Silver and Gold: Metal and Meaning in HP

Prelude I have a couple of posts I am trying to work in in the midst of other things, stuff that is a little dated for me (observations that came to mind while reading the previous Potter books, and which I have talked about with others, but since this is a new venue I would like to try to get them out and, you know, on the record). The Golden Rule I think there is something very significant of the Judeo-Christian Tradition in the Potter books in the fact that the wizarding community uses gold as it's currency. Of course, gold itself is already very central to the meaning of the book. John Granger notes that gold is the desired result in Alchemy as a science and the golden soul is the same for Alchemy as a symbol of a spiritual discipline. This symbolism works its way down through even to sports: Harry is a seeker, which is to say that He seeks the golden snitch and symbolically seeks to be the golden soul of alchemy. Ginny finally finds her heart's desire to be with Harry, when? Right after she wins the game by catching the golden snitch in Half Blood Prince. There is a very rich heritage to this use of gold, however, that goes much further back than medieval Christian Alchemy. In Judaism and early Christianity there is a marked difference between Gold and Silver. Silver is the currency of the mundane, the political, the secular. This is not to say it is intrinsically bad ... but it is not for sacred use, as gold is. The sacred is the counterpart to the secular. There is a confusion that exists for some contemporary Christians, in which it is thought that "secular" is the opposite of "Christian (due in large part to the heresy of Secularism). In truth, the secular is really simply the lower counterpart to the sacred. There is a hierarchy in which the sacred is higher, but the secular can still be very good when informed by and ordered towards fulfillment of the sacred. The heresy of Secularism arises only when the secular is set up as the highest ideal or defining, and indeed only, characteristic of reality. Kespeh and Zahav (Silver and Gold) The Hebrew word for gold is "zahav" (on the soundtrack for Schindler's List there is a choral track called "Yerushalaihim chel Zahav": Jerusalem of Gold). The Hebrew word for silver is "Kespeh" and is usually the term used when speaking of common money. Here are some examples of the way the two metals are used in the Bible: 1. The furniture in the Desert Tabernacle and in the Temple Solomon built are covered in gold (by order from Yahweh). This gold is sacred: In the Gospels Christ tells the Pharisees that they should not swear by the "gold of the Temple." Swearing is a sacred action, an action of vowing by something associated with a god (the fact that oaths involve sacred-use items and an appeal to a god is a tenet of classical paganism as well ... it is only in modern times that we have, on a large scale, made the mistake of equating oaths and promises). 2. Some scholars (such as Gordon J. Wenham, who teaches at Oxford) note that the reference in Genesis 2 to the "good gold" of the land is a reference to later sanctuary imagery in the Pentateuch and historical writing of the Old Testament. The end result of this fact is that it is seen that in creating the world Yahweh was creating a sacred space for His sacred relationship with humanity. 3. By contrast: what does Judas betray Christ in exchange for? 30 pieces of silver. The point of this fact is much deeper in the original setting of 1st century Jewish Christianity. We moderns tend to think the main point is that he betrayed for money because he was greedy. This is bad enough on its own, but the symbolism goes deeper and more of the meaning of Judas' role is revealed. Silver is the money of the mundane, the merely political. In other words, there is something "crass" in the action. Some scholars speculate that part of Judas' motivation may have not been "greed" as we think of it. It may have been politics. Judas was supposedly a zealot, a group who had a very distinct concept of the Messiah as a political savior, as one whose main "task" would be to free Judea on the political level. Thus Judas betrayed as a way to force Jesus' hand, so to speak, and coerce him to "step up" and be the type of messiah the zealots thought he should be, a primarily political messiah. That is the sort of "crassness" I mean - when you have a chance to encounter something truly sublime but all you do is set your sights on mere political power. That is what it is to pursue silver rather than gold. He did betray for money, but the type of money is very symbolic too (in fact, it was the common price for a slave ... slavery being when the sacredness of a human person is degraded and treated as merely secular, like the commercial value of a cow) Harry Potter The main point or theory I would put forth here is that I think that for Rowling, "Magic" has something to do with the sacred, something beyond mere material existence. Muggles like the Dursley's are all-too proficient at dealing with material existence. Mr Dursley (especially as a drill salesman) is the epitome of Muggle pragmatism. The wizarding world is about something beyond this. It is about imagination as the power to make contact with something sacred, something that gives us a hint at a larger world that is the real meaning to the world of our mundane existence. (Note: this is officially one of my own personal theories - that the closest thing that can be found to what Rowling is symbolizing by "good magic" is the proper and healthy use of the imagination) It is about "imagination" in the sense that the Greek Orthodox think about Iconography (In summarizing the tenets of the tradition of symbolist literature which Rowling is following in, John Granger draws heavily on a website of theoretical literary/Theological explication of the system by which Greek Orthodox delineate the progressive levels of symbolism in their thought on Iconography. The line of progression they use has 7 levels, the first 4 being a progression of symbol types within the realm of "natural art" and the last 3 being progressions of symbol types within "supernatural iconography" ) The word "imagination" itself comes from the word "image;" and in turn "image" is the Latin word usually used to translate the Greek word "Eikos/n." When shortened by dropping the "e" on the front (as happens in translation and transliteration form Greek to English) the Greek "Eikon" becomes the word "Icon." This may seem like semantics (in a negative sense ... but actually it is semantics in the proper meaning of the word: semantics is simply one domain in linguistic studies, the domain of dealing with the meanings of words). It is, however, really much of the theory that is behind the literary tradition on which Rowling is drawing (and which I suspect she is, like Tolkien and Lewis, immersed in and in love with). For a long time powerful art was tied to religion (like Dante's Divine Comedy, Caravaggio's Crucifixion paintings, and Bach's and Mozart's Masses). The thinking of artists was informed by these systems; and when an artist like Rowling contemplates the artistic tradition of the past she "soaks up" these ways of thinking that are embedded that artistic tradition. Conclusion I am not saying that Rowling necessarily knows of the different tone Judaic and early Christian languages had towards gold and silver or that she is consciously appealing to this (although she may; by all reports she is actually a well-studied woman). Her exposure may be mainly to the medieval alchemical use of gold as symbolic. My point is that, at what ever point she is drawing on in that tradition, the tradition is consistent within itself and her usage is consistent with the tradition. The wonderful thing about truly good wizards is that they have a certain respect for the muggle world, for the conventions of the mundane (or, by my interpretation, secular) and understand that those thing can be truly fascinating when they occupy their proper place in the hierarchy. Arthur Weasley is much more interested in the world of the Dursley's than they are in his world ... Simply look at how fascinated Weasley is at the conventions and exchanges of muggle money Harry uses at the station on the way to his trial in Order of the Phoenix.