Quantum Harry, the Podcast

  PUBLICATION NEWS: The Alchemical Harry Potter is now available for purchase from McFarland! (My chapter is in Part III, below.) From the publisher:  When Harry Potter first boards the Hogwarts Express, he journeys to a world which Rowling says has alchemy as its “internal logic.” The Philosopher’s Stone, known for its power to transform base metals into gold and to give immortality to its maker, is the subject of the conflict between Harry and Voldemort in the first book of the series. But alchemy is not about money or eternal life, it is much more about the transformations of desire, of power and of people—through love. Harry’s equally remarkable and ordinary power to love leads to his desire to find but not use the Philosopher’s Stone at the start of the series and his wish to end the destructive power of the Elder Wand at the end. This collection of essays on alchemical symbolism and transformations in Rowling’s series demonstrates how Harry’s work with magical objects, ...

A SPECIAL EPISODE OF QUANTUM HARRY, THE PODCAST: JK Rowling and the Essay of Doom  *  Blog version  *  ~  EPISODE GUIDE  ~

The link to the podcast version of this essay. JK Rowling has, of late, been digging an ever-deepening hole concerning her attitudes toward transgender people. As the parent of a trans son, as well as someone who co-led (for 10 years) an interfaith 501(c)(3) educational organization that educated the public and media about the existence of people of faith who support equal rights for sexual minorities, reproductive freedom, and separation of church and state, I have felt the impetus to respond to Rowling’s extremely damaging statements but felt too full of grief, initially, to do so. So, to begin to address this in terms of the most recent statement Rowling has made, I will examine some parts of her statement that particularly moved me to respond. I am working from a Google docs version of it . This is the first problematic statement I found: “… last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets...

Part I of The Tarot Hallows  essays: Horcruxes and King’s Crosses In the last ten Quantum Harry essays I’ve been writing about each of the seven columns in the grid of Tarot Major Arcana cards numbered one to twenty-one, with three rows and seven columns (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 30: Harry and Tarot ) aligning with each of the seven books of the Harry Potter series, as well as the seven sets of sequential cards (1-3, 4-6, 7-9, etc.) also aligning with each of the seven books, in order. The last essay will actually be four essays, as this is the blog version of the final episode of Quantum Harry, the Podcast , which is an extra-long installment. This will be the first of four essays. The seventh column, the one aligned with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, has the Chariot (card #7) at the top, Temperance (card #14) in the middle, and the World (card #21) at the bottom. In the first book of the series, the Magician (#1) was the top column card ...