My two copies of Running Grave were delivered late this morning and I have yet to open mine. My son Zossima is almost half-way through and has confirmed that my enthusiastic judgment of the first eleven chapters, that this was the strongest start of a Rowling novel ever, was spot on. He reports that “It starts well and doesn’t let up one bit.”

I’m very excited to join him in reading Strike7, as I know all of you have been, but I need to do some house-keeping chores here at HogwartsProfessor and to prepare for my reading first. Number one on my list is putting up seven placeholder posts for Serious Strikers around the world to write up their thoughts as they read on specific subjects that are signature points of discussion on this weblog.

Why bother? [Read more…]

Running Grave Placeholder Post, Number Seven! The Wild Side of Strike7 —

It’s something of a Publication Week tradition here at HogwartsProfessor to provide an online space for Serious Strikers to share their discoveries as they find them, an alocal place for specific topics we have explored here in the past. It’s a community gathering place — and each placeholder creates a record of findings for topics that otherwise become hopelessly jumbled in the threads of various posts. The seven I am posting for Running Grave are:

• The Gaffes
• Deathly Hallows Parallels
• Cuckoo’s Calling Parallels
• Lethal White Parallels
• The Ghosts
• Literary Alchemy
• The Occult

I confess I had to make a hard choice when I got to number seven on my list of placeholder posts. I’m really looking forward to reading Running Grave, having read the first eleven chapters several times in the last few weeks, because of my interest in the Psychomachia, the Jungian archetypal content with the advent of sister Prudence, and the backdrop mythology of Leda and the Swan, Castor and Pollux, and, most important, Psyche and Cupid. I don’t think these subjects lend themselves to finds or spottings, however, so I elected to go with ‘The Occult.’

What I mean by that slippery word with respect to Running Grave is do we see in the text references to or suggestions of occult practices such as tarot card readings, astrological symbols and natal chart readings, necromancy (!), or divinatory practices such as I Ching yarrow stalk throwings? If we do, what do they tell us?

Every Part and chapter in Styrike7 begins with an epigraph from the I Ching; I have not read more than the first eleven chapters of the yo-yo previewings, but I suspect this will be akin to the previous books, Troubled Blood and Ink Black Heart, in which novels there is no reference to the source of the epigraphs but which books reflect that source material in meaningful ways. The depths, in brief, are in the epigraphs.  Given the divinatory nature of the I Ching in common usage, I think we should be looking for embedded references to such occult or psychic sphere-penetrating practices.

I’m almost hopeful that we will get a second chance to read Rowling’s clues the way she tipped her hand in Strike5 via the illustrations in Talbot’s True Book. I doubt it, but I’m confident that if the opportunity presents itself and I miss it, the Serious Strikers in the HogwartsProfessor reading audience will spot it and share it here. Thank you in advance for that!

Running Grave Placeholder Post, Number Six! The Alchemical Artistry of Strike7 —

It’s something of a Publication Week tradition here at HogwartsProfessor to provide an online space for Serious Strikers to share their discoveries as they find them, an alocal place for specific topics we have explored here in the past. It’s a community gathering place — and it creates a record of findings for topics that otherwise become hopelessly jumbled in the threads of various posts. The seven I am posting for Running Grave are:

• The Gaffes
• Deathly Hallows Parallels
• Cuckoo’s Calling Parallels
• Lethal White Parallels
• The Ghosts
• Literary Alchemy
• The Occult

I have been writing about Rowling’s alchemical coloring and symbolism since 2002 (see my Hidden Key to Harry Potter if you’re into literary archeology or How Harry Cast His Spell for the post-Hallows update). Back in the day, the idea that Rowling, single mother on the dole, was crafting stories using hermetic sequences a la Shakespeare, Dickens, and Joyce, was the butt of jokes in the critical community. We have arrived, though, because the pile of evidence has grown so high to the stage where books are devoted to the subject, at the point of consensus, per Walker Percy, where “everyone has always known that” and the initial eye-rolling and scoffing has been forgotten. See the Literary Alchemy Pillar Post if this is the first time you’re encountering the idea; almost every one of the many links there will take you to an introduction to the subject.

What alchemical points are Serious Strikers looking for in Running Grave? I think there are at least three.

The first is the structure of the book in hand; do we see a nigredo breakdown at the beginning followed by an albedo cleansing or purging of character that ends in a rubedo climax of revelation, confrontation, resolution, and transformation with the attendant colors and symbols of these stages?

The second is its place in the series; is it a rubedo book that closes a story cycle as did Deathly Hallowsin the Hogwarts Saga?

The third is an alternate view of its series role; is it the last of the three albedo books per Evan Willis’ Tetractys Theory?

I suppose I am obliged to include a fourth possibility, namely, ‘Is there little to no evidence of alchemical symbolism in Strike7?’

Let me know what you found in the comment boxes below!