I always thought that perhaps phoenix feathers are meant to heal wizards with emotional issues. Spell-casting is very much involved with emotional control after all. Dumbledore, yanked out a Fawkes tail feather (I’m sure he asked permission!) and took it to Ollivander knowing that Little Mister Sociopath would be by on a shopping trip in the near future.

Nice try, but it didn’t work.

Since I go for there’s-a-horcrux-inside-of-Harry theory, again, the feather reached out to heal a portion of torn soul that showed up in Ollivander’s shop. This time, the feather empowered Harry’s pure soul, who actually can turn the tide.

I suppose when DD pulled out the one feather, a second came out. He gave both to Ollivander. They didn’t realize just how important that second feather would be.

You brought up Providence and perhaps that second feather becoming available would fall into that category.

I read somewhere that some Shamens use feathers to heal souls. They hold one and blow on it while another feather is put upon the person needing help and this frees the troubled person.

Harry, then, is the feather in the hands of the Shamen.

It is also interesting to note that the first spell is Wingaurdium Leviosa (spelled wrong!) using a feather.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/books/features/rumorsofglory/070625.html

I think our atheist commentator (Lee Grossman) on the absence of God in HP is going to be surprised in the end by what he has missed. But it may require that JKR write the background of HP1-7 just as Tolkien subsequently published the Silmarillion et alia.

I do think that JKR will be finished with HP as she has promised. But that leaves much about the nature of Harry’s world to be explored without Harry or the cast we are familiar with to date. Something very like the History of Middle Earth may reveal the conundrums we now perceive in a glass darkly but later face-to-book see clearly.

I also like the idea inked presents here that perhaps the wand core somehow senses “greatness” of soul, without “knowing” how that greatness will turn. That seems at least partially borne out by canon, when Olivander himself makes that comment (don’t have book handy, so this will be a loose paraphrase) that he didn’t know what Voldemort’s wand was going out in the world to do, and that the things done with it were “great” but also terrible.

I wasn’t exactly suggesting that the wand core itself would “know” the future, more that the wands and wand cores are objects in a bigger drama than might seem apparent to the eye immediately. (Who knew that ring Biblo found in a cave would turn out to be so important?) It’s interesting, is it not, that some sense of “personality” comes through here, when Olivander (perhaps speaking metaphorically or hyperbolically!) uses the phrase the “wand CHOOSES the wizard.” Given the importance of the choice theme in these books, that seems like a very carefully chosen line by JKR. And we do know that certain magical objects are vested with power or abilities (like the sorting hat) or somehow are already considered good conduits for magical power (some substances more magically powerful than others, which is why certain substances are chosen as cores). I guess what I am getting at is that this seems like a quiet, implicit way to get at the notion that there is some power, some power for good, moving behind the scenes, and perhaps directing and influencing events in a certain direction.

The differences between yew and holly are wonderfully explicated by esoterica 1693 and I think her analysis correct. TR horcrux would not have known of the two wands, would he? So his handling of it while sapping the very life out of Ginny would argue against an inherent ability of the core to distinguish between good or ill in the handler. And we know that other witches and wizards may employ differing wands than their own (though less powerfullly, perhaps?).

Holly is also associated w/ Christ and resurrection it has been linked w/ more positive aspects–the Incarnation and the Cross. W/o going and copying bunches on yews, basically the “tone” of the symbolism of yews is very dark and gloomy, while holly has much more positive connotations.

The two wand woods are like the two characters….very similar in some respects, but turned to opposite sides of the core question. It’s as if the phoenix feather is the “question”–resurrection and immortality–and it’s “clothed” in two different answers. V has focused on death–its negative aspects, how to evade it, etc.–while Harry is focused on the incarnation of love and sacrificial love transcending death. All very alchemical! Now to see how the wands are involved in resolving this duality.