Essay: The End of the Realm of the Gods

The first seven cards of the Tarot Major Arcana depict age-old archetypes, and with one exception, each aligns with a gender or age archetype (the Wise Old Man, the Maiden, the Father, etc.) plus the ageless and genderless Liminal Being. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episodes 2-9.) The only card in the first seven that doesn’t align with one of these archetypes has for its only numerically-linked card a Tarot archetype that does align with the remaining “missing” archetype, as if those two are interchangeable. In other words, each book is ruled by a mythic archetype that has an equivalent in the first seven cards of the Tarot Major Arcana in the exact same order.

This is unlikely to be a coincidence; instead, it is highly probable that JK Rowling intentionally inserted Tarot imagery and symbolism in the series in a specific, structural way. She seems to have deliberately included imagery from the Tarot Major Arcana, but not randomly, instead utilizing two approaches to accomplish this: aligning one of the seven columns of cards with each book, in order, and also aligning one of the seven three-card sequences with each book, also in order. (Aligning cards one, two, and three with the first book, cards four, five, and six with the second book, etc.) This means that the column cards for the third book in the series are cards 3, 10, and 17, while the sequential cards for this book are 7, 8, and 9. There are also six additional cards linked numerically to these six column and sequential cards.

Since the Tarot was originally created for playing games, this once again ties in with the overarching theme of JK Rowling’s seven-book series: games, toys, sweets, fairy tales and childhood in general, meshing perfectly with her hero not only being a child but with Harry’s chief enemy being contemptuous of him specifically because he is a child. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 1: The Kids’ Table.)

The first seven cards of the Tarot Major Arcana, or the top row in our grid of twenty-one cards, is called The Realm of the Gods. Prisoner of Azkaban is the first Harry Potter book in which Harry is not rescued by a deus ex machina at the climax (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina), but since the first of the three sequential cards for this book, the Chariot (card #7), comes from the Realm of the Gods, the last of the first seven cards, there is one more deus ex machina that helps Harry in this book, though it is not during the climax. This “god from the machine” seems very clearly linked to the Chariot card, just as the Flying Ford Anglia was in the second book, when the Chariot card was linked numerically to the card at the bottom of the second column, the Lightning-Struck Tower. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 33: The Inverted Tower of Secrets.)

When Harry is on the run in Prisoner of Azkaban, the Knight Bus just shows up out of the blue, sparing Harry having to fly on his broom to run away from Privet Drive. He does not expect it or even know that this exists, and he does not knowingly summon it. Knight Bus appearances in later books do not carry the deus ex machina vibe of its debut; however, as a Liminal Being and an axis mundi, a link between worlds, this “Chariot” is the most appropriate transportation for Harry to use in this situation. Harry, a Metaphorically Queer Liminal Being, like many literally queer youth, has left home and is in danger of being homeless specifically because of his difference from his family and their subsequent rejection of him. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 8: Have You Tried Not Being Liminal? and Episode 9: We’re Here, We’re Metaphorically Queer.) This also happens to Sirius, another Metaphorically Queer Liminal Being, when he is young, though the difference between him and his family is that he is not a blood supremacist, rather than the difference between Harry and the Dursleys: that he is magical and they are not.

Many versions of the Chariot card show two horses pulling the Chariot, a red one and a blue one. If you combine these colors you get purple, which is the color of the Knight Bus. Other cards show two sphinxes pulling the Chariot instead, one white and one black. This is a visual presentation of the same theme; the creatures of different colors represent the Chariot being pulled in opposite directions, and the driver must balance and reconcile these opposing forces, guiding the vehicle magically. The Chariot driver does not hold reins but a wand, like the Magician, the card at the beginning of the Realm of the Gods. And like the Moon card, the Chariot is connected to the sign of Cancer, which is all about home.

The Chariot’s destination is ultimately home. In Chamber of Secrets, Harry flew in the Ford Anglia, a symbolic Chariot, to two of his emotional homes: the Burrow and Hogwarts. In addition to bridging worlds and reconciling opposing forces, which is what Liminal Beings do, another theme connected to this card is a journey home—which may be a new, chosen home—and discovering your true self by learning about where you came from, like Harry in  Prisoner of Azkaban, when he learns about the Marauders’ backstory.

These themes mesh with the mythic archetype linked to this card, the Metaphorically Queer Liminal Being, and to the color purple, the color of the Knight Bus, which happens to be an emblematic color in the LGBTQ community. Harry, a Metaphorically Queer Liminal Being, is treated as a pariah in his own home, but after he is “Outed” and learns about his true self, he goes to his spiritual home, to live with a chosen family.

Another meaning attached to the Chariot card that is somewhat obvious is travel. Travel and transportation are key themes in the third book of the series. Harry’s first experience of dementors is while he is traveling on the Hogwarts Express. He is later convinced that he must learn to fight dementors to play Quidditch, his usual mock-war, which is played on brooms, a mode of transportation. The Knight Bus and the Hogwarts Express are both virtual Chariots, taking Harry home—the bus going to the wizarding world in general, and the train to Hogwarts.

When he arrives at Hogwarts, Harry encounters so-called “horseless carriages” for the first time, which are really pulled by Thestrals, skeletal winged horses that are invisible to most people, including Harry, in his third year. Having flown to school in the previous book, he did not previously see these carriages, which, like Tarot Chariot, do not require a driver to steer them with reins. The eerie Thestrals Harry sees two books later are there, however, and these creatures combine black and white, like the sphinxes on some Chariot cards, with their black bodies and wings, and white eyes.

In addition to the bus, the train and the school carriages, another mode of transportation Harry uses to play a game, his broomstick, is destroyed and he gets a replacement, a Firebolt, which is an especially apt name for a broom owned by Harry Potter, with his lightning-bolt scar. The new broom is hotly debated, with Hermione, backed up by McGonagall, convinced that it is from Sirius and therefore jinxed (which makes her half-right). Harry also rides Buckbeak the hippogriff, first during a lesson with Hagrid, later to save Buckbeak and Sirius from the Ministry’s version of “justice”.

However, the Chariot is not just about Harry’s many journeys, literal and metaphorical, including his journey to understanding who he is and where he comes from. Sirius, also a Metaphorically Queer Liminal Being, travels “home” from Azkaban, back to being Harry’s godfather, a role he would have filled at his friends’ deaths if he had not gone to prison, and, like Harry, he also travels back to Hogwarts, his spiritual home. Sirius is Metaphorically Queer in his own family, due to his ideological differences with them, but he is also a Liminal Being because he is an Animagus.

Another character linked to the liminality of the Chariot is the werewolf Remus Lupin, someone who, rather than changing into another creature at will, like an Animagus, becomes a ravenous wolf during the full moon, quite unwillingly. This works neatly with the sign of Cancer being linked to the Chariot card, since those born under Cancer are called “Moon Children”.

Other symbols on some Chariot cards are wings and the Hindu symbols for the union of positive and negative, which is equivalent to the yin/yang. Sirius escapes from the Ministry’s clutches on Buckbeak, another Liminal Being and a mode of transportation (for Harry, Hermione and Sirius) that is a union of opposites. Even Buckbeak’s name speaks of his dual nature, since “bucking” is something a horse does and a “beak” belongs to a bird. (His later alias, “Witherwings” also speaks to his dual nature; a wither is the ridge between the shoulder blades where a horse’s height is measured, and wings obviously refer to another major anatomical feature of birds, as well as being a symbol on the Chariot card.)

The fear that a boggart feeds on is defeated by laughter, and the despair brought on by dementors is fought by hope, love and thoughts of happiness. The Chariot embodies these and other dualities in the third book of the series and takes Harry, the protagonist in this Tarot story, to the end of the Realm of the Gods.

The card linked to the Chariot (card #7) is the Tower of Destruction or the Lightning-Struck Tower (card #16, because 1+6=7). In addition to the Firebolt being Harry’s new broom, an obvious link to Harry’s lightning-bolt scar, in this book the Tower card can be linked to the literal tower from which Harry and Hermione rescue Sirius. This is what may make the tower from which they rescue him “lightning-struck”, since Harry has a lightning-bolt scar, so, like the inverted Tower of the Chamber of Secrets, it is also a “Harry-struck” tower.

Harry begins studying Divination in Prisoner of Azkaban, lessons he attends at the top of a tower, even having to climb a ladder to reach the top. This is also the residence of Professor Sybill Trelawney, her tower being a physical manifestation of her identity as an axis mundi, a link between worlds, an archetypal Crone. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 6: A Murder of Crones.) She is also a genuine Seer, though Harry and his friends scoff at her predictions. However, Harry is less sanguine about the prediction she gives during his Divination final, about the servant of the Dark Lord returning to his master, which Harry initially believes means Sirius, though he later realizes that it refers to Peter.

There is another crumbling “tower” in this book, accessed from underground, like the inverted tower of the Chamber of Secrets: the Shrieking Shack. A confrontation and a number of revelations occur in this virtual “Tower”, which, like the Chamber of Secrets, can be considered “inverted”, with a meaning that seems to be the same in this book and the second: a time of change and upheaval that nonetheless ends well—which it generally does, with Sirius and Buckbeak rescued and the dementors leaving Hogwarts. The only fly in the ointment is that Peter escapes, which makes it impossible to clear Sirius’s name with the Ministry and also leads, eventually, to the resurrection of Voldemort, a development predicted by Trelawney in her literal Lightning-Struck Tower.

Justice (card #8) is the second sequential card for this book, and it is linked to a column card, the Star (card # 17, because 1+7=8). Justice is nearly always shown in a negative light in Prisoner of Azkaban, unlike when Harry embodied the archetype of Justice and mediated between Dumbledore and Voldemort in the first book. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 31: The Devil You Know.) This reflects the up-and-down influence of the Wheel of Fortune card in this book, and that one of the characters embodying the Star archetype, Sirius, gets short shrift in terms of Justice. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 35: Prisoner of Time.) Harry tries to rectify this, helping Buckbeak and Sirius to escape miscarriages of Justice, but Harry is not the only one working on this; Hermione does research to secure an acquittal for Buckbeak, and when she is unable to continue, Ron picks up where she left off. All three are keenly interested in seeing Justice done.

Dementors are as blind as Justice should be, but not in a good way; they do not care if they suck a soul from someone innocent. They are indiscriminate, unswayed by arguments about who deserves punishment and who does not. Buckbeak is also “railroaded” by the so-called wizarding Justice system, merely because Lucius Malfoy is friendly with the Minister for Magic.

A Time-Turner looks like an hour glass and is about balance, since the sand can only go from one end of the glass to the other and back. Using the Time-Turner, Harry administers Justice and saves Sirius and Buckbeak, after hearing Lupin’s and Sirius’s “testimony” in the Shrieking Shack and having heard Pettigrew’s side of the story. Harry, again embodying the archetype of Justice, even offers a stay of execution to Peter. He wants to turn Peter over to the Ministry for a trial, perhaps sensing that letting Remus and Sirius murder him would damage them as well as Peter. He does not want them to do this to themselves. He does not yet know about murder ripping a person’s soul, but seems to know instinctively that it will change his father’s best friends forever. Harry wants to protect them from the blowback that he expects to be the result of this vigilante “Justice”.

The third sequential card for Prisoner of Azkaban, the Hermit (card #9), a wandering holy man or scholar, can refer to multiple people in this book, like the Hanged Man and Star cards. Harry is a candidate for this archetype when he is briefly homeless and must stay at the Leaky Cauldron. Sirius is in this role as a fugitive. He engages in a lonely trek to see Harry in Surrey, then goes north again to Hogwarts. Another archetypal Hermit is Remus Lupin, who leads a lonely, insular life, due to his lycanthropy, and has to lock himself up monthly to avoid hurting others. Plus, as a teacher, he also fits the “scholarly” aspect of the Hermit archetype.

The Hermit is an archetypal holy man, one of the intercessor roles that Harry played in the previous book, Chamber of Secrets. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 34: Emperors, Fools, and Angels.) He is again an intercessor in the third book, now for Sirius and for Peter. Sirius and Remus are also intercessors and holy men, of sorts; Sirius is literally Harry’s godfather, and Remus gives Harry spiritual tutelage that leads to his being able to conjure a Patronus to keep his soul whole and intact.

The card linked to the Hermit (#9), is the Moon (#18, because 1+8=9). Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the book in which Remus Lupin is introduced, and Sirius Black, a dog Animagus, is also a major part of the book and the other title character besides Harry. On a typical Moon card, the most prominent creatures in the center of the card are a dog and a wolf baying at the moon! In the foreground, a scorpion or lobster sort of creature emerges from a body of water (the element of Slytherin house). This could point to Snape’s pursuit of Sirius, though he must settle for “outing” Remus Lupin as a werewolf instead. This creature seems to be creeping from the water to pursue the wolf and the dog, which is how Snape behaves in this book, creeping around, trying to get dirt on Lupin, who he suspects is helping Sirius. This is also reflected in the incident from their youth, when Snape was nearly killed because Sirius lured him to the Whomping Willow when Remus was on the verge of transforming into a werewolf, before Snape’s life was saved by James Potter.

To return to the third column of Tarot Major Arcana cards, the one aligning with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, at the top of the column is the Empress card, #3, which rules the third book and is the main link between the Horcrux aligned with this book and the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in this book: Remus Lupin. However, all three “middle” books of the series—the third, fourth and fifth books—also have five other alignments (for a total of seven each).

The remaining seven alignments are:

3. Each book has a non-Gryffindor house matched to its Horcrux (Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff or Slytherin).

4. The element for the house aligned with each book is important, thematically, in each book.

5. There is a Marauder who accompanies Harry to his death who is aligned with each middle book of the series.

6. A member of the Trio—Harry, Ron or Hermione—is aligned with each of these three books.

7. There is a non-Harry Champion who inspires jealousy in the Trio-member who is the 6^th alignment, during the fourth and central book in the series.

The Empress wears a crown of stars, a kind of diadem, the Horcrux aligned with this book: Ravenclaw’s diadem, whose story JK Rowling tells in Deathly Hallows. This is the first of the seven alignments in this book: the Horcrux.

Remus Lupin is the second of the seven alignments, as the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher for this book. He is also linked to the Empress’s starry diadem, a symbol of her dominion over time and of women’s monthly cycles, like Lupin’s monthly cycle. This is also connected to the Moon card, numerically linked to the third sequential card for this book, the Hermit, a Tarot archetype embodied by Remus Lupin, among other characters.

In addition to these connections, Ravenclaw’s diadem confers wisdom upon the one who wears it, and Lupin is the first DADA teacher Harry has who teaches him useful things and is a credit to his job, in addition to giving Harry dementor-fighting lessons that impart wisdom to him about his fear of fear.

Ravenclaw’s diadem is the Horcrux aligned with this book, and thus Ravenclaw is the house aligned with this book, the third alignment. The diadem was Rowena Ravenclaw’s, but the Grey Lady, the Ravenclaw ghost, is Helena Ravenclaw, her daughter, who stole the diadem from Rowena, an archetypal Empress and archetypal Mother. Helena’s romance with the Bloody Baron is also linked to Justice, a key theme in this book, since it is the second sequential card and related numerically to the Star, at the bottom of the third column. The Baron killed Helena, then himself, and will forever wear his chains in penitence.

The fourth alignment is the element for the House linked to this book, the element of Ravenclaw: Air. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 18: The Wide World.) This element is key in Prisoner of Azkaban on multiple levels. The backstory of the diadem Horcrux is one example of the importance of Justice in this book; this card, #8, the second sequential card, shows a woman representing Justice, holding scales. The Justice card is also linked to the sign of Libra, an Air sign. However, in a more tangible way, Air is linked to how Harry carries out Justice in this book: by flying through the air on a Hippogriff to save Sirius.

The element of air is even significant in minor details. Of all the things JK Rowling could have had Harry accidentally do to Aunt Marge, for instance, she chooses having him inflate Marge with air, so she floats into the air. He plays a full Quidditch season in this book, for the first and last time, and where does he play Quidditch? In the air.

Another minor link to Ravenclaw and the element of Air is that in his third year Harry first notices the Ravenclaw Seeker, Cho Chang, during a Quidditch match, which is, again, played in the air—the element aligning with Ravenclaw and with this book. This fourth alignment, the element for Ravenclaw, the House aligned with this book, repeatedly plays a role in Prisoner of Azkaban and is tied to one of its most significant cards: Justice.

Another link between the diadem and the element of Air is that when the diadem is destroyed, it is the only time in one of the seventh book’s mock-Quidditch matches when Harry rides a broom, as he would in a real match (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 27: Legacy). This is an echo of the first book, because the only time Harry rides a broom while overcoming the obstacles to the Philosopher’s Stone is when he tries to catch the flying key, the third obstacle, which happens to be the one created by Professor Flitwick, head of Ravenclaw. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 16: The Seeker.) Thus, something close to Quidditch, which is played in the air and shapes the third book, is a fitting end for the Horcrux aligned with this book: the diadem.

Remus Lupin, in addition to being the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in this book, is also the Marauder who accompanies Harry to his death, the fifth alignment. Sirius is Harry’s godfather, and in turn, Harry becomes godfather to Remus Lupin’s son Teddy, orphaned in the final battle against Voldemort. Remus is the Marauder whose mythic archetypes are the same as Harry’s—he is an archetypal Youth and a Metaphorically Queer Liminal Being. Remus and Harry were both attacked at a young age and changed by becoming a little like—but not completely like—the ones who attacked them: Fenrir Greyback, the werewolf, and Voldemort. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 9: We’re Here, We’re Metaphorically Queer.)

Hermione, whose archetypes rule this book, both the archetypal Mother (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 4:Mother, May I?) and the archetypal Empress, is the rather obvious member of the Trio aligned with this book—the sixth alignment. In addition to Hermione being a near-Ravenclaw—she reveals in Order of the Phoenix that the Sorting Hat considered putting her in that house—her counterpart amongst the Champions in the fourth book, the one of whom she is jealous, is Fleur Delacour.

And finally, alignment #7: the three non-Harry Champions. Fleur is from the pseudo-Ravenclaw school, Beauxbatons (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 18: The Wide World). Fleur will later wear a borrowed tiara—another type of diadem—at her wedding in Deathly Hallows to yet another character who, like Remus Lupin, shares the same mythic archetypes as Harry: Bill Weasley, both a Youth and a Liminal Being, who is bitten in the sixth book by the same werewolf who changed Lupin.

All of these alignments are easiest to discern through examining the Tarot cards linked to this book, especially Justice and the Chariot, but also the cards linked numerically to both the sequential cards and the Major Arcana cards in the third column, the one aligning with the third book of the series: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 36: Chariots of Justice. 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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