Lumos 2006 Class Notes - Saturday - # 2

Why Voldemort Cannot be Named: Traditions, Taboo and Language in Rowling's Harry Potter -by Jeanne M. LaHaie This was, overall, a pretty interesting talk (and truly informative), even though I suspect this woman and I would not necessarily see eye to eye on some things (I'll stay away from some things ... she said "I'm more of a ..." but I couldn't figure out how that impacted her particular reading/interpretation here - so it seemed to me like it didn't impact how interesting I found her talk to me, which was cool with me). She was basically making a suggestion of one possible source for the not naming Voldy thing - medieval Jewish magical practice ("Jewish Name Magic") and its taboos. Apparently they would not say the name of an evil deity because to even speak the name at least risked calling said evil deity to interact with you. This of course automatically set off the mental bell on Granger's thing on invocational magic versus incantational. In having Harry and Dumbledore call Voldy by his "dark lord" name, Rowling is actually not only using incantational magic and not using invocational magic, she is even presenting an argument (well, in the way that stories in particular present their arguments) against invocational magic. If somebody who does not worship a certain deity, say Baal, is still afraid to say the name, they are ascribing a power to Baal (or whatever spirits/demons may have "piggy-backed" on Baal worship) that Baal might not have, giving him undue credit for power by fearing him in that way ... and ironically it is often this very type of thing that actually does give such entities the power (although, I'm not saying to be flippant with a demons name; Baal/demon does not have that power because Christ is more powerful, not because any of us are). Secondly, there was a neat parallel she had with the myths of Jewish Rabbis in a certain area (Prague, I think) in the middle ages forming a sort of protector from clay (only a very holy Rabbi had the power to do this) and inscribing one of the names of God on its forehead. At some point the protector becomes self-aware, but then, after the protector had saved the people from the particular evil in the story the Rabbi would remove the name and it would return to clay. This is a parallel that would lead one to believe that the scar might be removed when Harry has vanquished Voldy ... interesting theory (it would maybe mean too that Harry will die but then Harry did exist before receiving the scar. Voldy did not create Harry, only made him his equal). Beyond that there are just a few interesting incidentals, some of hers and some of my mental hiccups from her stuff. She noted that these days title names refer only to context/function ... sort of stripped of idea of "person," which I found interesting. She also tied the lightning bolt to the sign of Zeus and the fear of Zeus. The talk also made me think of the movie "Pi" (the Greek symbol for 3.14...) but I would not recommend that movie to everyone, it is highly stylized and can be quite jarring (my sister, Pauli's wife, found nothing wrong or objectionable with it, but just the style really grated on her nerves) ... anyway, in that movie there is a set of Hasidic Jews trying to persuade the main character (an atheist of Jewish descent who is a number theorist trying to figure out the mathematical system behind the stock market, and also suffers intense [and intensely represented, hence the jarringness] migraine headaches and is paranoid reclusive) to share with them the 216 digit number his computer spit out just before it melted and just after it made a set of stock market picks that contained two picks that were completely illogical ... but dead on. Apparently their lore said that at the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD the last high priest was taken up into heaven, taking with him the true name of God, which has a numerical value of 216 in Hebrew. All that to say that names are really important, and hence the giving and taking of names. In Genesis there is specific formulaic text for God giving names to what He creates and the first task for man as having dominion over the earth is to name the animals (and indeed this leads to the revelation that there was not a mate suitable for him among the animals and the creation of the woman). Voldy's renaming of himself could be seen as a "dark re-creation" of himself. Fasinating stuff. The Slytherin Question by Eva Thienpont Ok, this one is for Pauli because he wanted to hear it. But also, when I thought about doing it tonight (not going to get to all of them tonight) I was thinking "hmmm not as much interesting as Pauli might have hoped" and I was thinking of doing another one because I thought that one had a point on it I thought very interesting (on the pentangle as a magical symbol) ... but then I checked the notes and found that indeed the other talk did NOT have the pentangle point ... this one did. Anyway, this lady started with some interesting observations: Rowling's interview statements on Slytherin as "embracing the flaws," the fact that traitors are not unique to Slytherin - Wormtail is arguably the biggest traitor because he was supposed to be the Potters' friend, and he was a Gryffindor, and the fact that everyone in the Order of the Phoenix whose house is known was from Gryffindor except Snape. She moved from there to the "nature/nurture" debate in regards to Draco and Snape and Voldy, then discussed the "non-interference" policy at Hogwarts and the probability that it is something Rowling agrees with, then set up Gryffindor and Slytherin as a pair, with the former being courage and the latter calculation, and noted a quote from Rowling in an interview saying "the sorting hat is never wrong." Finally, what she really blew me away with was the pentangle as a magical symbol. Four of the points on the pentangle are for the 4 cosmological elements (fire, earth, air, water), but there is a fifth point symbolizing their unity. In other words, once you get rid of Voldy, all you have is the four points still in oppositional tension ... you need a fifth point to be their unity. I think it is Granger in Looking For God in Harry Potter (but if it is not, if it was in your stuff Felicity ... I apologize ... a lot of stuff flowing in through my eyes and ears recently :) ) that voiced the suspicion that Harry will be shown to have the blood of all 4 founders (or in the case of Slytherin, Voldy's infusion of power/gifts). But, if Harry still hates Snape, he cannot be the unity point. Harry will not only need to see Snape through his mother's eyes of compassion, but part of that will be seeing the world through Snape's eyes ... in short, he must have not just sympathy for, but empathy with Snape. Without this all is still the four points of tension. Thus she surmises that Harry will overcome Voldy before reconciling with Snape. I have noted this same sort of thing in Lord of the Rings: the ring is destroyed, the black riders gone, we have reached the climax right? No, evil, by definition, cannot exist without good, but good is always more than just the conquering of evil, it has a positive existence of its own. Thus on mid-summer's eve you have the onset of evil in the form of the black riders crossing the fords of Isen, and mid-summers eve one year later you have the symbol of evil finally overcome in Arwen arriving with the company from the north, betrothed to Aragorn. But the wedding itself is on Midsummer's day, beyond the mid-summer's eve book-end framework. The true culmination of the 7th HP book will be a positive relationship between Harry and Snape, even if it only takes place and the deathbed of one or both. I think it was this lady, but it may have been somebody else, who said that the "If I meet Severus Snape along the way, so much the better for me, so much the worse for him" line is a very Slytherin thing to say -- Harry has more of it in him than he realizes. The Slytherin Problem The whole thing in all of this is a point this lady brought out, that in the sorting hat's songs there seems to be the idea that Salazar and Godric were good friends before the disagreement about "blood purity" came up ... ie, there was unity. It would seem to me that if the school with its houses represents the cosmos (4 elements cosmology ... she used the Rowling Quote that Granger had about the houses and the elements) then this original unity lay in the actual founding of the school ... originally the school was the unity. But like in Creation, the seeds of disunity are sown, not in the founding itself, but very quickly thereafter. Eventually this disunity crescendoes to Voldemort and the progress must be made beyond an institution as the unity, to a person as the unity (much like the development from the institution of the Old Testament Law to the person of Christ in the New Testament). This is much like the thought that is developed with regards to the Garden of Eden, that it was not ever meant to be the final rest, but rather a probation ground. So, if the couple had not sinned then the development would have come in another form that was "reward" rather than "redemption," but still the Incarnation. Either way, as concerns the Potter series, this final unity will have to involve Slytherin in the equation. I think, and I think what she was driving at, is that Snape will be crucial to this, and not just as "a Gryffindor in Slytherin Clothing." It will be through his genuine Slytherin perspective of calculation (in the talk on memory, which I'll get to later, it was mentioned that Snape says to Harry in Book 5, that in not closing his mind, in allowing Snape into his memory, he gives Snape weapons to use ... it will likely be something about this kind of understanding that Snape has that will have played some crucial role in the physical events that help Harry to overcome Voldy, and Harry will have to "get it" that this was the case and that Snape was doing right ... did I already mention in writing on one of the talks that somebody presented the theory that even in actively killing Dumbledore, as a "cunning" and calculating move, that he was doing the "best thing," because he was weighing the life of Dumbledore, as an already doomed man, against his own usefulness to the good cause and that of Harry's survival?) End Anyway, that is it for tonight ... I'll continue the "Lumos Findings" when I get back up North East. :)