Umbridge's Shadow

I was listening recently to the part in book 5 where Umbridge puts Trelawney on Probation. I believe I have gone through some of these ideas in posts long gone by, but I'll repeat here because this is a more clear idea of them and based in some specifics of book 5. What is in a Name Before I go to the specifics of book 5, I want to note something about Umbridge's name and Biblical typology and prophecy. Really, in the Biblical way of seeing things, typology is what real prophecy is all about - the fulfillment of Old Testament Prophecies in New Testament Realities is based not in the mere physical details, but in the typological "making full" of the symbolsic connections. St. Ambrose was one of what are refered to as "The Mystogogical Fathers," Fathers of the early Church who focussed not only on the typological fulfillment of the Old Testament in the New, but on the living out of that typological reality in the Sacraments of the Church. Ambrose in particular had a very broad and richly developed vocabulary regarding this typology. One of the terms he specifially made us of was the term for "shadow" ... which is (you guessed it) "Umbra." Prophecy as Forth-telling, not Fore-Telling Umbridge asks Trelawney to predict something, anyhing. This is a very materialist outlook. The thing is, in true prohpecy (as I am purporting Rowling sees it, in line with the definition my one professor, Dr. Hahn, has given of it - primarily "forth-telling," not fore-telling) you cannot predict in a vacuum, you cannot simply predict "something." You always have to have a specific situation to look into and understand the inner working of what is going on it, the real essence of the thing, in order to "predict" how history is going to "rhyme" (going back to Dr Hahn's favorite Mark Twain quote: "History does not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme"). The True Seer Although undoubtedly not in the way she meant, Umbridge gets her demand fulfilled and becomes herself the subject of prophecy by a true seer, or seers - the centaurs. Her "shadow" or umbrage is fulfilled in a prophetic revelation of her true nature. The whole way along Ron and Hermione, and basically all of the students accept Malfoy's gang, have been decrying what a nutter Umbridge is. When she comes face to face with the true seers of the woods, her luncacy is revealed for what it has been all along. The true diviners force her into a more realistic, or full, actualization of the craziness she already embodies and she winds up batty in the hospital wing. Back to the "Normal," Back to the Nut-house You might ask why we then see Umbridge again in book 6 at Dumbledore's funeral, back at her job with the ministry, if she has been revealed to be a nut case. That is the point, she was already a fruit-cake all along, and those with "eyes to see" saw that ... and those like Fudge thought her lunacy to be wisdom. Unfortunately Scrimgeour, although a bit less of an idiot, is unfortunately pretty much the type of bureaucrat who, while not being so buddy-buddy with her, still thinks her relatively safe and sane.