It is the week of Nativity for traditional Orthodox Christians and it promises to be a white Christmas here in upper New York State where my family and I are living. More than eighty inches of snow since 1 December… In the slow-down to the lead-up to the big day Friday (services begin tomorrow night and will go through the weekend), I’ve put aside my writing and publishing projects for some reading between shoveling shifts. I’m on something of a Charles Williams binge of late after reading David Downing’s Looking for the King in which historical novel Williams is featured. I just finished his The Greater Trumps (1932) and I thought I’d share some very brief notes here for serious Potter readers of the echoes of Williams’ supernatural thriller that we find in the Hogwarts Saga.
Charles Williams: ‘The Greater Trumps’
Mailbag: Questions About Literary Alchemy
I have been writing John Patrick Pazdziora the past two or three weeks on Narniad subjects and the last few days he has been peppering me with questions about literary alchemy. If you don’t know who Mr. Pazdziora is, stay tuned, because I hope he will be introducing himself soon enough. Though this exchange does not constitute anything like an introduction to the topic of literary alchemy as tradition and reader experience, I do think it is a helpful addition to the discussion of hermetic artistry in The Deathly Hallows Lectures. For those of you already familiar enough with the colors, sequences, and principal figures of alchemy, e.g., the Quarreling Couple, Philosophical Orphan, Alchemical Wedding, etc. from that and posts here, this Q&A back and forth between John Patrick in Scotland and John in Syracuse may help you grasp the sudden ubiquity of alchemy in today’s best sellers in the wake of Ms. Rowling’s juggernaut Hogwarts Saga.
Literary Alchemy: Time to Talk ‘Cinderella’
Once upon a time, Travis Prinzi, the Young Lion of Potter Punditry, wrote to me to ask “what else” he could read that was written on a traditional, alchemical scaffolding. I recommended C. S. Lewis’ Perelandra because it seemed to me that, from Lewis’ use of the word albedo and the red-and-white “pie-bald man” to the Dance of Archetypal Contraries and the white coffin filled with red roses, it was a hermetic no-brainer. Mr. Prinzi wrote back not many days later saying how excited he was to recognize the alchemical signatures throughout the book, signs and symbols he gratefully and gracefully allowed I had taught him. I blushed then and blush now to say that I had missed many of the great catches he made.
I tell this story (forgive me, please, if you have heard it before) because another serious reader, this one in the UK and a George MacDonald scholar, claims me as his alchemical mentor — and, then, just as Mr. Prinzi did, he demonstrates that he has a much greater grasp of the essence and the mechanics of literary alchemy than his supposed master. For a delightful exegesis of the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale, Cinderella, as an example of the power and flexibility of hermetic artistry, I urge you to read ‘unsettling wonder‘ at The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond.
HogPro ‘Rings’ Talk in NYC Thursday Night!
Harry Potter Chapter Rings, Character Names, and Magic Mirrors: The Genius Inside the Planning of the Hogwarts Saga
Joanne Rowling has told interviewers for more than a decade that the secret of her success was “planning,” a “boring answer” she always apologizes for. But what exactly was she planning that took five years to sketch the books and six months prior to each novel’s composition? Potter Pundit John Granger, author of Harry Potter Unlocked: Seven Keys for the Serious Reader and editor of Harry Potter Smart Talk, believes she was working on embedding within her story the structures and symbols that would reflect her most profound meaning. Want to learn why Harry’s name as well as all the alliterative names and those with reduplicated letters are what they are? Curious about the Deathly Hallows symbol and what it really tells us about Ms. Rowling’s novels? Interested in why specific events happen in the chapters they do in each book and why there are seven novels? Come to the Samsung Center to hear John Granger reveal at last the genius in Rowling’s planning and how it generated Potter-mania
The Venue: Thursday, 7 October, 6 pm
Time Warner Building
3rd Floor Columbus Circle
New York, NY 10019
The Sponsors and more about the event: The Group That Shall Not Be Named
Chaos Walking #3: Todd Hewitt, ‘Hewn Heart’
Life is short, art is long; let’s get right to the alchemy, then, if you don’t mind.
As discussed previously, the books’ penchant for Christian and biblical names makes me think ‘Todd’ is meant to be understood as ‘Thaddeus,’ the Aramaic word for ‘Heart,’ the spiritual faculty of the human person, or “breast,’ as in ‘bosom buddy.’ The last name of our hero, ‘Hewitt,’ is a not especially opaque telling of “hew it,” which translates as “roughly shape or fell the hard object.” Together, I think the Dickensian cryptonym gives us “the stone or wooden heart’s felling” or, better, “the revelation of the heart out of stone.” His story is a postmodern Everyman tale of the spiritual journey to human perfection or apotheosis.
If you’re a newcomer here, that must seem a real stretch. Old hands, however, I’m sure, have already started asking themselves, “If Todd is the Stone/Heart being perfected, are the three books the three alchemical stages of the Philosopher’s Stone?” Indeed, they are. [Read more…]
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