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."