizarding world.Card number 20, Judgment, often shows dead bodies rising from what appear to be open graves, presumably on Judgment Day, a reference to the book of Revelation, in the Bible. This could refer to Harry’s resurrection after three days, following Dumbledore bringing him out of the symbolic underworld where the Philosopher’s Stone was being protected. The High Priestess’s link to the first book is that the she, like the archetypal Maiden, is about new beginnings and entering a new world, plus secrets and mysteries, which abound at the start of the series. Ginny as a character is the embodiment of the High Priestess, but she does not need be present for the card to have this meaning in connection to the first book in the series.Hermione, in contrast to Ginny, is very present in the first book after the Troll incident; she is a clear embodiment of the Empress, the third and last sequential card linked to Philosopher’s Stone and card number 3 in the Major Arcana, which is equivalent to the Mother archetype. She is a Mother figure to Harry. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 4: Mother, May I?) She keeps his nose to the grindstone and is concerned with new life and growing things, which is important when she is the one who knows how to get past Devil’s Snare because she paid attention in Herbology lessons. After she solves Snape’s Potions riddle, she gives Harry a motherly hug and a speech of encouragement to gird him for confronting the archetype of the Devil, the bottom card in the first column, and assuring that Justice is done—Justice being the middle card in the first column, represented by Harry, the Liminal Being, someone with a foot in two different worlds—the Muggle world and the wizarding world, as well as being someone who eventually literally dies and is resurrected, though his “death” and resurrection is only symbolic in the first book.Two cards are linked to the Empress: the Hanged Man (card number 12, because 1+2=3, the number of the Empress card) and the World (card number 21, because 2+1=3). The Hanged Man depicts a man hung upside down over an open pit, not someone with a hangman’s noose around his neck, as you might expect from the name. This card is also called the Traitor, Il Traditore, in Italian decks, because hanging someone upside down was called baffling, and this was specifically a punishment for traitors. This tradition has survived for so long in Italy that Il Duce, Benito Mussilini himself, was hung upside down. This card could point either to the traitor Peter Pettigrew, the true identify of Ron’s pet rat, Scabbers; or it is possible that it could be a link to Sirius Black, who was thought to have betrayed James and Lily Potter, Harry’s parents. Sirius is mentioned off-handedly by Hagrid early in the first book, because he borrowed Sirius’s enchanted motorcycle. It is also possible that the Hanged Man card, or the Traitor, Il Traditore, could point to Professor Quirrell, who betrayed Dumbledore by becoming Voldemort’s servant, and betrayed Harry in turn, by attempting to deliver him to Voldemort. Or perhaps the Hanged Man is referring to all three of these: Peter, Sirius and Quirrell. All are masked in some way in the first book, until Quirrell alone is unmasked and revealed as a traitor. The World card, number 21, is extremely important at the end of the series, where it will have a double influence in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as both a column card and sequence card, just as the Magician card is both a column card and sequence card in the first book. The World’s faint influence here, through its link to the Empress, is more evidence of the symmetry with which Rowling has constructed not only this book but her entire series.Like the Wheel of Fortune card, the World also often includes a depiction, in the four corners, of the four Evangelists. Each Evangelist can be linked to one of the Hogwarts houses (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 31: The Devil You Know), making the inclusion of these symbols on the World card collectively one symbol of wholeness and integration, just as the symbols of the Tarot Minor Arcana suits are on the first card, the Magician. The symbols on the World card point to the importance of wholeness and integration to all seven books and wholeness is also a theme of alchemy, which is the process through which the Philosopher’s Stone is created. The number 3 and cards that add up to 3—the Empress, the Hanged Man and the World—are a big part of that. For instance, the importance of the number 3 in the series comes up repeatedly. There are the three members of the Trio, Harry, Ron and Hermione. Eventually there will be the Counter-Trio, Neville, Ginny and Luna—and the six members of the two trios embody each of the six gender- and age-related archetypes. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 7: Fountain of Youth.)There are the three non-Harry Tournament Champions, each of whom is a doppelganger to Harry, Ron and Hermione because each member of the Trio is jealous of one of these Champions. Each non-Harry Champion is also aligned with someone in the other Counter-Trio—Viktor with Ginny, Fleur with Hermione, and Cedric with Harry, his “shadow” Champion, so that’s nine, three times three. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 19: Not Playing to Win.)There are also three Deathly Hallows; three Marauders who accompany Harry to his death; the Tournament that was to have three tasks and three Champions; three members of the Dursley family; three Black sisters; and many other groups of three throughout the series, all connected to the wholeness epitomized in the World card. The characters embodying the first and third sequence cards, Ron the Magician/archetypal Wise Old Man and Hermione the Empress/archetypal Mother, are with Harry throughout most of the first book, while the person embodying the second, Ginny the High Priestess/archetypal Maiden, is barely seen. However, she appears again at the close of the book, waiting for the Hogwarts students on the train platform with her mother. When she says, “There he is!” she does not mean Ron, her brother, or any of her brothers, but Harry. The Magician, High Priestess and Empress are with Harry at the end of his first journey; he is now ready to continue his trek to wholeness, which will come when he has completed his journey through all twenty-one cards.I previously wrote about Harry stepping into the shoes of the character best embodying the ruling archetype for each of the seven books, the archetypes being, in order, the Wise Old Man, the Maiden, the Mother, the Father, the Crone, the Youth and the Liminal Being. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast: The Archetype Episodes.) Following the examination of the archetypes, I looked at how each book aligns with one of the game-like obstacles to the Philosopher’s Stone in the first book, as well as each book aligning with one of the thresholds that Harry crosses with Hagrid or with his help in the first book. (See the Quantum Harry Episode Guide, Episodes 10-29.) Now I am examining how each book also aligns with one of the seven Horcruxes, which is in turn tied to each book’s Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. It is easiest to understand which Horcrux goes with which book when the Tarot cards for each book are used as a guide.At the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stonethree entities are in the chamber with Quirrell/Voldemort that align with the Deathly Hallows. The Philosopher’s Stone is a doppelganger to the Elder Wand, items Voldemort is pursuing in the first and seventh books to increase and maintain his power. The Mirror of Erised has many parallels to the Resurrection Stone. And Harry, who is also in the chamber, has his built-in protection from Lily in his very skin, which parallels the Invisibility Cloak, Death’s own cloak, the third Hallow, the cloak that was his father’s. This gives Harry one form of protection from his mother and another from his father, meaning that once again, when Harry is with a particular object—this time, his Invisibility Cloak—it is a moment of completion for him, because this means that he has a legacy from both parents.The reason that the Horcrux aligning with the first book is the ring containing the Resurrection Stone is that this stone and the Philosopher’s Stone are two sides of the mirror of life and death, and together they make a whole. The Philosopher’s Stone is a fitting representative of the Hallow of the Elder Wand because each is sought by Voldemort at opposite ends of the series as a solution to what he perceives to be his greatest problem: living forever. But the Philosopher’s Stone is used to brew the Elixir of Life, while the Resurrection Stone allows someone to bring back a shadowy version of a person who has died but who definitely isn’t alive again. (“Undead” is an appropriate label for someone brought back this way.)The ring with the Resurrection Stone is a legacy for Harry from Dumbledore, given to him inside the Snitch Harry catches in his first Quidditch match. This first match, against Slytherin, is another element of the first book reflected in the last, when Harry plays his final match, a metaphorical one, against the Slytherin Voldemort, this time catching the Elder Wand like a Snitch, just as he “catches” the Philosopher’s Stone from the mirror. This comparison is furthered by Harry having no desire to keep the Elder Wand, just as he has no desire to use the Philosopher’s Stone. All he wants to do with the Elder Wand is to repair his original wand and put the Elder Wand back in Dumbledore’s tomb, where it will eventually be without a master if Harry dies a natural death or if no one, for the rest of Harry’s life, disarms him. Dumbledore, who embodies the Magician, both a column card and the seed card for the first book, is linked to both the Philosopher’s Stone (since he helped create it) and the Resurrection Stone, which he took from an enemy and which ultimately leads to his drawn-out death, until Snape kills him as an act of mercy. Dumbledore is also linked to the Elder Wand, having taken it from Grindelwald.The Devil card, at the bottom of the first column of Tarot Major Arcana cards, has symbolism on it that applies to Quirrell and to Voldemort in different ways. Quirrell himself is not the Devil on the card; that is Voldemort. There are many parallels between Voldemort and the Devil as seen in folk customs or legends connected to the Devil. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 14: The Devil’s Game.) There is also the “Voldemort Name Game” (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 26: Until Someone Loses an Eye), in which you do not want to accidentally say his name and summon him, just as people once avoided saying the Devil’s name and used other nicknames for him instead.A representative for Quirrell is also on the Devil card, but he isn’t the Devil: he is one of the chained servants depicted on the card. He calls Voldemort “master” and fears his wrath. Chains are made from rings. The Resurrection Stone could have been set into any kind of jewelry or ornament, or left without a setting, but JK Rowling chose this link (so to speak) to Harry’s first Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, which is easiest to see when we examine the connection of the Tarot Major Arcana cards to each book.Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 32: The Mirror and the Stone. Copyright 2017-2019 by Quantum Harry Productions and B.L. Purdom. See other posts on this blog for direct links to all episodes of Quantum Harry.~ PREVIOUS ESSAY~
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What are Ron’s, Ginny’s, and Hermione’s Tarot archetypes? How can Scabbers/Peter be linked to the Hanged Man card in the first book? And which Deathly Hallow is the equivalent of the Mirror of Erised?
Episode 32: The Mirror and the Stone
Watch the Episode 32 video on YouTube.
Related Essay:
Ring Around the Rosy
EPISODE GUIDE
What are Dumbledore’s, Harry’s, and Voldemort’s Tarot archetypes? How do certain Tarot cards and the tasks of the Triwizard Tournament reveal which saints are aligned with the four Hogwarts houses? And how is the Tarot Lovers card linked to Harry’s Sorting?
Episode 31: The Devil You Know
Watch the Episode 31 video on YouTube.
Related essay:
In the Balance
EPISODE GUIDE
The cards of the Tarot Major Arcana numbered one through twenty-one can be arranged in a grid with cards one through seven in the first row, eight through fourteen in the second, and fifteen through twenty-one in the third, and when we look at each vertical column in this grid of cards, we can apply the symbolism of the cards in each column to each of the Harry Potter books. The first column of Tarot aligns with the first Harry Potter book, the second with the second book, and so on. This gives us the Magician (card number one) at the top of the first column, Justice (card number eight) in the middle of the column, and the Devil (card number fifteen) at the bottom.The first card at the top of this column, the Magician, is the Tarot equivalent of the archetype of the Wise Old Man, the ruling archetype for the first book in the series. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 2: This Old Man.) The Magician is traditionally depicted with various accoutrements of wizardry—in many decks he holds a wand. Items that appear on a table before him or elsewhere on the card may include a sword, a cup and a large disk or a coin, often with a five-pointed star on it, called a pentacle. These are the “suits” of the fifty-six cards in the Tarot Minor Arcana: wands, swords, cups and either disks, pentacles or coins (all three terms are used interchangeably). The suit cards of the Minor Arcana are numbered one through ten, followed by the “court” cards, Page, Knight, Queen and King, making fourteen in each suit, unlike the thirteen in modern decks of playing cards.
Each Tarot suit corresponds to one of the four elements recognized by alchemists: Fire, Air, Water and Earth. The Magician on the first card is effectively ruling over these items, positioning him as the master of fire (wands), air (swords), water (cups) and earth (disks or pentacles or coins). These have become the playing card suits that we know today: wands became clubs, swords became spades, cups became hearts, and pentacles became diamonds.JK Rowling aligned the traditional four elements of fire, air, water and earth with her Hogwarts houses slightly differently than these symbols are aligned with the elements in the Tarot Major and Minor Arcana (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode Eighteen: The Wide World), but she is consistent in the way that she changes these alignments, which is probably because she thinks it works better in her story rather than because she is ignorant of the traditional alignments (which is unlikely).Thus, even though Gryffindor is aligned with the element of Fire, which is clear in the first task of the Triwizard Tournament (the one involving fire-breathing dragons), because she also gives a sword to Godric Gryffindor, the sword is that house’s Tarot suit, not wands, though the element linked to the suit of swords is air, not fire. Similarly, wands are the Tarot suit aligning with Ravenclaw, though its element is Air.
The visitors from the pseudo-Ravenclaw school in the fourth book, the French school, Beauxbatons, arrive at Hogwarts by flying through the air. Beauxbatons even has “batons” meaning “wands” in its name, and crossed wands for its emblem (which is also similar to the saltire or Cross of St. Andrew that is on the Scottish flag, and of the major regions in the British Isles, Ravenclaw is aligned with Scotland). In the Harry Potter books, wands are associated with everyone, especially Harry, with his phoenix-feather wand and later his mastery of the Elder Wand, but swords are neverassociated with Ravenclaw in the seven-book series. The Ravenclaw Horcrux, Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem, isn’t even destroyed by the Sword of Gryffindor or by a stand-in for the sword, a basilisk fang, as many of the Horcruxes are. Instead it is destroyed by Fiendfyre. JK Rowling seems to have decided that swords are aligned with the element of fire and wands with the element of air in her world, not the other way around.The Hufflepuff Horcrux is a cup, which shouldgo to the house with Water for its element, but in the Potterverse it goes to the one aligned with the element of Earth. On the other hand, Slytherin, whose element is Water, should have the cup for its Tarot suit, but instead it has the pentacle or coin, and the locket Horcrux looks like a large gold coin, such as a Gold Galleon (which is yet another reason for this object not to be silver, which would match with the heraldic metal for Slytherin). So, again, in the Potterverse, cups are aligned with the element of Earth and coins with Water, not the other way around.One of the inspirations for the creation of the Tarot “trumps”, or “triumphs” was Petrarch’s I Trionfi, which means: The Triumphs. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 30: Harry and Tarot.)This was an allegorical procession in the form of a poem, in three parts. In each part of this triumphal-procession-as-story there are two people, one of whom triumphs over the other, and each subsequent pair triumphs over the previous ones. The first two are Love and Chastity, represented by Cupid and by the love of Petrarch’s life, Laura. In the second part, Laura is in turn trumped by Death (she did actually die), while Death is trumped in turn by Fame.
In his book on Tarot history and symbolism, Robert M. Place writes, in reference to Petrarch’s work: “Fame allows one’s work and reputation to outlive the body and in this way defeats death.” [Mysteries, Legends, and Unexplained Phenomena (NY: Chelsea House Publications, 2009), p. 111] This philosophy might be the reason that, when Dumbledore is falling out of favor at the Ministry in Order of the Phoenix, Bill Weasley tells Harry “he doesn’t care what they do as long as they don’t take him off the Chocolate Frog cards.” Perhaps this type of enduring fame is another reason that Dumbledore thinks of death as “the next great adventure,” while Voldemort has either not considered this (because surely Voldemort’s fame will outlive him) or he doesn’t feel that it is adequate compensation for his life eventually ending.At the other end of the spectrum is Voldemort, whose Tarot archetype here and in much of the series is the fifteenth card: the Devil, at the bottom of the first column. The Devil is often shown with servants, male and female, who are enslaved to him, chained up and unable to exercise their will, which is consistent with Voldemort using the Imperius Curse to control people, though he also controls other wizards, whether his Death Eaters or not, with threats of violence. This contrasts with Dumbledore interacting respectfully with the teachers who work for him and the other members of the Order of the Phoenix, who are valued for their diversity, not their ability to follow orders, which is what Death Eaters are expected to do. Hogwarts’ students are equally respected by Dumbledore, who lays down rules but does not enforce them quite as stringently as Filch or Umbridge. (He gives an Invisibility Cloak to Harry when he is eleven.)At the end of the first book, Quirrell binds Harry with snake-like ropes, snakes being both Slytherin’s emblem and a creature traditionally linked to the Devil. In contrast, on the first card, the ouroboros, the image of a snake eating its own tail, is the Magician’s belt, and this symbol is as morally neutral as an infinity sign. Quirrell calls Voldemort “master”, which no one calls Dumbledore, though he is the headmaster. Voldemort has servants, slaves even. Dumbledore has colleagues and comrades, despite his extreme magical prowess.In Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, Sallie Nichols writes about the symbolism of the Devil card: “…according to Jung, any kind of psychic function that is split off from the whole and operates autonomously is devilish.” [Boston, MA/York Beach, ME: Weisner Books, 1980), p. 267.]Voldemort aspires to immortality and believes any price is worth achieving this, even splitting his soul or condemning himself to a cursed “half-life” by drinking unicorn’s blood. No other life is sacred to him, not even a loyal servant’s; he murders Snape while still believing him to be loyal merely because he thinks that this is necessary for him to gain mastery over the Elder Wand. He is, of course, wrong about this. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 24: Disarmed and Ready.)The Devil card is linked to the element of Earth, and therefore to graveyards and to the Devil’s mythic home, Hell. This card is also linked to Capricorn, Tom Riddle’s astrological sign, and to ambition, a Slytherin characteristic.At the top of the first column of Tarot Major Arcana cards is Dumbledore as the Magician (it might as well be his Famous Wizard card) and at the bottom of the column is Voldemort, epitomized by the Devil card. In the middle is card number eight, Justice, an archetype that can be seen as Harry in the first book. The middle row of cards, eight through fourteen, is often called the Realm of Equilibrium. It is a bridge between worlds, just as Harry, as an archetypal Liminal Being, is someone who bridges worlds. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 8 and Episode 9.) Harry is innately justice-minded throughout the series; he has an inner voice that knows when something is fair—or not. Repeatedly, when he is caught doing something he knows is wrong and he cannot defend his actions, he accepts punishment. This is especially true if he respects the punisher, such as McGonagall, but he also accepts his detentions from Snape with no argument after cursing Draco in the bathroom in the sixth book. He balks at unfair or extreme punishments, usually from Umbridge, and also does this on others’ behalf. This includes Hagrid, Sirius, Buckbeak, and Stan Shunpike. On many Justice cards a woman is depicted. She sometimes has wings, sometimes not, but she almost always carries a sword and a set of scales, though in some cases just the scales might appear on the card. The Justice card is linked to the element of Air (hence the sword) and to the sign of Libra (hence the scales). Libra is also an Air sign in the Zodiac, just as Capricorn, linked to the Devil card, is an Earth sign. (All twelve signs in the zodiac are aligned with either Fire, Air, Water or Earth, three signs aligned with each element.)Thus the first column of cards presents, in symbolic form, a fairly straightforward good-and-evil struggle, with Harry at the fulcrum of the see-saw. In the first book of the series, just as in the final book, Harry has access to great power—the Philosopher’s Stone— that he does not pursue for himself. His goal is to protect others by keeping this power from someone who would abuse it, and the magic that Dumbledore uses to hide the Stone in the Mirror of Erised is designed specifically to respond to Harry’s selfless, protective impulse.Each card in the Tarot Major Arcana has at least one other card that is linked to it if the numbers on both cards—or on a set of three cards, in some cases—add up to the same number. The cards that are numerically linked to the first column card, the Magician (card number one), are the Wheel of Fortune (card number ten) and the Sun (card number nineteen). Symbolism connected to The Wheel card is more prominent in the third book, when it is the center column card for that book, and the same is true of the Sun card in the fifth book, when it is at the bottom of the fifth column, but in the first book there are faint echoes of the symbolism on both cards. A major connection between the first and tenth cards is that each has symbols that align with the elements of Fire, Air, Water and Earth, which in turn are connections to the four Hogwarts houses, since each house is aligned with one of these elements.
On the Magician card these symbols are the Tarot suits of wand, sword, cup and pentacle, while the Wheel card shows a composite mythical creature, a sphinx, which is made of an eagle, a man, a lion and a bull. These are also the symbols connected to the four Evangelists, the writers of the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In many Tarot decks, the Evangelists’ symbols also appear in the corners of card twenty-one, the World, pointing again to that card’s link to the wholeness that comes from integrating disparate parts. Sometimes, instead of or in addition to a sphinx appearing on the tenth card, an artist might put the individual Evangelists’ avatars in the corners of the card.Because each Evangelist is linked to a Tarot suit and to one of the elements of Fire, Air, Water or Earth, each can also be linked to a Hogwarts house, and the symbols for each Evangelist help make that alignment clearer. The lion of St. Mark is linked to Gryffindor; St. Mark is also the patron saint of the Italian city of Venice, and if you look at a Venetian flag, it depicts a winged lion in red and gold—something very close to the Gryffindor coat of arms. (A side note concerning a link between Venice and Gryffindor, which was also Dumbledore’s house: the opera house in Venice, called La Fenice, keeps burning down, but has been repeatedly rebuilt. La Fenice means “the phoenix”.)St. John is represented by an Eagle, the symbol of Ravenclaw, which is linked to the sky and to the element of Air, which in turn is linked to the intellect and to learning. The Gospel of John is often considered to be the most esoteric; it is called the Synoptic gospel and was heavily influenced by the Greek philosophy of the Logos, or the Word.St. Matthew is represented by a man, or an angel, when the man is given wings, and this aligns with Slytherin house because another angel linked to a snake, the symbol for Slytherin, is Lucifer, the fallen angel who became Satan, the Devil, which is Voldemort’s Tarot archetype in the first book. The Gospel of Matthew also begins with a genealogy for Jesus, which is likewise seen in Luke but not the other Gospels, and Slytherin the Founder was very interested in bloodlines. In addition to this, snakes are associated with both poisons and medicines, hence the two entwined snakes on the caduceus, the symbol of the medical profession, and Severus Snape, the Slytherin potion master, creates potions than can kill or cure, reflecting the fact that in ancient Greek, the same word is used for poison and medicine.Lastly, St. Luke is represented by a winged bull or ox, creatures usually linked to Earth (the astrological sign of Taurus, the bull, is an Earth sign), which in turn links this with Hufflepuff. This house’s head is Professor Sprout, the Herbology teacher, and the plants she nurtures in the greenhouses are again linked to medicine and the potions that can be made from them; St. Luke was a physician.The combination of the symbols of the Evangelists on the Wheel card, or the symbols for the Tarot suits on the Magician card, are each collectively a single symbol of wholeness. There is even a word for the combination of the Evangelists’ symbols: the tetramorph, which is a symbolic configuration of four images, from the Greek tetra (four) and morph(shape). The sphinx, which combines a lion, eagle, man and ox, is also considered a tetramorph. In Christian symbolism, compositions encompassing the four separatesymbols of the Evangelists also appear prominently, especially in Revelation 4:6-8; in St. John of Patmos’s vision (not the St. John of the Gospel) these are a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle, though they are a lion, a cherub, a man and an eagle in the Hebrew book of Ezekiel, from which this is derived, and the Ezekiel images have earlier versions in Babylonian and Assyrian literature and art, especially images showing the four each facing a different cardinal direction. (Each element, Fire, Air, Water and Earth also have a link to each cardinal direction.) St. Irenaeus was the first to link these images to the Evangelists and to specifically link the lion to Mark, the eagle to John, the man to Matthew, and the ox/bull to Luke. These images are seen in many depictions of the Evangelists produced by artists in the last six hundred years (possibly more).Tarot cards showing the symbols of the Evangelists, which are in turn linked to the cardinal directions, the four elements, and to the symbols for the four Hogwarts houses, are fitting links to the first book, in which Harry enters Hogwarts. This is a major milestone for him, allowing him to learn who he is and where he belongs in the world, and during this journey of self-discovery he coincidentally also learns that he has inherited a small fortune (as in “wheel of”). A connection between the first card, the Magician, and the nineteenth card, the Sun, is Dumbledore’s pet phoenix, Fawkes, since phoenixes are symbolically linked to the sun. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 14: The Devil’s Game.) The phoenix is also linked symbolically to death and resurrection, as the sun is also, especially in winter solstice myths from around the world. However, just as the symbolism of the Sun card is present in the first book in only a remote, echoing way, Fawkes, a symbol of death and resurrection, is only seen briefly in it. Nonetheless, Harry, a boy with a feather from Fawkes in his wand, spends three days unconscious in the hospital wing, symbolically dead and then resurrected.The eighth card, Justice, is numerically connected to the Star card, (number seventeen—its digits, one and seven, add up to eight). However, the connection here to the Star card is subtle, if Rowling did intend a connection to be seen. Hagrid tells Minerva McGonagall that Sirius Black lent him the flying motorbike to bring Harry to Surrey. Sirius is the name of the Dog Star and Sirius Black’s link to Justice is in the foreground in the third book, where Justice is a sequential card and the Star is a column card.Finally, the card linked to the Devil (number fifteen) is the Lovers (number six), which is a sequential card in the second book and at the top of the column for the sixth. The Lovers card is about many things, but mainly choices. An important choice that Harry makes in the first book is connected to its related card, the Devil, because he chooses not to be in Slytherin specifically due to what Hagrid says about dark wizards (most likely because of Hagrid’s personal experience of Tom Riddle). This prompts Dumbledore to tell Harry in the next book, in which the Lovers card is even more influential, that choices make us who we are.To return to the first two column cards, the balance and symmetry represented by the Magician and the Justice card are seen in the structure of the first book, which is highly symmetrical. Each obstacle to the Philosopher’s Stone aligns with a book in the series (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episodes 10-29, the Game Episodes), but in addition to this, something related to each obstacle is introduced in reverse order in the plot of the first book. The Mirror of Erised is the seventh obstacle to the Stone for Quirrell/Voldemort, but Quirrell/Voldemort is the final obstacle for Harry to protect the Stone, and Quirrell and Voldemort are each mentioned at the beginning of the story in reverse order. JK Rowling tells her readers very early that Voldemort has killed Harry’s parents (wizards rejoice over the disappearance of “You Know Who” and Dumbledore and McGonagall discuss Voldemort killing the Potters but not being able to kill Harry); then Harry meets Quirrell at the Leaky Cauldron. In the chamber with the Mirror, Harry sees Quirrell, then Voldemort when Quirrell removes his turban. His two faces, like the god Janus, also point to the book’s symmetry, which can be linked to the Magician card (and by association, to the Wheel and Sun cards) and to the balanced scales of Justice.Before Harry encounters Quirrell and Voldemort on the way to the Stone, he and Hermione are confronted with the potions riddle, and earlier in the first book the next significant person Harry meets is Severus Snape, in the chapter called The Potions Master. Preceding the potions obstacle is the troll that Quirrell knocked out, and sure enough, soon after The Potions Master Harry, Ron and Hermione have their Troll adventure in the Halloween chapter. The reflection of the fourth obstacle, the giant chess game, is subtle; at the Christmas banquet in the great hall, Harry receives a wizarding chess set when he opens a wizarding Christmas cracker.The reflection of the third obstacle, the flying keys, which Harry has to catch while on a broomstick, is even subtler. Harry has already played one Quidditch match by Christmas, but in that match he does not catch the Snitch with his hand; he does that for the first time in his second match, played after Christmas against Hufflepuff. Furthermore, since Harry plays a match against Slytherin first (becoming entangled with the Snitch that will contain the Resurrection Stone, in a ring that is handed down to Slytherin by his Peverell ancestors, setting this up to be reflected all the way at the end of the seventh book), and then he plays Hufflepuff, but is out of commission during the match against Ravenclaw, it seems that Harry doesn’t technically play a full Quidditch season in the first book, since he does not play against Ravenclaw. However, in this book he plays a metaphorical match against Ravenclaw, since the flying keys are the obstacle that Professor Flitwick created, and Flitwick is head of Ravenclaw house. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 16: The Seeker.) The second obstacle, Devil’s Snare, is a reflection of the detention Harry serves in the Forbidden Forest, a symbolic Hell, which is also where Harry sees Quirrell possessed by Voldemort, who embodies the Tarot archetype of the Devil. Finally, after the detention in the forest, Harry learns how to overcome the first obstacle, Fluffy the three-headed dog, when he asks Hagrid about where he got the dragon egg that became Norbert. One by one, these story elements reappear, in reverse order, as the obstacles to the Philosopher’s Stone: Voldemort/Quirrell, the Potions master, a Troll, a chess set, Harry catching a Snitch with his hand instead of in his mouth, harrowing the metaphorical hell of the forest and seeing an incarnation of the Devil, and Harry learning how to subdue a three-headed hell-hound. One by one, Harry gets past each obstacle: Fluffy, Devil’s Snare, the flying keys, the chess game, the Troll, the potions riddle and Quirrell/Voldemort. This symmetry is reflected in the first column of cards in the Tarot Major Arcana, the column cards linked to the first book in the series: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry,the Podcast, Episode 31: The Devil You Know. Copyright 2017-2019 by Quantum Harry Productions and B.L. Purdom. See other posts on this blog for direct links to all episodes of Quantum Harry.~ PREVIOUS ESSAY~
All future episodes of Quantum Harry, audio, video and essay, will be posted on successive TUESDAYS, rather than Mondays. The Episode guide will also be updated to reflect this change.