Happy First Birthday, Hallmarked Man!

September 13, 2026 by Leave a Comment

In celebration of the first anniversary of The Hallmarked Man’s publication, I created an annotated index of everything written at Hogwarts Professor or discussed in Rowling Studies podcasts since last September, an index with urls to the relevant posts all neatly arranged by subject matter for easy perusal.

The ‘Index for the Hogwarts Professor Hallmarked Man Index’ looks like this:

  1. First Thoughts, First Findings, First Fandom Theories, First Flights of Cupid and Psyche
  2. The Big Finds: Shanker’s Secrets, The Incest Golden Thread and Series Backdrop, and the Letter ‘G’ Revealing the Series Structure (with Rowling Extras)
  3. The Projects and Partners: Hogwarts Professor exclusive Deep Dives into Rowling’s Artistry and Meaning and the New Voices Speaking Here and Nowhere Else

Check it out at ‘Happy Birthday, Hallmarked Man! A Hogwarts Professor Celebration‘ over at the Substack sister site — and let me know what you think in the comment boxes below!

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

The Symbolism of the Letter G in Hallmarked Man: Is It the Key to Unlocking the Strike Series Structure?

September 9, 2026 by Leave a Comment

[Left image source, Right image source]

‘Coloration’ is a term used to describe background information that lights or shades the foreground material in such a way that the reader’s experience of the narrative is moved in a particular direction subliminally. ‘Coloration’ is not exclusively about colors, though that can play a part as in alchemical sequence symbolism; it is at least as much about prevalent symbols and types that create contact, if you will, between the immaterial referents, the greater realities, which the symbols represent and the reader’s imagination. C. S. Lewis’ use of traditional astrological tokens for the seven planets in each of his Narniad novels as detailed in Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia is all about coloration, as is Charles Williams’ use of Tarot imagery in his archetypal thrillers and Rowling’s use of Christian and alchemical symbolism in her Potter and Strellacott series.

In that author’s latest novel, The Hallmarked Man, there is a peculiar emphasis on, a much repeated reference to the letter ‘G.’ It is done in such a way that the reader who is struggling with the story’s multiple suspects, with a bevy of new characters with names that sound like other characters’ names, and with a bizarre and inexplicably complex (can you say ‘convoluted’?) murder does not have the focus or attention band-width sufficient to pick up consciously. Which means that it penetrates only the unconscious mind, the alocal locus of coloration’s effect.

C. S. Lewis famously observed in an essay on The Literary Impact of the Authorized Version that “An influence which cannot evade our consciousness will not go very deep,” i.e., will not have a lasting or profound effect. Whence Twain’s injunction to writers to instruct their readers not overtly, which instruction they will resist instinctively, but only covertly, implicitly rather in explicit heavy-handedness.

[Source: Jeremy Harwood’s heavily illustrated, oversized, coffee table book, The Freemasons]

To explore the possibility that Rowling-Galbraith’s subliminal didactic message to her readers in Hallmarked Man involves the letter ‘G,’ I am first obliged to provide evidence of the frequency of this image and examples of how the Freemasons interpret this letter as provided within Strike 8 and from properly Masonic texts.

That is the bulk of the first post in this series, which ends with reasons why this isn’t a sufficient explanation for all the ‘G’s.

The Symbolism of the Letter ‘G’ in ‘Hallmarked Man’ (Part One): Why did Rowling-Galbraith flood her Strike 8 story-line with references to the letter ‘G’?

In Part Two of this three part Deep Dive I review other meanings ascribed to the letter by traditional and other sources before I  explain the effect of its use by Rowling-Galbraith as coloration in the book.

The Symbolism of the Letter ‘G’ in ‘Hallmarked Man’ (Part Two): Rowling-Galbraith is Working the Subliminal Route to Transform Her Readers via Their Unconscious Imaginative Experiences of Repeated Symbolic Freight

In Part Three, Nick Jeffery and I talk about the Letter G and why it matters especially with respect to the structure of the series.

A Conversation about the Symbolism of the Letter ‘G’ in ‘Hallmarked Man’ — Nick and John become G-Men!

Would you believe the Tetractys, Tetragrammaton, Gammadion Cross, and the shape of the Strike-Ellacott decalogy are involved? It’s all there, believe it or don’t, in the letter ‘G’ and the Murdoch silver hallmark…

 

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Rowling Tweets Status of ‘Sleep Tight, Evangeline:’ Sixty Percent of First Draft

May 21, 2026 by 4 Comments

Url to Thread

Three quick notes about this news!

  1. If 72 chapters is approximately 60% of Sleep Tight, Evangeline, then we’re looking at another 120 chapter book. At best, those migraines not reflecting a brain tumor or even a chronic condition, Strike 9 won’t be with us until late in 2027. That she is writing and enjoying the process, however, means the intense planning of this entry in a series of intricately structured novels is over and she is in the hard-slog of writing business. Fair winds, etc.
  2. Check out the Rowling tweet on the thread of which the Serious Striker thought it appropriate (and apparently Rowling agreed!) to ask about the fictional work in progress. Maybe her posts about government ineptitude and party politics are the secret passage to ask The Presence questions about her work? Those of you who enjoy life on social media, please ask her about the ten book series structure, the alchemical sequence, or whether the allegory of Cormoran and Robin is Cupid-Psyche mythic template, Jungian archetypal psychology, or Shakespearean romance.
  3. “After a mere seven years, Strike is finally in open pursuit.” One of the speculative ideas about Evangeline has been that Robin will be disappearing from Strike’s life for much of the novel via a kidnapping or a retreat to work with the Cursing Crone Psychologist (a la Psyche’s trip to see Persephone at Venus’ bidding). If Strike is at last “in open pursuit” of winning Robin’s hand in marriage, that suggests that, no, Robin will be center stage in Strike 9. Doesn’t it?

Let me know how you read these migraine inspired bon mots to her followers on Twixter!

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Twitter

The Cupid and Psyche Myth Retellings: C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’ and J. K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike Novels

April 21, 2026 by Leave a Comment

At the Hogwarts Professor Substack page, Nick Jeffery and I both wrote pieces this month about C. S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces and Rowling-Galbraith’s Strike-Ellacott mysteries. We then filmed our conversation about why the Serious Striker or Generic Thoughtful Rowling Reader would benefit from time with CSL in the Kingdom of Glume, Queen Orual presiding.

I began my post about the two Cupid and Psyche adaptations with several reasons reading Till We Have Faces is a very good investment of any Rowling fan’s time:

First, anything by C. S. Lewis rewards a close reading by any thoughtful person and lover of challenging modern writing (and, though Lewis is often dismissed as some kind of Christian dinosaur, he is a thoroughly modern writer). Faces was his last fiction piece, he and Tolkien thought it was his best, and it is a catharsis inducing masterpiece, frankly, that makes a more than generous return on any time invested in it.

Second, despite Rowling’s several digs at Lewis near the end of Potter Mania’s peak around the publication of Deathly Hallows, it would be hard to exaggerate the hat-tips and references to CSL’s Narniad in the Hogwarts Saga. Rowling’s efforts to diminish if not dismiss that influence have to be read in tandem with her earlier effusion of admiration for Lewis and his work. Her Christmas Pig, I think, can be read as her attempt — her wonderfully successful attempt, by the way, at least with respect to accessibility and humor — to out-do Lewis’ The Great Divorce. Reading Lewis is a good idea for the Serious Striker, then, because its a decent bet based on the postmodern writer’s track record that the bibliographical inspiration or Lake aspect of her work might be found in his writing.

Third, forget the Lake, Rowling’s Shed is filled with tools that Lewis used.

  • Literary alchemy? Read his Space Trilogy.
  • Ring composition? Every Chronicles of Narnia novel and Space Trilogy piece is chiastic.
  • Psychomachia or Soul-Allegory? Pilgrim’s Regress, Great Divorce, Till We Have Faces.
  • Genre Blend with Heavy Doses of Literary Allusion? Again, the Narniad and Space Trilogy.
  • Christian symbolism? If Lewis is known for anything, loved by his fans and despised by his detractors, it is because of his “smuggling the Gospel” into his stories, not-so-subtly and supremely subtly (see Planet Narnia for exposition of the latter).

And to the point today, use of Classical myth as a story launching pad and template. Serious Strikers know that the Strike-Ellacott series is up to its eyeballs in mythic backdrops; think of Leda and the Swan, Castor and Pollux, Tisiphone and Artemis, and, the only one confirmed by the author via tweet, Cupid and Psyche. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces is a re-telling of this exact myth.

It’s not a direct match by any means. Lewis’ adaptation is fairly straight-forward (well, relative to Rowling-Galbraith’s). He re-tells the Cupid and Psyche myth from the perspective of one of Psyche’s supposedly jealous sisters. It’s still set in a mythic time and in a pagan or pre-Christian Greece (or thereabouts). Rowling uses the myth, in contrast, as a near invisible back-drop or atmosphere that informs her story, a subtle deployment that wasn’t noticed by readers until its reveal in Troubled Blood and Ink Black Heart (a revelation that wasn’t accepted by fandom until Rowling’s tweet post Hallmarked Man).

Nick Jeffery wondered if it was possible that Rowling-Galbraith used Till We Have Faces as something of a template’s template for her adaptation of Cupid and Psyche in her Strike novels. Read his C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’ and Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series (Part One) for his answer to the question, ‘Is Till We Have Faces the The Thematic Template for the ‘Strike-Ellacott’ Series?’

In my follow-up to Nick’s post, C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’ and Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series (Part Two), I shared the seven points of intersection I found in CSL’s 1956 adaptation and JKR’s eight Strellacott books: the underlying myth, Artemis and Aphrodite, the Pursuit of the Real, the Hidden Nature of Divinity, the Story Structure, the Meaning of ‘Faces,’ and the Eros-Anteros Distinction (what Lewis called ‘The False Cupid’ in his essays on Spenser).

In our subsequent discussion-podcast, A Spirited Conversation about Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series and C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces,’ we reviewed our findings and played pickle-ball with the subject of what Faces might suggest about the contents of Strike 9, tentatively titled Sleep Tight, Evangeline.

Nick and I will be talking about fan theories and Rowling’s Golden Threads this week and I will be writing about the literary alchemy of the Lions in Hallmarked Man as well as more notes about the plethora of names in Strike 8. I also hope to share the introduction to and TOC for my book in progress, Harry Potter for Grown-Ups: Volume 1 Philosopher’s Stone, and a chapter of the only book to my knowledge written exclusively about the Perennialist Theory of Literature, the school of thought best suited to grasping the traditional tools used by both Lewis and Rowling in their stories.

See you there!

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis, Cormoran Strike, Substack Post

Guest Post: The Church Across the Street from the Strike & Ellacott Agency’s Denmark Street Office

April 20, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Ed Shardlow visited the church across the street from the Agency office on Denmark Street and sent me some fascinating fotos he took there. I asked him to write up his visit and he obliged me with these notes. Enjoy!

I was in the vicinity of Denmark St a few weeks ago and thought I’d drop in on the Church of St Giles.

John Granger has raised the possibility that the Church of St Giles in the Fields, located at the end of Denmark St, in plain sight of the Strike & Ellacott Agency office, will feature significantly at some point at the climax of the Strike series (see his 2017 post, a 2021 follow-up, and this year’s conversation about the Christian content of Rowling’s Evangeline charm bracelet) . As yet, the presence of this place of worship in close proximity to the Denmark St office has been hidden in the story with no mentions in the text.

The church is like so many in central London – an oasis of stillness open to public visitation in the midst of the busy city. It is steeped in history, while still providing a religious function for believers and a fascinating space for enquiring heathens. When I made my visit, there were a couple of fellow travelers having a look around, and a couple of organists airing the pipes of the instrument housed within.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking for as I explored the church. I read the memorials and tombstones, but didn’t spot any Strikes or Evangelines that may have provided Rowling with inspiration. There were of course numerous Christian images and icons which undoubtedly share some symbolism with the Christian imagery in Rowling’s works. But there didn’t seem to be anything particularly relevant to Strike.

The most interesting thing to me was the memorial for Andrew Marvell.

I know Marvell best for his superb Restoration-era booty call, To His Coy Mistress. A marvelous piece of verse, pointing out that life is short, and so we might as well get jiggy while we can. “Had we but world enough and time…”

I took some photos, which I sent to John after my visit. That very day John posted a discussion with Nick Jeffery about the different modes of alchemy, and mentioned Marvell’s interest in alchemy. Which was a fairly major coincidence and perhaps offers us a pointer as to what part St Giles in the Fields may yet play in the Strike saga.

Three Quick Notes from John:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Guest Posts, Literary Alchemy