Question: How does Fawkes “Apparate” Inside Hogwarts?

December 31, 2006 by 8 Comments

Thoughtful Question from a Hogwarts Professor season-ticket holder:

John,

Not sure where I could’ve asked this question, but I do have one. Have you done any writing on how Fawkes the Phoenix can “apparate” inside Hogwarts? What is it about Fawkes, and Dumbledore, that seem to transcend the “normal” rules for such things? I’m thinking here in reference to Dumbledore being able to become invisible without a cloak. Appreciate any insight.

Dn Kevin

I have a pretty involved answer about the special abilities of the Headmaster and his familiar but I hope someone has a clear and direct answer before I unload my suspicions and try way too hard to get at Dn Kevin’s question.

An official HogPro Best-Guess Prize will be emailed express to the Associate Hogwarts Professor who writes the most cogent response to this fascinating question.

Filed Under: Unlocking Harry Potter

Reflections on the Death of Saddam and the Dark Lord’s Blindspot

December 31, 2006 by 3 Comments

Saddam Hussein was hanged at year’s end, 2006, and, though this gives me no satisfaction or reason by itself to cheer in the New Year, I have not lost any sleep over the execution, either. Those who want to see historical analogies hidden in the Harry Potter stories – and they are legion, I’m afraid – most often make the equation of Lord Voldemort and Adolph Hitler (with Cornelius Fudge and bowler hat playing Neville Chamberlain, Dumbledore and the Order standing in for Churchill and the gang, etc.). I have also heard mention that, though it wasn’t possible at story’s inception, the Dark Lord seems to be picking up characteristics of America’s favorite, mysterious bad guys; I have heard both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein mentioned in this regard.

An article at Arthur Silber’s Sacred Moment weBlog that attempts to explain the origin of Saddam’s “malignant narcissism” mentions bin Laden and Hitler, too, struck me as relevant to our discussions here because of the following passages: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Literary Alchemy

Euro Muslims: Alienated “Other” and Pained “Hermaphrodites”?

December 29, 2006 by 1 Comment


European Minorities Torn Between Worlds

I post the story above in case you sometimes wonder if the discussion in the previous posts about the “Constitutive ‘Other'” in postmodern thinking is just a head game or if the idea of a Gryffindor/Slytherin Hermaphrodite who can bridge the chasm created by cultural metanarratives is silly beyond words. The agony of “home grown” Muslims in Europe unable to assimilate because of their beliefs and the beliefs of their host countries puts a “real life” face on this discussion and highlights both the relevance and the urgency of a “metanarrative of love.”

I would say, too, that this theme of painful duality needing resolution strikes home in our hearts both because we are all the victims of faction or “misfit toys” to some degree and because, as psychosomatic life, just by being human, we are a joining of contrary physical and spiritual tendencies. Our outsides and our insides, the external social environment and our interior life, then, resonate with the alchemical action of this story.

This isn’t kid stuff, however edifying the experience of this story is for the open-hearted, young or old

Filed Under: Literary Alchemy, Postmodern Polly

Dragon’s Blood and Elixir from the Philosopher’s Stone

December 29, 2006 by 12 Comments

A note from Lyndy Abraham’s A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, from the end of the entry on ‘blood:’

At the final stage of the work, known as the rubedo, the image of blood symbolizes the precious red elixir or purple tincture [coming from the Stone]. The attainment of the red elixir (gold), after the white (silver), is sometimes compared to the dyeing or staining of of white sheets with red blood (see rubedo). Paracelsus’s Aurora called the purple tincture ‘the blessed blood of Rosie colour’ and Basil Valentine wrote that ‘this Tincture is the Rose of our Masters, of purple hue, called also red blood’ (HM, 1:330). Laurentius Ventura wrote of the fixation of the Stone: ‘For the Stone must be kept in the fire, till it cannot any more be changed from one nature to another, from one color to another, but become like the Reddest blood running like wax in the fire, and yet diminishing nothing at all’ (in ZC, 81). The divine tincture is thought to be capable of tingeing all metals to gold and of restoring man to perfect health and consciousness of God.

The colour of the red tincture or Stone is sometimes compared to dragon’s blood. A recipe for the tincture in Lancelot Colson’s Philosophia maturata instructs the alchemist to ‘increase the fire, till it [the matter for the Stone] be perfect yellow, and then again increase the fire, until it be red as Dragon’s blood’. (Abraham, pgs. 38-39)

* The heating of the Stone in the fire reminds me of Norbert’s egg in Hagrid’s fireplace but I cannot make anything of that beyond Hagrid’s relationship with Dumbledore, master Alchemist, and the Gamekeeper’s strong desire for a pet dragon. The end and the beginning are joined in the best stories; should we expect a return of Norbert to visit his “mummy” in the series’ finale?

* Dumbledore’s chocolate frog card, to which he seems attached over and above his other honors, says he is “particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindlewald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon’s blood, and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicholas Flamel” (Stone, Chapter 6).

*My memory for canon detail is notoriously poor but I can only recall one other mention of dragon’s blood in the books. It’s in Prince, Chapter 4, after Dumbledore has revealed the comfy chair to be Slughorn. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Literary Alchemy

The Five Keys & What Makes a Book “Great”

December 29, 2006 by 1 Comment

Eeyore (Pat) wrote after reading my post below on “Postmodernism, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Harry Potter” that:

I understand your point about her being post modern — it makes sense that she is a writer of her times — which is also why it’s always made sense to me that much of the imagery is Christian, because she IS a Christian. I think it would be very difficult for a writer to not let their beliefs or their era influence their writing.

So, how does this all fit in with the Christian message that so many of us see? I’ve thought since HBP that she is not necessarily intending the books to have a Christian, or even religious, point, but that it is there, nonetheless.

I’ll try to answer the question of how Harry Potter can be simultaneously postmodern and Christian by discussing what it means to be a “Great Book” and how the “five keys for the serious reader” work together, to include the keys of Postmodern themes and Traditional Symbolism. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Postmodern Polly, The Five Keys: Essential Patterns, Unlocking Harry Potter