Essay: The Rule of Four


In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry, Ron and Hermione play a life-sized chess game, Professor McGonagall’s contribution to the defense of the Philosopher’s Stone. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling designs the Triwizard Tournament to be a life-sized board game. That there are four, rather than three Tournament Champions helps draw attention to this. Multiple board games have been based upon Harry Potter, and the Hogwarts houses have for their chief colors red, yellow, blue and green—colors commonly used for board game playing pieces around the world. The Hogwarts houses also align with the four elements that medieval alchemists recognized: fire, earth, water and air. 
Gryffindor aligns with the element of fire, has a lion for its mascot, the symbol for Leo, an astrological fire sign which happens to be Harry’s and JK Rowling’s birth sign, and Rowling has assigned to this house the “fiery” colors of red and gold. 
Hufflepuff aligns with the element of earth; it has the burrowing badger for its mascot and Professor Sprout, the Herbology teacher, is Hufflepuff’s head-of-house.
Slytherin aligns with the element of water. In Chamber of Secrets, a snake, the symbol of Slytherin, moved through the castle by way of the plumbing. Severus Snape, Slytherin’s head-of-house, is also the potions master—potions usually being liquid.
And finally, Ravenclaw aligns with the element of air, having an eagle as its symbol and blue, like the sky, for its chief color.
 The four Champions in the Triwizard Tournament also each align with one of the Hogwarts houses: Harry is obviously the Gryffindor champion and Cedric is the Hufflepuff champion. Fleur Delacour, on the other hand, a Beauxbatons student, is the virtual Ravenclaw champion and Viktor Krum, of Durmstrang, is the virtual Slytherin champion because while they’re at Hogwarts, Fleur and Viktor sit at the Ravenclaw and Slytherin tables, respectively, and the way that the students and teachers from these schools arrive at Hogwarts reflects the elements that these houses are aligned with.
The Beauxbatons delegation descends from the air in a blue carriage—the element and color of Ravenclaw—and the carriage is drawn by flying horses. The ship carrying the Durmstrang students and their headmaster rises up from the within the lake, like a submarine surfacing on the water—which is Slytherin’s element.
There is another alignment between each Triwizard Tournament task and the four elements, plus an alignment between the Tasks and some creatures that alchemists, especially Paracelsus, who is mentioned in the Harry Potter books, called “elemental” spirits or beings.
Fire is the element for the first task, which features fire-breathing dragons. The elemental being that Paracelsus associated with fire is the salamander, which is a kind of lizard—like a dragon, though other alchemists simply linked dragons to this element.

Air is the element for “the Unexpected Task” of the Yule Ball, which makes four tasks total, just as Harry is the fourth Champion. The elemental being linked to the Yule Ball is the SYLPH, described by Paracelsus as an invisible spirit of the air. He believed each elemental being could move easily only through their element, so this meant that in fire, sylphs burn, in water, they drown, and in earth they get stuck. Fleur, the champion who excels at this task, is a bit like a sylph or part-sylph herself, as a part-veela witch, and this may explain why she doesn’t fare very well at the other tasks. She does in fact catch on fire during the first task, fails to retrieve her sister from the lake, and is incapacitated during the final task.
Water is the very obvious element linked to the task of retrieving the hostages from the lake, and the elemental being linked to this task is the UNDINE, a mythical water creature often treated as interchangeable with sirens, selkies and mermaids, whom the Tournament Champions encounter in the lake.
Finally, earth is the element aligned with the last task, which begins in a hedge maze grown on the Quidditch pitch, but ends, for Harry and Cedric, in a graveyard. The elemental being associated with this task is one that Rowling first showed readers in the second book, Chamber of Secrets, when Harry comes to the Burrow and engages in the game of throwing garden gnomes over the hedge. Gnomes are the elemental being Paracelsus associated with the element of earth. In this task the Champions attempt to find their way through a maze, just as the gnomes’ underground homes seem rather maze-like, but the maze that the Champions are in is made of hedges, which is what the Weasleys throw their gnomes over when they want them out of the garden (though they always come back).
The four tournament tasks each align with a Champion, a Hogwarts house, an element and an elemental being. Goblet of Fire is the book in which Harry is first exposed to the wider wizarding world, a world beyond Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley, even beyond the British Isles. The number four is traditionally how the world is described; there are four cardinal directions—North, South, East and West—and we still speak of the earth as having “four corners”, though we know perfectly well that it’s a sphere. In the fourth book, Harry learns a spell called “Four Points” that lets him navigate the maze by using his wand like a compass. We are repeatedly reminded in this book of both the wider world beyond Hogwarts and of the four cardinal directions and other symbols associated with them. Alchemists linked these directions to the elements: North is linked to Earth; South to Fire; East to Air; and West to Water.
In Genesis, the world is described as divided by four rivers, with the Garden of Eden at the center of the world, though it’s a different four rivers in Mesopotamian cosmology, and yet a different configuration in Hinduism, in which a sacred four-sided mountain is the world’s center and the starting point for four rivers that flow to the four quarters of the world. In Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell writes about the “four corners” of the world as seen by multiple ancient civilizations:
The dome of heaven rests on the quarters of the earth, sometimes supported by four…kings, dwarfs, giants, elephants, or turtles. Hence, the traditional importance of the mathematical problem of the quadrature of the circle: it contains the secret of the transformation of heavenly into earthly forms.
[Joseph Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces (Novato, CA: New World Library, 1979) p. 42.]
A circle with a cross inscribed within it, like the Quantum Harry logo (below), is a symbol that has long been used to represent the earth, and it resembles a compass as well. 

It’s also the image of an ancient board game design that was used around the world for a variety of “race games”. This earth sign design is seen in other ancient games as well, such as Pachisi, the “national game of India”, which in turn became the western game of Parcheesi.
Parcheesi is also called the “Royal Game of India” because royalty once used members of harems, in costumes matched to the color of each “team”, as playing pieces on life-sized outdoor playing boards—much like Harry, Ron and Hermione in the life-sized chess game. The winner is the one who gets all four of their pieces (red, blue, yellow or green) “home” first—home being the center of the board.
The goal in a medieval labyrinth, like the one in Chartres Cathedral, is also the center of the labyrinth—which has, again, the overall appearance of a cross inscribed within a circle.
This is similar to the Triwizard Champions trying to get to the center of the maze to win—they must reach “home”. In other words, Rowling has them playing a life-sized Parcheesi game—though she might give it another name: Ludo, the first name of Ludo Bagman. 
“Ludo” is the Latin word for “game” in general, but it’s also the best-known name for the variant of Pachisi played in the UK, JK Rowling’s home. Thus she likens the entire world to a game board sharing its name with the head of Magical Games and Sports, and the Champions are all racing to get “home”.

In Goblet of Fire Harry encounters wizards from other countries for the first time, and his experience of completeness and wholeness in the fourth book is connected repeatedly to the number four, starting with Harry being the fourth Champion. Rowling also seems to have aligned the Hogwarts houses with the four major regions of the British Isles at the time that Hogwarts was founded: England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the geographic areas served by Hogwarts, and probably the Ministry in London. As far as we know, Scotland, Ireland and Wales don’t have separate Ministries from England, and children from these countries attend one school, Hogwarts. These four regions seem to be considered one political entity by wizards, though they’re treated as separate for Quidditch competition (just as it is with rugby and football for Muggles).
 The Sorting Hat gives us a clue about these four regions aligning with each house by telling us that the Founders came from four distinct types of landscapes. In the Sorting Hat song from Goblet of Fire, the first new song since the first book, the Hat sings:
Bold Gryffindor, from wild moor,
Fair Ravenclaw, from glen,
Sweet Hufflepuff, from valley broad,
Shrewd Slytherin, from fen.
“Fair Ravenclaw, from glen” includes a Scots Gaelic term for a long, deep valley: a glen. “Shrewd Slytherin, from fen” not only refers to wetlands that are characteristic of large areas of Ireland (water is Slytherin’s element) but the word “Fenian” refers to Irish patriots. “Sweet Hufflepuff, from valley broad” could refer to the valleys of Wales, while “Bold Gryffindor, from wild moor” could refer specifically to the West Country of England, where JK Rowling grew up, which is known for its moors. Godric’s Hollow is also described as a “West Country village” and Gryffindor’s first name was Godric.
These alignments are suggested in shorthand in the Sorting Hat song, but it’s specifically the version of the song that appears in Goblet of Fire, the fourth book, in which Rowling creates many four-part alignments connected to the houses, the Tournament Champions, the four traditional elements of fire, earth, air and water, the four elemental beings, and the Tournament tasks themselves.
Heraldry can reveal further support for Gryffindor being aligned with England, Ravenclaw with Scotland, Slytherin with Ireland and Hufflepuff with Wales. Medieval English battle flags, with repeated gold lions on a deep red ground, look like they could have been designed by Gryffindor, and they wouldn’t look out of place in the Gryffindor common room.
The meanings linked to heraldic colors and symbols reinforce Rowling’s choices for the houses. Gryffindor’s red signifies a warrior, brave and strong but also generous and just, as well as standing for martyrdom, which brings Harry’s sacrifice to mind in the seventh book. Gold is linked to generosity and elevation of the mind. A heraldic lion also symbolizes dauntless courage, and a griffin (evoked by the name of Gryffindor) means valor and bravery.
In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Rowling introduces a character whose family coat of arms seems to owe a debt to Gryffindor: Rufus Scrimgeour, the Minister who succeeds Cornelius Fudge. His coat of arms shows a rampant gold lion holding a sword on a deep red ground. He’s first described through the eyes of the Muggle Prime Minister, in the chapter called The Other Minister:
...Rufus Scrimgeour looked rather like an old lion. There were streaks of gray in his mane of tawny hair and his bushy eyebrows; he had keen yellowish eyes behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and a certain rangy, loping grace...   
The name “Rufus” means “red-haired”, so Rowling is combining red and gold yet again, in addition to the coat of arms for the Scrimgeour family looking very Gryffindor-ish. “Scrimgeour” is a Scottish clan, but the arms appear very English, with the red field and gold lion, so perhaps Scrimgeour is meant to be a fictional version of King James I of England, who was King James VI in Scotland but rose to the English throne after the death of Elizabeth I.
Ravenclaw’s colors are called blue and bronze by JK Rowling, but bronze is not a heraldic metal; there are only two, silver and gold. Bronze is close in appearance to gold, so for the purposes of examining the houses’ heraldry let’s call Ravenclaw’s colors blue and gold, which, in heraldry, can look like bronze. The Scottish flag is blue and silver, in heraldic terms, since white is used to represent silver on paper. This flag has a white X on a blue ground, which is called the Cross of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland.
 However, Rowling’s virtual Ravenclaws, from Beauxbatons, are French. The French flag used at the same time as the Gryffindor-like flag once used by England is blue with gold fleur-de-lis.
There’s also a link between Scotland and France, due to both often being at odds, historically, with the same enemy: England. The name for this is “The Auld Alliance”. The tie between Ravenclaw and Scotland is even easier to see with the help of the pseudo-Ravenclaws from France, who first appear in Goblet of Fire.
In addition to this, Charlemagne had a shield that looked like it could be used by a Ravenclaw; it bears three gold fleur-de-lis on a field of blue in the upper portion and a bronze-ish eagle on gold in the lower part.
 The flag of Wales has neither black nor yellow, which are Hufflepuff’s colors, but another flag associated with Wales does: the flag of St. David, the patron saint of Wales. In heraldry, black is called “sable” and yellow represents gold on paper, just as white represents silver, so we can say that the flag of St. David shows a gold cross on a sable ground. Thus Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff all have gold for their heraldic metal, though only Gryffindor is said to have gold. The heraldic meaning associated with sable (black) is “constancy or grief”, which is appropriate for the house that loses its favorite son, Cedric Diggory, in the fourth book. The badger, the mascot of Hufflepuff, is also known for digging in dirt, another link to Hufflepuff’s element, earth. An industry for which Wales is well known also involves digging into earth: coal-mining, and sable—blackis the color of coal.
Ireland is the only region of the British Isles that doesn’t share an island with the other three regions; it’s separate, just as the Founder Salazar Slytherin is eventually separate from his fellow Founders. And, yes, Northern Ireland shares the same island as the Republic of Ireland, but these are Muggle political distinctions and we have no evidence that wizards pay attention to this. As far as we know, the Irish National Quidditch team represents what Muggles call Ulster plus the Republic of Ireland. Slytherin is also the only house with silver as its metal, pairing it with green. Ireland is of course famous for its rolling green countryside, but a couple of Irish flags use not just green and silver but also gold:

A flag with a gold harp on green was used by the Irish Catholic Federation (1642-1649). The harp has silver strings. Another green, gold and silver flag is the Fenian flag, captured by British forces in County Dublin in 1867; its green stripes alternate with silver (which is to say white) and it has 32 eight-pointed gold stars on a green field in the upper left. Silver and gold are both linked to Slytherin: the locket Voldemort makes into a Horcrux is gold.
Rowling places the founding of Hogwarts roughly in the era of the first Crusades. At the time, green wasn’t used in heraldry in Western Europe because it was the color of Islam. This avoidance of green in Western European heraldry didn’t change until the fifteenth century. So Slytherin is not only the one house with silver for its heraldic metal, but the heraldic color of green, which Crusaders considered the color of the enemy at the time Hogwarts was founded.
“Salazar” is also a Spanish name, and the Islamic Fatimid Caliphate ruled the Iberian Peninsula (where Spain and Portugal are located) from 711 to 1212 CE; the Caliphate continued to rule Granada for almost another 300 years after that. Thus, at the time of Hogwarts’ founding, the founder with the Spanish first name used the heraldic color of both Ireland, the only region of the British Isles distinct and separate from the other three regions, and Islam.
This heraldic color and the hint at Salazar being from Ireland together serve to isolate him, symbolically, from his fellow Founders from the start, though the subtle association with Spain and the Fatimid Caliphate, under whose rule art, science and literature flourished, not to mention religious tolerance for both Christians and Jews, suggest that at one time Salazar might have valued erudition and learning from people of many backgrounds, as the rulers of the Fatimid Caliphate did before they were ejected from Spain in 1492 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. The king and queen also heartily approved of the Spanish Inquisition occurring under their rule, which was responsible for torturing, killing, and forcibly converting many Jews and Muslims, plus generalized persecution of people perceived to be “witches”.
Finally, the emblem of Slytherin is the snake. Snakes were supposedly sent packing from Ireland by St. Patrick, though they may not have existed there in the first place. Snakes are also a symbol of Satan, who took the form of a snake in the story about Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden. So Rowling chose a snake as the emblem for the Founder who speaks to snakes and may have come from Ireland. This also allows JK Rowling to change the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood back into the snake of the Eden myth when she retells Grimm's fairy tale in Chamber of Secrets, after Grimm changed the devilish serpent into a wolf for his purposes. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina and Episode 14: The Devil's Game.)
 Viktor Krum, a virtual Slytherin when he sits at that Hogwarts table, is from Bulgaria and wears red to represent his country when he plays against Ireland. However, when Viktor catches the Snitch in the World Cup final, winning the title for Ireland, he becomes a virtual Irish player, so he’s a pseudo-Slytherin even before reaching Hogwarts, securing a victory for the national Quidditch team whose country aligns with Slytherin, just as Ravenclaw aligns with Scotland, Hufflepuff with Wales and Gryffindor with England. This alignment continues with the tournament tasks, both the “official” three plus the Yule Ball—“The Unexpected Task”.
The World Cup triumph of Ireland, the region aligning with Slytherin, at the beginning of the fourth book could also be considered foreshadowing for Voldemort’s triumph at the end of the book. If anyone is the epitome of a Slytherin, it’s the Dark Lord, the Heir of Slytherin himself. Thus, Goblet of Fire is bookended by two Slytherin victories—first a symbolic one, then a literal one.
Fire is the element aligned with the first task. This links it to Gryffindor and in turn to England. In addition to the medieval English banners with gold lions on a red ground, another common standard used to represent England is a flag with the red cross of St. George, patron saint of England; this flag shows a red cross on a white ground.
 St. George is most renowned for killing dragons, the elemental creatures at the center of the first task. Harry, the Gryffindor champion, born in Godric’s Hollow, home of his house’s Founder, is the Champion who “wins” this task, getting his egg away from the dragon more quickly than the other champions.
The Yule Ball, as a task, is aligned with the element of air, and thus to Ravenclaw. That in turn links the Yule Ball to Scotland. The band playing at the Ball is the Weird Sisters. In Shakespeare’s MacBeth, the three witches who prophesy MacBeth’s downfall are called the Weird Sisters. MacBeth is often called “the Scottish play” by actors and other theatre folk who avoid saying the name of the play under certain circumstances. And, in the Spanish translation of Goblet of Fire, the band is called las Brujas de MacBeth—MacBeth’s witches. One of the instruments in the band, a set of bagpipes, relies on air to maintain its sound and is indelibly linked to Scotland.
All of the Champions—and even Harry’s best friend, Ron, and Ron’s sister Ginny, have a link to Ravenclaw and/or Beauxbatons during the course of the Ball. Viktor goes with Hermione, a near-Ravenclaw who wears blue, Ravenclaw’s color. Cedric goes with Cho Chang, Seeker on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. Harry goes with Parvati Patil, from his own house, but she abandons him to spend time with a boy from Beauxbatons—a virtual Ravenclaw. Even Ron goes with a Ravenclaw—Parvati’s sister Padma—and Ginny goes with Neville but meets her first boyfriend at the Ball, the Ravenclaw Michael Corner, though we don’t learn this until the next book. And of course, the first girls Harry and Ron ask to the Ball are Cho and Fleur.
Fleur Delacour, a virtual Ravenclaw who hails from France, Scotland’s traditional ally, is arguably the Champion who “wins” at this task, since she’s so much in demand as a Yule Ball partner. She goes with Roger Davies—captain of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team.
In the task linked to water and therefore to Slytherin house, and thus to Ireland, which is surrounded by water and known for its watery fens, the Champions encounter merpeople who are not very attractive, unlike many depictions of mermaids and mermen from around the world, even the mermaid in the painting in the prefects’ bath that Harry sees when he takes the egg there. Instead, these merpeople have green bodies and hair and long, sharp teeth, making them resemble a magical creature from Irish folklore called the MERROW. Viktor Krum, both a virtual Slytherin and a virtual Irish Quidditch player, becomes a half-shark and rescues his hostage, Hermione, before the other Champions. He can be considered the Champion who “wins” this task.
Finally, the last task is linked to earth and to Hufflepuff and thus to the country of Wales, known for its coal mines, which are like underground mazes. The labyrinth/maze for the final task is grown on the Quidditch pitch itself. Cedric could arguably be called the champion who wins this task—Harry certainly thought so. Harry only takes the cup with him because Cedric refuses to do it on his own.
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling introduces the idea of the Founders hailing from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales in a new Sorting Hat song, and then links each Tournament Champion, each Task, the four alchemical elemental beings, and the elements of fire, air, water and earth to each of these regions of the British Isles, all in the service of her elaborate game.


Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 18: The Wide World, Copyright 2017-2018 by Quantum Harry Productions and B.L. Purdom. See other posts on this blog for direct links to all episodes of Quantum Harry.

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