‘Deathly Hallows’ and Penn’s ‘Fruits of Solitude’

I hope you have been following the discussion in the separate post below of what constitutes Harry Potter canon. The topic is of no little importance to the work we do here at Hogwarts Professor, of course, but that thread is also an excellent example of what internet exchanges can lead to but rarely do. I think we have come to a point, after no little give and take, that we accept there are four ways to understand literary canon with respect to the Potter novels, four ways that overlap to one degree or another but which differ enough to be understood independently. That discussion is certainly not over and I encourage you to jump in on that thread if you disagree or have a quintessential position that will square the circle and resolve all the contrary thinking there.

Here I want to apply what understanding we have reached and make an explicitly “textus primus” argument for the fullest understanding of the William Penn epigraph that is part of Ms. Rowling’s opening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

A textus primus or “text first” argument is one which rests primarily on the seven Harry Potter books for its conclusions about their meaning but which includes knowledge about the context of this work, especially with respect to English literature and the symbolist tradition in which Ms. Rowling writes. Ms. Rowling’s comments are not considered authoritative or necessarily important; they are valued as the thoughts of the “first among equal serious readers.” Trying to understand the selection from Penn’s More Fruits of Solitude (1702), one of the two quotations that opens Deathly Hallows, is a useful exercise that illustrates this position vis a vis the other canonical categories. Here is the Penn selection as it appears in Hallows:

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

William Penn, More Fruits of Solitude

In The Deathly Hallows Lectures: The Hogwarts Professor Explains Harry Potter’s Last Adventure (and, yes, I encourage you to purchase that book today), I discuss the Aeschylus and Penn quotations in the FAQ chapter. I cited the curator of the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College, Christopher Densmore, in that discussion and wrote him a thank you for his help last week with a copy of Lectures. He was kind enough to send me a copy of William Penn’s Some Fruits of Solitude.

This book is a delight in several respects. There is, of course, the kindness of Curator Densmore in sharing this edition with me. Beyond his charity, though, I value his gift because, unlike much of what can be found on line or in print, this 3 x 5 book has not been expanded with commentary and historical glosses, translated into contemporary English (which is to say, “dumbed down”), or included with other works as part of a collection. This book is both Some Fruits of Solitude (1693) and the harder to find More Fruits of Solitude (1702) as they were written, and, I suspect, in a spirit much like they were published. The diminutive format, what is quite literally a “pocket book,” is fit for reading in secret as its first readers in Restoration England almost certainly did.

From what I can piece together online, Penn wrote Some Fruits of Solitude while in hiding. He was under indictment for treason, his Irish estates had been confiscated, and his Pennsylvania holdings were at risk because of his fall from favor after the Restoration. These four years of living in secret, moving from place to place, were among Penn’s most productive as a writer; in addition to Fruits, he also wrote Essay on the Peace of Europe, which, as an essay in favor of something like the EU, was not meant to win him many friends at court. Penn rises Mandela-like eventually, though, from his Rushdie existence and his rights to property are restored. He retires to Pennsylvania but is compelled to return to England in 1701, when he again finds himself in trouble, this time more financial than political. He does a brief spell in debtor’s prison and dies penniless years later.

What is perhaps most striking, consequently, while reading Some Fruits of Solitude and More Fruits, written during his later troubles. is their equanimity and absence of bitterness, partisanship, or any hint of martyrdom. They are valuable Society of Friends statements of how human life is to be understood and lived in the nimbus of the “inner light,” regardless of external circumstances and trials.

The passage that Ms. Rowling chose as one of the epigraphs opening Deathly Hallows is from the More Fruits of Solitude. Before getting to how the epigraph presented differs in presentation from the original, let me say a few words about the style of Penn’s writing here.

There’s no way of knowing this from the epigraph in Deathly Hallows, but Some Fruits and More Fruits of Solitude are both collections of one-liners and aphorisms that are numbered: 1-566 in Some Fruits, 1-299 in More Fruits. They aren’t stray shots; the pithy and pointed, often profound pieces are collected in small bunches something like Bible verses have chapters and line Stephanus numbers, albeit with a title for the aphorisms collected under each heading. To give you a flavor of these titles, the first five in Some Fruits are “Ignorance,” “Education,” “Pride,” “Luxury,” and “Inconsideration.” The heading for the sentences in Rowling’s epigraph is “Union of Friends.”

The subject matter of these aphorisms, namely, virtue, vice, and spiritual mindedness, have long passed from the short list of popular topics in the public square, but their format is as jarring to the modern reader as the “moralistic” content. To 17th century readers, though, the proverb or “trenchant sentence” made popular in La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes (properly, Reflexions ou Sentences et Maximes Morales, 1655) were an art form and literary genre of great value. And the Maximes are a delight; who can argue with the pithy observations that “Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue,” “There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not,” and “We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end we become disguised to ourselves”? Pascal’s Pensees (1670) and Penn’s Fruits of Solitude (1693, 1702) are perhaps the best of this sort of writing, and if you acquire the taste for it, a collection of aphorisms is simultaneously challenging, edifying, and entertaining. Imagine writers of this type as genetic crosses of Plato, John Henry Newman, and Henny Youngman and you’ll have an idea of the single and joined effect of these one-liners aimed at heart and head simultaneously. Coleridge begins his Aids to Reflection (1825) with aphorism sets, which speaks both to their poetic and philosophical power, not to mention the longevity of the genre.

Having set the context of the work, we can look at the specific epigrams Ms. Rowling chose as one of her Hallows epigraphs. The first thing to note is that the sentences chosen are only half of the sentences under Penn’s heading “Union of Friends” and that they are not presented as they are in the original, either with respect to being numbered thought-arrows or in their appearance, most notably with respect to capitalization.

Here is the original “Union of Friends” section from More Fruits of Solitude:

127. They that love beyond the World, cannot be separated by it.

128. Death cannot kill, what never dies.

129. Nor can Spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their Friendship.

130. If Absence be not Death, neither is theirs.

131. Death is but Crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas; They live in one another still.

132. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is Omnipresent.

133. In this Divine Glass, they see Face to Face; and their Converse is Free, as well as Pure.

134. This is the Comfort of Friends, that though they may be said to Die, yet their Friendship and Society are, in the best Sense, ever present, because Immortal.

Before jumping into the meaning of these Quaker Pensees in themselves or in the context of Deathly Hallows, forgive me for noting some differences in this version and Ms. Rowling’s epigraph and explaining whence they may have come and why they’re worth noting. The differences:

(1) Ms. Rowling’s epigraph is sentences 131-134 of More Fruits, which four bon mots are half of the eight aphorisms under the heading “Union of Friends;”

(2) The second epigraph in Deathly Hallows is presented as a paragraph rather than individual sentences; and

(3) The capitalization of the original work has been replaced in all but words beginning sentences with lower case letters.

So what? Well, the changes may have been because these sentences are frequently quoted as examples of Penn’s best writing (the editor of the books I have cites and quotes “Union of Friends” as 1 of 2 examples to illustrate Penn’s genius — and he leaves out the sentence numbers). But eliminating the capitalization, for one, obscures to modern readers what was almost certainly Penn’s reference in writing about “Friends” crossing the Seas (131) and the Immortality of their “Society” (134). William Penn is a Quaker, which Christian sect is more formally known as “The Society of Friends.” Penn is writing a book as a Friend for other Friends in an age of religious persecution and penal transportation. “Penn’s Woods” was born as something of a Friends’ Utopia and an escape from the hardships of life in Commonwealth and Restoration England (Catholics and Protestants both thought Quakers fair game for persecution). Making “Friends” a lower case noun obscures not only the reference of the people about whom Penn is writing but the nature of their fraternity. These aren’t friends like your buddies; the bond of these Friends is well beyond casual brother-homeboy acquaintances or even partisan political or denominational religious association.

Grouping them diminishes any impact any of the individual sentences, too, and cutting out sentences 127-130 further occludes our understanding of what exactly constitutes the “Union of Friends.” We get that Friends are those “that love and live in that which is Omnipresent” (132) but we miss that these are the Friends indivisible in spirit “that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their Friendship” (129), the parallel sentence that precedes it.

Which brings us to the meat of Penn’s meaning in the original. The “Divine Principle,” “that which is Omnipresent,” that joins the Friends, and what makes them immortal and forever joined, is the “inner light” and Word of God (Logos). William Penn described the beliefs of the Society of Friends first and foremost as believers in the Divine Principle God put in men as conscience through Christ:

§ 1. That which the people called Quakers lay down as a main fundamental in religion is this— That God, through Christ, hath placed a principle in every man, to inform him of his duty, and to enable him to do it; and that those that live up to this principle are the people of God, and those that live in disobedience to it, are not God’s people, whatever name they may bear, or profession they may make of religion. This is their ancient, first, and standing testimony: with this they began, and this they bore, and do bear to the world.

§ 2. By this principle they understand something that is divine; and though in man, yet not of man, but of God; and that it came from him, and leads to him all those that will be led by it.

§ 3. There are divers ways of speaking they have been led to use, by which they declare and express what this principle is, about which I think fit to precaution the reader-viz., they call it, The light of Christ within man, or, light within, which is their ancient, and most general and familiar phrase, also the manifestation or appearance of Christ, the witness of God, the seed of God, the seed of the kingdom, wisdom, the word in the heart, the grace that appears to all men, the spirit given to every man to profit with, the truth in the inward parts, the spiritual leaven that leavens the whole lump of man: which are many of them figurative expressions, but all of them such as the Holy Ghost hath used, and which will be used in this treatise, as they are most frequently in the writings and ministry of this people. But that this variety and manner of expression may not occasion any misapprehension or confusion in the understanding of the reader, I would have him know, that they always mean by these terms or denominations, not another, but the same principle, before mentioned ; which, as I said, though it be in man, is not of man, but of God, and therefore divine: and one in itself, though diversely expressed by the holy men, according to the various manifestations and operations thereof.

§ 4. It is to this principle of Light, Life, and Grace, that this People refer all: for they say it is the great Agent in Religion; that, without which, there is no Conviction, so no Conversion, or Regeneration; and consequently no entering into the Kingdom of God. That is to say, there can be no true sight of sin, nor sorrow for it, and therefore no forsaking or overcoming of it, or Remission or Justification from it. A necessary and powerful Principle indeed, when either Sanctification nor Justification can be had without it. In short, there is no becoming virtuous, holy and good, without this Principle; no acceptance with God, nor peace of soul, but through it. But on the contrary, that the reason of so much irreligion among Christians, so much superstition, instead of Devotion, and so much profession without enjoyment, and so little Heart-reformation, is, because people in religion, overlook this Principle, and leave it behind them.

They will be religious without it, and Christians without it, though this be the only means of making them so indeed.

So natural is it to Man, in his degenerate state, to prefer sacrifice before obedience, and to make prayers go for practice, and so flatter himself with hope, by ceremonial and bodily service, to excuse himself to God from the stricter discipline of this Principle in the soul, which leads Man to take up the Cross, deny self, and do that which God requires of him: and that is every man’s true religion, and every such man is truly religious; that is, he is holy, humble, patient, meek, merciful, just, kind, and charitable; which they say, no man can make himself; but that this principle will make all men so that will embrace the convictions and teachings of it, being the root of all true religion in man, and the good seed from whence all good fruits proceed.

To sum up what they say upon the nature and virtue of it, as contents of that which follows, they declare that this principle is, first, divine; secondly, universal; thirdly, efficacious; in that it gives man, first, the knowledge of God and of himself, and therein a sight of his duty and disobedience to it. Secondly, it begets a true sense and sorrow for sin in those that seriously regard the convictions of it. Thirdly, it enables them to forsake sin, and sanctifies from it. Fourthly, it applies God’s mercies in Christ for the forgiveness of sins that are past, unto justification, upon such sincere repentance and obedience. Fifthly, it gives to the faithful, perseverance unto a perfect man, and the assurance of blessedness, world without end.

(from Primitive Christianity Revived: In the Faith and Practice of the People called Quakers, 1696?, emphasis added)

[T]heir belief and assertion is that Christ, Who is the Word that was with God, and was God, and is so forever, has enlightened every man with His own Light, as He is that True Light. And that such as follow the leadings of that Light, with which He enlightens the understandings and consciences of men, shall not walk in darkness, that is in evil and ignorance of God, but shall have the Light of Life, that is, be in a holy and living state or condition toward God—a state of acceptance and salvation, which is from sin here as well as from wrath here after, for which Christ was given of God. So that they assert the Light of Christ to be sufficient to save, that is, to convince of sin, lead out of it, and quicken the soul in the ways of holiness, and not a natural light. This Light is something else than the bare understanding man has as a rational creature, since as such, man cannot be a light to himself, but has only the capacity of seeing by means of the Light which Christ the Word enlightens him. As the sun in the firmament is the light of our bodies, so the Light of the Divine Word is the sun of our souls, and they that walk in it will by it be led to blessedness. (Section I)

Not that God looks on people to be in Christ, who are not in Christ, that is, who are not in the faith, obedience, and self-denial of Christ, nor sanctified, nor led by His Spirit, but rebel, and instead of dying to sin through true repentance, indulge themselves daily in it; for they that are in Christ become new creatures, old things are passed away, and all things become new. Wherefore we say that whatever Christ then did, both living and dying, was of great benefit to the salvation of all who have believed and now do, and who hereafter shall believe in Him. But the way to come to that faith is to receive and obey the manifestation of His Divine Light and grace in their conscience, which leads men to believe and value, and not disown or undervalue Christ as the common sacrifice and Mediator. For we do affirm that to follow this holy Light, and to turn to it, is the only way to have true living faith in Christ as He appeared in the flesh and to receive Him as sacrifice and Mediator. (Section VIII)

(from A Key: Opening the Way to Every Capacity; How to Distinguish the Religion Professed by the People Called Quakers, from the Perversions and Misrepresentations of their Adversaries; With a Brief Exhortation to All Sorts of People to Examine Their Ways, and Their Hearts, and Turn Speedily to the Lord, 1692?, emphasis added)

That’s probably more than you wanted to read about Quaker beliefs. It should, however, have revealed the context of the More Fruits of Solitude “Union of Friends” passage, most importantly, the Quaker beliefs about the Divine Principle within man as conscience. Read those eight sentences again:

127. They that love beyond the World, cannot be separated by it.

128. Death cannot kill, what never dies.

129. Nor can Spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their Friendship.

130. If Absence be not Death, neither is theirs.

131. Death is but Crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas; They live in one another still.

132. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is Omnipresent.

133. In this Divine Glass, they see Face to Face; and their Converse is Free, as well as Pure.

134. This is the Comfort of Friends, that though they may be said to Die, yet their Friendship and Society are, in the best Sense, ever present, because Immortal.

Quakers “love beyond the World” (127) in living in obedience to the Divine Principle that is the love (1 John 4:16) that creates all things (John 1:3) and which is light in every man (John 1:9) and the light of the world (John 8:12). “Death cannot kill what never dies” (128) because this Principle in which Quakers live is Life itself (John 14:6). “Nor can Spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their Friendship” (129); if you are indeed a “Friend,” you are one because you “live and love in the Divine Principle.” “If Absence be not Death, neither is theirs” (130); having been joined in the Christ within them, Friends cannot be separated by death.

“Death is but Crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas; They live in one another still” (131); the shared identity of Friends in the transpersonal self of Logos-conscience means that they they live in one another despite distances of space and time or the appearance of separation at death. “For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is Omnipresent” (132); an echo in phrasing and meaning of sentences 128 and 129, the Divine creative principle or Logos in all human beings and the stuff and substance, the reality of existence, is omnipresent and those who live in it deliberately and without compromise are necessarily always close.

“In this Divine Glass, they see Face to Face; and their Converse is Free, as well as Pure” (133); a reference to St. Paul’s mirror comment in 1 Corinthians 13:12 (For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known), Penn is referring to the Logos reflection Friends see in one another of the Divine Principle, and, in repose, of the Principle Himself. “This is the Comfort of Friends, that though they may be said to Die, yet their Friendship and Society are, in the best Sense, ever present, because Immortal” (134); the Society of Friends, a conscious incarnation of the Logos Principle with many individual members joined in conscience, believes itself as ever present and immortal as the Word in God en arche (as Principle, in principio, “in the beginning,” John 1:1).

This was one radical Christian sect, as, in truth, the Religious Society of Friends is today (if you overlook the liberal unprogrammed fundamentalists that dominate the Quaker scene and the popular understanding of Friends). The Quakers who followed George Fox and William Penn out of conventional churches in the 17th century were known as “non-conformists” because they were, to use Lewis’ language, only about “the conformity of soul to Reality” rather than obedience to religious practice and ritual divorced from communion with the inner light of conscience. They identified themselves and their inner light with the Creative and Rational Principle that became incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth.

That is Penn’s meaning as well as I can understand it in the context of Friends’ beliefs and More Fruits of Solitude. My apologies to any readers who find this sort of immersion in Quaker beliefs and the Christian scripture they offer in support of same uncomfortable or just not what you expected on a Harry Potter geek site. As an Orthodox Christian whose “sect” in many ways defines the other end of the Christian spectrum, you can be sure I do not have a proselytizing motive in acting as exegete to Penn. My ambition in laying out what Penn meant is my hope that this understanding will be helpful in understanding Deathly Hallows.

What, then, do the four sentences from Penn’s set of eight that Ms. Rowling chose as one of the Deathly Hallows epigraphs mean in the context of that book? Mirabile dictu, I’m almost certain it means there much the same thing as Penn did in More Fruits of Solitude, if obviously Ms. Rowling wasn’t writing as a Society of Friends sectarian. I’d go so far as to say that this Quaker “seeing eye” of conscience as we encounter it in Ms. Rowling’s magical sub-creation is what Dumbledore calls the “power beyond any magic.”

I have three arguments for this position: (1) Logos cosmology and conscience clears up the jumble of Deathly Hallows items Ms. Rowling has identified in interviews as “key” to understanding her novels, (2) Logos reflection as the means to God (Penn’s and Paul’s “seeing face to face” mirror imagery) is a topos or commonplace of symbolist writing, the stream of English literature in which Ms. Rowling writes, and (3) the text of Deathly Hallows, especially the eye and mirror symbolism and chapters 34 and 35, support a Logos focused interpretation of what present day beliefs and assumptions the book is trying to subvert. Deathly Hallows is as subversive a book as More Fruits of Solitude and for much the same reason.

We’ll start with Ms. Rowling’s interviews and her pointing to specific parts and passages of Deathly Hallows as important. In brief, the “key” bits are to be found in chapter 34, ‘The Forest Again,’ the scripture engraved on the Godric’s Hollow gravestones Harry and Hermione read on Christmas Eve, Dumbledore’s farewell to Harry at the non-local place he thinks of as King’s Cross, and, of course, the epigraphs that start the book.

The epigraphs: “They say it all to me. They really do”

‘Harry Potter’ Author J.K. Rowling Opens Up About Books’ Christian Imagery, Shawn Adler, Oct 17 2007

“Deathly Hallows” itself begins with two religiously themed epigraphs, one from “The Libation Bearers” by Aeschylus, which calls on the gods to “bless the children”; and one from William Penn’s “More Fruits of Solitude,” which speaks of death as but “crossing the world, as friends do the seas.” No other book in the series begins with epigraphs — a curious fact, perhaps, but one that Rowling insists served as a guiding light.

“I really enjoyed choosing those two quotations because one is pagan, of course, and one is from a Christian tradition,” Rowling said of their inclusion. “I’d known it was going to be those two passages since ‘Chamber’ was published. I always knew [that] if I could use them at the beginning of book seven then I’d cued up the ending perfectly. If they were relevant, then I went where I needed to go.

“They just say it all to me, they really do,” she added.

Grave Marker Scriptures: “They almost epitomize the whole series”

‘Harry Potter’ Author J.K. Rowling Opens Up About Books’ Christian Imagery, Shawn Adler, Oct 17 2007

But if she was worried about tipping her hand narratively in the earlier books, she clearly wasn’t by the time Harry visits his parents’ graves in Chapter 16 of “Deathly Hallows,” titled “Godric’s Hollow.” On his parents’ tombstone he reads the quote “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,” while on another tombstone (that of Dumbledore’s mother and sister) he reads, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

While Rowling said that “Hogwarts is a multifaith school,” these quotes, of course, are distinctly Christian. The second is a direct quote of Jesus from Matthew 6:19, the first from 1 Corinthians 15:26. As Hermione tells Harry shortly after he sees the graves, his parents’ message means “living beyond death. Living after death.” It is one of the central foundations of resurrection theology.

Which makes it a perfect fit for Harry, said Rowling, who was talking about those quotes for the very first time.

“They’re very British books, so on a very practical note Harry was going to find biblical quotations on tombstones,” Rowling explained. “[But] I think those two particular quotations he finds on the tombstones at Godric’s Hollow, they sum up — they almost epitomize the whole series.”

“Bible Verse Rowling says is the theme for the entire series”

J. K. Rowling: Person of the Year Runner-Up 2007, Nancy Gibbs, Time magazine, December 2007

Through it all, Rowling didn’t really fight back. Talk too much about her faith, she feared, and it would become clear who would live and who would die and who might actually do both. After six books with no mention of God or Scripture, in the last book Harry discovers on his parents’ graves a Bible verse that, Rowling says, is the theme for the entire series. It’s a passage from I Corinthians in which Paul discusses Jesus’ Resurrection: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”

Chapter 34, The Forest Again: “That’s My Favorite Passage”

“JK Rowling One-On-One: Part One.” Today Show (NBC), Meredith Vieira, 26 July 2007

MV: Overall, the loss of which character brought you to tears?

JKR: Definitely the passage that I found hardest to write of all of them in all seven books and the one that made me cry the most is Chapter 34 in this one. But that was– and that was partly because of the content-and partly because it had been planned for so long and been roughed out for so long. And to write the definitive version felt like a– a huge climax.

MV: And can you tell us what was in 34?

ROWLING: It’s when Harry sets off into the forest. Again. So that’s my favorite passage of this book. And it’s the part that when I finished writing, I didn’t cry as I was writing, but when I finished writing, I had enormous explosion of emotion and I cried and cried and cried.

“My favorite scene to write”

Kristy: What was your favorite scene to write in Deathly Hallows?

J.K. Rowling: Chapter 34: The Forest Again.

“That Chapter is the Key of All the Books”

“Ser invisible… eso sería lo más,” El Pais, Juan Cruz, 8 February 2008

Q: Talk a bit about death. In the sixth and seventh Harry Potter books, death appears no[t] just as a word or thought but as a possibility, something obvious and a reality.

A: That was always the plan, that death should appear in that way. Since he was young until Chapter 34 of the seventh book, Harry is required to be a better man in that he is obligated to accept the inevitability of his own death. The plan of the books was that he should have contact with death and with the experience of death. And it was always Harry alone who had to have that experience. It all came down to conscience, because the hero had to live these things, do things, see things on his count. It’s part of that isolation and sadness that comes with being a hero.

Q: That 34th chapter [quotation – re: Harry realizing he won’t survive] sounds like the beginning of 100 Years of Solitude by García Márquez.

A: That’s very flattering.

Q: It’s a book about death and obviously solitude, like yours… the character of 100 Years of Solitude accompanies his grandfather to see the ice and you take Harry to visit death.

A: For me, that chapter is the key of all the books. Everything, everything I have written, was thought of for that precise moment when Harry goes into the forest. That is the chapter that I had planned for 17 years. That moment is the heart of all of the books. And for me it is the last truth of the story. Even though Harry survives, of that there was no doubt, he reaches that unique and very rare state which is to accept his own death. How many people have the possibility of accepting their death before they die?

Of course it’s happening in your head, Harry: “That Dialogue is the Key”

“Ser invisible… eso sería lo más,” El Pais, Juan Cruz, 8 February 2008

Q: There’s this dialogue between Harry and Professor Dumbledore: “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”

A: And Dumbledore says: “Of course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth would that mean that is not real?” That dialogue is the key; I’ve waited seventeen years to use those lines. Yes, that’s right. All this time I’ve worked to be able to write those two phrases; writing Harry entering the forest and Harry having that dialog.

As explained elsewhere, I don’t think Ms. Rowling’s statements about what is and is not important in her books is as important as her novels are for understanding what those novels mean. She is the definitive authority for “what Ms. Rowling thinks” certainly and even “what Ms. Rowling intended” but she is only the first among equal serious readers in interpreting what her books are about. The Harry Potter novels are not Plum Pies that we Little Jack Horners de-plum with our thumbs according to exactly how many treasures Ms. Rowling believes or remembers she baked into them.

Having said that, assuming she is not drunk, senescent, or malevolent (and I think in her interviews she always seems sober, sane, and good willed), serious readers will want to think about those passages she says are especially meaningful. Even if she gives us four seemingly unrelated passages that are “the key” for understanding “all the books” (and even if she adds to this list of key passages indefinitely as she might).

Looking at the Penn epigraph — Aeschylus will have to wait for another day, alas — the Dumbledore farewell, Harry walking into ‘The Forest Again,’ and the scripture quotations, one interpretation that joins them all requires Penn’s radical vision of the conscience or Logos-mind as the human means to divinization and immortality. The epigraph itself I parsed above. Let’s move on, then, to the scripture quotations that “epitomize the whole series” and see if the epigraph key is a match with the scripture keys.

On Ariana Dumbledore’s tombstone we read, “For Where Your Treasure Is, There Your Heart Will Be Also” (Matthew 6:21). This passage and the verses that follow it would be favorites of Penn. It is about, after all, non-conformity, the eye of the heart, and the light that is in all men.

19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness…

If you see the light, eye, treasure, heart, and kingdom of the Sermon on the Mount from Penn’s Logos-conscience perspective, which is to say, that the eye is the Logos conscience that is the light of all men and the kingdom of heaven within us, we can proceed to the scripture carved into Harry’s parents’ tombstone: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26). To risk repeating myself (by repeating myself and Penn), “Death cannot kill what never dies” (More Fruits of Solitude, 128) because this Principle in which Quakers live is Life itself (John 14:6). “Nor can Spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their Friendship” (129); if you are indeed a “Friend,” you are one because you “love and live in the Divine Principle.” “If Absence be not Death, neither is theirs” (130); having been joined in the Christ within them, Friends cannot be separated by death.

The scripture passages are reconcilable with the Penn epigraph, then; how about Chapter 34, Harry’s walk into ‘The Forest Again,’ the part of Deathly Hallows Ms. Rowling says is “the key to all the books”?

The main events of ‘The Forest Again’ are Harry’s acceptance of his task, his walk from the castle and brief exchange with Neville about Nagini, his opening of the Snitch and use of the Resurrection Stone, the walk and talk with James and Lily and Sirius and Remus to Aragog’s grove in the Forest, and Harry’s sacrifice of himself in obedience to Dumbledore’s plan. My favorite part of the author’s most important chapter is its beginning and Harry’s sudden awareness of his heart, the “funeral drum” (page 692):

He felt his heart pounding fiercely in his chest. How strange that in his dread of death, it pumped all the harder, valiantly keeping him alive. But it would have to stop, and soon. Its beats were numbered. How many would there be time for, as he rose and walked through the castle for the last time, out into the grounds and into the forest? (page 691)

Even Hogwarts is likened to a giant heart, “all its remaining lifeblood… concentrated in the Great Hall” (page 694). He almost gives Neville “heart failure” (page 695). A “chilly breeze” that interrupts Harry’s brief consoling talk with the spiritual bodies (1 Corinthians 15:44-55) of his parents, Godfather, and mentor “seemed to emanate from the heart of the forest” (page 700). Before Harry reveals himself to Voldemort, his “heart was now throwing itself against his ribs as though determined to escape the body he was about to cast aside” (page 703).

Why the stacked heart imagery? I’d suggest it is because Harry is the story symbol of the “eye of the heart,” the noetic faculty of soul in the Harry-Hermione-Ron body-mind-spirit soul triptych. Which is the Logos conscience or inner Divine Principle and light that unites the Friends and is their “Comfort;” because, “though they may be said to Die, yet their Friendship and Society are, in the best Sense, ever present, because Immortal.” Harry’s comforting experience of the “cloud of witnesses” that allow him to walk “with patience the race set before” him (Hebrews 12:1) is his consoling transition to the world of Logos that is outside, beyond, within, and behind the appearances of time and space.

The consistency of Chapter 34 with Penn’s epigraph leaves only Dumbledore’s farewell to Harry at the end of ‘King’s Cross,’ Chapter 35, on our list of Ms. Rowling’s passage “keys”:

“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”

Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry’s ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?”

Forgive me, but I devote an entire chapter of The Deathly Hallows Lectures to just this question. I explore it in light of the eye and mirror symbolism of Deathly Hallows and the fascinating terrain and activity of what Harry thinks of as King’s Cross but describes repeatedly as a “palace.” My conclusion? Not to spoil it for you, but, yes, Dumbledore’s comment is consistent with a reading of the books as a story-symbol of Harry the Logos conscience or eye of the heart being purified — and ‘King’s Cross’ as his experience of the Kingdom of Heaven within him, call it “Logos land.”

In brief, the Logos conscience in our heads, because it is at least some aspect or reflection of the Divine Principle that creates all things and is the cause of their existence and “reality,” is the most real thing-not-a-thing or place-not-a-place that Harry has ever known or experienced. ‘King’s Cross’ is in Harry’s head and more real than “anything made that was made.”

Rolling through Ms. Rowling’s highlighted passages, then, the parts of her last book she has said “epitomize” or are “the most important” for understanding her work, they all can be understood in terms of the Penn epigraph and the peculiar Logos cosmology, epistemology, and soteriology specific to Penn’s Christian sect, the Society of Friends. I suppose that might have been expected, both because most things take on the qualities of the lens you look through to see them and because Rowling told us as much about the Penn and Aeschylus selections: “I always knew [that] if I could use [the epigraphs] at the beginning of book seven then I’d cued up the ending perfectly. If they were relevant, then I went where I needed to go.” How surprised should we be that chapter 34, the end of 35, and the scripture quotations resonate with Penn’s epigraph when the author says the epigraphs were selected near the story’s conception to “cue up” the ending, and the test of her having arrived where she “needed to go” with the story was the relevance of these epigraphs?

Not very surprised. But it was smart to check, right? Especially because checking out the author’s pointed hints forced us to get into the text and look at it ourselves in the context of Penn and his thoughts about the “inner light.” Please do buy The Deathly Hallows Lectures to read my exploration of ‘King’s Cross’ in the context of the eye and mirror symbolism of the text itself. Taking a cue from Ms. Rowling, I’ll say it’s my favorite part of Lectures, the chapters that I waited years to write, and I almost cried after writing them.

“Very funny, bozo. But what about English literature and the symbolist stream of writers in which Ms. Rowling is writing? You’re not seriously trying to say the author is a closet Quaker trying to win the world’s hearts for non-conformist Christianity of the late 17th Century? Are you?”

No, I’m not arguing that Harry Potter is to the Society of Friends what Ayn Rand‘s Fountain head and Atlas Shrugged are to Objectivism. Ms. Rowling isn’t trolling for disciples to her private beliefs or those of William Penn under the Invisibility Cloak of her fantasy novels.

I will, however, make the case that she is writing in the same imaginative vein as Lewis, Tolkien, Sayers, Goudge, MacDonald, and Carroll, to much the same purpose, and that these symbolists are all working ultimately from the esoteric natural theology of Samuel Taylor Coleridge — which has an awful lot in common with George Fox, William Penn, and the Inner Light theology of the Society of Friends. In chapter 5 of Lectures, ‘The Seeing Eye’ I make the Coleridge-to-Lewis-to-Rowling connection in terms of the Logos as creative rational principle and Lewis’ idea (via Barfield, MacDonald, and Coleridge) that “the universe is mental.” Not mental as Ron thinks things are “mental” (though Ron’s asking Harry if he “is mental” is meaningful…), but in terms of everything, including most especially thinking and conscience, being a “participation in the cosmic Logos” (Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis, pages 208-209).

I won’t beat that to death here lest I bore those of you who have read the book and spoil the fun ahead for you readers waiting for your Amazon copy or the autographed one from Zossima Press. I will, though, throw in a few symbolist writers’ non-conformist, seeing eye, border-line gnostic thoughts to give you a sense of the connection between Coleridge’s “primary imagination” and the Quakers’ “inner light.”

From Elizabeth Goudge, author of The Little White Horse and Green Dolphin Street, from which this passage was taken:

Was she really as useless as Marianne thought her, wondered Marguerite this morning? She thought that she was not. She knew that in the eyes of the world her life must seem a very trivial thing, just a passing of the time somehow by a woman whose first youth had passed away without her having been able to lay hands upon the blessed employment that the care of husband and children would have given her, but she knew also that what the world sees of the life of any human creature is not the real life; that life is lived in secret, a reality that moves behind the facade of appearance, like wind behind a painted curtain; only an occasional ripple of the surface, a smile, a sudden light or shadow passing on a face, surprising by its unexpectedness, gives news of something quite other than what is seen. And Marguerite believed that her real life was of value, besides being an immense joy to herself. She assured herself that the practice of the presence of God, that she had learned with self-discipline of thought and will, was not a selfish thing but something absolutely essential if one’s soul was to be of the slightest use. This faith had come to her from the book Reverend Mother had given her on the faraway day of her childhood, that she had picked up and for the first time read with attention soon after William had left the Island, a book of letters written by a barefoot Carmelite brother nearly two centuries ago. Like Brother Lawrence, she had learned by bitter experience that “useless thoughts spoil all”; she had learned to silence the chatter of self, to focus her mind in meditation, until the beauty dwelt upon became not a picture but an opening door.

From Dorothy Sayers’ correspondence (Dorothy Sayers: Her Life and Soul, Barbara Reynolds, page 188, emphasis added):

One must remember that though in one sense the Other World was a definite place, somewhere beyond the Atlantic Ocean, yet in another the kingdom of gods was within one. Earth and fairy-land co-exist upon the same foot of ground. It was all a matter of the seeing eye . . . The dweller in this world can become aware of an existence on a totally different plane. To go from earth to faery is like passing from this time to eternity; it is not a journey in space, but a change in mental outlook.

And from Lewis’ ‘The Seeing Eye,’ these surprising thoughts about religious conformity and those who listen to conscience, the power of mind “continuous with” the unity of existence:

Presently, if you are a person of a certain sort, if you are one who has to believe that all things which exist have unity it will seem to you irresistibly probable that what lies ultimately behind the one facade [of ego, i.e., conscience] also lies ultimately behind the other [facade of matter and energy]. And then — again, if you are that sort of person — you may come to be convinced that your contact with that mystery in the area you call yourself is a good deal closer than your contact through what you call matter. For in the one case, the ordinary conscious I, am continuous with the unknown depth.

And after that, you may come (some do) to believe that that voice… which speaks in your conscience and in some of your innermost joys, which is sometimes so obstinately alert, sometimes so easily silenced, and then at other times so loud and emphatic, is in fact the closest contact you have with the mystery; and therefore finally to be trusted, obeyed, feared, and desired more than all other things….

I don’t mean that all religious and all irreligious people have either taken this step or refused to take it. Once religion and its opposite are in the world — and they have both been in it for a very long time — the majority in both camps will be simply conformists. Their belief or disbelief will result from their upbringing and from the prevailing tone of the circles they live in. They will have done no hunting for God or flying for God on their own. But if no minorities who do these things on their own existed I presume that the conforming majorities would not exist either. (Don’t imagine I’m despising these majorities; I am sure the one contains better Christians than I am; the other, nobler atheists than I was.) [Compare Ms. Rowling’s “”It is perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it’s perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God,” Time, Person of Year Runner-Up 2007.]

…To some God is discoverable everywhere; to others, nowhere. Those who do not find Him on earth are unlikely to find Him in space. (Hang it all, we’re in space already; every year we go a huge circular tour in space.) [‘The Seeing Eye’ was written in response to Soviet atheist cosmonauts remarking on re-entry that they had not seen God out in space either.] But send a saint up in a spaceship and he’ll find God in space as he found God on earth. Much depends on the seeing eye.

… Indeed the expectation of finding God by astronautics would be very like trying to verify or falsify the divinity of Christ by taking specimens of His blood or dissecting Him. And in their own way they did both. But they were no wiser than before. What is required is a certain faculty of recognition.

If you do not at all know God, of course you will not recognize Him, either in Jesus or in outer space.

C. S. Lewis, Essay Collection (HarperCollins, 2002), chapter 8, ‘The Seeing Eye,’ pages 61-62, emphasis added.

This “faculty of recognition,” the means by which something seen corresponds with something in our heads, be it a mental image, a memory, or an idea, when mentioned as a means to know God in Jesus is the Logos conscience of Penn and the Quakers, the light of the body in the eye from the Sermon of the Mount, and Paul’s “glass” in 1 Corinthians in which the Logos is reflected “darkly,” but still recognized by the Logos within looking at itself in the mirror of the world. This Logos foundation of reality (the “mental universe”) and of mind or conscience is an idea found at the base of Lewis’ apologetics, his philosophical work contra naturalism, his Narnia novels (e.g., it is the “inside bigger than the outside” of the stable in The Last Battle, Chapter 13, and of Rowling’s many “inside bigger than outside” magical objects), and his social criticism (e.g., the universal moral law or Tao of The Abolition of Man). This isn’t just a “Quaker thing.”

I suggested earlier that, because I am an Orthodox Christian and because Orthodox Christianity “defines the other end of the Christian spectrum” than the Society of Friends, that these non-conformist teachings are totally different than traditional Christian beliefs. I should say that the spectrum I was referring to was a Liturgical and Credal spectrum; the Orthodox have many liturgical Mysteries and dogmas, the Society of Friends have relatively few. The ends of the spectrum may meet at certain points, however, though this may scandalize both my brethren and Quakers, as this passage from St. Gregory Palamas in which he explains the experience of St. Paul in the third heaven suggests (2 Cor 12:24):

Paul saw a light without limits below or above or to the sides; he saw no limit whatever to the light that appeared to him and shone around him, but it was like a sun infinitely brighter and vaster than the universe; and in the midst of this sun he himself stood, having become nothing but eye.

Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts, I, iii, 21 (ed., Meyendorff, vol. i, page 157), cited in The Power of the Name, Archimandrite (now Metropolitan) Kallistos, SLG Press, page 24, emphasis added.

The beliefs of the Symbolist writers after Coleridge and his hermetic Christianity are certainly unconventional and they may be even heterodox or heretical ultimately (though I would love to see the American Christian attempt to pin the gnostic tail on the Inkling donkey). These beliefs about Logos and our participation in it through conscience are, however, parallel with Penn’s understanding of conscience and the inner light, and they reflect, too, if only darkly, biblical and orthodox teachings as well.

More to the point, these esoteric and, to the devotional Christian at least, metaphysical conceptions of “the life in Christ,” non-conformist as they are, may explain Ms. Rowling’s two minds about C. S. Lewis and her frequently asserted disdain for “fundamentalism” of any kind. Lewis is a symbolist whose Logos orientation Ms. Rowling seems to share, but he also presents himself to the postmodern reader as a bedrock “conservative” who is as determined to save Narnia from the Calormenes as Tolkien was in defense of the Shire.

Rowling, in contrast, is from the “subversive” bank of the Symbolist stream of writers; she wants Harry to defeat Voldemort and save Hogwarts, true, but, that battle being won, the hostility of the Order and Dumbledore’s Army for the Ministry suggest big changes there. Colin Manlove described the subversive symbolists as those writers, unlike the Inklings, who aim “to undermine [their] reader’s assumptions and ways of seeing the world” either “for the sake of broadening our perspective on life” or “for the purpose of leading us towards God” (‘Parent or Associate?: George MacDonald and the Inklings,’ included in George MacDonald: Literary Heritage and Heirs, Zossima Press, 2008, ed., Roderick Gillis, page 235).

And what beliefs or assumptions is Ms. Rowling attempting to subvert? If anyone knows, she does. I sure don’t.

Though I am attentive to her comments about her books, my focus is on their meaning rather than guessing what she thought or thinks. The seven texts of the Harry Potter saga that we have and that are the heart of “textus primus” canon. on the other hand, suggest the core beliefs under attack are the empiricist assumptions of our age. Harry’s final question to Dumbledore in ‘King’s Cross’ is a neat statement of the dichotomy between objective reality and subjective opinion (“real or in my head?”) that is the conformist postmodern “way of seeing the world.” Dumbledore’s answer and the allegorical and anagogical meaning of Harry’s alchemical adventures as the “Seeing Eye” beneath the Invisibility Cloak both tell us that the “real” is in our heads, that the objective/subjective materialist mental dichotomy is a false dilemma, and that we make our closest contact with the “unity of existence” and God when we listen to the Word between our ears and in our hearts.

Which I’m betting is a non-conformist message William Penn would have liked.

Your comments and corrections are coveted, as always.