Essay: The Crone and the Heretic



Harry Potter is a bishop in the life-sized chess match in the first book of the series, the fourth obstacle to the Philosopher’s Stone. He is a holy man and intercessor again in the Chamber of Secrets, when he has his spiritual coming-of-age (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina), a symbolic confirmation or bar mitzvah, embodied by his statement of faith in Dumbledore bringing Fawkes-the-Phoenix to him (a symbolic Holy Spirit). In Order of the Phoenix, Harry is on the front lines of a political and religious war, a church-state conflict. He is still loyal to Dumbledore, the High Priest or Pope figure; both he and Harry are labeled heretics and traitors, fighting in the spirit of the perpetually burning and reborn Fawkes—both Dumbledore’s pet and his namesake, the most notorious traitor in British history: Guy Fawkes.

In the grid of Tarot Major Arcana cards numbered one through twenty-one, the column of cards aligning with the fifth book in the Harry Potter series has the Pope, #5 at the top of the column, the Hanged Man, #12, in the middle row, and the Sun, #19, at the bottom of the column. In the second book of the series, cards 4, 5 and 6 were sequential cards, and the fifth card in particular, the Pope or High Priest, was linked to Harry’s spiritual coming-of-age and his role as an intercessor for others, a link between worlds. The figure on this card sits on a throne with two monks or priests kneeling, facing him. These figures are even more important in this book than the second, with a metaphorical pope-figure who is also a rebel leader; they are his comrades, his lieutenants in the rebellion.


Harry and Dumbledore both fill the role of High Priest at different times in the fifth book. Dumbledore’s death in the sixth book is foreshadowed as he segues from filling this role himself to Harry doing it, something for which Dumbledore trains him formally in Half-Blood Prince, though Harry has started to play the role of Dumbledore’s successor in Order of the Phoenix. The role Dumbledore fills and passes on to Harry is notably not that of a political or military leader, like the Emperor with the symbols of war on his throne, but that of a religious leader.
Harry trades places with the headmaster as spiritual leader of Hogwarts when Dumbledore departs the castle upon Dolores Umbridge’s discovery of Dumbledore’s Army, the “evidence” the state needs to label Dumbledore as a traitor, a role in which the Ministry’s propaganda has already cast him. Umbridge also hopes to expel Harry from Hogwarts, but the group’s name—Dumbledore’s Army—means that the headmaster is able to take the fall for Harry. As metaphorical Pope of the “old religion” Dumbledore is the one to whom Harry owes his loyalty. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 20:The Order of the Rebel; Episode 21: Remember, Remember; and Episode 22: The Phoenix Games.) These are the book’s themes, now in Tarot form.
Harry and Dumbledore are not just Popes/High Priests but also Hanged Men. Sallie Nichols writes in Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey:
Fudge tries to have Dumbledore arrested, but the headmaster has no intention of “coming quietly” and goes on the lam. He knows that the last thing the Ministry will do is give him a fair hearing, and he must continue to operate behind the scenes as head of the Order of the Phoenix. Harry is on trial at the start of the book and is cleared thanks to Dumbledore. However, defending himself for performing magic in front of a Muggle and outside of school is soon the least of his troubles.
Dumbledore and Harry each embodying card #5, the Pope/High Priest/Hierophant, and both embodying card #12, the Hanged Man merges into one archetype: The Heretic. They are both seen as apostates who embrace beliefs that run afoul of the establishment, making their conflict with the Ministry more like a religious war than a political one. Harry is specifically in trouble with Umbridge because he is not willing to alter his beliefs. With the zeal of a martyr, he goes to one detention after another consisting of actual torture, which is designed to convince heretics to recant heretical beliefs. Harry takes on the role of a heretical revolutionary leader when he heads Dumbledore’s Army and Dumbledore accepts this mantle when he learns of the group’s name; he’s eager to shift blame onto himself, more willing to be a martyr than to make Harry into one. He no doubt feels that Harry being literally martyred will happen soon enough.
Nichols describes the clerics on the fifth card as near-twins. In Chamber of Secrets, when this was a sequential card, the Weasley twins, Fred and George, come to Privet Drive in a flying car, to rescue Harry from his metaphorical Hermitage, which relates to the Hermit, the middle column card for that book. Rowling now uses the Weasley twins, loyal to Harry and to Dumbledore, as able lieutenants in a rebellion against the “new religion”.
Umbridge’s reign of terror includes the confiscation of artifacts, such as the Quibbler with Harry’s interview (the “gospel” according to Harry Potter). This is similar to the English Crown confiscating rosaries and “popish” items before and after the discovery of Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder beneath Parliament in November of 1605, the event commemorated ever since as Guy Fawkes Day or Bonfire Night. Fudge and Umbridge also spy on Ministry employees friendly with Dumbledore, just as the English Crown spied on known Catholic sympathizers, especially those suspected of hiding renegade priests who still declared that their first allegiance was to Rome, not to the Crown.
The Weasley twins make Umbridge’s job impossible as their parting gift to Hogwarts. Their “weapons” in this war are linked to a central element of the celebration of Bonfire Night: fireworks. The unpredictable influence of the Fool card, which can be played at any time, adds to this chaos when the Fool incarnate, Peeves, does his bit, escalating the mayhem abetted by Professor McGonagall, a woman who embodies the Father archetype. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 5: Our Father.) The Father is equal to the Emperor in the Major Arcana, who is in turn numerically linked to the Fool (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 34: Emperors, Fools and Angels), so perhaps we should have expected all along that McGonagall and Peeves would turn out to be kindred spirits.

The card numerically linked to the Pope (#5) is Temperance (#14), the Tarot equivalent of the archetypal Crone. This is why the Crone is the fifth mythic archetype, which rules the fifth book in the series. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 6: A Murder of Crones.) The figure on a Temperance card is often winged, like an angel, and this figure has a “third eye” in the center of the brow, indicating that this person can see across barriers, like the archetypal Crone. The character who best embodies the Crone in the fifth book is Luna Lovegood, who also “sees” what others cannot, including Thestrals and that they are the best way to quickly reach the Ministry of Magic when Harry believes Sirius is in danger. It is significant that Harry, a Pope/High Priest/Hierophant, and Neville, who takes Harry’s place as intercessor at Hogwarts for anyone at Hogwarts who doesn’t follow Voldemort, are the others who go to the Ministry to rescue Sirius who can see Thestrals. Luna is also instrumental in helping Harry cope with Sirius’s death near the end of the book.
The Crone archetype and the Tarot archetype of the Pope as interchangeable entities makes sense historically, since “Wise Women” in many communities sometimes continued to observe holy days and rituals dedicated to local gods or other supernatural entities after the advent of Christianity in Europe, and as a result were often accused of being witches. The Wise Women in most villages were healers and links to the Mother Goddesses in many pre-Christian religions. The “new religion”, Christianity in this case, often displaced Crones/Wise Women who were links to the “old religion”, so Rowling making the Crone the ruling archetype in the fifth book is another case of an “old religion” triumphing over a new one, in addition to the allegorical church-state battles in the book also depicting this type of conflict. Rowling effectively reinstating the Crone in the Realm of the Gods, the first row of seven cards, as the equal of the Pope, rounds out the six gender-and-age-related archetypes. The creators of the Tarot Major Arcana relegated her to the Realm of Equilibrium, the second row of cards, but it’s worth noting that her placement in the fourteenth position means that she “trumps” or triumphs over Death, at number thirteen.
Other connections between the Pope and Temperance are Harry’s role as heretic/rebel and his link to Voldemort. In each case he sees what others don’t, like a Crone, or someone with a third eye. However, what he has seen—Voldemort’s resurrection—works against him, since Umbridge forbids him to tell the truth about Voldemort’s return.  Voldemort also takes advantage of his link to Harry—the meaning of which seems to escape him, that Harry is a Horcrux—by making Harry believe he is torturing Sirius at the Ministry, a lie designed to lure Harry to the Hall of Prophecies.


The cards linked numerically to the card in the center of the fifth column, the Hanged Man (#12) are the Empress (#3, because 1+2=3) and the World (#21, because 2+1=3). As the best embodiment of the Mother archetype and equivalent Tarot archetype, the Empress, Hermione helps Harry establish Dumbledore’s Army. Cho Chang, another Mother/Empress, is linked to another Hanged Man: Marietta Edgecomb, who betrays Dumbledore’s Army.
The World card, a symbol of integration and completion, points to Harry’s opposition to Occlumency, at which he was bound to fail because it required him to divide his mind. His Occlumency tutor, Severus Snape, embodies both the archetype of the Crone (though he is neither female nor elderly, at only 35 years of age) and the archetype on the Temperance card, which shows not only a messenger, as Snape is when he spies for the Order of the Phoenix, but a figure pouring what could be considered “potions”, Snape’s specialty, between two vessels. However, Harry is whole and integrated; he cannot and should not be dividing his mind, despite both Dumbledore and Snape being convinced that this is necessary. Harry’s inherent wholeness and love for Sirius, symbolized by the World card, protects him and drives Voldemort from his mind.
The fifth column’s bottom card, the Sun, #19, has not been a column or sequential card in previous books, though it is numerically linked to the Magician and Wheel. The Sun links directly to the title of the book, since the phoenix is a symbol of the sun in ancient myth due to the sun metaphorically ‘dying’ each night and being ‘reborn’ in the morning. Phoenix lore includes tales of a reborn phoenix sealing its ashes in an egg that it takes to the altar of the sun god, Ra.

Pages from the Aberdeen Bestiary
In the Middle Ages, the phoenix entered Christian lore as a symbol of the Resurrection and emblem of immortality. Fawkes-the-phoenix, named for Guy Fawkes (a traitor or freedom-fighter, depending on your perspective), provides Dumbledore’s escape. The historical Fawkes was sentenced to death because of his loyalty to a literal pope, while Rowling’s Fawkes is loyal to a symbolic Pope, a Guy Fawkes figure. On Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes is burnt in effigy, and the holiday was also called “Pope’s Day” or “Pope’s Night”, when it was common for the pope’s effigy to also be burned (or for his effigy to be burned instead of Guy Fawkes’s).
George Washington was so worried about alienating the largely Catholic French-Canadian troops who joined in the fight against the British during the American Revolution that he banned the practice of celebrating Pope’s Day/Night and burning an effigy of the Pope amongst the troops of the Continental Army. This probably contributed to the holiday not being observed in the United States, though it also makes sense for the leader of a rebel army to discourage an observation that grew out of a squashed rebellion.
The Sun card could be called the Phoenix card. Many modern decks show a phoenix on this card and call it the Phoenix; the image above is one example. On older versions of the Sun card, there are two children who appear to be twins, making twins prominent in the top and bottom cards in the fifth column. This can, again, point to Fred and George’s roles in the war on Umbridge, especially since their fireworks can look like suns rolling through the sky, particularly their Catherine Wheels, named for a martyred Catholic saint.
A phoenix is reborn from its ashes. At the Ministry, Fawkes takes the brunt of the Killing Curse for Dumbledore while he duels Voldemort, and Fawkes is reborn from his own ashes. Sirius, in turn, is a symbolic phoenix. Named for the Dog Star, a minor sun, Sirius is killed by the life-ending archetypal Crone Bellatrix Lestrange, and Harry is reborn from Sirius’s ashes. His love for Sirius ejects Voldemort from his mind, ensuring that he will never again venture into Harry’s thoughts, lest he encounter the overwhelming love that is integral to Harry.


The Sun card (#19), at the bottom of the fifth column, is numerically linked to the Wheel of Fortune (because 1 + 9 = 10, and 1 + 0 = 1). It is also linked to the Magician (#1). The Wheel card brings us back to Fred and George’s rebellion-by-fireworks, in which they make prominent use of Catherine Wheels, named for the patron saint of fireworks, because of the “breaking wheel” that was used to torture her. In heraldry, a Catherine wheel in a coat of arms points to a willingness to undergo great trials for one’s faith.
Harry encounters a horizontal wheel in the Department of Mysteries, a circular room of doors that spins, disorienting Harry and his friends and making forward progress or escape difficult. Hermione marks doors they’ve gone through with flaming crosses (an obvious Christian symbol) and once they’re marked, the spinning flaming crosses become another Sun or a Catherine Wheel—a wheel of light with Harry and his friends at the center. Each time they try an unknown door they’re playing a real-life Wheel of Fortune game.
Dumbledore is the epitome of the Magician, Pope of the “old religion”; because of this, the Sun card evokes not only death, resurrection and phoenixes, but the archetypal Magician himself, as well as spinning wheels of light (evoking the Sun and Wheel cards), both at the Ministry and cavorting through Hogwarts’ corridors in a rebellion with game-like qualities.


The sequential cards for this book are Death (# 13), Temperance (#14), and the Devil (#15). Sirius Black dies in this book, which seems like an obvious link to Death, but this card is also about new beginnings. Like a phoenix. Harry rises from Sirius’s ashes by the end, no longer a Hanged Man, heretic, and traitor, which is what people once thought Sirius was.
Death is a constant companion for Cho Chang in the fifth book, who doesn’t cope well with Cedric’s death. This comes between her and Harry almost as much as her sympathy toward her friend Marietta, who betrays everyone in Dumbledore’s Army. In contrast to Cho, Harry’s eyes aren’t veiled by tears due to witnessing death; instead they’re opened to the new, to Thestrals.
In addition to the third eye, the winged figure on the Temperance card, #14, often called the Angel Temperance, holds two goblets with a stream of liquid flowing between them. An angel is a messenger (the meaning of ἄγγελος in Greek, which is where “angel” comes from) and a “messenger” is a good label for Luna Lovegood, the means for Harry’s interview to appear in The Quibbler. She is a messenger in another way when she helps Harry cope with Sirius’s death by talking about her late mother; though chronologically a young woman, Luna, an archetypal Crone, is an apt representative of the Angel Temperance.
The third sequential card, #15, is the Devil. This obviously refers to Voldemort, but another character also fills the role: Dolores Umbridge. Like Voldemort, Umbridge requires everyone to be in agreement with her; no diversity of opinion or deviation from what she deems acceptable is permitted. She is not a Death Eater but is a kindred spirit to Voldemort, despite her fearful denials that he has returned to power. In the seventh book, she fully supports the campaign against Muggle-born wizards; when Harry meets her again it is in a hellish underground Ministry courtroom where she is in the process of condemning Muggle-born wizards for a lack of magical ancestry.


The card linked to the Devil (#15) is the Lovers (#6, because 1+5=6). One version shows a young man, a woman who might be his mother, and a young woman. This could be seen as Harry choosing between Cho and Ginny. Cho and Hermione are repeatedly contrasted in this book as permutations of the Mother/Empress, but Cho and Ginny are also contrasted: Cho comes up with ‘DA’ for the name of the secret society Harry is asking people to join, but Ginny suggests it stand for ‘Dumbledore’s Army’, rather than ‘Defense Association’. Ginny dates Michael Corner at the beginning of the book but by the end he’s seeing Cho Chang. Most significantly, in the Quidditch final, Ginny catches the Snitch, a symbolic Harry, from “under Cho’s nose”, winning the match and Quidditch cup, but also winning Harry. He hasn’t chosen yet, as the young man on the Lovers card is still choosing, but this card shows what his choices are; in the next book, with this card is at the top of the column, he does choose.


The Horcrux aligned with the fifth book is Slytherin’s locket, which first appears in Order of the Phoenix (when Harry, Hermione, Sirius, and the Weasleys spend the summer cleaning Grimmauld Place). The Sun card is at the bottom of the column aligned with the fifth book, and the locket is another reason that the symbolism of this card is central to the book, since it plays the role of a metaphorical Sun in Deathly Hallows when Harry, Ron, and Hermione go to the Ministry to retrieve it from Dolores Umbridge, the DADA teacher in this book.
Umbridge is consistently described as “toad-like” in the fifth and seventh books, and Harry has no doubt that she has the locket when Mundungus Fletcher, who bribed Umbridge with it, describes her this way. For him to know her name is unnecessary; Harry knows it cannot be anyone else. The incident in which they take the locket from her in a courtroom JK Rowling compares to a well (where one usually finds water) is a retelling of part of the Grimm fairy tale of the Frog King/Prince, which begins with a princess getting help from a frog to retrieve a symbolic sun from a deep well. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 28:The Grimm Campaign.)
The locket Horcrux could have ended up anywhere after it was stolen, but it went to Umbridge, the fifth book’s DADA teacher. In one of Rowling’s many ironies, Umbridge bans Harry from Quidditch for life, but he still “catches” the locket from her. Like the other Horcruxes, including Harry, it is a symbolic Snitch, proving that no one, not even the High Inquisitor, can keep Harry from playing Quidditch, real or metaphorical, or from being the ultimate Seeker.
As the last of the three middle books in the series, this book, like the previous two, has five more alignments: #3 - its house is Slytherin and #4 - its element is Water; #5 - Sirius is the Marauder aligning with this book; #6 - Ron is the Trio member aligning with the book; and #7 - Viktor Krum is the Champion of whom Ron was jealous.

There are many pointers to Slytherin being this book’s house, alignment #3: the locket Horcrux was Slytherin’s; Umbridge puts only Slytherins on the Inquisitorial Squad; Sirius, who dies in this book and is the Marauder aligning with it is a virtual Slytherin, just as Viktor, alignment #7, the Champion for this book, was a virtual Slytherin when he sat at that table in the Great Hall. In fact, until Sirius went to Hogwarts, all members of the Black family were in Slytherin. Sirius’s Slytherin cousin Bellatrix kills him; and his Slytherin brother Regulus—another Seeker—stole Slytherin’s locket from the cave where Voldemort hid it.
Water, the element for this book, alignment #4, is also linked to Sirius, alignment #5, the Marauder for this book, because he is Harry’s Godfather and an embodiment of the Godfather-variant of the Wise Old Man archetype. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 2: This Old Man.) In the book with Water for its element, which is used for baptisms, Harry loses his Godfather, which is reflected in the fifth threshold that Harry crosses with Hagrid or with his help in the first book: crossing the lake upon arrival at Hogwarts, a symbolic baptism. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 20: The Order of the Rebel.) Harry and Dumbledore (and Regulus and Kreacher before them) must go through both water and the potion in the bowl in the cave to reach the locket that is the Horcrux aligned with this book (or its doppelgänger, since Harry and Dumbledore discover that someone else has already taken the locket). The obstacle to the Philosopher’s Stone aligned with this book, the troll, is conquered by Quirrell for Harry, but he and his best friends are bonded together earlier by an interchangeable troll incident, in a girl’s bathroom, with quite a lot of spraying water. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 22: The Phoenix Games.) And, as mentioned above, the courtroom where they must go to obtain the locket is described by Rowling as a well, a place where one obtains water, though she uses this description for Ministry courtrooms at no other time in the seven-book series.
The third book’s element of Air links to the destruction of that book’s Horcrux, since Harry flies on a broom in a mock-Quidditch match to destroy the diadem; the fourth book’s element of Earth relates to the destruction of Hufflepuff’s Cup, that book’s Horcrux, since Harry, Ron and Hermione go underground to the Lestrange vault to retrieve it, and Ron and Hermione then go underground to the Chamber of Secrets to retrieve a basilisk fang to destroy it.
When Ron, the member of the Trio aligned with this book, alignment #6, returns to Harry and Hermione in Deathly Hallows, he must go into Water, this book’s element, to save Harry, who is being strangled by the chain on which he wears the locket, the Horcrux aligned with the fifth book (alignment #1). Ron retrieves both Harry and the Sword of Gryffindor from the water, Harry and the Sword again being equated here, as they are both necessary to destroy the locket. After Harry speaks the word “Open” in Parseltongue, Ron uses the Sword to destroy the Horcrux. In this episode, Ron morphs from being a plain archetypal Wise Old Man to the Godfather variant of the Wise Old Man, like Sirius; he plays John the Baptist to Harry’s Christ-figure when he pulls him out of the pool.

Alignment
Prisoner of Azkaban
Goblet of Fire
Order of the Phoenix

Horcrux
Diadem of Ravenclaw
Hufflepuff’s Cup
Slytherin’s Locket
DADA Teacher
Remus Lupin
Barty Crouch, Jr.
Dolores Umbridge
House
Ravenclaw
Hufflepuff
Slytherin
Element
Air
Earth
Water
Marauder
Remus Lupin
James Potter
Sirius Black
Trio member
Hermione Granger
Harry Potter
Ron Weasley
Champion
Fleur Delacour
Cedric Diggory
Viktor Krum

Each of the three Champions who are not Harry have a link to a Snitch-equivalent analogous to the Horcrux for each book; Viktor, a Seeker, catches actual Snitches, and the locket is a mock-Snitch captured in a mock-Quidditch match (in a courtroom); Cedric, another Seeker, takes the Tournament cup with Harry in the book whose Horcrux is Hufflepuff’s cup; and Fleur wears a tiara/diadem at her wedding to Bill Weasley, who is equated with Remus Lupin at the end of the sixth book, after he is bitten by Fenrir Greyback. Remus is the DADA teacher for the third book, with the diadem as its Horcrux.
Through the cards at the bottom of each column for these three books, the Star, the Moon and Sun, the Horcruxes can be matched to each book, though other cards also provide links between the aligned items and these books. Rowling again juxtaposes three with seven, like the three Deathly Hallows and seven Horcruxes, but here it is three books and seven items aligning with each book, another part of her incredibly complicated Harry Potter Game.


Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 38: The Order of the Heretic. 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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