Essay: Ring Around the Rosy

Each of the seven columns of cards in the Tarot Major Arcana can be aligned with each of the seven books in the Harry Potter series. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 30: Harry and Tarot.) However, the cards of the Major Arcana that do not include The Fool (numbered 0 or 22, depending upon the Tarot deck) can also be divided into seven sequential sets of cards: the first three (one, two and three), the second three (four, five and six), and so on. This is because the Major Arcana was not originally created for divination but for storytelling, and each set of three cards heralds a new stage of the Tarot story. These sets of three cards can also, in order, be aligned with each of the books in the Harry Potter series.

The first sequential card for each book is called the “seed card”. The card that fills this role for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first book in the series, is the Magician, card number one. The Magician is often depicted with an infinity sign somewhere on the card, whether it’s floating over his head or he’s wearing a hat that looks like a squashy sideways number eight. Many versions of this card also show the Magician wearing an ouroboros belt, which is the Greek word for the image of a snake eating its own tail, a symbol of infinitude. These symbols point to the Magician being the epitome of both wholeness and potential power.

In the first Harry Potter book, Quirrell says, “There is no good and evil, only power, and those too weak to seek it,” though we see throughout the series that it takes more strength to refrain from seeking power than to pursue it, which Dumbledore knows—and at which he ultimately fails when he puts on the cursed ring Horcrux because it is set with the Resurrection Stone. Power being neutral, needing someone to use it in a “good” or “evil” way, with potential for good or evil, is epitomized by the Magician card, with its many powerful symbols.

The Philosopher’s Stone can also be used for good or for evil; on its own, it is morally neutral and not inherently good or bad. Dumbledore, the archetypal Magician and head teacher at Hogwarts, which has houses that can be represented by the wand, sword, cup and coin suits of the Tarot Minor Arcana, worked with Nicolas Flamel on alchemical experiments. Of the two, only Flamel uses the Stone to make the Elixir of Life, which allows him and his wife to live for over six hundred years. Dumbledore’s life does not seem to be artificially prolonged, and there are other quite elderly witches and wizards in the books, one of whom is so old that she oversaw Dumbledore’s O.W.L. examinations at the end of his fifth year at Hogwarts. It is unlikely that her longevity is due to the Elixir of Life.

Dumbledore being the epitome of the archetype of the Magician, who is shown with symbols of all of the Tarot suits, makes sense because Dumbledore, as the headmaster of Hogwarts, is also linked in some way to each of the Hogwarts houses:

Dumbledore is a Gryffindor by Sorting and was the Gryffindor head of house and the Transfiguration professor before McGonagall was.

Dumbledore’s first given name is Albus, a link to Alba, the Celtic name for Scotland. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 29: The Horcrux and Hallows Game.) Scotland is linked to Ravenclaw (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 18: The Wide World), and hence this is connected to Dumbledore’s scholarly nature.

Like Helga Hufflepuff, Dumbledore has a cup, of sorts: the Penseive, in which he examines memories, using these to educate Harry.

And like many Slytherins, in his youth he supported a philosophy favoring wizards over Muggles, along with his friend Gellert Grindelwald. The symbol of the Deathly Hallows has for its Tarot equivalent the disk or coin depicting a five-pointed star drawn with five lines, the pentacle, which is the fourth Tarot suit shown on the Magician card, and which is the suit linked to Slytherin house.

The three sequential cards for the first book in the Harry Potter series, the Magician, card number one, the High Priestess, card number two, and the Empress, card number three, can be thought of as matching up with the three people in Harry’s generation to whom he will eventually be closest: Ron Weasley, Ginny Weasley and Hermione Granger. Dumbledore is the best representative of the Magician in the first book when examining the column cards for the book, but Ron has many things in common with Dumbledore. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 2: This Old Man.) It is no coincidence that they both embody the archetype of the Wise Old Man, the ruling archetype for the first book, which is equivalent to the Tarot archetype of the Magician. Ron introduces Harry to new information and experiences in a world familiar to Ron, but in a less didactic and pedantic way than a teacher would. He is also the chess master, as opposed to the headmaster; this ability and his selfless sacrifice during the life-sized chess game distinguish him in the first book of the series.

Ginny doesn’t appear much in the first book, but when she does, waving goodbye to her brothers and to Harry on the train, she is the embodiment of the High Priestess, the second card, which is equivalent to the archetype of the Maiden. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 3: Iron Maiden.) At the train station, Ginny, representative of the archetypal Maiden, is seeing Harry off on a new part of his life. Her introduction at the start is key because she is, in the long run, his equal and counterpart. In Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, Sallie Nichols writes:

“The High Priestess is the epitome of Woman, spiritual descendent of goddesses like Isis, Ishtar and Venus, of the Virgin Mary and Sophia, Divine Wisdom.”

Though Ginny barely exists in the first book she will rule the column governing the second book in the series, the book ruled by the archetype of the Maiden and also ruled by the equivalent Tarot archetype: the High Priestess.

Each Tarot card in the Major Arcana has at least one card linked to it numerically through the simple Arithmancy method (Hermione’s favorite subject) of adding up the digits in a number to “reduce” it to another number. The cards that link to the Magician card are the Wheel of Fortune, card number 10, because 1+0=1, the number of the Magician card, and the Sun card, number 19, because 1+9=10 and then 1+0=1. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 31: The Devil You Know.) There are also links between the next sequential card, the High Priestess, and two others: Strength (card number 11, because 1+1=2, the number of the High Priestess) and Judgment (card number 20, because 2+0=2).

The Strength card usually shows a woman taming a lion, which could be considered another image of the formidable High Priestess. Alternately, we could focus on the Lion, the symbol of Gryffindor, and the way that it is being held in check and controlled by this unknown person, just as Harry must learn to control his magic in the first book and follow school rules to learn what he needs to know to join the wizarding world.

Card number 20, Judgment, often shows dead bodies rising from what appear to be open graves, presumably on Judgment Day, a reference to the book of Revelation, in the Bible. This could refer to Harry’s resurrection after three days, following Dumbledore bringing him out of the symbolic underworld where the Philosopher’s Stone was being protected.

The High Priestess’s link to the first book is that the she, like the archetypal Maiden, is about new beginnings and entering a new world, plus secrets and mysteries, which abound at the start of the series. Ginny as a character is the embodiment of the High Priestess, but she does not need be present for the card to have this meaning in connection to the first book in the series.

Hermione, in contrast to Ginny, is very present in the first book after the Troll incident; she is a clear embodiment of the Empress, the third and last sequential card linked to Philosopher’s Stone and card number 3 in the Major Arcana, which is equivalent to the Mother archetype. She is a Mother figure to Harry. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 4: Mother, May I?) She keeps his nose to the grindstone and is concerned with new life and growing things, which is important when she is the one who knows how to get past Devil’s Snare because she paid attention in Herbology lessons.

After she solves Snape’s Potions riddle, she gives Harry a motherly hug and a speech of encouragement to gird him for confronting the archetype of the Devil, the bottom card in the first column, and assuring that Justice is done—Justice being the middle card in the first column, represented by Harry, the Liminal Being, someone with a foot in two different worlds—the Muggle world and the wizarding world, as well as being someone who eventually literally dies and is resurrected, though his “death” and resurrection is only symbolic in the first book.

Two cards are linked to the Empress: the Hanged Man (card number 12, because 1+2=3, the number of the Empress card) and the World (card number 21, because 2+1=3).

The Hanged Man depicts a man hung upside down over an open pit, not someone with a hangman’s noose around his neck, as you might expect from the name. This card is also called the Traitor, Il Traditore, in Italian decks, because hanging someone upside down was called baffling, and this was specifically a punishment for traitors. This tradition has survived for so long in Italy that Il Duce, Benito Mussilini himself, was hung upside down. This card could point either to the traitor Peter Pettigrew, the true identify of Ron’s pet rat, Scabbers; or it is possible that it could be a link to Sirius Black, who was thought to have betrayed James and Lily Potter, Harry’s parents. Sirius is mentioned off-handedly by Hagrid early in the first book, because he borrowed Sirius’s enchanted motorcycle. It is also possible that the Hanged Man card, or the Traitor, Il Traditore, could point to Professor Quirrell, who betrayed Dumbledore by becoming Voldemort’s servant, and betrayed Harry in turn, by attempting to deliver him to Voldemort. Or perhaps the Hanged Man is referring to all three of these: Peter, Sirius and Quirrell. All are masked in some way in the first book, until Quirrell alone is unmasked and revealed as a traitor.

The World card, number 21, is extremely important at the end of the series, where it will have a double influence in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as both a column card and sequence card, just as the Magician card is both a column card and sequence card in the first book. The World’s faint influence here, through its link to the Empress, is more evidence of the symmetry with which Rowling has constructed not only this book but her entire series.

Like the Wheel of Fortune card, the World also often includes a depiction, in the four corners, of the four Evangelists. Each Evangelist can be linked to one of the Hogwarts houses (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 31: The Devil You Know), making the inclusion of these symbols on the World card collectively one symbol of wholeness and integration, just as the symbols of the Tarot Minor Arcana suits are on the first card, the Magician. The symbols on the World card point to the importance of wholeness and integration to all seven books and wholeness is also a theme of alchemy, which is the process through which the Philosopher’s Stone is created. The number 3 and cards that add up to 3—the Empress, the Hanged Man and the World—are a big part of that.

For instance, the importance of the number 3 in the series comes up repeatedly. There are the three members of the Trio, Harry, Ron and Hermione. Eventually there will be the Counter-Trio, Neville, Ginny and Luna—and the six members of the two trios embody each of the six gender- and age-related archetypes. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 7: Fountain of Youth.)

There are the three non-Harry Tournament Champions, each of whom is a doppelganger to Harry, Ron and Hermione because each member of the Trio is jealous of one of these Champions. Each non-Harry Champion is also aligned with someone in the other Counter-Trio—Viktor with Ginny, Fleur with Hermione, and Cedric with Harry, his “shadow” Champion, so that’s nine, three times three. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 19: Not Playing to Win.)

There are also three Deathly Hallows; three Marauders who accompany Harry to his death; the Tournament that was to have three tasks and three Champions; three members of the Dursley family; three Black sisters; and many other groups of three throughout the series, all connected to the wholeness epitomized in the World card.

The characters embodying the first and third sequence cards, Ron the Magician/archetypal Wise Old Man and Hermione the Empress/archetypal Mother, are with Harry throughout most of the first book, while the person embodying the second, Ginny the High Priestess/archetypal Maiden, is barely seen. However, she appears again at the close of the book, waiting for the Hogwarts students on the train platform with her mother. When she says, “There he is!” she does not mean Ron, her brother, or any of her brothers, but Harry. The Magician, High Priestess and Empress are with Harry at the end of his first journey; he is now ready to continue his trek to wholeness, which will come when he has completed his journey through all twenty-one cards.

I previously wrote about Harry stepping into the shoes of the character best embodying the ruling archetype for each of the seven books, the archetypes being, in order, the Wise Old Man, the Maiden, the Mother, the Father, the Crone, the Youth and the Liminal Being. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast: The Archetype Episodes.) Following the examination of the archetypes, I looked at how each book aligns with one of the game-like obstacles to the Philosopher’s Stone in the first book, as well as each book aligning with one of the thresholds that Harry crosses with Hagrid or with his help in the first book. (See the Quantum Harry Episode Guide, Episodes 10-29.)

Now I am examining how each book also aligns with one of the seven Horcruxes, which is in turn tied to each book’s Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. It is easiest to understand which Horcrux goes with which book when the Tarot cards for each book are used as a guide.

At the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone three entities are in the chamber with Quirrell/Voldemort that align with the Deathly Hallows. The Philosopher’s Stone is a doppelganger to the Elder Wand, items Voldemort is pursuing in the first and seventh books to increase and maintain his power. The Mirror of Erised has many parallels to the Resurrection Stone. And Harry, who is also in the chamber, has his built-in protection from Lily in his very skin, which parallels the Invisibility Cloak, Death’s own cloak, the third Hallow, the cloak that was his father’s. This gives Harry one form of protection from his mother and another from his father, meaning that once again, when Harry is with a particular object—this time, his Invisibility Cloak—it is a moment of completion for him, because this means that he has a legacy from both parents.

The reason that the Horcrux aligning with the first book is the ring containing the Resurrection Stone is that this stone and the Philosopher’s Stone are two sides of the mirror of life and death, and together they make a whole. The Philosopher’s Stone is a fitting representative of the Hallow of the Elder Wand because each is sought by Voldemort at opposite ends of the series as a solution to what he perceives to be his greatest problem: living forever. But the Philosopher’s Stone is used to brew the Elixir of Life, while the Resurrection Stone allows someone to bring back a shadowy version of a person who has died but who definitely isn’t alive again. (“Undead” is an appropriate label for someone brought back this way.)

The ring with the Resurrection Stone is a legacy for Harry from Dumbledore, given to him inside the Snitch Harry catches in his first Quidditch match. This first match, against Slytherin, is another element of the first book reflected in the last, when Harry plays his final match, a metaphorical one, against the Slytherin Voldemort, this time catching the Elder Wand like a Snitch, just as he “catches” the Philosopher’s Stone from the mirror. This comparison is furthered by Harry having no desire to keep the Elder Wand, just as he has no desire to use the Philosopher’s Stone. All he wants to do with the Elder Wand is to repair his original wand and put the Elder Wand back in Dumbledore’s tomb, where it will eventually be without a master if Harry dies a natural death or if no one, for the rest of Harry’s life, disarms him.

Dumbledore, who embodies the Magician, both a column card and the seed card for the first book, is linked to both the Philosopher’s Stone (since he helped create it) and the Resurrection Stone, which he took from an enemy and which ultimately leads to his drawn-out death, until Snape kills him as an act of mercy. Dumbledore is also linked to the Elder Wand, having taken it from Grindelwald.

The Devil card, at the bottom of the first column of Tarot Major Arcana cards, has symbolism on it that applies to Quirrell and to Voldemort in different ways. Quirrell himself is not the Devil on the card; that is Voldemort. There are many parallels between Voldemort and the Devil as seen in folk customs or legends connected to the Devil. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 14: The Devil’s Game.)  There is also the “Voldemort Name Game” (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 26: Until Someone Loses an Eye), in which you do not want to accidentally say his name and summon him, just as people once avoided saying the Devil’s name and used other nicknames for him instead.

A representative for Quirrell is also on the Devil card, but he isn’t the Devil: he is one of the chained servants depicted on the card. He calls Voldemort “master” and fears his wrath. Chains are made from rings. The Resurrection Stone could have been set into any kind of jewelry or ornament, or left without a setting, but JK Rowling chose this link (so to speak) to Harry’s first Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, which is easiest to see when we examine the connection of the Tarot Major Arcana cards to each book.

Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 32: The Mirror and the Stone. Copyright 2017-2019 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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