Fantastic Beasts…the Revised Edition, by Luna Lovegood, Ph.D Cryptozoology

by Dave

Sorry for the wide ranging post, this time. But I’ve left the trail of this one intact in the way I worked through it from start to the point I’ve stopped. I have to confess, one of my favorite pieces of the Harry Potter universe is the giant squid living in the lake. There’s no great reason for this except for my own childish interests. The squid has very little, if any, literary merit for the books. But, as a kid I looked at every body of water as some great mystery hiding virtually anything my mind could remember from the Discovery Channel or my imagination could conjure on its own. Even though I’ve grown older and more skeptical, tales of sea monsters still fascinate me.

We all know that any number of mythic, legendary, and symbolic creatures populate Rowling’s world. Although, some are not purely legendary or mythical. Science has accepted that giant squids are, in fact, real — washing up on the shores of areas all over the world (I think New Zealand actually tends to find as many or more carcasses than any other place). This one washed ashore in Tasmania, as documented by National Geographic in 2002.

However, dragons, phoenixes, sphinxes, and merpeople aren’t accepted as real. They are symbols deployed within the books to illicit a sense of fantasy on the surface level; on a subsurface level, they draw in the imaginary and intellectual products of other, generally much older, cultures so as to say something about the human condition, the nature of our understanding of the world, and our relationships with these things and some philosophical/theological Truth.

Then, Rowling does something with the concept of imaginary creatures that is really mind boggling. She creates this wonderful character in Luna Lovegood who, along with her father, spends her summers searching for the Wizarding World’s very own cryptozoological creatures (aka “cryptids”). At first, a reader could simply see her as Rowling poking a bit at the overindulgence of modern day urban legends and mythmaking — kind of like intellectual joyriding, in a sense. Except for one problem: Luna quickly becomes one of the characters with whom we most joyously sympathize. We first see her with “protuberant eyes that gave her a permanently suprised look” (OotP Ch. 10, 185). She is the epitome of wonder, both showing wonder and being the object of it. The whole scene on the train accentuates Luna’s strangeness, culminating in Harry’s first full-fledged encounter with thestrals that ends like this:

“It’s all right,” said a dreamy voice from beside Harry [...] “You’re not going mad or anything. I can see them too.”
“Can you?” said Harry desperately, turning to Luna. He could see the bat-winged horses reflected in her wide, silvery eyes.
“Oh yes,” said Luna, “I’ve been able to see them ever since my first day here. They’ve always pulled the carriages. Don’t worry. You’re just as sane as I am.” (Ch. 10, pg. 199).

By comforting Harry, she immediately earns our trust, even if she only earns Harry’s befuddlement here. She is also comic relief and hilarity in a book that is all about personal angst, easing Harry’s transition just a bit into his knowledge and now intimate familiarity with death. Luna is easily the most patient character in the books, save for Dumbledore, and there are points when she even comes across as wise. Can you imagine those two having a heart-to-heart sit-down over some butterbeer?

Yet, her friends aren’t always convinced of this. Even in this fictional, fantasy world of strange beasts, physics-defying magic, and the like, crumplehorned snorckacks and those who believe in them are targeted by sidelong looks from beneath raised eyebrows. “Newt Scamander” describes the situation this way for us non-magical types:

If any Muggle is unwise enough to confide in another that he spotted a Hippogriff winging its way north, he is generally considered to be drunk or a “loony.” (Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find Them xvii)

Even though the quote is discussing muggle attention directed toward “real” magical creatures, the choice of “loony” can’t help but bring Luna to mind. And part of the brilliance is that it follows this:

Muggle sightings of the yeti have been so numerous that the International Confederation of Wizards felt it necessary to station an International Task Force in the mountains on a permanent basis. Meanwhile the world’s largest kelpie continues to evade capture in Loch Ness and appears to have developed a positive thirst for publicity. (xvii)

We can only assume that the “International Task Force” (for “Yeti Control”, I would guess) is a team of Wizarding naturalists and obliviators assembled to study the animal and modify the memories of any muggles who get too clear a glimpse of the thing. And the personification of the Kelpie/Loch Ness Monster in language playing on historical/scientific rhetorical practices fascinates me beyond description.

In all its comedy, brevity, and fun, Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find Them is also a fictional version of “naturalism” texts from Aristotle to the Renaissance, in which an incredibly wide number of creatures and places are treated. One famous text from the 16th centry by Konrad Gessner is particularly fascinating. You can page through a virtual version of one of his more famous texts, Historiae Animalium, here. And there are tools that will provide an English language summary and allow you to get a closer look at the pages that are provided. Mythical creatures like satyrs are treated alongside more mundane animals, such as beavers, goats, and a rhinocerus (who looks like he just got back from a battle in Lord of the Rings). Here, you can find a map from ca.1581 from the University of Southern Maine’s Osher Map Library website with the common Medieval and Renaissance representation of the world depicting Jerusalem at its center. Below is the thumbnail image. You should notice what’s depicted in the seas: sea monsters.

We, as modern readers with empirically driven perceptive processes, look at these as the sometimes fascinating intellectual products of a people who simply didn’t have the technology to understand the world as fully as we do, today. But, in doing so, we also tend to miss an important point. For scholars and intellectuals of the age, these artifacts were accurate in a manner that was more than simply empirical — they were cosmologically symbolic. Jerusalem’s place at the center of the world was simply a reflection of the Christian worldview intermingled with Aristotle’s cosmological understanding of the physical universe and its representations of Platonic forms. By 1581, Europeans had navigated the vast majority of the world and understood its design to be more than the pattern represented in the map. But, the nature and structure of the cosmos as it was built by God mattered as much or more than a cartographically pure and accurate map, like we use from Google or Yahoo!.

Umberto Eco talks about symbols in an essay aptly titled, “On Symbolism”, found in On Literature, an anthology of his essays and lectures. He believes that “The medieval symbol is a way of approaching the divine” (pg. 147). Symbols for this era served as a conduit between people and the Truth of things for which they longed, particularly a relationship with God. Almost every piece of European literature from the canon of this time period deals almost directly with Christian concepts of the divine, or deals with them in an allegorical way.

Travis has spent a great deal of time here outlining the function of all the Christian symbolism within the books. Now imagine a culture that takes the (possible) existence of these symbols quite seriously. In some ways, this is exactly what you have with Luna. Though we don’t have a sense that crumplehorned snorckacks are at all part of some vast wizard mythology, they provide an avenue in the books that make the reader see the symbolism in a different light. We love Luna as a character because she represents the kind of patience and faith that everyday life demands of us, and that Rowling could only pull off in a child. Just check out Xenophilius; he comes across as a legitimate loon with the inability to accept reality. Ultimately, his flaws are laid bare for both characters and reader alike once his home, a quite literal cottage-industry for the wizarding paranormal, is left shattered at the very section devoted to his pursuits: the room with the printing press and some of Xenophilius’ prized possessions. The innocense-despite-life mentality wrapped into Luna just seems corny in an adult.