Rowling Studies The Hogwarts Professor Podcast

John Granger
  • 4.8 (11)
  • Fiction
  • Updated Biweekly

The Artistry and Meaning of J. K. Rowling and Other Greats hogwartsprofessor.substack.com

  1. 20h ago

    A Lake and Shed Conversation about the Lost Mother Golden Thread in J. K. Rowling’s Work

    This is the third of three posts about the Lost Mother Golden Thread in the work of J. K. Rowling. The first, Anne Rowling and the Lost Mother Golden Thread in the Works of J. K. Rowling, reviewed Rowling-Galbraith’s regrets at the death of her mother Anne in December 1990 with a listing with brief discussion of the many Lost Mothers in her twenty-three published books. In the second, The Lost Mother Golden Thread and a Key Reason We are Moved by J. K. Rowling’s Stories, John joined the Lost Mother meme to the Ghosts and Mother’s Love Golden Threads to get at the metaphysical ground and beating heart of Rowling’s work. In the video podcast above, Nick and John discuss reader feedback to the Hidden Hold of Horrors Golden Thread conversation, John’s two Lost Mother posts, the implications of his findings for the Strike series’ last two novels, and the work being done on interactive Hogwarts Professor talks and online classes. Please share all the Lost Mother characters, mother and child, in Rowling stories that they missed in the comment boxes below, as well as your thoughts about John’s idea that the “Defining Idea and Power of Rowling’s Work is in the Intersection of the Lost Mother, Ghosts, and Mother’s Love Golden Threads Running Through Everything She Writes.” Before we forget, here are the three things Nick and John promised would be posted ‘Down Below’ in the conversation above: * A Key to Maternal Love in Harry Potter? Mum Crouch’s Sacrifice in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: The meaning in the middle of the Harry Potter series, the murder of Barty Crouch by Junior, a son saved by his mother’s love, incorporates the key symbolism of Rowling’s work with respect to sin and death as well as virtue, love, and the victory over death in one family. Conversation with Wayne Stauffer, Beatrice Groves, and Louise Freeman with implications for the understanding of the Hogwarts Saga, Cormoran Strike, and The Christmas Pig. * Death of Eric Wardle’s Mum is first mentioned in Hallmarked Man, Chapter 70: Wardle drank more lager before answering. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘My mum’s just died.’ ‘S**t,’ said Strike, who’d had no idea of this. ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘Yeah. Last month. She was never right, after my brother,’ said Wardle. ‘Broke her heart.’ His words were coming as though each adhered to his throat, and needed to be pulled up, with effort. ‘She chose not to go for a second round of chemo… raised us both as a single mum. We were her life. Terry dying half-killed her, and then April left me, and she didn’t see nearly as much of Liam any more.’ ‘Liam?’ ‘My son,’ said Wardle, with a faint smile. ‘The kid you just saw me put to bed.’ ‘Oh, yeah, of course.’ ‘Anyway… Mum left a lot more money than I expected. She came into an inheritance herself, right before she died… never got to enjoy it. Before she went, I kept telling myself I’d be mad not to hang on at work for the pension, but with what she left, I could still see Liam right.’ * Percival Proudfoot "Plug" Plugsley, Cartoon Character: Hogwarts Professor is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Here are all the links to points and articles Nick and John discuss in today’s video podcast; enjoy! The Ten Questions with Links (John in Red, Nick in Blue) * So, Nick, what did we miss in our review of the Hidden Hold of Horrors Golden Thread (HHH) running through all of Rowling’s work? Tamspells: The bat cave in Tassel’s version of Bombyx Mori * The smuggler’s cave Strike and Pollworth never got to? * IBH - Mother Shipton’s Cave * The silver mines on Sark and the Maid of the Silver Sea Connection Ed Shardlow: * One point of pedantry, the incident on the tracks in IBH takes place at Custom House station, which is on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) rather than the underground, and very much above ground, although there’s still a drop from the platform to the tracks and the onrushing mortality. * There are also lots of cemetery references with Highgate Cemetery itself as a key location, and then the depictions of the cemetery in both the cartoon and the game. Gus’s darkened room perhaps also qualifies? * A few other candidates occur to me in other books, although perhaps these are more concealed treasure than concealed danger - the cupboard under the stairs, Harry’s Gringotts vault, the Old Forge... * Connected to all the mining and masonry in THM, and the silver vault, there’s the archetypal setting of King Solomon’s Temple in the legend of Hiram Abiff, and the recreation of that setting in the vault-like temples of Freemason’s Hall. * Also, the place under the bridge on the canal, where Strike meets Rena, that turns out to be Ben Liddell’s final resting place. * Seems like the subterranean chamber in Church Cottage might be the inspiration from real life not just for the golden thread of caverns, dungeons and cisterns, but also for the Lake in her creative process. Whereas perhaps those raised and well-lit counterexamples are the Shed. * So I wonder if there’s a real world shed to identify too. Maggie S: Strike swims in a pool in Cuckoo Calling. MS Liner Notes-Sideways Bird: In Deathly Hallows, the Malfoys keep their prisoners in a dungeon/cellar * They escape to Bill and Fleur’s home — Shell Cottage, which is on a cliff overlooking the sea. The processing of grief and burial rituals alongside the sea imagery, where Harry tries to make sense of it all and figure out what to do next, are beautiful. I use them as stand-alone passages for grief counseling often. * It has made me want to explore further the juxtaposition of the underground trauma moments with the above ground lake/sea/water processing moments. Like DP and Jack’s final encounter on the beach. * I think there might be a reason Cormoran is drawn to the sea for healing…and maybe a bit hesitant to linger there too long… Gina Sterling: In OoTP, Harry goes down into Snape’s cellar, goes into the Pensieve, and he sees his dad being a jerk to Snape...next to the lake. * My mind is blown! I love that this podcast gives me paradigm shifts once in awhile--with the stories in which I’m most familiar. I’ve never connected the *literal* undergrounds and *literal* waters with the descent to the innermost cave/nigredo. The cave or underground area is always followed by water, the albedo, cleansing moment...where the hero is changed. I’ll never be able to not see this now! John: The two Hidden Hold events I thought of this morning were the “deepest dungeon” in ‘The Warlock’s Hairy Heart’ and the trapdoor concealed by a carpet in Poem and Pretence’s home in Christmas Pig. Both of those are in credibly rich moments in their respective books, the latter the Meaning-In-The-Middle moment of perhaps Rowling’s best book. * You’re the Lake man, Nick, so you probably aren’t surprised that we have two Golden Threads coming out of Church Cottage, Rowling’s childhood home in Tutshill. Are there any others? * In addition to the Hidden Hold of Horrors out of the Church Cottage basement, there is Tutshill echo everywhere in ‘the family with Bad Dad and Lost Mother living in a modest home on the periphery of a Manor estate’ (think the Gaunts and the Riddles, the Knights and the Chiswells, and the Prices in the Wallace’s Pagford). * We need to look at the Ghost of the Lost Mother (Anne Rowling) now and the Upstairs Bedroom Prison as other possibilities (hat-tip Susanna!) * John, you asked me to dig up Rowling’s comments about Anne’s death that were specifically about regrets. What did you make of the three that I found? * See Anne Rowling and the Lost Mother Golden Thread in the Works of J. K. Rowling for full discussion: * ‘If I could talk to my mum again I’d tell her I’d tell her I had a daughter - and I wrote some books and guess what happened?’ The Guardian, 18 April 2001 * ‘Multiple Sclerosis Killed My Mother,’ Sunday Herald, 16 November 2003 * Rowling’s contribution to "Dear Me: A Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self" by Joseph Galliano, published by Simon & Schuster 15 October 2009 * Haven’t we talked about this before, John? During the Kanreki? * Yes! The Lost Child Golden Thread had two parts, the ‘Child Survives’ half of which was properly the Lost Mother Golden Thread (LGMT); * Orphan-Neglected Child and Lost Mother almost identical * Lost Mother Golden Thread Review: * See full review and lists at The Lost Mother Golden Thread and a Key Reason We are Moved by J. K. Rowling’s Stories, * Fascinating but So What? Is this just a persistent Lake-Life parallel or is it reflective of Rowling Shed artistry and core messaging? * See the full discussion of the Ghost Golden Thread in John’s post, The Lost Mother Golden Thread and a Key Reason We are Moved by J. K. Rowling’s Stories; * “You think the dead we have loved ever truly leave us?” * Troubled Blood: The Dead Among Us * The Ghosts Haunting Troubled Blood * More Hauntings in Cormoran Strike: The Ghost of Charlie Bristow Comes Calling in Cuckoo’s Calling (Louise Freeman) * More Hauntings in Cormoran Strike: Freddie Chiswell as the Lethal White Horse (Louise Freeman) * Ghosts are a big deal in Rowling-favorites Nabokov, Shakespeare, Aeschylus, and Greek mythology * Rowling on “indestructible soul,” “obsession with death,” “Mortality and morality” * In HHH we saw that Rowling used the dark damp depths to communicate psychological fears and places of transformation; is there a point to the Shed artistry of recurrent Lost Mothers? * Yes! See The Lost Mother Golden Thread and a Key Reason We are Moved by J. K. Rowling’s Stories for the full discussion of the Mother’s Love Golden Thread in Rowling’s work; * Evan Willis’ Christmas Pig piece “For the Straightforward Path Was Lost”: A Few Startin

  2. Sep 24

    The Lake, Shed, and Golden Thread Aspects of Rowling Characters’ Repeated Trips Underground

    This video podcast is the third in a series of three posts about the Hidden Hold of Horrors Golden Thread in the work of author Rowling-Galbraith. A Golden Thread is a plot point, scene, or character type that recurs repeatedly through an author’s stories, a commonality that is evident only when looking at the writer’s writings viewed as a whole. The ‘Hidden Hold of Horrors’ repeated scene is of a location underground, be it a cave, a cellar, a tunnel, a tomb, or a basement pool, in which a frightening confrontation, a Near Death Experience, flat out murder, or transformative revelation occurs. The first post in this series was Nick Jeffery’s exploration and explanation of Rowling’s Church Cottage childhood home in Tutshill and its remarkable cellar beneath a covered access port, what has been mistakenly referred to as a “trapdoor.” In The Hidden Cellar Beneath J. K. Rowling’s Childhood Home, Nick shares why a building in West England on the border with Wales from the mid 19th Century that was built as a Church of England school would have a substantial brick and cement vaulted basement and what this room, originally a cistern to prevent cholera outbreaks, was probably like during Rowling’s childhood. [Golden Thread Image: Wovex.com; Ladder to Cellar Under Access Port: Pinterest] The second post was one I sent out yesterday in which I shared Nick’s and my off-the-top-of-our-heads catalog of everything subterranean, frightening, and damp in Rowling’s oeuvre, that is, her seven Harry Potter novels, eight Cormoran Strike mysteries, the Cursed Child ‘collaborative’ play script, her Beedle the Bard fairy tale collection and Ickabog “political fairy tale,” the three Fantastic Beasts screenplays, her border-line autobiographical Casual Vacancy, and the Dante-meets-Dickens Christmas Pig classic. Rowling Golden Thread: The Hidden ‘Hold of Horrors Downstairs, Beneath the Trap Door Hogwarts Professor is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The morning after posting it, readers are already adding scenes Nick and I overlooked and I am kicking myself for not including the “deepest dungeon” in ‘The Warlock’s Hairy Heart’ and “the trapdoor beneath the rug” concealing the tunnel beneath Poem and Pretense’s sanctuary from the Loss Adjustors, a tunnel reached via a ladder. ‘The Tunnel’ takes them “to the bottom of the mountain” where Compass joins them for their flight to the City of the Missed across the Wastes of the Unlamented, Pig’s story turn and meaning-in-the-middle. As Nick and I note in the conversation above, a comprehensive list will require a repeated reading of Rowling’s complete writings. Please add the ones you think of that we missed in your comments below, especially for Cursed Child, the only book for which Nick and I drew a complete Golden Thread blank. Those first two posts cover half of the four subjects Nick and I tackle in this Golden Thread conversation; the Ten Questions guiding that discussion with the relevant links and notes from our answers can be found below. What I want to write out here briefly are some notes about Golden Threads in general, their place in a Lake and Shed bifurcated critical environment, and then the importance of the ‘Hidden Hold of Horrors’ Golden Thread specifically for understanding Rowling’s work, its inspiration and intentional artistry, and for seeing what will happen in the remaining Strike novels. Not to mention the meaning of Hallmarked Man’s fictional silver oligarch Murdoch’s name! {Lake image source; Golden Thread image source; Shed image source] Are ‘Golden Threads’ Evidence of ‘Lake’ Inspiration or ‘Shed’ Intentional Artistry? Since the time of our first Hogwarts Professor Substack posts and podcasts, Nick and I have described what we are trying to advance here in the niche field of Rowling Studies is Fourth Generation work. For a discussion of the four generations of Rowling scholarship, listen to On Reading ‘On Writing.’ where we discussed the evolution of reader approaches to Rowling-Galbraith texts and how each generation, while typical of a specific time period, continues into the other generations (most of Strike-Ellacott fandom, for example, is reading that series as the ‘Shippers and speculators did the Hogwarts Saga during Potter Mania, the first generation of Rowling Studies). What distinguishes Fourth Generation thinking is, in essence, (1) the incorporation of biographical material in understanding the inspiration of Rowling’s work (per her implicit instruction since the late 2019 Lake and Shed metaphor interview), (2) the creation of a gauge to measure the success or failure of her work out of the intention evident in her choices of literary tools, her Shed artistry, and (3) shifting the critical focus from the latest work and the book-next-in-queue to the oeuvre as a whole, everything she’s written. The bumper-sticker version of that? Lake — Shed — Golden Threads. Lake? Rowling describes the source of her stories’ inspiration as the ‘Lake’ of her unconscious mind, her personal issues, the events of her life, her reading and education. This is the work of Fourth Generation specialists who sift through what is known about Rowling’s life in pursuit of clues to the source material of her stories. Shed? Again, Rowling’s bipolar metaphor for her creative process has a marker, her ‘Shed,’ that represents the alocal place ‘where’ she deploys her traditional tools to craft archetypal story out of her very personal Lake inspiration. These tools — I focus on seven — have a specific quality, both antiquarian and profoundly effective in producing the effect Rowling desires on her reading audience. And, at last, the Golden Threads, which are not explicitly Lake or Shed findings, but, as noted above, “a plot point, scene, or character type that recurs repeatedly through an author’s stories, a commonality that is evident only when looking at the writer’s writings viewed as a whole.” Examples? In two episodes of The Kanreki Series last July (here and here), Nick and I discussed fourteen Golden Threads in Rowling’s work: The Bad Dad, Writing about Writing, Violence against Women, the Evils of Fleet Street, Mother Love, Ghosts, Pregnancy Traps, the Lost Child with Grieving Steward, Evil Government, Occult tropes, the Embedded Author, the Search for the Real, Embedded Texts, and Shadow Doppelgangers. ‘Blood’ makes fifteen (see here, here, and here for that) and my post yesterday about the ‘Hidden Hold of Horrors’ is sixteen. As Nick and I explain in the conversation above, most of these Golden Threads have a Lake element or point of origin, e.g., the Cholera Cistern cellar beneath Church Cottage. Understanding why Rowling returns to them again and again in reinventive ways in her work, though, requires more than a psycho-biographical connection. This is obviously the case with all the underground terrors to be found in Rowling’s stories. [Basement Image from WallPaperAccess.com] How are We to Understand the ‘Hidden Hold of Horrors’ Golden Thread? What does it mean? As I listed at the end of yesterday’s post and the conversation with Nick above, Rowling’s childhood home with its hidden depths beneath the floorboards and neighboring graveyard and attendant ghosts is only one part of the explanation for the Hidden Hold Golden Thread. It’s a wonderful point of origin and launching pad for inspiration, certainly, but restricting the interpretation of her usage of this meme to nightmares and flights of fancy she had as a child about the sublimely subliminal spaces around her is, for lack of a better word, lazy. Her use of these spaces again and again reflects, I’m sure, to a certain degree her psychological Default Setting from childhood memories of the ‘Wet Nightmare Place’ under the dining room table and next door. But Rowling’s mind was shaped as much by her bibliography, the books she read and loved, as by her biography, the exterior circumstances of her life. Her reading is the bridge linking her Lake and Shed creative process and it plays an outsized role in her Golden Threads as well. Granting that the first inspiration of her unconscious mind may just have been childhood fears and fantasies, knowing that Rowling has read Homer, Virgil, and Dante and studied Greek mythology from her time at Wyedean Comprehensive through UExeter means that a Trip to the Underworld to speak to the dead is a touchstone of myth and epic. There’s a word for this commonplace, katabasis, the going-down-and-coming-back. Odysseus visits Tiresias, Aeneas his father Anchises, Dante with Virgil tours the Inferno’s multiple levels — and Psyche is sent by Venus into Hades on the last of her purgative trials.· Rowling, having entered into these stories, knows they are delivery vehicles for the cathartic transformative change to be found in consultation with the dead and in thinking about death. Joseph Campbell famously argued in Hero with a Thousand Faces that per James Joyce, ethnographers, and comparative mythology experts this descent into the nether worlds and return was an essential aspect of the “monomyth” or Ur story underlying all story and myth. Campbell’s more important contribution was arguing that this was not an abstract historical or literary assertion but one fundamentally important in every human being’s life and psycho-spiritual development. The Journey to the Underworld from this perspective is that it represents the conscious entry into the Unconscious Mind, the Hidden ‘Depths’ of the Person Behind the Persona-Mask. Rowling has said that, if the writing dream had not worked out, she would have studied to become a psychologist. It is a touchstone belief of Fourth Generation Rowling Studies that, even though the writing g

  3. Sep 19

    Year One of ‘The Hallmarked Man’ at Hogwarts Professor: A Look Back at What We’ve Learned

    Nick Jeffery and John Granger met on Wednesday this week to talk about John’s epic ‘Index to the First Year of Reading Hallmarked Man’ that was posted a week ago. Both were delighted (and a little surprised?) by the range and depths of the work done here and elsewhere to unpack the eighth Strellacott mystery, easily the most carefully planned and unique of the Strike series. Below are the ten questions Nick and John asked one another, brief versions of their answers, and links to points they made for listeners wanting to read more about the subjects and previous work mentioned. The conversation ended with a big THANK YOU to the Hogwarts Professor subscribers and the announcement of an announcement (!) coming next week of Real Time conversation with those supporters. Enjoy this conversation and the links below to highlights from the previous year - and stand by for some exciting news about the coming year’s work at Hogwarts Professor! Hogwarts Professor is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The Ten Questions, Answer Notes, and Links: [Nota Bene: Nick’s questions to John are in Blue and John’s to Nick are red; Links with bullet points are Nick and John ‘Rowling Studies’ podcasts; non-bulleted links are posts.] 1 -- Happy Anniversary, John! Can you believe it’s been a year since Hallmarked Man was published? What Should we do in commemoration of the Strike Fandom Holiday? * Three things? First, note how much our thinking about the Strike series has changed from our expectations about Strike 8 to our ever growing appreciation of the complexity and mysteries of Hallmarked Man; * Next, maybe this is just me, but I wanted to chart somehow that progression and change from date of publication to where we are now, if only to get a clearer picture of where we’re headed – and * Last, I want to have some kind of party, right? Some kind of gathering, the virtual kind obviously, to celebrate the milestones and our direction as readers -- 2 -- So, Nick, I spent my weekend collating an Index of our Hallmarked Man Year’s Greatest Hits. The most shocking piece for me, frankly, was the amount of material we put up in the first months in addition to our podcasts. Do you remember the feeling of a second Kanreki blitz? * Nick notes: stories of publisher bread crumbs and gaffes, ‘Robin is Sterile’ and ‘Charlotte was Murdered’ strikes, and fandom shock, disappointment and confusion; * Our ‘hot takes’ here, reader speculations, beginning of Lake and Shed readings From Hallmarked Man Index Post: First Impressions: Overwhelm, Cryptonyms * Three Cheers for The Hallmarked Man! Thoughts After the First Reading * The Hallmarked Man: A ‘Blitz’ Lake and Shed Reading (with a few Golden Threads) Hallmarked Man’s Flood of Names, Characters, and Plots The Allegorical Cryptonyms of The Hallmarked Man, Part Three Hallmarked Man as Key to Series Ending, Difficulty Intentional * Hallmarked Man’s Three ‘Whose My Daddy?’ Set-Ups to Shock Readers in Strikes 9 and 10 * Why Hallmarked Man is the Best Cormoran Strike Novel and Will Be Considered the Key to Unlocking the Series’ Mysteries Cupid and Psyche Template * The Hallmarked Man’s Mythological Template * Valentine’s Day Special: The Cupid and Psyche Myth within the Cormoran Strike Series: Both a Series Template and Traditional Delivery System for the Fundamental Choice in Human Existence, Eros vs Anteros 3 -- Rowling spurred that, John, with writing a very challenging book but also via the Cupid and Psyche tweet. Which of the flood of Fan Theories we discussed did you find the most intriguing? * Ryan Murphy is Charlotte Campbell’s ‘Dirty Bomb’And Other Mind-Blowing Cogent Arguments and Ideas from Hogwarts Professor Readers * Robin Ellacott’s Imminent Death and Its Out of This World Effect on Strike: The Christian Text-Within-the-Text of Running Grave Subtly Suggests the Ultimate Twist in Cormoran Strike’s Transformation 4 -- Talking about Robin’s Immanent death and the Charlotte Campbell ‘Dirty Bomb’ were fun, but, Nick, the Fiona and Katya revelations about Shanker may have been the Peak of the Year’s Finds and Reveals, no? The Mysterious Suicides of Leda Strike and Charlotte Campbell Revisited Post Hallmarked Man: Has Fiona Down Under Revealed the Murderers of both Strike’s Mother and Milady Bezerko? Was a Busted Drug Deal with Gangsters and Campbell-Longcaster Incest and Adultery behind it All? Dementia, Jewelry, and a Nine Inch C**k: The Mystery of Shanker’s ‘Old Man,’ His Given Name, and Why He’s Never Killed Jeff Whittaker: Katya Slonenko’s Deductions from Shanker Comments about His Dear Old Dad in ‘The Hallmarked Man’ * Shanker’s ‘Old Man,’ Leda Strike’s Tattoo, Her First Husband’s Real Name, and The Dress: A Conversation with Katya Slonenko about Her Strike-Ellacott Theories and Others from Reddit’s r/CormoranStrike Community 5 -- That was like reading Strike 9 in advance, John, wasn’t it? Shades of ‘Robin is Sterile’! But the wheels almost fell off the cart when it came to the Incest speculation. Funny that it was a Golden Thread through all her work, though, not just Hallmarked Man... Incest Notes and Theories * Jonny Rokeby was both Cormoran and Charlotte’s Father: The Incest Twist Rowling Has Hidden Inside the Strike Series * Is Rowling’s Incest ‘Golden Thread’ the Key to Her Cormoran Strike Finale? That Seems to Be the Strong Trend in the Theories Offered by Serious Strikers at Hogwarts Professor 6 -- But, Nick, what a Year for a Trip to the Lake -- Rowling’s Charlie Kirk tweets, the Charm Bracelet, the Congenital Blood Disease -- was your cup running over? JKR — VWD! Rowling Tweets About Congenital Blood Condition: von Willebrand Disease * Hallmarked Man and Rowling’s Tweets after the Shooting of Charlie Kirk The Troubled Blood of J. K. Rowling: Blood as a Golden Thread in all her Works * Blood! The Crimson Thread: Exploring the Lake Inspiration of Blood in the Works of J. K. Rowling The Christmas Charm Bracelet Conversations with Elizabeth Baird-Hardy: * The Christmas Charm Bracelet of Strike 9 Clues (Part One) * The Christmas Charm Bracelet of Strike 9 Clues (Part Two) Rowling Tweets about Changed Beliefs — and Her Beliefs about “Religious Faith” Perhaps the most important of Rowling’s revelations in the past year were the ones she made about her beliefs consequent to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Specifically on 12 September 2025 she wrote about the beliefs she has changed, in which tweet she concluded with thoughts about God and “religious faith:” The distinction implicit in Rowling’s “God conundrum” is between (a) “religious faith,” conformity to the beliefs and practices of a specific revelation, and (b) belief in God. Her posture of enlightened agnosticism with respect to God, being unable to believe “without seeing proof,” while acknowledging the “God-shaped vacuum inside me,” an existential proof of same she experiences, is, frankly, only sophistry. It is verbiage draped over her all-too-human inability to reject those core beliefs she has qua postmodern that religious faith requires she reject for communion with God. [If you struggle earnestly and honestly with these same issues, I recommend to you what I would to Rowling as I have to Nick, namely, that you read James Cutsinger’s Advice for the Serious Seeker and Ross Douthat’s Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. What Chesterton said about Christianity is as true about “religious faith” in general, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting but found difficult and left untried.” Pedestrian agnosticism and adolescent atheism today are less markers of sophistication and thoughtfulness, being ‘above the herd,’ than unthinking captivity to the zeitgeist and to one’s unexamined beliefs.] 7 -- That was a Big Year for us Lake Dwellers, John, but Hogwarts Professor, I think, will always be a Shed site until Rowling agrees to an interview with Veritaserum. And the Shed work we did with Hallmarked Man was significant; what was your favorite part of that? ‘The Group Adventure of Charting Hallmarked Man’ (Fourteen Posts) was a landmark event in Rowling Studies, frankly, and a proof that Strike 8 was one of if not THE most carefully planned novels — which proof serves as a corrective rebuke to readers who thought it was a careless melange of confusing and conflicting plot lines, the “worst of the series.” * The Group Adventure of Charting Hallmarked Man’s Rings: Part Ten and Epilogue, Chapters 117-127 (post to the other thirteen posts in this series are at the bottom of this post) 8 -- For me the Gang of Five independent Ring Reading of Hallmarked Man will always be the stand-out of the past year. But you brought the Lake into the Shed with your Read-Along-with-Nick Book club this year! Two epic poems by the Brownings, a Bildungsroman classic by Dodie Smith, and another C. S. Lewis template -- what was the goal and what was the highlight for you in those readings? Nick’s Reading List Online: Rowling’s Admitted Literary Influences (December 2020) Important Side Texts: The Ring and the Book, Aurora Leigh, I Capture the Castle,‘Till We Have Faces The Ring and The Book – A Rowling Reading * What the Hallmarked Man Epigraphs Reveal About Rowling-Galbraith’s Artistry and Meaning A Rowling Reading of Aurora Leigh * Talking About ‘A Rowling Reading of Aurora Leigh‘ A J. K. Rowling Reading of I Capture the Castle * The Most Influential Book Rowling Read as a Child Wanting to Be a Writer is Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle ‘Till We Have Faces C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’ and Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series (Part One) Is ‘Till We Have Faces’ the The Thematic Template for the ‘Strike-Ellacott’ Series? C. S. Lewis’

  4. Sep 10

    HBO+ Harry Potter Roll-Out is Heavy with Traditional Symbolism

    Nick and John get together to discuss three HogwartsProfessor posts about the All New Hogwarts House Emblems and Rowling’s commentary via three emojis about the recent trailer for the Bronte Studios adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. You can read those posts via these links: The HBO+ Potter Trailer: The Meaning of Rowling’s Heart, Owl, and Lightning Bolt HBO’s Harry Potter and the Alchemical Symbols The New Hogwarts House Emblems and Their Alchemical and Plant Symbolism Or you can just jump right into the conversation via the questions, notes and links below! Hogwarts Professor is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The Ten Questions Guiding this Conversation: Nick in Red, John in Blue 1. G’day, John! Great to see you, your chin, and hairline again! You posted a short piece over at the HogwartsProfessor weblog this week about a seemingly meaningless Rowling tweet that shared a new trailer for the HBO+ adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. She only ‘wrote’ three emojis, but, even though you wrote was only several paragraphs long, it said a lot. Why do such a deep-dive into these perhaps offhand fan-servicing signals? * All the signals or emojis are traditional symbols, so, offhand or not, they're markers of the choice a serious reader has to make about understanding Rowling's work properly; * Is it literary sacred art as her Shed tool choices suggest or just creative personal expressions for our diversion and entertainment? * Rowling is signaling us, as you say, that it is the former with these three emojis. * T. S. Eliot, ‘The Dry Salvages’ (InterNet Poem) We had the experience but missed the meaning And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form 2. Let’s take a closer look, then! The Heart, the Owl, and the Lightning Bolt -- what does the Rowling fan, from “ten years old to seventy,” see right away before they stretch for the traditional meaning? * Heart – Rowling is pleased; we should be, too; heart as sentiment, love token. * Owl – Hedwig in Stone, important message being delivered, ‘pet’ project of Rowling’s. * Lightning Bolt – The Boy Who Lived’s signature mark, news out of the blue or ‘news flash’ 3. And there’s more? What traditional meanings do these emojis have? * The Heart to Rowling is a lot more than a token of sentiment. It is a Golden Thread in her work that the Heart is a pulsing symbol of the human spiritual capacity. Only the Eye does as much heavy freight of meaning lifting in her work and I think the Heart surpasses the Eye ultimately in importance except insomuch as she elides their meaning. Read The Heart is Not About Emotions and Affection but the Human Spiritual Center for discussion of the symbolism and the Golden Thread. * The Owl, too, is an ancient and dynamic symbol, the reason frankly there is a Hedwig rather than Hedwig being the meaning of the token. Rowling clearly draws on her experience of owls in Greek mythology (and reading of C. S. Lewis’ Narniad drawing on the same source) in making the owl the vessel of communication and supernatural perception in her Wizarding World. None of the letters written by her witches and wizards need to be addressed because an owl is so attuned to everyone and everything that it is able effortlessly to understand where it needs to go, God’s own GPS. What is usually described as a symbol of Wisdom is clearly much more a revelation of a mind able to grasp the great interconnectedness of things which in turns takes us back to the Eye and the Heart — and what Rowling is trying to bring to readers in her transformative literature. (Contrast this Greek mythology symbolism with what owls represent in Christian scripture; quite the gulf between Athens and Jerusalem there!) * But the wisdom piece is there, too! Rowling is writing at four levels of story that correspond with the four ways of human knowing, of which the last and most important is gnosis or wisdom, the so-called anagogical layer of meaning that no less a light than Flannery O’Connor said was the whole point of writing and reading. If you’re writing for the Heart or to illumine the Eye of the Heart, the goal is transformative imaginative experience fostering wisdom. * And the Lightning Bolt? The forehead scar, the mark of Orestes, the Greek hero who avenged his father’s betrayal and murder, is another polyvalent and profoundly spiritual cipher as a lightning bolt. In it simultaneously the reader experiences simultaneously as we do in a thunder storm albeit imaginatively (1) sudden illumination or enlightenment, (2) from above, the heavens, the super-conscious realm, and, most important, (3) a reorientating shock, a cathartic shaking, the jolting moment that jars us out of our psychological rut and cage to see the world afresh with our ‘eye of the heart.’ * Rowling’s three emojis on her tweet about the fun trailer below can be read as fan servicing variations on the ‘thumbs up’ and ‘hand-clapping’ using tokens associated with the books. No doubt about that reading. * I think it as important to note, however, the possibility that Mrs Murray is signaling to the HBO+ audience as well as the international of readers that this adaptation is about trying to reproduce as much as is possible in an iconoclastic medium some replica of the imaginative and transformative experience to be had in the books. The Heart, the Owl, and the Lightning Bolt all point to that experience and depth of meaning. 4. Which segues nicely to your brief post, Nick, on the HBO+ adaptations and its choices in how to represent the four Hogwarts Houses: Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin. (”Nitwit, Blubber, Oddment, Tweek,” anyone?) Can you review what the books say are the proper representations, the heraldic glyphs most appropriate to each house? 5. Has Rowling added content or context for why she chose those specific representations? [Anelli-Spartz Interview discussion of four elements] JKR: But they’re not all — don’t think I don’t take your point, but — we, the reader, and I as the writer, because I’m leading you all there — you are seeing Slytherin house always from the perspective of Death Eaters’ children. They are a small fraction of the total Slytherin population. I’m not saying all the other Slytherins are adorable, but they’re certainly not Draco, they’re certainly not, you know, Crabbe and Goyle. They’re not all like that, that would be too brutal for words, wouldn’t it? ES: But there aren’t a lot of Death Eater children in the other houses, are there? JKR: You will have people connected with Death Eaters in the other houses, yeah, absolutely. ES: Just in lesser numbers. JKR: Probably. I hear you. It is the tradition to have four houses, but in this case, I wanted them to correspond roughly to the four elements. So Gryffindor is fire, Ravenclaw is air, Hufflepuff is earth, and Slytherin is water, hence the fact that their common room is under the lake. So again, it was this idea of harmony and balance, that you had four necessary components and by integrating them you would make a very strong place. But they remain fragmented, as we know. More on Elements and Humours at HogwartsProfessor: * Ben Jonson’s Every Man and His Humor * The Crimes of Grindelwald Group Portrait: A Study in Temperaments 6. Where did the Warner Brothers film adaptations depart from and stick to the page-and-interview House heraldry? * The animal representations as often as not are facing in the wrong direction, sinister rather than dexter and vice versa; AND * The Ravenclaw eagle of the books became a raven and their House colors become dark and light shades of blue rather than blue and copper. 7. But those corrections aren't the most interesting changes or corrections in these new House shields, are they? What are the extras we're given that weren't suggested in the original texts but implicit in the interview material? [Hat Tip to Sad-Ad-9273 at r/HarryPotteratHBO for these screen catches!] * Note the vegetation in the Banners and the Emblems: the acorns in the Gryffindor mean the Oak tree is its symbol; the white berries in Slytherin suggest holly, per Sandra Miesel Kopec, the laurel tree seems a match for Ravenclaw and ivy for Hufflepuff; * Check out a website devoted to these things, ‘What Do Leaves Represent on a Coat of Arms,’ for the meaning of these plant associations with each house or share your own ideas in the comment boxes below! 8. What is with the ornamentation on those triangles? The Slytherin circle, the sideways line and paleolithic horse on Gryffindor, the Ravenclaw ‘V,’ and the Hufflepuff cup and ‘V’? Are these Founder’s treasure tokens that become Horcruxes? If so, are there traditional meanings as well as plot points, e.g., Tarot Card qualities? [Hat Tip to LightAngel452 at r/HarryPotteratHBO for the brilliant graphic! LightAngel also picked up on the alchemical symbols.] * The Emblems material that gets heady involves the melange of symbols and signs in their respective headboards; * Slytherin has an easily discerned ‘S,’ the suggestion of the House’s signature serpent, and the Horcrux locket of Salazar Slytherin; * Ravenclaw’s header with a little head turning and squinting has an ‘R,’ the V inserted looks like a diadem, and simultaneously it has what looks like an eagle in flight from a distance; * Gryffindor does not seem to include the ‘G’ we’d expect, but the Sword of Gryffindor, and the paleolithic horse a Medieval knight be riding are evident; * Hufflepuff gets the best of the lot, though, with its distractingly obvious cup obscuring how the ‘V’ within the inverted triangle and its bisecting line yields both the stripes of a badger and Helga Hufflepuff’s initials! * That’s great stuff, Nick, but the re

  5. Aug 26

    A Conversation about the Symbolism of the Letter 'G' in 'Hallmarked Man'

    Nick Jeffery and freshly Shorn & Clean Shaven John Granger sit down to discuss John’s two posts about the symbolism of the Letter ‘G’ in Strike 8. Part One of the series did the necessary work of demonstrating that, yes, the letter ‘G’ is all over Hallmarked Man, from the online guess that the murderer carved that initial into ‘William Wright’s back to the Witness G echoing with Green-jacked Gorilla-bearing man and a bit of calligraphic terrorism on the Agency door at street-level. The first also covered the accepted Masonic interpretations of why the ‘G’ is featured in the Compass and Square symbolism of their fraternity. Part Two was a deep dive into more esoteric meanings given to the ‘G’ by Freemasons and by Rene Guenon, notable Perennialist, and into what associations Rowling-Galbraith tried to make between the seventh letter and the key hallmark of the book. It concluded with three answers to “So What?” including some fun speculation about a possible shape for the series, a shape highlighted in Strike 8, and with a discussion of whether Rowling-Galbraith’s subliminal artistry with ‘G’ worked or failed. Perhaps the biggest take-away of this series of posts was to introduce subliminal coloration as the common denominator of Rowling-Galbraith’s signature seven Shed tools. Nick and John open their conversation about the letter ‘G’ with that subject and everything they discuss in the end folds back into that covert artistry. As always, the Dynamic Duo covet your comments and feedback as the best follow-up to their conversation. Please jump right in! Hogwarts Professor is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The Ten Questions and Relevant Links 1. Okay, John, let’s talk coloration. You mentioned some examples in famous authors’ work in Part One of your deep dive into Letter G Symbolism in Hallmarked Man; do we have coloration in Harry Potter? Another Strike novel? * ‘Donegality’ in Planet Narnia, Michael Ward, the subliminal artistry of C. S. Lewis’ Narniad; * From ‘Literary Alchemy: Sacred Science, Sacred Art, and the Alembic of Story’ C. S. Lewis, according to Michael Ward, author of Planet Narnia, also felt appreciating the “manner of the author,” his “various special tricks,” especially those connected to creating atmosphere, were critical to understanding the style of the Greats. Again and again, in defending works of romance, Lewis argues that it is the quality or tone of the whole story that is its main attraction. The invented world of romance is conceived with this kind of qualitative richness because romancers feel the real world itself to be ‘cryptic, significant, full of voices, and the mystery of life.’ Lovers of romances go ‘back to fruit tree for its taste; to an air for… what? For itself; to a region for its whole atmosphere – to Donegal for its Donegality and London for its Londonness’ (Ward, 16). Donegal was one of Lewis’favorite vacation spots as a child in Northern Ireland. Ward defined Lewis’ stylistic atmosphere as his ‘Donegality:’ By donegality we mean to denote the spiritual essence or quiddity of a work of art as intended by the artist and inhabited unconsciously by the reader. The donegality of the story is its peculiar and deliberated atmosphere or quality; its pervasive and purposed integral tone or flavor; its tutelary but tacit spirit, a spirit that that the author consciously sought to conjure, but which was designed to remain implicit in the matter of the text… the more influentially to inform the work and so affect the reader (Ward 75). Ward’s concern is especially with Lewis’ character Aslan, in whom this donegality is “concentrated and consummated” as a “Christologically representative character” (Idem), but the thesis of Planet Narnia is that the “kappa-element,”[xiv] Lewis’ phrase for the informing, hidden “tutelary but tacit” style of a work, is astrological symbolism, each of the Narnia chronicles representing one of the seven traditional planets. Ward argues that Lewis’ subliminal artistry, the “inner weave” or style of his work in Nabokovian language, is the embedded mythological and astral metaphors to be found beneath the surface of each story. Twain is supposed to have said, “”If you would have your fiction live forever, you must neither overtly preach nor overtly teach, but you must covertly preach and covertly teach.” Lewis, believing as he did that “an influence which cannot evade our consciousness will not go very deep” (Lewis no date), wrote in astrological glyphs to reach covertly his reader’s unconscious depths or noetic heights. * ‘The Eyes of Deathly Hallows’ in The Deathly Hallows Lectures, John Granger, and, briefly, here, and 2010 lecture at New York Public Library; and * ‘The Cross Symbolism of Troubled Blood,’ John Granger 2. You list those eyes and crosses and I confess it didn’t strike me on my first and repeated readings that there were so many of those. What made you notice all the ‘G’s in Strike 8? * I confess that I didn’t make anything of the letter ‘G’s repeated appearances in Hallmarked Man until I saw that Rene Guenon, the most famous and profoundly metaphysical of the first 20th Century Perennialists, had written a brief essay in his youth, ‘The Letter G and the Swastika.’ I made that discovery inadvertently when looking for something else in Fundamental Symbols, a posthumous collection of his writing (downloadable as pdf here). 3. Let’s play ‘Name a G passage;’ I’ll start with the G supposedly carved into William Wright’s back and you name another until we’re both out of examples... Robin’s research into the death of ‘William Wright’ in the Ramsey Silver shop vault begins with an online observer saying out of the blue that a ‘G’ was carved into the victim’s back and that this was tied to the Secret Word of Freemasonry and the legend of Hiram Abiff’s martyrdom. Rowling-Galbraith has Robin mention this to Murphy at their first unofficial briefing on the case and Murphy all but explodes; he denies it was a ‘G’ and says he heard it was a “hallmark” instead. The letter is associated with Freemasonry as their symbolic center (GAOTU) via a telephone message and in Strike’s meeting with ‘Hiram’ Hardacre. We learn after Robin’s being attacked in Harrow’s that she was ‘Witness G’ in her rapist’s trial, the letter being to her something like a secret identity. Strike not long thereafter finds a blood Red Letter ‘G’ painted on the street level door to the Agency which he hopes is a Masonic terrorist marker rather than the pointed suggestion that the Angel of Death is coming for Witness G. I’d add that the Gorilla mask and doll of the Green jacket man that haunt Robin have some of their subliminal effect on her and the reader because of the initial guttoral sound of ‘Gorilla’ and ‘Green.’ 4. The Freemason connection is the most interesting one even though the Masonic G isn’t carved into Powell’s back (it’s a Salem Cross and the only other twice played symbol is the orb and cross pendant Strike buys for the charm bracelet Christmas present). Who knew that the capital ‘G’ was such a big deal in Masonry? 5. At the end of Part One, I thought you’d pretty much covered the symbolism and were going to close in Part Two with what God and Geometry are about in Hallmarked Man, hence the coloration. Instead you wrote that the G being a one-letter acronym wasn’t enough. Why not? * not Masonic -- no edges! * not ancient Greek, Hebrew, or Sanskrit, * not tied to craft symbolism, * not a symbol!, * the catechism answer “By letters four and science five, this G aright doth stand in due art and proportion’.” 6. So was Guenon’s essay the key to Rowling’s use of the letter ‘G’? * Yes and no! * His Symbolism of the Cross, Lord of the World, and The Great Triad chapters help a lot but from ‘The Letter G and the Swastika’ we learn that * yod is God is gamma, * catechism answer means four gammas or four yodhs which both yield swastikas (gammadion cross), * GAOTUmeans Christ the keystone/cornerstone, * the sequence of jumps from letter ‘G’ to Murphy’s Salem Cross... 7. Who backed Guenon up on this connection so you weren’t using the Perennialist hammer to drive in a screw or fasten a bolt? * Cockburn, Crypto Curry, Albert Pike (via Tamara/Tamspells!) 8. If I accept the preponderance of ‘G’s in Hallmarked Man as coloration/Donegality (I do) and the meaning of the symbolism per your readers (I’m withholding skeptical judgement), what effect was this supposed to have on me the reader so I can tell you if it worked or not? If it was supposed to confuse me, boffo job! * Nabokovian potustoronost, * numinous quality in the air, * Robin as ‘Witness G, ‘ * Strike channeling Tyler Powell at finish in Ironbridge 9. Will we see Freemasonry and its symbolism in Strikes 9 and 10? Maybe! [Rowling-Galbraith] certainly has made us long for a big pay-off with respect to ‘G;’ see Sarah Keeler’s idea that it may be a pointer to Gillespie reappearing in Strike 9. I love that possibility and it certainly is in keeping with the HogwartsProfessor working thesis that Hallmarked Man is what it is to set up the next two books. If we’re going to see characters and themes bleed between the first book of the last three and its successors, why not its symbolism? If I had to bet money on it, though, I think we probably won’t see more Freemasonry or Big ‘G’ payoffs. It kills me to say that given the investment I’ve made in books about the Masons (they’re on a shelf beneath the dust-collecting little library on Mormon history and scriptures I collected while writing about Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight books). I just cannot see her w

  6. Jul 29

    Shanker's 'Old Man,' Leda Strike's Tattoo, Her First Husband's Real Name, and The Dress

    Late last month, John shared two theories about the Cormoran Strike series of novels, both from Katya Slonenko, a member of the Reddit r/CormoranStrike online fandom: Dementia, Jewelry, and a Nine Inch C**k: The Mystery of Shanker’s ‘Old Man,’ His Given Name, and Why He’s Never Killed Jeff Whittaker and Katya Slonenko: Leda Strike's 'Mistress of the Salmon Salts' Pudenda Tattoo. John corresponded with Katya while preparing those posts and invited her to join him and Nick for a discussion of her ideas, of life as a Redditor, and her thoughts about Rowling’s artistry and meaning. She accepted the invitation but said she wouldn’t be free until July to talk. Hence the wait! As expected, though, speaking with her about her own journey to expertise in Rowling Studies, her ideas about the clues Rowling has embedded so carefully within the first eight books and especially in Hallmarked Man, and the Reddit posts of which she thinks Hogwarts Professor readers need to be aware was well worth the wait. You’ll want to read those posts from June before listening to get the most out of this conversation, but, regardless of your preparation, John and Nick believe that every Serious Striker and Rowling Reader will be charmed and challenged by Katya’s remarkable insights, generous spirit, and winsome personality. The conversation includes three other Reddit community posts — about Leda’s ‘Carnival’ dress (Arachulia), about the real name of her first husband, and about the Harry Potter tattoo Rowling-Galbraith hid on a Strike novel character’s shoulder — which took the discussion above and beyond the two Katya theories in the June posts. Nick and John close the conversation by inviting her back and they hope readers here will share the questions they want us to be sure to ask her on her return visit in the comment thread below. Or just ask her yourself! As she demonstrated on the threads beneath the June posts, she is generous with her time in responding to other Strike fans. Can’t wait for more Katya Slonenko? Follow her at r/CormoranStrike, on Instagram (Tattoos!), on FaceBook, and check our her older, longer posts on Medium… The Ten Plus Questions with Links 1. Welcome, Katya, and thank you for joining us! The serious readers at Hogwarts Professor have been buzzing about your Shanker and Leda r/Cormoran Strike Reddit posts and we’re thrilled to be able to talk with you about those ideas. First, though, tell us about your first Rowling reading experiences and how you started posting on Reddit about the Strike series. 2. I’m guessing that Reddit Strike fandom may be as unfamiliar to Hogwarts Professor readers as it was to me. What is it about the Pelican_Girl and TopRequirement670 moderated posts and that international community that you love the most? 3. Shanker! I confess -- I hadn’t given him a thought really beyond a doppelganger twin for Strike before Fiona from Adelaide introduced me to the ideas that he had to be involved in the death of Leda Strike and that the Riccis were also somehow party to it. Ed Shardlow shared your Reddit post on the subject and my mind was blown; you made a compelling case soon after the publication of Hallmarked Man last year that Shanker is a Ricci, the illegitimate son of Nico ‘Muccy’ Ricci, but to avenge Leda Strike’s death he has become a Met or MI5 informer. Let’s start with the four pointers that Shanker gave Strike in one conversation that he is a Ricci-by-blood and what made you think of that connection: * Shanker’s statement that his father had dementia or was senile; * Shanker’s report that his dad taught that jewelry was the way to a woman’s heart; * Shanker’s claim that his ‘old man’ was said to have a “nine inch c**k;” and * Shanker’s saying that his begetter “‘ad kids wiv abou’ ten diff’rent women.” 4. I see the trigger now that you’ve detailed it but you dug and made four more connections that were buried in the texts of the series’ other books: * Shanker’s knowledge of the Ricci clan, especially Mucky, * his Strike-witnessed working with Mucky in drug deals, * “he deals cocaine and is good with a knife;” and, best of all, * the reaction Robin had to both Shanker and Luca at their first meeting, the fun-house mirror upside-down reflection of the attraction half-siblings feel for another intuitively. Robin is viscerally repulsed and afraid of the half-sibling Ricci boys. We cannot not see these connections after you point them out, but they’re nigh on invisible until they’re pointed out! Why do you think you saw them when we missed them -- and why do you think Rowling has taken such care to make them invisible in plain sight? 5. And Shanker is an MI5 informant? Where does that come from? 5.5 Let’s not forget that you also make an intelligent guess, the first one I’ve heard, about what Shanker’s given name really is, one based on the names of Nico Ricci’s two children out of ten for whom we have names. * Katya shared not only her reasoning about why Shanker’s name is John or an Italian variant of the Evangelist’s name but also her theory about the parentage and name of the other remaining character in the series who also remains nameless: the mysterious ‘Strike’ with whom Leda ran away from Cornwall! (Be sure to read the comment thread for Redditor conversation about other possible Ricci children…) 6. Your thoughts about Shanker all feed into theories about Leda Strike and her mysterious death in the end, which brings us to another aspect of her life and death about which you’ve brought an important and unique perspective. I’m talking about the Mistress of the Salmon Salt tattoo. Did you know anything about tattoos, Katya, before writing this piece? 7. As a tattoo artist yourself, what do you make of Leda’s tattoo placement? 8. Tattoos are meaningful, powerful reflections or revelations of the person’s interior life or self-understanding (see the post about Katya’s ‘Salmon Salt Tattoo’ theory for much more on this). What do you think this tattoo communicates about Leda? Is it another example of Rowling’s text-within-the-text or a variant of her using cryptonyms to signal important information about a character’s inner life? What Tattoos Mean in Cormoran Strike and a Catalog of Examples * From Katya’s 2023 ‘Mistress of the Salmon Salt Revisited:’ I hear you asking - why can’t Leda’s be just a tattoo, without any deeper meaning to it? That’s because all the other tattoos in the Strike books have meaning and provide a clue to their wearers’ characters. Here are some examples: * Kelsey Pratt’s One Direction tattoo is an obvious link to her being a One Direction fan. (How Leda’s tattoo is different? She chose the name of the particular song, not the more generic name of the band, to be tattooed on her) * Laing’s rose pierced with a dagger bluntly means violence to women. Rose is a woman in the language of symbols, while the dagger is… well, a dagger. * Polworth’s St Piran’s cross means he’s a Cornish patriot. I’ll be surprised if it also doesn’t mark him as The Hanged Man (a symbolic bearer of a cross) * Portia Bayliss’s trident refers to her Caribbean roots * Edie had a small black heart on the knuckles because she was the creator of ‘The Ink Black Heart’ cartoon. * Zoe’s tattoos are of ‘The Ink Black Heart’ characters she identifies with. * Pez Pierce has The Beatles quote around his neck - Strawberry Fields was (is?) a place in Liverpool. * Union Jack, a skull, and a Nordic “Chaos” rune give a good impression of what the Turisaz character will be about (all tattooed on visible spots like head or neck - he wears them proudly!); * Same with Algiz and Uruz, sans the Union Jack and the skull. * Noli Seymour’s tattoo stands for “Golden Prophet”. It denotes her connection to the Universal Humanitarian Church and her status there as the current Golden Prophet. * An ace of spades was inked onto his left cheek, and a tattooed tiger covered his throat. - Jordan Reaney’s tattoos are pretty telling, too. * Not a character, but still - JK herself has a tattoo, “Solve et Coagula”, which means - “I’m a writer of an alchemical detective series!” :D So you see, all these tattoos are chosen to reflect their owners’ personal histories. That’s generally a feature of Rowling’s writing: if she describes a character, every little detail works for the portrait she wants to paint. There are no details put there “just because” - everything is important. How the characters dress and speak, what they eat and drink, what music they listen to, and what tattoos they have tell us something about the character. What does Leda’s tattoo contribute to her portrait? Nothing! In Career of Evil, when we learn of its existence, the tattoo adds literally nothing to Leda’s portrait. Why is it mentioned in the story to which it makes zero contribution, except for serving as a plot device enabling the killer’s obsession? Because it will be important later. * Katya shared in her answer her theory from experience that Rowling-Galbraith had secretly marked a character as a Harry Potter fan by giving her a shoulder tattoo that Potter-heads would recognize! 9. Rowling’s Solve et Coagula tattoo: what do you think she is telling the world about herself? Is there a correspondence or tie between the author’s tattoo and its placement and Leda’s? 10. Whittaker quotes a line from the Salmon Salt song by the Blue Oyster Cult — “She was the Quicklime Girl” — while testifying at his trial on murder charges; what do you think that tells us about her death? Does it suggest it was suicide or murder? Do you think Whittaker did it? 11. And another one to make eleven! You thought at one point because of the meaning of ‘Mistress of the Salmon Salt’ that we had to take seriously the possibility that Leda herself was a se

  7. Jul 19

    A Pen to Change the World: Conversation with Solomon Schmidt, Rowling-Galbraith Biographer (Part Two)

    (Credit: Telegraph article, June 2017, J.K. Rowling at the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation party in 2007, wearing a floral diamond necklace and matching earrings, cf., Christmas Pig) Solomon Schmidt, author of A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J. K. Rowling (Skyhorse, June 2026), sat down with us again to discuss what challenges he faced in collating and synthesizing almost thirty years of interviews for his biography. He also shares the three questions he’d ask The Presence if she’d consent to an interview, questions that he thinks she might answer; Solomon turned the tables on his interviewers who had to improv questions they’d ask without being told their interview with Rowling was over. The necessary links to the book’s Amazon page and to the two Hogwarts Professor reviews are here: * A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.com) * A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.co.uk) Uk Edition * A Pen to Change the World – the Biography of J. K. Rowling by Solomon Schmidt (Nick Jeffery) * Book Review: A Pen to Change the World - The Life of J. K. Rowling (John Granger) Five Questions for Solomon Schmidt, Author of A Pen to Change the World: 5. I said you didn’t get to interview Rowling, which is true, but you did have access to all her interviews that she has done 1997 to the present as well as the interviews and articles with her family, friends, fans, and business associates. How did you find, assemble, and sift through those interviews?6. If you had been allowed inside the gates of Fortress Rowling and you were only allowed three questions, what would you ask her? (This is a game John and I regularly play, and usually John’s questions would get him thrown out of an interview!)7. What discoveries that you made in your research were the most exciting to you?8. Rowling has said repeatedly through the years that the critical negative events of her life that reshaped her thinking and her work were the death of her mother and the abusive relationship she had with her first husband. Agree or disagree? What do you think were the most important positive turns in her life?9. Very few people I meet don’t have a fixed opinion about Rowling; the world seems to love and hate her in equal measure with little grey area between the two: adoring fans and political allies on the one hand and those that despise her work, her political efforts, or both. Where do you fall in that divide and how hard was it to represent the other point of view in your biography?10. I assume you’ve started researching your next biography though you’ll be neck deep in this book’s launch for a few months. What will you be working on next? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Jul 9

    A Pen to Change the World: Conversation with Solomon Schmidt, Rowling-Galbraith Biographer (Part One)

    (Credit: Neil Wilder, Edinburgh 1999, now in National Portrait Galley) Solomon Schmidt, author of A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J. K. Rowling (Skyhorse, June 2026), sat down with us this week to discuss what moved him to write a Rowling biography at the height of her radioactivity as a supposed “transphobe” and the obstacles that Rowling, Inc., puts in the way of unauthorized biographers. He also shares the kindness and circumspection of the people who did agree to speak with him, to include Neil Blair and Jorge Arantes. The necessary links to the book’s Amazon page and to the two Hogwarts Professor reviews are here: * A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.com) * A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.co.uk) Uk Edition * A Pen to Change the World – the Biography of J. K. Rowling by Solomon Schmidt (Nick Jeffery) * Book Review: A Pen to Change the World - The Life of J. K. Rowling (John Granger) The second part of our conversation with Mr Schmidt will be posted next week. The first five questions he answered were: 1. What moved you to start this project? You've already written a biography of Alan Dershowitz and many more in the History Bites series; what made J. K. Rowling an inviting subject to you? What made it different from the other biographies you've written?2. You wrote in the acknowledgements at book's end that you didn't write the biography as a work of "literary criticism," but you do discuss everything she has written or collaborated on, Philosopher's Stone to Ink Black Heart. What would you have included in those discussions if you had been writing "literary criticism"?3. This is an "Unauthorized" biography which means you were researching and writing outside the gates of Team Rowling, simultaneously shut off from Rowling and her circle of friends and, one would hope, outside her ability to shape the narrative you put together of her life. You did, though, get some push-back from Rowling, Inc.'s legal arm at one point; what was that about?4. You weren't able to interview Rowling, her sister, her husband, her father, her daughter Jessica, Sean Harris, the Sisters of Swing, Michael the boyfriend, Lucy Shepherd, Pearl Biddle, or 'Starsky and Cox.' You did find and scored interviews with Jorge Arantes, Barry Cunningham (the publisher who signed J. K. Rowling to Bloomsbury), Steve Eddy (one of Rowling’s English teachers), Neil Blair (sort of!), and her American cousins, Ben and Bryony Rowling. How did you find these sources and what was it like sitting down to speak with them?5. I said you didn't get to interview Rowling, which is true, but you did have access to all her interviews that she has done 1997 to the present as well as the interviews and articles with her family, friends, fans, and business associates. How did you find, assemble, and sift through those interviews? Please share your thoughts below as well as follow-up questions you wish we had asked! Part Two will be up in a week… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

See All (85)

4.8
out of 5
11 Ratings

About

The Artistry and Meaning of J. K. Rowling and Other Greats hogwartsprofessor.substack.com

Information

You Might Also Like