From HogPro All-Pro, MEKJ, an essay from her Live Journal:

Snape as a Pillar of the Universe?
Who is Severus Snape, and What is his Role in the “Harry Potter” Stories?

Several commentators online, most notably swythyv in the livejournal community and jodel from aol at the red hen website, have postulated that Severus Snape is perhaps the major figure – the hidden hero – of the Harry Potter stories. I agree – I see him as a warrior/guardian, who has always protected Harry and who will play a key role in the final defeat of Voldemort. But if he is a hero, why is he so petty and cruel? For he does seem to be. There are many examples of petty, malicious, or even downright vicious behavior from Snape in all the books, but the two most shocking bits of venom (other than the utterly horrifying climax to the Half-Blood Prince ) must surely be his treatment of Neville Longbottom and the ‘sectumsempra’ spell he invented as a young teenager. Can behaviors like these be reconciled with the idea of Snape as a hero, and, if so, how? [Read more…]

HPEF invited me early in 2003 to participate as a Featured Speaker at Nimbus 2003. I learned later that it was not a unanimous decision of the HPEF Board to invite me. It seems several Potter-philes, even at the height of ‘The Controversy,’ thought Connie Neal’s invitation was sufficient to cover the “Christian Interpretation” sub-category. The few board members who had read my Hidden Key to Harry Potter explained that mine was a literary rather than theologically driven approach to the books and that my thoughts on Alchemy were sufficient to warrant an invitation as Featured Speaker. I got in through the back door.

In 2003, “literary alchemy” was terra incognita to all but the few in Fandom who were subscribers to Cauda Pavonis, the academic journal devoted to the subject. Google “alchemy” and “Harry Potter” today and prepare for an afternoon of reading (most of it, unfortunately, will be time spent “wading” through papers not having been read by editors or “peer reviewed” by people familiar with the subject).

My talk at Nimbus 2003, “Alchemy, Doppelgangers and the Irony of Religious Objections to Harry Potter” (which was published in Touchstone magazine later that year as ‘The Alchemist’s Tale,’ brought Ms. Rowling’s use of alchemy to Fandom at a popular level — and the Slash writers, homeschooling soccer moms, and professors of Medieval Literature there were pretty excited about it. They voted that talk the “best presentation” of the 65 talks and panels at Nimbus. [Read more…]

I have written at some length about the likelihood of Harry Passing through the Veil in the Department of Mysteries and expanded on the Christian Symbolism of the Veil even more recently.

In brief, Ms. Rowling has repeatedly had Harry go underground in his annual Hero’s Journey, which epic heroes do, as a rule, to visit the dead. That link and its constancy through six books points to a trip underground to see the dead in the finale.

Ms. Rowling’s comments about the seventh book (a) revealing her faith and (b) revealing how near we can get “to the dead” also point to an afterlife experience that has “shades” (ouch) of a Christian cosmology.

Let’s go to the “high spots” from my post on the Aeneid and Harry’s possible trip through the Veil…

Six Reasons for believing Harry will Pass Through the Veil

Here are six reasons taken from the top of my head for thinking Harry may go through the Veil in Deathly Hallows:

(1) In every novel so far, Ms. Rowling has had Harry descend before the climactic battle either underground quite literally or to a place of the dead. We can take this as something of a fetish, a coincidence, or a pointer to the last book when Harry will, at last, “do an Odysseus/Aeneas/Dante” and head into the real land of the dead. All previous descents would then be understood, not as mechanical check-list satisfaction for her hero’s journey formula, but as dramatic perumbration of one of the most memorable events in the story’s closing book.

(2) Ms. Rowling is by training a classicist. If she majored in French at the University of Exeter, [Read more…]

One of my sure-thing predictions has already come in, alas. Judy over at Sword of Gryffindor reports that:

It appears DH has finally leaked; someone has a stolen library book copy (I knew giving the librarians permission to open them early was a bad idea!) and has taken pictures of the first four hundred pages. I’ve spent hours trying to find fault with them, but unfortunately, they are flawless. The book dedication itself is what got me; it was uniquely and supremely Jo, no hoaxer could have come up with it.

She goes on to write that Fandom internet sites are already flooded with postings about the characters who have died, etc.

“Say it ain’t so, Jo!”

I guess there is little point in posting predictions this week, is there? If I hit something spot on, then it’s not genius or the Five Keys, it’s because the prediction is about something that is now common knowledge. If I post something that is clearly wrong, of course, someone will write to enlighten us with what they have read and spoil the surprise for me. No, I won’t post anything here from these “spoiler-sports.”

Looks like a lose-lose situation. That’s not even mentioning that thousands if not millions of readers are getting a head start on Deathly Hallows, effectively popping the critical mass of readers with anticipation who might be following the fun discussions “that might have been” during Potter Week.

As my Drill Instructors like to say at Parris Island, “Oh, well!”

On the off-chance that Judy just woke from an Alice in Wonderland dream (with a live journal url and links to the 400 copied pages? right!), I’ll persevere for a few days. MuggleNet and Leaky, as you’d expect, have not posted anything about this, but CNN and MSN are quiet as well. There is reason to hope! FYI, all the predictions made here are from my Enlightening 2007 talk given last Friday in Philadelphia and filmed by the “We Are Wizards” documentary crew.

Prediction #2: The Master Plan is Revealed

The Rubedo or ‘red’ and last stage of the alchemical drama is about the revelation of the work already accomplished in the white stage. Deathly Hallows, consequently, as the crimson crucible of Harry Potter, will largely be about what we missed in Half-Blood Prince. More specifically, I think we will learn how everything in Half-Blood Prince, from Harry’s tutorials up to the melodrama on the Astronomy Tower, was staged to deceive the Dark Lord via his Horcrux/mind-link with Harry. [Read more…]

If you missed the latest brou-ha-ha in Time magazine about Harry Potter this week, take a minute to read Lev Grossman’s celebration there of Ms. Rowling’s putting more nails in God’s coffin. In an article titled, “Who Dies in Harry Potter? God,” Grossman confirms both that he doesn’t see anything except what he wants in the series and that he has an atheistic agenda. Travis Prinzi, as usual, has stepped to the plate over at Sword of Gryffindor to reveal the nonsense Mr. Grossman has served up for what it is. Mr. Prinzi’s analysis deserves your attention.

Mr. Grossman affirmed the bias he brings to the books in an interview that Reyhan found on NerdWorld.com and posted in the comment boxes at Sword of Gryffindor: [Read more…]