Quantum Harry, the Podcast

What are Dumbledore’s, Harry’s, and Voldemort’s Tarot archetypes? How do certain Tarot cards and the tasks of the Triwizard Tournament reveal which saints are aligned with the four Hogwarts houses? And how is the Tarot Lovers card linked to Harry’s Sorting? Episode 31: The Devil You Know Watch the Episode 31 video on YouTube. Related essay: In the Balance EPISODE GUIDE

All future episodes of Quantum Harry, audio, video and essay, will be posted on successive TUESDAYS, rather than Mondays. The Episode guide will also be updated to reflect this change.

JK Rowling never tells her readers about Harry Potter learning about Tarot, nor is it ever mentioned during his Divination lessons. Despite this, Professor Trelawney abruptly reappears in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince , even though she is no longer Harry’s teacher by the time he’s in his sixth year. In just about every appearance she makes in the sixth book she is raving about the Tower , also called The Tower of Destruction , or La Maison Dieu ( The House of God ) in French, the sixteenth card in the Tarot Major Arcana. Trelawney ranting about this card is the first overt mention of Tarot in the seven books, and it is a virtual throwaway. It is not, however, the first mention of the name of a Tarot card in the series . In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire , Rowling calls the Little Hangleton pub frequented by Frank Bryce, the caretaker at the Riddle House, The Hanged Man. This is the name of the twelfth card in the Tarot Major Arcana. JK Rowling has also invente...

Chamber of Secrets (Pottermore post) Let’s face it—this is probably everyone’s least-favorite Pottermore post ever. So little about it makes sense. For contrast, this is my head-canon on what really happened vis a vis the Chamber entrance and plumbing at Hogwarts in general: The four Founders did not simply rely on magic to do things like build Hogwarts because they did not understand the Muggle way of building; they understood Muggle methods perfectly well but improved upon these methods with their magic. Wizards had had indoor bathrooms—both bathing rooms and water closets—for a long time when Hogwarts was founded. Wizards understood the physics of plumbing because they did not need to work as hard as Muggles to do things like acquiring food to eat and clothes to wear. This gave them the luxury of time to work out how to most efficiently dispose of human waste without magic. Thus, regardless of whether someone in a magical household can do spells (a young child, the ...