Number 4 Privet Drive: The 4th Task and the 4th Cup

-"You are dust, and to dust you shall return." - Genesis 3:19 -"He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." - Genesis 3:15 -"I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the Word of God, and for the Witness they had born." - Revelations 6:9 Introduction: In getting to ready just now to write this key post, I had a blinding insight for the general title for this minor series on the numerology and presence of the of the Number 4 in The Goblet of Fire, the center of the series as a chiastically structured whole ... where does Harry live in the world of us Muggles? Where is that blood-familial home which has been his crucible of Duldeyonic oppression but also his protection from Voldy while not at Hogwarts (in other words, the protection of a home home when he is not at his true home, in The Church, so to speak)? Why at # 4 Privet Drive, of course. The 4th Task In the post on the riddle in the middle, in the third task, I noted that Harry faces earth but answers with the answer to a riddle. But this is kind of lopsided. It is not complete until what I am convinced is the fourth task in the REAL wizard tournament. In this task, Cedric Diggory, as a Hufflepuff and representing the earth element, fulfills the curse on the race of Adam (humanity), and returns to the dust of the earth (Adamah) ... in a graveyard. But through being steeled by his role as witness (which, remember, gives Harry new prohpetic powers in that in Book 5 Harry is able to see the Thestrals), Harry is, in this fourth task, able to complete the uneven structure of the third task (overcoming earth with riddle) by overcoming Riddle through bearing witness (in Greek, Marturia) to Cedric's murder and then carrying him back to his parents to return to the dust of the earth naturally and not be defiled by Voldy. What evidence do I have for this suggestion that there is really a 4th task? Look at how Harry overcomes in the Graveyard and escapes with Cedric's body. He uses key spells that he learned specifically for the other tasks. When he makes the sacrifice of delaying his departure to retreive Cedric's body, and thus distances himself from the cup ... he must Accio the cup to himself just as he summons his broom in task 1. What curse does he throw back over his shoulder blindly that stops a death eater who is close after him? He uses Impedimenta, which he learned for task 3 because Hermione wisely noticed that it looked like a pretty good one to know. These spells proved useful in not just one task a piece, they both proved useful in THE final task. The link with the 2nd task (the middle task of the official tournament, and thus the center) is more subtley thematic and thus rests on the more literal connections with tasks 1 and 3, and so to use it to argue for the position would sort of be circular arguing. But I will just point out the thematic connection briefly: in task 2 Harry uses the earth element of a plant to beat the water element, and in task 4 he does the same. He beats Slytherin's Serpentine Heir by the acceptance/witness of death (returning to the earth). Snape: A Heel Who Wounds the Heel Now, my theory on Snape being the spider in the maze is tenuous at best as a "material prediction" ... it would be pretty crazy for it literally to be true (but I still think it possible, or at least that he has an un-registered animagus of a spider ... 'twill be my battlecry till book 7 proves me worn LOL) ... but I do think that Snape is at least symbolically a spider, and in particular the spider in the maze. If, as I have argued in the previous sub-heading, this last task is that of acceptance of returning to the ground ("coping with death" being a key Rowlingian theme), and if, as I will argue in the next sub-heading, that task is tied to a 4th cup that is the cup Christ drank in death upon the ultimate Horcrux, the tree of shame ("cursed is every-one who hangs from a tree" Galatians 3:13) ... then it would seem fitting, would it not, that he enter this last crucible wounded in the archetypal words from the curse on the serpent when it introduced death, if he enetered it, like Lewis' Ransom in That Hideous Strength, "wounded in the heel"? And Harry does enter that graveyard with ... a leg wounded by a spider bite. What does Harry think about after seeing the trials in the Penseive? He thinks about Neville's parents and Neville as an Orphan and himself as an orphan, and he concludes that it was Voldy, Voldy who broke all these family and shattered these lives and made them oprhans. But the question here is how did he do it? Through other people who were under his control. He broke the Longbottoms through the Lestranges, and he broke Harry's family with information provided by Severus Snape. And in book 5 ("coming up" from our perspective here), how is Harry kept at a disadvantage from defending himself from Voldy's legilemency? He is kept from it by a mutual prejudice that Voldy could not have planned but that he authored none the less, for he is a father of lies. Even though they are both on the right side, Harry hates Snape and Snape hates Harry. The book 5 situation is the most obvious, but really all along this mutual antipathy has been a "Stumbling Block" to Harry focussing on school matters that are important for O.W.Ls, but even more for skills needed to defeat Voldy (Hermione has had her hands full keeping him and Ron on any kind of track for this, and the boy had definitely better be practicing non-verbals before he heads off to find Voldy) ADDED AFTER ORIGINAL POSTING: There is one I almost forgot, on a practical level and directly from book 4, on how Snape is a real heel and hinderance. Had not Snapoe played his little power game with Potter outside DD's office door, it might have been possible for the headmaster to help Barty Sr. Probably not, being as Barty Jr was probably right there in the darkness waiting for Harry to split, but Harry definitely gets the impression that Snape held up a real possibility, and this impression of Snape as too caught up in his own little vendetta to the point of hindering real things definitely contributes to Harry' problems with him and distractions from studying, particularly learning Occlmency. 4 Cups Ok, I have spoken near the end of the post on chiastic structure that the cup of the Goblet finds fulfillment in the Tri-Wizard cup (on the level of the symbolism in the sport/quest - being chosen or discerned as a champion and being proved true as a champion). I have since lighted upon a 4 cup symbolism and structure. The 4 Cup Structure Before I go on to the 4 cups of Potter, let me give a brief synopsis of the Judeo Christian background. I am drawing here on material learned from classed taken from Dr Scott Hahn. He has drawn a connection between the 4 cup formula of the Jewish Caburrah (more "informal" meal ... but all meals are religious for Biblical Judaism) and Seder (more formal meal or solemnity, such as the Passover Seder) and the Eucharist. In this structure and study he starts with the question of "what was finished?" when Christ says "It is Finished." For different reasons scholars have concluded that the literal meaning cannot be "the salvific work" (this is the larger spiritual meaning). From here the observation is made that in the accounts of the institution of the last supper there is a major breach in the form of the Passover Seder they were celebrating. They made it to the 3rd cup, the "cup of blessing" (cf Paul's exhortation "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?" - 1 Corinthians 10:16) and then they sing a set of Psalms (I believe, if I remember correctly, the "little Hallel Psalms") and then they go out into the night. They don't drink the 4th cup ... major breaking - the Passover Seder cannot be complete. And He had said that he would not drink the fruit of vine again until he drank it anew with them in the kingdom of Heaven ... but then he drinks again on the cross. "To fulfill the Scripture" he says "I thirst" and is given sour wine on a sponge on a hyssop branch (the wood used to smear the blood of the lamb on the doorposts in the first Passover) ... and then he says "It is finished" and gives up His spirit (St John's Gospel 19:28-29). The work of salvation was completed and the Kingdom of Heaven ushered in by the completion of the true Passover in the drinking of the 4th and consumating cup. (Please NOTE: there is much evidence for this reading of the matter in Medeival times etc but for contemporary scholars a theory such as this is far from ubiquitously accepted) The 4 Cups of Harry Potter So, as I said in the post on chiasm, the medeival European imagination was captivated by the Eucharist, and particularly the cup of Christ in the form of the Holy Grail; and this is the literary tradition that stands behind the alchemical structure (the crucible of transformation of the soul) used by Rowling. Whether or not Rowling knows of the Judeo-Christian Tradition element of the 4 cups that make up the Passover/Eucharist is not known to me, and so I do not know how consciously she has 4 cups, but I think they are there none-the-less. I think that it is built into the very core of the tradition on which she draws. There may even be some more immediate instantiation of a 4 cup structure specifically from within Medeival literary structures, but I do not yet know of a specific one - just saying I could see it being the type of thing those buggers would do (LOL). So, what are these 4 Cups? (In order of appearance). 1. The Goblet of Fire (The cup of selection or calling to be a champion) 2. The Penseive (cup as oracle or path to understanding) 3.The Tri-wizard Trophy Cup (a "cup of blessing" of sorts) 4. The Final Cup of Pain in the Graveyard (whose form I will discuss below) The 4th Cup Here I'll briefly note that the 4 cups and the 4 tasks inter-penetrate each other. As far as the interpenetration of the tasks with the general imagery of cups and wine (the 4th cup being one of sour wine) ... simply notice what Harry's wand produces in the weighing of the wands: "a fountain of wine." (GOF 311 ... of course Harry's wand is very central to the story, for it was used to conjur the dark mark at the World Cup, and this is the first place we see Priori Incantatem, used to reveal this fact, and a foreshadowing of the key chapter that contains the 4th Cup). But for here I will simply note that the 3rd task is closely tied to the 3rd cup, since it contains it. But it also contains the literay reversal I'll name in short order here. The 3rd task/cup is that of blessing and in it Harry overcomes Earth by answering a riddle (and then fighting the answer, yielding the wounded leg/heel). In the 4th task/Cup this is reversed and fulfilled in that Harry overcomes (Tom) Riddle by the toughness rought, as in a forge, by bearing witness to Cedric's "return to the earth" ... that and some help. So, who helps him? Thus far I have stated only that I believe the graveyard represents a 4th cup - and here I will say that the dome of Phoenix song that surrounds Harry and Voldy is, in a sense (of physical symbolism), an inverted cup. And what is it that makes me think so much that, whether consciously or subconciously for Rowling, there is no noubt that this cup is the cup of the Eucharist that so captured the imagination of medeival Europe that is the source of her imagery, that it is indeed the fourth cup of the true Passover Seder? Who is in it? ... The Martyrs that stand beneath the altar of sacrifice in Revelations 6:9 - Cedric Diggory, Bertha Jorkins, Frank Bryce and Lily and James Potter. And like "so great a cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1 - the word marturia/martyr literally meaning "witness"), this communion of martyred saints helps Harry in the crucible of the 4th cup.