How cool are swords?
| I was thinking about swords and sword fights and how cool they are and, having blogged about the sword Anduril from LotR in the past, I decided some questions needed to be posed about Gryffindor's sword. For example, why does a wizard need a sword anyway? Just something to hang over the mantelpiece? I mean Mrs. Weasley chops potatoes and carrots with a wand - why the need for any cutlery at all? While thinking about the scene in the chamber of secrets when Harry slays the basilisk, thought turned to the famous scene of St. Michael about to slay the Devil and I supposed that an angel really doesn't need a sword much anyway, but the picture would look pretty stupid without it. So I thought this: maybe angels and wizards don't use sharp pieces of metal, but they might use swords. In the Letter of Jude from the New Testament, St. Jude mentions in passing, "but when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him, but said, 'The Lord rebuke you.' (1:9)" Then in Revelation it reads, "From His mouth comes a sharp sword...and on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, 'King of Kings and Lord of Lords'. (19:15a,16)" Obviously these two passages can explain the picture if the sword, being the Lord's word spoken in judgment, is St. Michael's instrument which he trusts rather than his own pronouncing of a "reviling judgment" himself. So the sword is necessary for Harry to slay the basilisk. Had he his wand I don't know if it would have helped him; the other serpent-like creatures in the series, i. e., the dragons, are fairly immune to wand attacks owing to their own ancient magic. So maybe when Tom Riddle/Voldemort identifies the sword as being "from Dumbledore's office" he says more than he realizes; Dumbledore's "office" as headmaster is inherited from Godric Gryffindor who might alone possess the authority to rebuke Slytherin in the shape of a serpent. Side note: I always thought the name "Michael" was interesting because represents a question in Hebrew, that is "Who is like God?" (Here's another cool picture of St. Mike along with a nasty multi-headed dragon.) |
Comments on "How cool are swords?"
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Merlin said ... (December 05, 2005 8:54 PM)
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Merlin said ... (December 05, 2005 9:07 PM)
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Merlin said ... (December 05, 2005 9:13 PM)
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Merlin said ... (December 05, 2005 9:17 PM)
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Merlin said ... (December 05, 2005 9:20 PM)
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Pauli said ... (December 05, 2005 11:05 PM)
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post a commentWow, great post ... really great stuff, I almost hate to post anything right now because it would push this post won the blog.
I was thinking along the lines of something that is "sharp metal" but sharp in the sense of pentrating and analogous the the religious symbolism in metal, something that visible/inconically protrudes into a matter/foe ... reminds me of the comments of another Michael, the character in Chesterton's Ball and the Cross, who says to Turnbull and McCian from his doorless cell, "I like the spike the best, the spike sticks out"
But the comments on St Michaels Sword are great and the role of the gift of the autoritative from above are great, that it is almost the fact that it is a gift from above that makes it an effective weapon ... And hence the connection with DD's office
Great Stuff!
PS - BTW, great comment on the name Michael ... yes, it is a combination of 3 elements: the word "Mi" is an interogative "who?", the preposition "Ki" means "like or as" and the word "El" is one of the names for God.
Why does a wizard need a sword? Well, for one it makes a really cool image :) I loved the choreography in the Return of the King Movie of Gandalf wielding the staff and sword ... obviously very symbolic along the lines of what we have been talking about here, but also just looked so cool ... What it made me think was an adaptation of the scene from 2 Towers where he says, "Yes, Gandalf the Grey, that is what they called me ... I am Gandalf the White," but in this version he would turn to Pippin after that scene with the sword and staff and say, "I am Gandalf the Bad-ass."
But, on Godric's sword ... I am going to hazard a guess that we might find out in book 7 that Godric new of Salizar's basilisk and that only a sword could slay it, and that he made this sword especially for this ... his true heir slaying Slytherin's Serpent.
Ok ... you make this this a little silly ... but I always loved the thing of ther names of the swords ... so when I was roofing with our friend Nate for years, I named my mighty 22 oz framing hammer I used - I named it "HamBarillis" which means (in whatever language was operating subconciously in my head) "Hammer of Brett" ... Unfortunately that particular hammer fell to sleep in the deep parts of the earth and has been replaced by "HamBarillis II"
sorry, that was supposed to be "you may think this a little silly" - I'm going to sign off for now, toss my laundry in the dryer as soon as it is done in the washer, and go to sleep - because my communicative abilites are rapidly degenerating.
LOL, I love the ads on this page, at least the ones that are up while I type this - I just noticed them ... did you engineer that? both are for swords.
Google automatically places ads by matching content. So it can be funny because sometimes the computer "makes a mistake", but I can't recall the last one. Most of them are for Harry Potter things. There are some cool "Gryffindor Sword" replicas from the Chamber of Secrets movie (here's one).