Fear of the name and the Wings of Death

Pauli just emailed me this link on the name Lord Voldemort. Really fascinating stuff. I love this stuff because Rowling is so obviously into the history she feeds into her world in different ways and using meaningful names and is obviously well studied in the medieval alchemy and numerology (which is basically, as far as I can tell, what the subject of arithmancy is, which "Jomione" has Hermione swap taking parallel to Divination in book 3 and then opts to drop the latter and keep the former). a We have had discussions on the whole name thing via the talk by Jeanne M. LaHaie at Lumos Here and Here. I just wanted briefly to note one possible loose tie to something I have mention before, here. We have heard from Granger and others that "Vol" means "flight" and "Voldemort" would mean "flight of/from death." I really liked Kaskait's research into the history behind the "flight" meaning, as coming from the joined wing symbol ... and what I really liked about it is the connection with the wings of death we meet in book 5, the thestrals. I haven't thought about it enough yet but there could be some connection with Harry "riding death" to arrive at the place where we eventually find Voldy trying to inhabit/possess him and not being able to do so. The part on the a,i and m not being carried into the name "Lord Voldemort" is an interesting observation but a little hard to follow. My HP corpus is in a plastic tub in an a friend's apartment in Queens at the moment so I can't look it up to make sure that what is in the movie actually came out of the book without running over to our friends Nathan and Julie's house to look it up in their copy, but I know that in the movie he rearranges the letters of "Tom Marvolo Riddle" into "I AM Lord Voldemort." I think that both paths can be "right" (technically this is call "multi-valence," as opposed to something like "ambi-valence." In the latter there might be two disconnected possible meanings and it's a contest between the two; in the former the distinct possible meanings are connected somehow thematically and often the tension/ between them is part of the deeper latent meaning). The "I am" would be a mockery of the divine name, the tetragrammaten, "Yahweh," the four consonant Hebrew name by which God calls himself when talking to Moses from the burning bush. And then even further, taking the "I am" and transferring and subsuming it into the "Vol de Mortaim" name would be a direct "power grab" - that name being Voldy's "kingly" name as KasKait notices. (In classes with Dr Scott Hahn, he talks a lot, drawing on certain sources in the Christian Tradition, that note the difference between man's kingly role in the 6-day creation narrative of Genesis 1, characterized by using the name "Elohim" for God, and man's intended priestly role in Genesis two, defined by relationship with Yahweh [which is the name used in Gen 2] and in marriage on the 7th day Sabbath - and that the narrative tension between these two set up in the canonical form of Genesis casts the fall itself in the light of not maintaining the proper hierarchy, and setting up the kingly as higher than the priestly, rather than letting the kingly be defined by and culminated in the priestly ... especially when you count in the fact that part of the specific temptation by the serpent, in chapter 3, was to revert to using the name "Elohim" when the relationship with "Yahweh" had been established all through chapter 2 in the paradise narrative.) Side Note: The whole thing of "not saying the name of God at all" is a much later addition in Judaism. In the book of Isaiah you have warnings not to say the name lightly, but this indicates that in the Biblical period they was not the practice of not saying the name at all. At our own time in history Jewish practice has followed the "not saying the name" thing pretty much. A few years ago I drove into Manhattan on the night of the 2003 blackout, and while I was there for the weekend with the friend who is now housing some of my belongings till I get out there for school (who was, at the time, returning to his apt in lower Manhattan to begin his second year in his MFA at the Art Academy in lower Manhattan, myself driving him and his stained glass stuff out, and me driving him out and hanging out for a few days). On Fri and Sat we slummed around some, and in the process hit the Strand bookstore at Broadway and 12th (famous for its "16 miles" of used books ... 1 floor dedicated solely to stated first editions, that kind of thing). I picked up a "Siddur" there, which is a Jewish book of common prayers and blessings (blessings for the house etc) which includes a copy of the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible) in Hebrew. Interestingly they do not even use the TG (YHWH) anymore in print in such books; they have replaced it even here with "HaSheim" - which means, "the name." The word Jehovah as a name for God comes from a mistaken reading of the Masoretic texts. The first official vowel pointing of the consonantal Hebrew texts began around 6th century AD and what is now the official texts, the Masoretic texts, was completed sometime 8th or 9th century AD. The vowel pointing began because of a sort of breakdown or loosening in cantational memorization. Before this every male would have been expected at his Bar Mitzvah to have the Torah opened in front of him and be able to cant/intone the text properly from memory up to the place it had been opened to (you hear, occasionally, some crazy elaborations ... that they would drive a nail into the text and the boy would have to recite up to where the nail was driven to - but I think they would have viewed it as a sacrilege to go driving nails into copies of the Torah, whi. The vowel markings are basically for canting the tex and and for what was before done from memory (you would just see the consonantal text and know how to intone it from being taught that and memorizing it). Anyway, by the time they began doing vowel pointing it was the practice not to pronounce the TG, but instead to use the word "adonai" which means Lord (in English translation nowadays you'll see the differentiation between the TG translated as Lord and adonai translated as Lord but using all caps for the TG, "LORD"). So, to remind a cantor of this fact they would use the vowel points for "adonai" with the 4 consonants of the TG and the cantor would remember to say "adonai" rather than "Yahweh." "Jehovah" comes from what you get if you mistakenly actually try to pronounce those consonants and vowels together. I mention all this ... well, mainly it's me "geeking out" a little ... but also because of this sentence in KasKait's piece: But the name Lord Voldemort does not. It is one vowel shy of a tetragrammaton like power. Just like Riddle himself was one murder shy of creating his final horcrux. I haven't read the thing through closely enough to completely follow the thing on the vowels but just the mention of vowels in connection with the TG brought this material to mind. PS Felicity, if you like this post you may want to drop Kaskait a note in the comments to check it out ... I tried to but KasKait has anonymous comment posting turned off and I don't have an LJ account/identity Now, provided I do not cough up a lung or something like that from this cold that has been plagueing me (I think tonight may do it in ... the past two nights have been heavy doses of Nyquil and Excederin PM [takes a bit to knock 230 pounds of wizard "weight" and residual construction muscle out cold LOL] inducing some heavy bed-ploughing slumber of 9-10 hrs each night - hopefully one more kills said terrible viral beastie) - I am off to reply to the great comment Felicity wrote on the chiasm stuff and then finally do the Granger PoMo post(yeasterday got a bunch of work done and the last touches on packing my jar of dirt so now it is sitting ready and waiting for the "opportune moment" of moving the last bit I have here and myself to NYC next week.