Essay: Horcruxes and King's Crosses

Part I of The Tarot Hallows essays:

Horcruxes and King’s Crosses

In the last ten Quantum Harry essays I’ve been writing about each of the seven columns in the grid of Tarot Major Arcana cards numbered one to twenty-one, with three rows and seven columns (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 30: Harry and Tarot) aligning with each of the seven books of the Harry Potter series, as well as the seven sets of sequential cards (1-3, 4-6, 7-9, etc.) also aligning with each of the seven books, in order. The last essay will actually be four essays, as this is the blog version of the final episode of Quantum Harry, the Podcast, which is an extra-long installment. This will be the first of four essays.

The seventh column, the one aligned with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, has the Chariot (card #7) at the top, Temperance (card #14) in the middle, and the World (card #21) at the bottom. In the first book of the series, the Magician (#1) was the top column card and first sequential card. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 31: The Devil you Know and Episode 32: The Mirror and the Stone.) In the fourth book of the series, the column and sequential cards intersect at Force or Strength (card #11), forming a cross. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 37: The Goblet of Memory.) There is a final intersection: the sequential cards for the seventh book, the last set of three in the cards numbered one to twenty-one, are the Sun (card #19), Judgment (card #20), and the World (card #21). All roads lead to the World card in this book, symbolizing wholeness, completion, and home.

The Chariot card being the ruling card for this book sheds new light on the seemingly-endless travel in Deathly Hallows: it shows a figure who might be a prince, king or magician using a wand, not reins, to drive a chariot with dark and light draft-animals, sometimes shown as a black sphinx and a white one, but often as a red horse and a blue horse. In addition to representing the opposing forces shaping Harry, making him Liminal (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 8: Have You Tried Not Being Liminal?), these horses can stand for Hermione and Ron, Harry’s best friends, who are opposites in some ways but learn to “pull together.” He could not make the journey without them, and when Ron is away for a little while, Harry and Hermione are nearly killed at Bathilda Bagshot’s house in Godric’s Hollow. Red also happens to be Ron’s emblematic color and blue is Hermione’s, while Harry’s is green, like his eyes and the Killing Curse that repeatedly fails to kill him. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 7: Fountain of Youth.)

The light and dark horses can also symbolize Harry’s journey to wholeness; he cannot achieve this by ignoring his “dark side,” the Voldemort in him. He carries a piece of his enemy; his understanding Voldemort helps him to succeed, even as it sometimes frightens Ron and Hermione. The Chariot is another archetype Harry embodies, a union of opposites, a Tarot version of the archetype of the Liminal Being, as well as pointing to the extreme level of travel in the seventh book. But in addition to symbolizing the archetypal Liminal Being and travel, the Chariot may also be a link to the Horcruxes.

The word “Horcrux” was coined by JK Rowling, and could have multiple origins. In a paper presented at Phoenix Rising in New Orleans in 2007 (“Of Horcruxes, Arithmancy, Etymology and Egyptology: A Literary Detective’s Guide to Patterns and Paradigms in Harry Potter”), Hilary K. Justice suggests that one possible etymology combines hors, a French root meaning “out of” or “outside of” with crux, meaning “essence,” as in “the crux of the matter.” This gives us an object holding part of one’s “essence” (or soul) “outside of” the body.

I engaged in some etymological digging of my own and found that the hor part of “Horcrux” is close to the hora, a circle dance in Israel and Romania, which may relate to hor also being the Latin root for hour, pointing to another circular image: a clockface. Crux means “cross” in Latin, and combining a circle and cross results in a simple wheel with four spokes (like the logo for Quantum Harry.)

This circle divided into four quadrants has long been a symbol of the Earth, suggesting a compass and the cardinal directions: north, south, east and west. It is the symbol used for Earth by astronomers, including those at NASA, who prefer to say that the cross represents the equator and a meridian. This is also the shape of an ancient race game that evolved into Pachisi, Parcheesi and Ludo, among others (it is also the format for an early Harry Potter trivia game, pictured above). All of these games share the goal of reaching the center of the cross, a center often called home, which relates again to the Chariot card because this card is linked to the astrological sign of Cancer, which is focused on issues related to the home. This symbol is also reminiscent of medieval labyrinths, like the cross-and-circle design of the labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral, seen in the photo below. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 18: The Wide World.)

Earth is the element out of the four alchemists recognized—Fire, Air, Water and Earth—linked to Voldemort, since his birth-sign, Capricorn, is an Earth-sign. Earth is also the element of the Devil archetype, which Voldemort embodies, and in turn, Capricorn is the astrological sign linked to the Devil card in the Tarot Major Arcana, which depicts a rather goat-like Devil. (Capricorn means horned like a goat.)

In another combination of opposites, the circle with an embedded cross was also called a Sun Cross, Solar Cross or Solar Wheel; it is linked to prehistoric cultures, particularly the Neolithic to the Bronze Age periods in Europe. Thus, a wheel with four spokes can also be linked to the Sun card and therefore to death, resurrection, and the phoenix. Voldemort’s wand, until almost the end of his life, contains a feather from a phoenix, and the purpose of his making Horcruxes is to make him like a phoenix, one who cannot die.

For a symbol that could mean “Horcrux”—a circle with a cross—to be equated with the Sun also fits with the locket Horcrux being a symbolic sun, like the golden ball in the Grimm fairy tale of the Frog King. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 28: The Grimm Campaign.) The locket happens to be the Horcrux aligning with the fifth book, Order of the Phoenix, the one aligned with the fifth column of Tarot Major Arcana cards, which has the Sun card at the bottom. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 38: The Order of the Heretic.) Finally, this symbol is also called a “Chariot Wheel” because of the Sun god’s chariot linking heaven and earth in the myths of many ancient cultures, connecting this both to the ruling column card for the book, the Chariot, and its first sequential card, the Sun. This is another reason that the Tarot archetype of the Chariot is the equivalent of the mythic archetype of the Liminal Being, one who crosses thresholds and is an axis mundi, a link between worlds.

Thus two possible etymologies for Horcrux may both be something Rowling intended: a word meaning that a person’s essence is elsewhere, outside their body, and a word combining circle and cross, pointing to the Earth, which Voldemort hopes to rule over; the Chariot, a Tarot archetype embodied by both Harry and Voldemort, as it is the Tarot equivalent of the Liminal Being; and the Sun, which in turn is linked to the phoenix, once a source of Voldemort’s power, and an entity he wishes to emulate by creating Horcruxes, so that, like the phoenix, he will be impervious to death.

The card linked to the Chariot (#7) is the Tower (#16, since 1 + 6 = 7). In Deathly Hallows, the Lightning-Struck Tower, the title of the Half-Blood Prince chapter in which Dumbledore dies, is least symbolic of all. Hogwarts is under attack; giants are literally tearing down the walls. It is a cataclysm, a violent rupture in the fabric of wizarding reality. However, we can see the Tower card as both upright and inverted here, since Hermione and Ron visit the Chamber of Secrets, the inverted Tower of the second book, to retrieve basilisk fangs. (See Quantum Harry, Episode 33: The Inverted Tower of Secrets.)

Below the Chariot in the seventh column of cards is Temperance (#14), which was also a sequence card for the fifth book. The back-and-forth of the liquid between the vessels on this card shows the mixing of water and wine; watering wine ‘tempers’ it, makes it less potent, and wine makes water more potent. It is another union of opposites, like the Chariot’s dark and light draft animals, and, as such, it is also about balance. Voldemort, in contrast, would eject all Muggleborns from the wizarding world, seeing no value in diversity. He is clearly incomplete because he has repeatedly ripped his soul to make Horcruxes, but also because he rejects both the Muggle part of himself and his link to Harry; as a result, he can no longer send even misleading images to Harry’s mind, as he did in Order of the Phoenix, because he recoiled in horror when he was exposed to Harry’s prodigious power to love. This ability to bridge worlds is the power Harry has that Voldemort does not, and is well summed-up by love.

Luna is again the Angel Temperance, an archetypal Crone, when she helps Harry cope with Dobby’s death, as she helped him cope with Sirius’s death in Order of the Phoenix. However, Harry also embodies the Angel Temperance in Deathly Hallows; the ‘third eye’ on this card links to his “seeing” through his enemy’s eyes, an ability he integrates into his skill-set. Harry’s being a Pope or High Priest (card #5) is linked to Temperance as well (#14, since 1 + 4 = 5). He has been a holy man ever since he was a bishop in the life-sized chess game; here he transcends worlds by seeing through the eyes of the Other (Voldemort) and by dying and returning to life, an intercessor for the entire wizarding world.

As Master of Death, Harry understands the cycle of life, instinctively summoning the shades of his parents, godfather and Remus Lupin with the Resurrection Stone, presenting himself to die because it is necessary to save his world, to protect those he loves and those he doesn’t. Harry-the-Hero does not just die for people he loves; his love protects everyone. Harry, High Priest, Liminal Charioteer and Angel Temperance, refuses to run, as Aberforth suggests; the Master of Death transcends life and death and bestows his grace on all.

The first sequential card aligned with the seventh book in the series is the Sun (card #19), symbolizing another integration of opposites—life and death, since the Sun daily dies and is reborn, linking this to the dying-and-reborn phoenix. Harry dies and is resurrected in this book, but a doppelganger for him, Neville, also evokes the twin children seen on some versions of the card.

Neville could have been the Prophecy Boy, and after Harry returns from death, he echoes Harry’s actions in the second book by stating his faith in Dumbledore as Harry did, with a cry of, “Dumbledore’s Army!” Instead of Fawkes bringing the Sorting Hat, Voldemort summons the Hat, which he plans to destroy because he only wants there to be Slytherins at Hogwarts in the future. He puts the Hat on Neville and sets it on fire, a substitute for Fawkes, who was the symbolic fire of the Holy Spirit on Harry’s head in the Chamber, evoking the story of Pentecost. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina.) The Hat is described as looking like “a misshapen bird,” again evoking Fawkes, a phoenix representing the Holy Spirit, instead of a dove, another bird symbolizing the Holy Spirit, who appears when John the Baptist baptizes Jesus. After this symbolic confirmation, Neville’s coming-of-age ceremony, he breaks free of the curse binding him and slays Nagini, whose head spins “high into the air”—imagery suggesting again a similarity to a ball, like a Snitch, which all of the Horcruxes resemble in some way, large or small, physically or symbolically. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 29: The Horcrux and Hallows Game.)

The cards linked to the Sun (#19) are the Magician (#1) and the Wheel (#10). Throughout this book, the influence of the archetypal Magician, Dumbledore, is keenly felt. His backstory’s extremes are given before the truth. First Rita Skeeter gets her say in a vitriolic biography, then Elphias Doge gives his version. The truth is worse than Doge’s hymn of praise and not as bad as Rita’s smear job; Harry finally receives a complete picture of the man in whose footsteps he has walked on the path to death from his brother, Aberforth.

The archetypal Magician dogs Harry’s footsteps from the beginning, when he reads excerpts from Rita’s biography, and he is with Harry at the end, at King’s Cross, which was always where he crossed a boundary between the “real” and numinous worlds. Now he finds himself on the platform in a misty afterlife where he speaks to Dumbledore (who may or may not be just in his head).

Rowling’s choice of King’s Cross for Harry’s brief afterlife could be another circle-and-cross reference. A sovereign’s orb in Latin is globus cruciger, part of the British Crown jewels. A globe symbolizes the earth, a 3-D circle, and the orb is topped by a cross, another union of circle and cross, on an orb that could be called a King’s cross. This is an alternate earth sign to the circle with the cross inside it and both are used as Earth symbols by astronomers.

The lore surrounding King’s Cross may offer clues as to why Harry goes there after his death. Where the King’s Cross-St. Pancras Station sits today may have been the site of a crossing for the Fleet River in Roman times, outside the Roman settlement of Londinium. In Christian lore, dying is often spoken of as “crossing the river” (Jordan). This may also have been the site of a battle between Queen Boadicea and Roman invaders; legend has it that she is buried beneath Platform Nine in the station—rather close Nine and Three-Quarters.

However, the name “King’s Cross” didn’t arrive until the nineteenth century, when a statue of King George IV was erected at the Battle Bridge crossroads. In folklore, crossroads are places where the fabric of reality is “thinnest”, where travelers may meet spirits and have paranormal experiences. It is a place of liminality. In Greek myth, crossroads were associated with Hecate and Hermes, both psychopomps, entities who accompanied spirits to the Realm of the Dead. Food was left for Hecate at crossroads during the new moon; one of her titles was “goddess of the crossroads,” and she was a goddess of witches and magic as well. Combining this intersection of roads with the king’s statue gave it the name King’s Cross, which persisted even after the statue was pulled down.

After he dies, when Harry is at King’s Cross with Dumbledore, who seems to serve as his psychopomp, it is clear that this is a crossroads for Harry; he can choose to “go on”—which ghosts like Nearly Headless Nick never did, so Nick has no idea what comes next—or go back (not as a ghost). This place has always been a threshold, inherently liminal, where Hogwarts students leave the mundane world and enter the world of magic (even if they are from magical families). Thus it is the perfect place for Harry to make his choice. Once again, nothing is carved in stone for Harry; his choices make him who he is, in life and in death, and Harry, the liminal charioteer, chooses to return to the world to save it.

Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 40: The Tarot Hallows. Copyright 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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