Essay: Harry and the Priestess

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets being JK Rowling’s retelling of the Grimm version of “Little Red Riding Hood” is possibly one of the cleverest things she has done in the series. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 12: Grow Up Now, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina, and Episode 14: The Devil’s Game.) However, Rowling doesn’t just use myth and folklore to shape her seven-book series. When the Tarot Major Arcana cards numbered one through twenty-one are placed in a grid of three rows and seven columns, each column contains cards whose symbolism allows us to see that each column aligns with each book in the Harry Potter series, starting with the top card in each column aligning neatly with the archetype ruling each book. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 2: This Old Man.) Each book also aligns with a set of three “sequential cards” that take our hero through a Tarot journey from card #1 to card #21, a Tarot story, going back to the origins of the Tarot, which were created to tell stories and play games, rather than for divination. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 30: Harry and Tarot.)

Having addressed the way that the first column and first three sequential cards align with the first book of the series in previous essays, this essay will be an examination of the second column, which is aligned with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The High Priestess is at the top (#2), the Hermit is in the middle (#9), and the Tower of Destruction or the Lightning-Struck Tower (also called just “the Tower”) is at the bottom of this column (#16).

Of the six gender- and age-related archetypes (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 7: Fountain of Youth) the Maiden is the ruling archetype for the second book in the series and Ginny is the best embodiment of the Maiden in Chamber of Secrets both because Ginny’s actions set the plot in motion, and because, during the climax of the book, Harry must step into her shoes in order to resolve the plot (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 3: Iron Maiden). This follows the pattern JK Rowling established in the first book of the series, when Harry stepped into Dumbledore’s shoes to resolve the plot of that story, Dumbledore being the character who best embodies the ruling archetype for that book: the Wise Old Man. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 2: This Old Man.) The Wise Old Man’s corresponding Tarot archetype is the card is at the top of the first column of Tarot Major Arcana cards: the Magician (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 31: The Devil You Know). In turn, Ginny Weasley, the character who is the best embodiment of the ruling archetype for Chamber of Secrets, the Maiden, also embodies the corresponding Tarot archetype at the top of the second column of cards: the High Priestess.

The Waite-Smith Tarot deck has a High Priestess card showing a woman on a throne between two columns representing the “symbolic pillars that in the account in I Kings 7:15-22 are said to have stood to the north and the south of the door of Solomon’s temple”, according to Sallie Nichols, in her book Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey. [Weisner Books, 1980] The Priestess holds an open book and a crescent moon is near her feet, linking her to the tripartite goddess, the one who combines the Maiden, Mother and Crone, though the crescent moon is specifically linked to the Maiden aspect of the Great Goddess. This card was first called the Papesse, but was changed to the High Priestess, probably because the idea of a female pope was heretical to many Catholics.

Behind the High Priestess there is often a tapestry depicting pomegranates; the goddess Persephone, Demeter’s daughter, ate pomegranate seeds when she was taken to the underworld, the land of the dead, by Hades. These are also symbols of fertility found carved into Solomon’s temple. The Priestess could be considered an embodiment of Sophia, wisdom personified (for which Solomon was also known) or Persephone. Persephone’s imprisonment by Hades and her eventual (temporary) release is one of the Greek myths JK Rowling has enmeshed in the plot of Chamber of Secrets, since Ginny is taken down to the Chamber (a symbolic underworld) by the one who rules the Chamber (Tom Riddle), who is equivalent to Hades, the god of the underworld, and the world (Hogwarts) was in danger of ending after Ginny is taken (Hogwarts is on the verge of closing).

The columns flanking the High Priestess mark her as a gatekeeper, like Moaning Myrtle in the girls’ bathroom, which is where the Chamber of Secret’s entrance is located. Harry, who plays the role of a Bishop during the life-sized chess game in the first book, is the holy man, the Hermit (card #9), who speaks an esoteric language (Parseltongue) that allows him to pass into that realm. Myrtle, like Ginny, shows an interest in Harry, an archetypal Youth, which is expected for someone in the role of the Maiden/High Priestess, the female counterpart of the Youth.

Harry passes through multiple gateways to reach the “temple” of the Chamber. It is treated by Tom Riddle as a holy place, a sanctum sanctorum. In The Hero with A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell writes:

...the approaches and entrances to temples are flanked and defended by colossal gargoyles: dragons, lions, devil-slayers with drawn swords, resentful dwarfs, winged bulls. These are the threshold guardians to ward away all incapable of encountering the higher silences within.... They illustrate the fact that the devotee at the moment of entry into a temple undergoes a metamorphosis. His secular character remains without; he sheds it, as a snake its slough.

Harry even finds a literal sloughed snakeskin immediately inside the Chamber, as if Rowling had been reading her Joseph Campbell when she wrote this part of Chamber of Secrets. In addition to the seven thresholds Harry crosses with Hagrid or with his help in the first book (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 11: Wargames), he encounters threshold guardians in each book: the Whomping Willow that guards the entrance to the tunnel leading to the Shrieking Shack; the dragons of the first Triwizard Tournament task; the entrance to the Ministry of Magic in the fifth book, and so on. Each one is similar to what Campbell writes about but is also subtly different. Myrtle is the threshold guardian for the Chamber of Secrets.

The High Priestess on the card holds a book on her lap, and Ginny’s relationship with a book is the impetus for the plot of Chamber of Secrets. The book on the card is supposedly the Torah, and in the second book of the series, Harry has his symbolic confirmation or bar mitzvah—his spiritual coming-of-age. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina.) Another meaning associated with the High Priestess card is “esoteric religious experience”, so it is fitting that Harry has his spiritual awakening in the book ruled by the Maiden/High Priestess, both embodied by Ginny.

Each Tarot Major Arcana card has at least one other card linked to it numerically. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 30: Harry and Tarot.) It may seem oddly random at first to add up the digits of a card to link it to another card, but this method of linking the cards numerically is a longstanding connection between Tarot and Arithmancy, Hermione Granger’s favorite subject, ironically (since it is a form of Divination). The cards linked to the High Priestess (#2) are Strength (#11, because 1+1=2) and Judgment (#20, because 2+0=2).

A woman wrestling with a lion (Strength) could be seen as Ginny again (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 32: The Mirror and the Stone), but in the second book she is struggling against an adversary poised to overwhelm her at any moment. She temporarily gets the upper hand when she throws Tom Riddle’s diary in Moaning Myrtle’s toilet to get rid of it, but she later sees it fall out of Harry’s bag when he is accosted by the dwarf/cupid who delivers her singing Valentine to him, so she steals it back, probably to prevent Tom Riddle from telling Harry about her role in what has been happening in the castle.

After retrieving the diary from his dorm, Ginny again falls under its spell, and this is almost fatal to her. Rowling shows readers firsthand in Deathly Hallows how dangerous it is to regularly be in close proximity to a Horcrux, and it must have been even worse for an eleven-year-old girl who did not know what she was handling. Harry, Ron and Hermione were of-age during the Horcrux hunt and knew the danger each time they took turns wearing the locket Horcrux.

The Judgment card could be linked to a plot point a bit more cheerful than the struggle depicted on the Strength card; it shows bodies rising from their graves on Judgment Day. The equivalent of this in Chamber of Secrets is the Petrifaction victims awakening after the Mandrake potion returns them to their original states before they all encountered the Basilisk.

The Tower of Destruction or Lightning-Struck Tower (the name Sybill Trelawney uses for it in Half-Blood Prince) is at the bottom of the second column of the Tarot Major Arcana. The importance this card will have to the sixth book, when it reappears, is somewhat obvious: Dumbledore dies on a tower. However, its role is less clear in reference to the second book of the series: this book includes an inverted tower, the Chamber, thrusting down into the earth, rather than toward the sky.

According to Sallie Nichols, each time this card appears, the Tower carries the same meaning: “transformation, the shattering of illusion, and sudden change”. In Tarot readings, it is considered important whether a card is right-side-up or upside down. The Chamber being, in essence, an upside-down Tower, could point to its meaning being that of an upside-down (inverted) Tower card. When this card is upright in a reading, also called a Tarot spread, it is only considered to be bad news, which is why Trelawney is so alarmed about the card turning up repeatedly in her readings. Thus, an inverted Tower card could mean that someone in a bad situation will experience a good end to all of the chaos and strife. This is a fitting description of the end of Chamber of Secrets: Harry prevents Ginny from being expelled, the diary is destroyed, the Basilisk is slain, the Petrifaction victims wake up, Hagrid returns from Azkaban, Dumbledore is returned to his post, and Harry frees Dobby.

The Tower card is also linked to the story of the Tower of Babel, which some theologians say “prefigured” (theology-speak for “foreshadowed”) the events that occurred at Pentecost, when Jesus’s disciples found, after the flames of the Holy Spirit appeared on their heads, that they could speak in languages they never could before, the better to evangelize. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina.) Thus, in addition to the High Priestess being linked to religious initiation, the Tower card can also link to this book’s Pentecostal theme, epitomized by Harry stating his faith in the god-figure, Dumbledore, and flames appearing on his head in the form of Fawkes-the-Phoenix, a stand-in for the Holy Spirit. After this Harry is spiritually mature and able to slay the Basilisk. The link to the Tower of Babel can also be a reference to Harry’s ability to speak Parseltongue, the language of the Other. Sallie Nichols also says that the Tower card is linked to “Kundalini experiences”, which is a yoga reference. “Kundalini” happens to mean “coiled”, like a serpent (or perhaps a basilisk).

A tower in myth, folklore or literature often serves, like Harry himself, as a symbolic link to another world, an axis mundi. However, in the physical world, towers are quite literal links to the sky because tall structures, like towers, attract lightning (which led Benjamin Franklin to invent the lightning rod). However, in the Harry Potter series, one might metaphorically say that (lightning-struck) towers—upright or inverted—attract Harry, who bears a lightning-shaped scar. In Chamber of Secrets, it is as if the inverted tower of the Chamber is “struck” by Harry when he crosses the threshold into the sacred temple Slytherin created.

In each of the first six books of the series, Harry harrows a metaphorical hell, and in the seventh he literally dies and rises from the dead. This is another reason that his confrontation with Voldemort in the first book is with a metaphorical Devil: he must pass a Cerberus-like three-headed dog guarding the entrance to a symbolic underworld. In this book the Chamber is Harry’s metaphorical hell, which meshes nicely with the High Priestess’s link to the goddess Persephone, who becomes Hades’ consort and co-ruler in the underworld.

The Tower depicted on most cards is damaged and under attack; this manifests in Chamber of Secrets as the cave-in caused by Harry, Ron and Gilderoy Lockhart when they go into the Chamber, which puts Ron and Lockhart on one side of the fallen debris and Harry on the other. Harry chooses to enter the inner sanctum of the Chamber alone; Rowling must have him experience his spiritual coming of age on his own, without anyone else accompanying him into the forbidden precinct.

The Tower card (#16), is linked to the Chariot card (#7, because 1+6=7). The Chariot, at the top of the seventh column (which aligns with the seventh book of the series), is the Tarot equivalent of the archetype of the Liminal Being, the ruling archetype for Deathly Hallows and one of Harry’s two non-Tarot archetypes, the other being the Youth. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 8: Have You Tried Not Being Liminal? and Episode 9: We’re Here, We’re Metaphorically Queer.) This is yet another card linked to the second book of the series that points to Harry’s status as a holy man, like the Hermit, someone who can cross thresholds and access mystical realms. In Chamber of Secrets, Harry is on the cusp of adulthood, he is an initiate, which is what liminality is all about.

In Bernadette Lynn Bosky’s article, “Liminal Places and Liminal States in Big, Little by John Crowley [New York Review of Science Fiction, November 2012], Boskey wrote:

…one of the goals of ritual is to turn boundaries into thresholds, as when a shaman crosses the barrier between our world and the other world and then personally forms a bridge between them… Roads and paths can be liminal also; they lead from one place to another, joining them, but also help define, for instance, what is safe versus what is not, as in the story “Little Red Riding Hood.”

The Chariot being linked to the Tower card reinforces Harry’s status as a Liminal Being, as someone who speaks the language of the Other and bridges worlds, who goes to the Realm of the Gods, the metaphorical underworlds he encounters in each book, and either returns with a boon or having lifted a curse from the world, which is the best way to describe his slaying the basilisk.

The Chariot also has an equivalent in Chamber of Secrets that is a literal mode of transportation: the Flying Ford Anglia. This unusual car takes Harry from captivity in Surrey to the Weasley home and then from London to Hogwarts. It is not operated like most cars but is controlled by magic. A driver is depicted on the Chariot card, but he does not hold reins to control the creatures pulling the Chariot; he holds a wand to control them instead. The driver uses magic. Just as Harry embodies the archetype of the Liminal Being, whose Tarot equivalent is the Chariot, the Ford Anglia also embodies a threshold-crossing Liminal Being, a “woods-car” instead of the “woods-man” of Little Red Riding Hood, when it rescues him and Ron from the giant spiders in the forest. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 14: The Devil’s Game.) Harry is rescued by this “hero” before he goes into the Chamber, and later becomes the embodiment of this type of savior himself to rescue Ginny from the metaphorical wolf embodied by Tom Riddle.

In the center of the second column of Tarot Major Arcana cards, between the High Priestess and the Tower, is the Hermit. Harry is in multiple Tarot roles in this book, but all of the roles are religious figures, intercessors. (The third intercessor, after the Hermit and the Chariot, is one of the three sequence cards for the second book, which will be addressed in the next podcast episode/essay.)

Most Hermit cards show an old man with a beard, wearing a hooded cloak, sometimes described as an invisibility cloak. The Hermit stands in a bleak, perhaps snowy landscape, holding a staff, but whether the staff is a walking stick or a wizard’s staff (an oversized wand) is unclear. He also has a glowing lantern that occasionally bears a Star of David. Hermits are by their nature shut away from the rest of human society, and Harry begins the second book in captivity, unable to leave his room or to access his magic books and equipment. He is even completely cut off from communication with his friends because he is not permitted to use his owl for post and Dobby the house-elf has been intercepting all of the post his friends have been trying to send to him. The Hermit on the card is not shut away, though, as a true Hermit should be; he is a wandering mendicant. Early in the second book, Harry is likewise on the move, in the Weasleys’ flying car (their Chariot). The lantern with the Star of David could also point to Harry’s spiritual enlightenment or coming-of-age in this book.

The card linked to the Hermit (#9) is the Moon card (#18, because 1+8=9). A typical Moon card shows two towers looming in the distance; a dog and a wolf that seem to be baying at the moon; and a crab or a lobster-like creature emerging from water in the foreground. This last image is a connection to the astrological sign of Cancer, the Crab; those born under this sign are also called “Moon Children”.

A crescent Moon is on the High Priestess card, an aspect of the three-faced goddess, specifically the Maiden in the Maiden/Mother/Crone trio (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 3: Iron Maiden). However, the aquatic animal in the water on the Moon card could represent two fearsome creatures in Chamber of Secrets, one of whom fears the other: the basilisk and Aragog, the giant spider. In the second book there is a trip into a forest primeval, one of the many re-enactments of the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood in Chamber of Secrets, when Harry and Ron follow the spiders into the forest and meet Aragog, nearly becoming a tasty snack for him and his family. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 14: The Devil’s Game.) Such a trip is easily linked to the Moon, which represents the unconscious mind. Symbolically, the Moon is the flip side of the Hermit’s lantern; the Hermit pursues conscious enlightenment, but the Moon is tied to unconscious enlightenment and intuition, which is linked to the High Priestess as well. Both have their place in this book.

The Moon is also linked to memory; Sallie Nichols writes about

A legend which tells that each night Lady Moon gathers unto herself all the discarded and forgotten dreams of mankind. These she stores in a cup till dawn.

This use of a cup or vessel to store dreams/memories is reminiscent of Dumbledore’s Pensieve, which is appropriate for the card that will be at the bottom of the fourth column, the one aligned with Goblet of Fire, the fourth book of the series, in which Rowling first shows readers Dumbledore’s Pensieve.

Memories are also important in Chamber of Secrets, or rather, a lack of memories, which is what Gilderoy Lockhart’s victims suffer after he learns how a variety of talented witches and wizards achieved the accomplishments Lockhart now claims. He steals their memories of these experiences, just as he attempts to steal Ron and Harry’s memories of his confession of fraud. When the memory charm he attempts to cast on the two boys with Ron’s broken wand backfires, he becomes unable to access his memories, and therefore his very identity, his concept of selfhood. That “selfhood” happens to also include a great deal of looking into mirrors to admire his appearance, and aside from the Moon symbolizing memories and unconscious enlightenment, it is also a literal mirror, reflecting the sun’s light; mirrors are undoubtedly amongst Gilderoy Lockhart’s most prized possessions.

In terms of the Tarot story, the Moon card also represents “the dark night of the soul”, the bleakest moment of the hero’s saga. In Chamber of Secrets, Harry has never felt worse in his life (so far) than when he and the other students are informed that Ginny has been taken into the Chamber. Ginny, his best friend’s sister, is lost, it seems. He literally feels like he has nothing to lose by trying to save her.

In the first book of the Harry Potter series, Harry-as-Justice is the intercessor and axis mundi who mediates between Dumbledore-the-Magician and the Philosopher’s Stone on the one hand, and Quirrell, the servant of the Devil, along with Voldemort, the embodiment of the Devil, on the other. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 31: The Devil You Know.) In Chamber of Secrets, as an axis mundi, a holy man/intercessor, a Hermit and Liminal Being, Harry again mediates between the character embodying the top card in that book’s column, Ginny, the High Priestess, and the Chamber, the inverted Tower card, a literal and figurative underworld, the realm of a Devil equivalent: Tom Riddle. Harry then uses the faith of the Hermit, the intuition of the Moon, and the language of the Other (linked to both the Tower and the Chariot) to defeat the master of the inverted Tower, resurrect the High Priestess, and bring his dying world back to life.

Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 33: The Inverted Tower of Secrets. 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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