(no subject)

[malsperanza]

idlerat has a nice post on Slytherin and its connections to alchemy and the 4 humors. Which as usual has set me off on a symbolchase.



Symbolchase
On the subject of the 4 Humors and that whole thang, bile comes in 3 kinds: yellow, black, and green. A melancholy nature, heavy and dark, is caused by too much black bile, and choler is associated with yellow bile. But there is a lighter sort of melancholy too, and that is green (cf Shakespeare: "she pined in thought,/ and with a green and yellow melancholy/ she sat like patience on a monument,/ smiling at grief," 12th Night, II.iv).

To be honest, I don't quite see how all the various connections of water, greenness, tempers, etc. fit together. Similarly, I get that Gryffindor, red and gold, is the House associated with the final stage of the Great Work, in which metal becomes gold (gold, associated with the Sun, was considered to be red by the medievals). It is also associated with the Humor called Blood or a Sanguine temper, and with fire.

Sometimes I think JKR has read the alchemists with care and worked it all out properly, and sometimes I think she just sketched a set of basic connections (identified by John Granger), and then threw in various bits randomly.

But we should probably add the Green Knight and the Black Knight and all them folks from the medieval meditative pomes to the mix of Slytherin symbols. For one thing, JKR knows her Arthurians, and her early English lit. For another, well, it does kind of jump out.

IIRC the Green Knight is kinda sorta evil, but not exackly, and a shape-shifter or trickster character. He's associated too with the Green Man, the wild man who represents untamed nature. I don't know if any of that has much bearing on Slytherin, though the snake as primeval Nature figure is certainly there.

It's possible that the newly 3-D Draco (Mr Serpent himself), is an avatar of the Green Knight, whose role in vol 7 will be to challenge Sir Gawain Harry and test his virtue. Works for me.

I'm beginning to see the shape of the alchemical process in HP more clearly now. The Opus Magnum, the transformation of base metal into the gold of the Philosopher's Stone, which conveys eternal life and/or spiritual immortality, occurs in 4 parts, each assigned a color. There are a million different versions of the order of the stages, but the usual basic order is: Opus Citrinitas (yellow): solution or distillation; Opus Nigredo (black): putrefaction and disintegration; Opus Albedo (white): purification; Opus Rubedo (red): transformation, rebirth.

In JKR's version of the alchemical Work, each stage is concluded with a death. I'm not sure how it breaks down, but one possibility is this:

Vol 1 is before the Great Work begins. The apprentice alchemist initiates his training.

Citrinitas, the first stage, solution or calcination or distillation, is the period of training. It is roughly vols 2, 3, and part of GOF, culminating in the death of ... well, Cedric, who is not in himself terribly important, but his death is the first death of an innocent, and marks a moment of passage for Harry.

The Black Work, dissolution and putrefaction, is introduced in POA with the arrival of Sirius and the downward, darkward turning of the narrative (Dementors being putrid, rotting creatures) but really takes place in GOF and especially in OOP, including the descent into the Underworld (the basement of the Ministry of Magic), into putrefaction and disintegration, and culminating in the death of Sirius Black.

HBP was the Opus Albedo, the White Work of purification: at its end, Albus is dead and Harry is declared to be "pure of heart" (though Albus declares that he always was, but whatever). The alchemist, no longer an apprentice, is prepared for the final stage of transmutation into gold.

Vol 7 will be the final stage of the Great Work, which is the Rubedo. To my chagrin, I fear this means that Rubeus Hagrid, whom I find tiresome, will be an important figure in the final vol. OTOH, hopefully he will die tragically.

JKR was clever to assign her 4 Houses colors that don't align perfectly with those associated with either alchemy or the 4 Humors. Blue doesn't appear in either system, and green only sometimes appears in alchemy as a substitute for yellow. I think she did that partly so as not to be too schematic or obvious (and so as not to be forced to stick rigidly to the traditional schemas of these systems), and partly because she is inventing her own schema, in which, for example, Slytherin-snakes-water-green-wisdom-cunning and Darkness all are grouped together.

* * *

About those star names...

The women with star names (Andromeda, Bellatrix) do all, so far, seem to belong to the Black family, except Merope Gaunt, perhaps. And some of the men (Sirius and Regulus). But there are wizards with star or constellation names who are not Blacks, though they do seem to be all Dark. E.g., Rastaban Lestrange, whose name refers to one of the stars in Draco. And Draco, of course, isn't only a Snake, but the constellation Draco.

I wonder about those stars and constellations. They echo the alchemical reference to the 7 planets. And Granger and others have identified a series of characters aligned with, or representing, some of these planets, and their associated metals:

Hermione: Mercury (Mercury), because Mercury is Hermes (and Hermes Trismegistus, the Greek god, is the founder or discoverer of alchemy, and Hermes Thricepowerful is also linked to Thoth, the Egyptian god who invented writing and is the patron of books and texts.)

Luna: Silver (Moon)

Ron: Copper (Venus), because of his red hair. But since HBP, I think we may wish to reassign this metal to Ginny, whose hair is also red, and who is obviously now linked with Venus. But.

OTOH, Ginny is Ginevra, another name for Juniper, and JKR likes to make puns out of slightly transposed names, which suggests that Ginevra is perhaps Jupiter. I'm just sayin.

Not yet identified:

Iron (Mars)
Lead (Saturn)
Tin (Jupiter) (Ginny?)
Gold (Sun)

I think we must assume that Gold is reserved for Harry himself.

I remain partial to the idea that Gold and Silver are paired, and that Harry, in the end, will not succumb to the appeal of Venus, but will instead find a partner in the Moon Goddess, Artemis, the huntress (also, btw, a fertility goddess).

Ron must be one of the others, and I am going with Iron, mainly because Mars is red, and Ron has red hair and is a Gryffindor, and because he seems to be shaping up to be Harry's military lieutenant in the coming war, and I think the role of Iron-man will suit him.

Neville may be another--perhaps connected to slow, time-bound Saturn. Tin/Jupiter is associated with lightning, which, if it isn't Ginny, suggests either Harry or Voldemort himself... which is bloody confusing.

These main characters are planets. To make this work well, and to justify naming Draco, I suspect that JKR began to build in these other star and constellation names for various minor (and not always nice) characters. It may be no more than that.

* * *
Oho!

And speaking of names, the penchant of wizards to name their daughters after flowers and plants is much more interesting than merely the connection of mysterious Petunia to Lily, Daisy, Fleur, Violet, Pansy, Lavender, and all those others. (All of which should have told us that Blaise was probably not a girl, btw.)

From the Odyssey, Book X, the Isle of Circe. Odysseus is speaking:

When I got through the charmed grove, and was near the great house of the enchantress Circe, I met Mercury [Hermes] ... [who said,] 'I will protect you and get you out of your difficulty. Take this herb, which is one of great virtue, and keep it about you when you go to Circe's house, it will be a talisman to you against every kind of mischief.

'And I will tell you of all the wicked witchcraft that Circe will try to practise upon you. She will mix a mess for you to drink, and she will drug the meal with which she makes it, but she will not be able to charm you, for the virtue of the herb that I shall give you will prevent her spells from working. I will tell you all about it. ...'

As he spoke he pulled the herb out of the ground an showed me what it was like. The root was black, while the flower was as white as milk; the gods call it Moly, and mortal men cannot uproot it, but the gods can do whatever they like. " (trans Samuel Butler)

Well! Moly is a flower with a black root and white blossoms, given to Odysseus by Hermes as a counter charm against the spells of the witch Circe (a shapeshifter who had a nasty tendency to turn her lovers into swine and other animals).

Go JKR!