The Holy Grail of Holy Grail Sites

When I arrived there, this is what I read: "Blessed reader, you've done it. You've just stumbled across the Holy Grail of blogs." Christopher Bailey and Mike Aquilina started this blog to help promote their book of the same name. But this site is more than just a blog - it's a virtual library of Grail Lore. Going to the Scriptorium Link takes the reader to a great resource page, some of the links go to online documents, others point to books. The most poetic work linked from the site is probably the "Alliterative Morte Arthure" on the University of Rochester Library page. Written in middle-English, translations are provided in the right margin (wisse=teach, warp = utter). I love the beginning: Here beginnes Morte Arthure. In Nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen pur Charite. Amen. Now grete glorious God through grace of Himselven And the precious prayer of his pris Moder Sheld us fro shamesdeede and sinful workes And give us grace to guie and govern us here In this wretched world, through virtuous living That we may kaire til his court, the kingdom of heven When our soules shall part and sunder fro the body Ever to beld and to bide in bliss with Himselven; And wisse me to warp out some word at this time That nother void be ne vain but worship til Himselven Plesand and profitable to the pople that them heres. There an English translation of "Quest of the Holy Grail" on the site also. I have no doubt that our Merlin will be spending some time over yonder. I'll be banging some coconuts alongside him, no doubt.

Language Stuff

I really dig language stuff, in case you hadn't guessed. So here are a few recent pop-ups. 1. Dementors: I was just working on some article or another, rewriting some sentence or other with the word "demonstrate" and few synapses went off cause it sounds like "dementors" but the "de" functions very differently. To demonstrate something is to show how it works etc which is congruous with the original meaning of "monstr-" verb in Larin, so the the "De" is positive there. Whereas in "dementor" it is negative, like DE-boning a fish. Mens/Mentis is the word for mind, so a de-mentor is one who rips out your mind, your memory, your soul. 2. Avada Kedavra: I was recently trying to get back in the habit of brushing up on Hebrew and Greek and so was perusing the glossary I photocopied out of my first year Hebrew Grammar book ... one of the first words is the verb - "Avad" which means to die. Hebrew has a number of stems with different functions, one of which is the Hiphil stem which translates as causative - so in the Hiphil stem AVAD means to kill (to cause to die). Now, I don't suspect Rowling is proficient in Hebrew, and may have no familiarity with it at all ... I'm guessing it's mainly Greek and Latin for her because those are the one studied in Classics programs. But there are some words which "inherit" between languages ... obviously there are a lot that pass from Greek to Latin and from Latin to the Romance languages (French especially) ... but there are also a few that have been passed down from Hebrew, even all the way to English (ie thus passing through both Greek and Latin) ... the most common is the word "Amen," which in Hebrew would be pronounced "Amein." But there is at least one other that I know of, which is the word "cinnamon." So I'm wondering if this word for dying and killing made it down into some folk-lore story in Greek or Latin or Slav or something like that and Rowling picked it up there ... would be kind of cool

The Final Pedagogue

Well, I am about in chapter 11 of listening to Half Blood Prince right now, but just before this book I listened to Prisoner of Azkaban. There are several things I have to go back and look at in the paper version to write about that I noticed when listening to that part, but for this post there is one biggy. I am more convinced than ever, after listening to the end of POA, that Harry will be the 7th and final DADA teacher. I should explain what I mean by being "convinced" and why I do not think that, whatever happens in book 7, I will be proved wrong. Whatever Rowling already has written in the final chapter sitting in her safe at home and whatever elements will be revealed in book 7 are still a mystery. As I have said before, from my experience of the works thus far I trust her that whatever direction she takes things will be good and that if she does not have Harry be the 7th DADA teacher, there will be revelations and introductions of elements that make it make complete sense along a new (or formerly hidden) line of logic that is completely consistent with the story as we have had it so far ... and a completely exciting read. BUT as for the story logic as it has unfurled thus far: the undeniable conclusion seems to me to be that Harry will be the 7th and final DADA teacher. Ex Cathedra Here is the bit I discovered in this my second complete experience of POA. When Harry speaks with Lupin in his office at the end, as Lupin is leaving, having resigned, Dumbledore comes in. Dumbledore and Harry speak more after Lupin leaves (which is the stuff I have yet to go back and refresh on from the paper version and write on), but before they do, Harry sits down in Lupin's "now vacant" chair, ie the chair behind the desk which was his as DADA teacher. For me as a Catholic there is the obvious connection between a chair and teaching authority in the fact that the Pope has authority to teach "Ex Cathedra," or "from the chair of Peter." But even for broader contemporary Christendom that is not as particularly aware of that particular "throne of teaching" image/office I think that the connection between a chair/seat and teaching permeates our collective subconscious (to borrow language from some post-modern literary critic/philosopher - Foucault, I think, but I can't remember for sure). Within Christianity in particular we have Christ's instruction in the Gospel that the Jews not do as the Pharisees do but that they do, for the time being at least, follow the teaching authority of the Pharisees, for they "sit in the chair of Moses." (Matthew 23:2). But even on a broader scale in our culture you have references to things such as the "seat of wisdom," or for instance people discuss the differences between Hebraic thought and modern thought by noting that for moderns the heart is the source of emotion, whereas for Hebraic thought the "gut" (literally bowels) is the "seat of the emotions." The Evidence When this is combined with the other evidence, I think it it is overwhelmingly in favor of 'Arry as the heir to that particular throne (I'm not entirely convinced of the concreteness of Granger's analysis as Harry's name as a cockney-accented "pun" meaning "heir of the potter," ie "Son of God," although what I mean by saying that is that I buy it but think it may be more latent/implicit and less solidified than Granger draws it out ... but for my purposes here the pun on "heir" fits too well not to borrow it shamelessly. :) ) We know, especially after what is revealed in book 6 about Voldy seeking the DADA post and it being cursed ever after he is denied it, that the DADA position is a major arc element in the plot of the series. Granger has noted (in his books) the great discovery made by fans that Snape's potions riddle in book 1, the outset of the series, is a riddle about the 7 DADA teachers. Out of the 6 teachers we have seen thus far, only 1 has been a truly good teacher: Lupin. Quirrel and Barty Jr were both in the employ of Voldy; Lockhart and Umbridge were both not only nitwits, but menacing nitwits; and while I believe Snape to be a "white hat" and also one of the most competent wizards around, his antipathy towards Harry often stands in the way of his teaching effectively and has even placed him in question of materially contributing to great evils (I am thinking of book 4 when Harry and Krum find Barty Crouch Sr in the woods mad in the head and Harry runs up to the castle to get Dumbledore - I don't think at that point anything could have saved BC Sr from his own son, but the delay caused by Snape's antagonism towards Harry in not letting him into Dumbledore's office does not put the potions master's case in good stead.) Only Lupin has been truly competent at actual defence, competent at teaching it well AND completely charitable - all together at once. When you combine these considerations with Harry's experience in teaching Dumbledore's Army and the brilliant chiastic theory Pauli put forth about the DADA position with Quirrel having Voldy on the back of his head in book 1 and Harry probably being revealed to have Voldy on the front of his head in book 7 (keeping in mind what I was saying about Harry's resonant recognition of Riddle's name even before he had actually heard who Riddle was, in Chamber of Secrets)... the evidence (at least, as I said, in what has been revealed in the series thus far) seems to me to be over-whelming: Harry is the heir-apparent to Lupin's throne as the truly good DADA teacher and the true culmination not only of his own personal story arc but of the DADA story arc at the same time. The Meaning Especially given Rowling's profession before beginning writing the HP series, it is obvious that pedagogy is, for her, an almost sacred role in the human family. It is not simply the giving of dead facts but the living formation of human lives at a most impressionable age. We see this still obscurely evident in the title "professor." In the ancient world "professionals" were those whose role in society was so fundamental on a deeper level that they took or professed an oath of office, they called on the name of the god/s imploring divine help to fulfill their heavy responsibility. I have already discussed someplace how there is a juxtaposition between the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts. In book one, at the outset of the series, Hargid relates that many wanted Dumbledore to be minister of magic, but he chose the path of pedagogy instead. The crowning arc of both the development of the DADA postition sub-plot and the plot of Harry's development as a person/wizard is that he become not an auror, but a teacher. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it until I get proven wrong. :)

Horcruxes and the Invisibility Cloak as an Image of Fluidity and Fabric

Pauli and JKR2 were having a really interesting discussion in the comments on the post where I said that I think there is evidence in Chamber of Secrets that the scar is a Horcrux. I was just going to continue in the comments - but our recents posts have been sparse and I also thought this warranted an actual post. They were comparing 2 images of the soul and how they fit Rowling's development of the soul in the Horcrux image/thought - the 2 images were fluid and fabric. JKR2 was asking if the image of fluid being poured into different containers seemed an adequate one for the Horcrux thing and Pauli was saying that it is more like fabric being torn. My take is that (in the Potterverse ... and in my own world) fluid is the image for the soul as it should be when it is whole: alive and moving and fluid - but when you begin to try to split the soul you move into the image of the violence of fabric being torn. Interestingly this harkens back to other discussions we have had on Horcruxes, particularly in regards to Potions as a form of magic. Potions is a "cruxing magic" - a magic of combining certain elements, and my thought of one of the hints that Sectum Sempra may be connected to Horcruxing (as Pauli originally brilliantly lighted upon as a theory) is that potions is such a possibly dangerous form of magic but that it seems that the Sectum Sempra spell would work very well in it when you want certain ingredients to be together in a potion but remain separate (maybe they need to remain separate because you want them to continually play off each other but never combine). I contrasted the exacting "scientific mathematical" thought of potions making (much like precision in cutting fabric) with the fluidity of charms, noting the importance of graceful movement in things like the "swish and flick" and in the charms used for Transfiguration. I think that in these two images of fluid and fabric Pauli and Jo have lit on a set of qualities that are at the wonderfully mysterious core of what Rowling is developing as the concept of "magic" (as maybe a defining quality of the human soul) in the series as a whole. Invisibility and Sacramentality The thing that struck me in reading Pauli and Jo's comments was that we have an oft overlooked but very perennially pervasive image in the series that combines fluid and fabric - the invisibility cloak. Harry receives this in his first year and (as I have begun now re-listening to book 6 on CD) it is used in key scenes and mentioned all the way up into HBP .... as they leave Privet Drive Dumbledore tells Harry to keep the cloak with him at all times even at Hogwarts. In that very first book when Harry gets the cloak on Christmas morn and in a number of places where the cloak is re-introduced (if memory serves me rightly) Rowling's description is pretty clear that the fabric appears to have a quality like water/fluid. I think this is such an important image because of the meaning of invisibility. Here we have an image that incorporates both of these aspects of the soul, fluidity (think of "graceful movement") and fabric (to split it involves violent tearing) and combines them in the concept of "invisibility." Something that is invisible is not any less substantial (at least in the Potterverse - contra an image like, say, the ringwraiths in Lord of the Rings) and one of the things that has struck me since the very first reading of book 1 is how much the images resemble "sacramental" thought. The Leaky Cauldron was the first place I saw it - it is virtually "invisible" to Muggles because it is so unassuming, but it's back alley has a doorway to the most wonderful world - Diagon Alley. "Magic" is, I believe, (for Rowling) ... the ability to see that which is thus invisible ... in short, magic is the imagination (to borrow from Granger, the ability to see DiagonAlly). It is the ability to perceive those inner and higher realities that are clothed in mundane details, like a human spirit that is clothed in and wed to a human body. We see something of this in the image of Moody's "magical eye" - it can see through invisibility cloaks. Trelawney's "inner eye" is spurious at best, but Moody's eye that can pear through such cloaks and view the hidden realities of the fact that there is a unique human person in there ... this is magic at its core. The Invisibility cloak is not "deception" though. It is the mystical fact that higher are hidden within mundane realities of human life (the pinnacle and defining instance of this truth is the Incarnation of Christ), and it yield a mysteriously integrated (not meant to be torn) fabric that flows like water (mysteriously both a symbol of the chaotic in the ancient world, and also the element of Baptism in the Christian world). I would say that in the series as a whole the Invisibility Cloak almost functions directly opposite the practice of Horcruxing as an image of how the soul really should be viewed and treated. PostScript I just wanted to add that, in the end, I don't think either image is completely "right." Both are analogies and analogies ultimately break down. But this is not a bad thing because it is quite simply a witness to the fact that the human soul is wonderfully mysterious, in short - mystical. What is bad is usually what Tolkien criticized as "allegory" - which usually does not break down because it is a simple mechanical device of arbitrary one to one correlation where the authors simply controls the physical action in the plot.

Backfiring on Voldy in Chamber of Secrets

Here is another set of things from recently listening to COS recently. First is that in an earlier post I had been noting the correlation between books 2 and 6 in the chiastic structure and been noting that I think the fact that the "eat slugs" backfires in book 2 is an indicator that Slughorn backfired on somebody, either Voldy or Dumbledore, in book 6. I am now pleased to announce that I am pretty sure that Sluggo backfired on Voldemort. I say this because in COS Ron had one final relapse of puking up slugs, later that night, while in detention helping Filch clean trophies in the trophy room he pukes up his last few slugs ... all over Tom Riddle's trophy for special services to the school that he got for "catching" Hagrid. The second thing also involves Riddle, maybe even a part of Riddle that isn't wholey perverted by Voldy's corrupt ego (but I'm less sure on this part being any purer than anything else about Riddle.) I think there is evidence in COS that Harry's scar is indeed a Horcrux. We hear about Ron's puking slugs on Riddle's trophy when they find the diary with his name on it ... and it is also at this point that Harry is described as feeling, when he reads the name, like it is the name of maybe a friend he had when he was little (which he knows could not be because the Dursley's made sure that he never had any friends.) This feeling is what makes me think part of the soul went into the scar. He never has this feeling when he hears Voldemort's name - which is what makes me think that maybe there was a process in which Voldy's ego corrupted his soul, but the soul in and of itself, apart from the ego, is not as evil - that is not to say that it is pure as the driven snow, I would imagine it being at least confused and a bit irrascible - but maybe not as malicious, and maybe baby Harry, in childlike simplicity of good emotion, tried to befriend the new person on the front of his head. We're talking about a "piece of a soul" here, not a whole person living in a body, and so naturally Harry could not befriend him and so as he develops past the age of concretely self-reflexive thought he forgets about that experience, except for little encounters like this. Of course, this raises another COS question - the Diary is never referred to by Voldy/Riddle as a piece of his soul, but rather a piece of his memory ... and it is precisely Ginny's soul that he is siphoning. My best guess is that Horcruxes are not an exact science and difficult to get "right." Maybe Voldy intended to make a Horcrux, ie part of the soul, and really dumped mainly a copy of his ego with a smaller piece of soul, just enough to animate a book? ... Not Sure.

Of Heros and Altars in Chamber of Secrets

Pauli emailed me this morning with some thoughts he had on the way to work, and some further thoughts on those in connection with some things I had noted in the past and it kind of dove-tailed with some thoughts I had while recently listening to Chamber of Secrets. Heroic Sacrifice I'll start with the thoughts I had on Chamber of Secrets and work to the stuff Pauli brought up to me and try to show the flow. Right around the time the second Spiderman movie came out on DVD I wrote an essay on the movie along the lines of seeing the character as portrayed in the movie as a hero in the form of a priest-figure, defined by (self) sacrificial service (sacrificial service being the defining mark of a "priest," which is what, in ancient Judaism for example, made the difference between a priest and a Rabbi: a Rabbi is simply a teacher but a priest performs sacred rites of sacrifice.) As part of this exposition I looked at the music used in the trailer for the movie, a choral piece written and produced by a company that does music for trailers but named after a piece from Mozart's Requiem, the "Lacrimosa." What I noted in the trailer was how well choreographed it was between the visuals and the music - during the more fluid musical movements you had shots of the hero's agility and quickness, and accompanying the more dynamic "hits" in the music were the shots of the hero's punch packing a wallop. It is the agility of the hero that I see in Harry, especially in the scene with the rogue bludger. What was dropped from the movie was some great stuff - Harry has a chance to let Wood call the game off and he also has the chance to let the rest of the team suffer attacks from the remaining bludger while Fred and George protect him from the rogue. But he does neither. Instead he takes to his broom for an unprotected death-defying ride ... and wins the game. The true heroic spirit behind the heroic agility, though, is only born witness to later by the culprit who fixed the bludger - Dobby, and in very Christ-like language. "Harry Potter risks his own life for his friends!" (COS 179). Earth and Sun, Altar and Tabernacle This is the material Pauli wrote me on this morning, but its connection here is difficult to explain, but none-the-less important. I'll start by explaining a link that provides the bridge between the hero and the altar. In studying the ancient liturgy of the Church and the development of liturgy one of the documents you study is "The Martyrdom of Polycarp." Polycarp was a disciple of St John, the Beloved Disciple ("The disciple whom Jesus loved" - Jn. 13:23, 19:26, etc.) The martyr's death is seen as a sacrificial liturgy and thus the form of the liturgical document follows that of the ancient Hebrew Passover Seder. This is the one with 4 cups that I spoke of in one of my posts on Book 4. The particular part noted is called the Haggadah and it is standard to most ancient covenants, it is a list of the works of the god ... in the case of the Martyrdom of Polycarp the works of God in faithfulness through his servant Polycarp - a list of heroic deeds by God through Polycarp. And this is seen to culminate on the altar of Polycarp's sacrifice. Here's My Pitch So, Harry is a hero described in Christ-like terms and martyrs are heroes and martyrs deaths are seen as sacrifices on altars, but this still does not make any connection with the place we started from with Harry, the Quidditch Pitch ... or was that just a sort of arbitrary jumping off place for me to play the opportunist - tip my hat to the text and then hop off in whatever direction I feel like going? (and what was up with mentioning the Earth and the Sun in the title of the last section and never touching on them at all?) Well, there is a connection, but before I reveal it I have to be upfront about the fact that this is one of those places where I am not sure this material is conscious on Rowling's part (although some things a little later down on the second movie lead me to believe she and her cohorts to have some tinges of it.) The line of flow goes like this: This was the thinking in ancient and medieval theology, and from there it passed into instantiations in medieval literature, and these instantiations are where Rowling encountered it as a Classics major in college. It may go deeper and be more conscious (she is a very brilliant woman, in my humble opinion) but we can't know for sure yet. One thing I do think is sure though, from her comments on the Faith in interviews - that in her writing using these classical modes and motifs she sees a connection with the faith and seems to have some sort of yearning finding her faith in finding that connection substantially. So, what of the Pitch? In discussing book 4, especially the 4 tasks, I noted that the first 3 official tasks include the 4 elements: air and fire in the dragon, water in the lake and earth in the form of the maze of hedges (plants as earth element) in the Quidditch Pitch. Unlike the 4th movie, Book 4 has ONLY the maze task take place in the Quidditch pitch - the dragon is elsewhere. The Quidditch Pitch is sort of a microcosm of earth and sky. As far as the earth goes, Pauli reminded me of some of the information related by my professor Dr Scott Hahn: that for the Medieval Christian mind the Earth was seen as an Altar, and hence the "4 corners of the earth"being like the 4 corners of a rectangular altar. We even catch a little bit of a glimpse of the same way of thinking in book 4 in the maze. The 4 corners and the 4 compass points are often thought of together and we see Harry using the wand as a compass with the "point me" spell. Now, one of the sort of major red herrings concerning medieval "thought" is precisely the thought on the earth ... you know, that the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it. If you asked a medieval if they thought that "scientifically" the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it they probably would have said, "um ... yeah, I guess so." But thinking this to be scientifically so is only by extension from the religious meaning of the physical world and the earth as the pace of human life, as we said, as an altar. In other words, that thing called "science" that we moderns prize as the sole definition of reality - the medievals weren't quite so concerned with it, they were more concerned with the religious reality. And this isn't gnosticism either, it is not saying "matter is evil, spirit is good," for what we call "science" does not, for the medevial mind, define even the totality of physical reality. For the medeival mind part of the Incarnation was that the religious dimension of physicality was brought to fulness (things in Judaism such as the thought that the Temple was a microcosm of the macrocosm of the universe.) The mentality towards physical reality that we call "science" did not really come into "power" until the Enlightenment and the formal codification of it is found in Descarte's term "res extensia," or "extended reality" (as distinct from "res cogitens," or "thinking reality," ie spirit - these two are the defining components in what is called "Cartesian Dualism.") Medeivals had not separated out quantifiable physical extension from the totality of physical being, let alone set up the former as the defining factor of the latter. For Greek speaking first-century Jews the term for body, "soma," was primarily a relational concept: the body is the mode or manner in which one relates to others - we communicate to each other with voice, with eye contact and movement and with body language; and we partake in a life-occassioning communion through our bodies in marriage and sexuality. For medievalist, having not isolated the concept of physical extension, to challenge flat-earth/geocentric thinking was to challenge the core of thinking about the scope of the Incarnation. The relational aspect is present in liturgical space, the Church building, and this is where it works back into Harry Potter. Pauli was commenting in his email about the thoughts he has read about how the tabernacle (wherein is housed the Blessed Sacrament, in the Consecrated Host). Geo-centric thought, with the sun revolving around the earth, reflected the thought on the tabernacle and Christ's presence moving realtionally with respect to the earth, the altar. You have this in two ways throughout the history of Christian Architecture in Church buildings. The first is that in the Tridentine Rite Mass, with the Altar against the back wall and the tabernacle in the center. In this Rite what is called "the Great Elevation" is more accentuated - the priest faces the altar, thus with the people at his back and him at their head, as he consecrates the bread and wine, and then he elevates the Blessed Sacrament over his head. With the people at his back the Blessed Sacrament has been hidden and the elevation is like the sunrise of Christ the Sun over the altar of the earth and those who come to the altar. The second is post Vatican II in the Novus Ordo Mass. Some criticize what seems to be the random placement of Tabernacles in newer Churches (and I myself do prefer the older style), but one must admit that with the altars now detached from the back wall, Tabernacle positioning now sort of orbits tha altar like a sun orbiting earth and the altar being detached now has the priest, who acts In Persona of Christ the true Sun, orbiting the altar as well. The Snitch and the Pitch In Harry Potter you have this where? ... In a golden ball that orbits the Quidditch pitch, sought by the seeker who is trying to become the golden soul. Again, it is hard to say to what extent these things are "conscious" but there is a really good image of this in the movie version of Sorcerer's Stone. When Wood brings the case out and begins explaining Quidditch to Harry, the snitch is not sinply strapped in like the quaffle and bludgers. It is actually hidden behind two small doors that are remarkably styled like Tabernacle doors in a Church (In a Catholic Church the Real Presence is always veiled behind the Tabernacle door/s unless the Eucharist is displayed, or unveiled, in a monstrance for prayer - in which case there must be people who have committed to time slots of being there while He is exposed.) Like I said, I don't necessarily think these things are conscious, in fact I suspect they are not because this is simply not the mode artists think in - if they did they would not make very interesting art. I would guess that one of them making the movie said "what do you think of this, having the snitch inside little doors like this" and the others said, "hmmm, yeah, something about that seems to me to fit and work really well." I'm just trying to delve a little bit, from the medeival background behind the classical literature Rowling draws on, into why it has that feel to them and Rowling. Conclusion So, this is an admittedly shrouded post - the material here is dense, dense like the clouds of incense around the altar in an Eastern Rite Church. Ultimately these things go into the realm of the properly mysterious and I'm not expecting to have nailed it all down and tied up all the loose ends nice and neat. I'm mainly just trying to give a glimpse of the rich tradition in what is there in the images Rowling uses - of the hero, of the physical universe as understood in 4 elements and how that physical universe is taken up into the great mystery of human life. I also think we can see that, as Rowling seems to be sort of working through things regarding the Faith, her work using these classically Christian motifs does touch and enter into some the mystery of the Incarnation, including how those truths are incarnated in good literature. Not only is it probably not all "conscious" on her part, but I would say that we could write about it here till the cows come home and still not totally capture, as "analysts," how it does that. I would say that if we could it would get dull ... and I definitely don't think the Potterverse is dull- it rings too much with what G.K. Chesterton called "the romance of orthodoxy."

Owl Post

I knew I was on the right track in shooting for going to Fordham ... this morning, in getting back to the usual run of things after my father's funeral and the settling back down of things, I was rifling through the folder of material with Fordham's letter of admission, trying to get the acceptance back in by the deadline and all - and I came across the 1 page "Congratulations" edition of the Newletter for Graduate Students - a newsletter which called ... "The Owl." For a Potterhead, a thing like this is pretty much almost along the order of a sign from God.