Alchemy

The End of the White Stage

by Travis Prinzi on April 25, 2007

John Granger is intending a post in the near future on Snape’s place in Harry’s alchemical transformation, which should be great reading. He linked this site recently, and I did some browsing and found this description of the state of the soul at the end of the White Stage:

The whitening is a phase when we sense or have a prevision of the end of the work. It is a polar swing from out of the blackening – the appearance of seeds of the future development of the work. It is that stage of catharsis after some intense experience of being consumed in the crucible, when we glimpse the appearance, however fragmentary, of a new possibility – a flickering light in our souls which draws us towards its promise of change.

Sounds like a good description of Harry at end of Half-Blood Prince? Not completely who he should be yet, but new possibilities ahead: the realization that he is “Dumbledore’s man through and through.”

In fact, this entire article on Animal Symbolism in Alchemy is incredibly fascinating, if you can plug through it (it’s a little wordy, and it’s a type of specialized language we’re not quite used to, perhaps). Read it, thinking of all the symbols, colors, and animals present in the Harry Potter books.

After a catch-up PubCast (whenever I get to it), I’ll finally do one on alchemy.

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Alchemy Proved!

by Travis Prinzi on March 1, 2007

This is big news (at least in my very strange world of thinking about Harry Potter):

John Granger has found a quote that should finally put to rest all the doubters about the alchemical framework of the Harry Potter series:

I’ve never wanted to be a witch, but an alchemist, now that’s a different matter. To invent this wizard world, I’ve learned a ridiculous amount about alchemy. Perhaps much of it I’ll never use in the books, but I have to know in detail what magic can and cannot do in order to set the parameters and establish the stories’ internal logic.

It’s not actually even news. The quote is from ‘98. But there you have it. I’m baffled that there ever was a debate to begin with, but now it’s over. Alchemy was one of the first topics I ever addressed here at SoG. I haven’t spent much more time on it, since John’s got it covered really well already, and I learned about it from him in the first place anyway.

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A Delay

by Travis Prinzi on June 23, 2006

I promised some posts on alchemy. I’m getting there. I’ve been working with a Jungian view, but this weekend I’ll be picking up Titus Burckhardt’s book on alchemy, and I want to work a bit with both views before post significantly on that topic.

Until then, brush up a bit on literary alchemy as it relates to Harry Potter in The Alchemists’s Tale and The Alchemical Keys to the Last Harry Potter Novel, both by John Granger.