Aslan

Over time, as I read and re-read the Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter books, I want to draw the parallels between Aslan and Gryffindor and highlight their status as Christ symbols. Let’s lay the initial groundwork.

Aslan is the manifest Christ symbol of Lewis’ Narnia books. Son of the Emperor over the Sea and sacrifice on behalf of the traitor Edmund, raised to life and to victory over the evil White Witch, Jadis, he is clearly a representation of Christ, “the Lion of the tribe of Judah.”

Rowling, being a great lover of Lewis’ Narnia series, would certainly be quite aware of this well-chosen imagery. Placing Harry in Gryffindor house is clearly no coincidence; positing the griffin against the serpent of Slytherin is just as deliberate. Let’s dissect “Gryffindor” for a moment.

A griffin is a two-natured creature: body of a lion with the head of an eagle (see Wikipedia entry). “Dor” should be read “d’or,” as in the French of “of gold” (Granger, 92), making “Gryffindor” literally mean, golden griffin. But you’ll notice that the “coat of arms” symbol used for Gryffindor house is consistently a lion and not a griffin, something the Wikipedia entry for “Griffin” refers to as “odd.” So we have, then, a golden lion as the context for Harry’s “family” at Hogwarts.

The connection with Narnia should be obvious: In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, for example, a “flat gold image of Aslan the Lion” is mounted on the wall above the door of Lucy’s cabin on the Dawn Treader. Perhaps Rowling’s use of a golden lion rather than a griffin for the coat of arms is not so “odd,” but rather a deliberate pointer to Lewis’ Narnia series, and more importantly, to Christ Himself.

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