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 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).
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
Comments
Post a Comment