Harry Potter's Bookshelf (25 page)

Literary alchemy is a snapshot of this apotheosis by alchemical transformation. It presents in story form the contrary aspects to be resolved as external contraries in the community, as internal conflicts to be resolved, or as both. In
Harry Potter
, the Wizarding world is divided largely along the Gryffindor/Slytherin divide, which extends ultimately to the militant factions of these tribes—Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix (with Harry’s Dumbledore’s Army the junior varsity squad) and Voldemort’s Death Eaters. Internally, this is represented in Harry’s mind, as he is both Gryffindor icon and the bearer of a Lord Voldemort soul fragment with its attendant powers and abilities. The drama of the seven books is how both of these conflicts, in the world at large and within Harry, will be resolved—and this resolution of all contraries is a signature of alchemical drama.

Harry’s annual hero’s journey, consequently, is also the cycle of his alchemical transformation—and each stage of the work has a character or more than one character named for that stage’s indicative color. The first stage of the alchemical work is dissolution, usually called the “
nigredo
” or the black stage. In the black, initial stage, “the body of the impure metal, the matter for the Stone, or the old, outmoded state of being is killed, putrefied, and dissolved into the original substance of creation, the
prima materia
, in order that it may be renovated and reborn in a new form.”
⁶
Sirius Black is named for this stage of the work; the book in which he died,
Order of the Phoenix
, as we’ll see in a second, was the
nigredo
novel of the series.

The second stage of alchemical transformation of lead into gold is the “
albedo
” or white work. It follows the ablution or washing of the calcified matter at the bottom of the alembic, the washing of which causes it to show the “peacock’s tail” (cauda pavonis) or the colors of the rainbow before turning a brilliant white. “When the matter reaches the
albedo
it has become pure and spotless.”
⁷
Albus Dumbledore is the character with the “white” name; “Albus” is Latin for “white, resplendent.”

Frequently used symbols of the
albedo
stage of the work in pictorial representations and descriptions of it are luna (Latin for “moon”) and a lily. I’ll explain how
Half-Blood Prince
was Albus’s book in many ways because it featured his tutorials with Harry—and because of his fall from the Astronomy Tower, planned or unplanned, at book’s end. The real work of alchemy is accomplished in the wedding or resolution of contraries in the white stage, a victory that is revealed in the crisis of the red.

The third and last stage of the chemical work is the “
rubedo
” or the red stage.

Rubeus Hagrid has the red name; “
rubeus
” is Latin for “red” (the Latin for “black,” of course, is “
niger
” so Sirius’s name is translated to the English “black” for obvious reasons). Rufus Scrimgeour also has red meaning and we should note that Fred Weasley’s name is “Red” if we drop one letter. A common symbol of the red work and the Philosopher’s Stone is the red lion, which is, of course, the house mascot for Gryffindor.

The formula for each book in the series is a trip through these three alchemical stages.

In the individual books, the black stage, or
nigredo
, is almost always launched on Privet Drive, where Harry is treated horribly. The work of breaking Harry down continues each year when he gets to Hogwarts and Severus Snape takes over, a black figure if there ever was one. But Hogwarts is also the home of Albus “the White” Dumbledore, and Hogwarts is where Harry is purified of the failing identified at the Dursleys as he, Ron, and Hermione solve that year’s mystery. The understanding he gains through these trials is revealed in the book’s crisis—the confrontation with the bad guys—in which he always dies a figurative death and is reborn. From Privet Drive to his chat with Dumbledore at book’s end, Harry is purified and transformed. The series taken altogether has a black, white, and red stage, too:
Order of the Phoenix
is the black book of the series,
Half-Blood Prince
is the white, and
Deathly Hallows
is the
rubedo
or red stage. Let’s review them quickly.

The
nigredo
, again, is the stage in which the subject is broken down, stripped of all but the essential qualities for purification in the
albedo
or white work.
Order of the Phoenix
, darkest and most disturbing of all the
Harry Potter
novels, is this stage in the series; Ms. Rowling cues us to this not only in the plot points, all of which are about Harry’s loss of his identity, but in the blackness of the book. No small part of it takes place in the House of Black and it ends, of course, with the death of Sirius Black.

More important, though, is that
Order of the Phoenix
details Harry’s near complete dissolution. Every idea he has of himself is taken from him. Dolores Umbridge teaches him that Hogwarts can be hell. He learns his father was a jerk. No Quidditch! Ron and Hermione outrank him on the Hogwarts totem pole. The entire “girl thing” eludes him except for agonizing confusion and heartbreak. Everything, in brief, is a nightmare for him in his fifth year. His self-understanding and identity are shattered—except, at the very end, after Sirius’s death and with it any hope of a family life with his godfather, Harry learns about the prophecy. That understanding replaces everything else. And that’s the end of the black work.

When
Half-Blood Prince
begins, we feel we are in a different universe. Albus Dumbledore is not only back in Harry’s life, he comes to pick him up at Privet Drive! The headmaster, largely absent in
Order of the Phoenix
, is everywhere in
Half-Blood Prince
. This is his book, which, given the meaning of his name and the work that is accomplished, might be called the “white book.” And, like Sirius at the end of the “black book,” Albus dies at the end of the “white.”

Through the tutorials with Dumbledore and the tasks he is given, Harry comes to a whole new understanding of himself in terms of the prophecy and his relationship to Lord Voldemort. Harry doesn’t get the whole truth from the headmaster, but at the end of
Half-Blood Prince
, he has been transformed from a boy who doesn’t believe Dumbledore will show up to one who defiantly tells the Minister of Magic, “I’m a Dumbledore man through and through.”

The American publisher’s decision to change the title from
Philosopher’s Stone
to
Sorcerer’s Stone
obscures the alchemical title. Which is a shame because if the man in the street knows anything about alchemy, it is that alchemists pursued the Philosopher’s Stone to turn lead into gold. The characters, too, point right at alchemy. Albus Dumbledore, we learn on the first train ride to Hogwarts when Harry reads his Chocolate Frog Card, is an alchemist of some renown. This relationship, it turns out, is the key to unraveling the mystery of what is hidden at Hogwarts in Harry’s first year.

Those alchemical pointers are right on the surface. But there are important alchemical red flags just beneath the surface of the story, most notably—characters representing alchemical mercury and sulfur, and the alchemical wedding.

The alchemical transformation of metals is a series of purifications of a base metal from lead into gold that is accomplished by dissolving and recongealing the metal via the action of two principal reagents. These reagents reflect the masculine and feminine polarity of existence; “alchemical sulfur” represents the masculine, impulsive, red pole, and “quicksilver” or “alchemical mercury,” the feminine and cool complementary antagonist. Together and separately these reagents and catalysts advance the work of purifying a base metal into “corporeal light” or gold.

Alchemical literature often features one or more pairs of characters with these qualities who bicker (in alchemical texts, the reagents are actually called the “quarreling couple”). The bickering alchemical pair in
Harry Potter
is Ron and Hermione. “Hermione” is the feminine form of “Hermes,” who besides being the Greek messenger god (Mercury), was also the name of the great alchemist Hermes Trismegistos in whose name countless alchemical works were written through the centuries. Her initials (Hg) and her parents being dentists (who use mercury in their work) point to mercury, feminine intelligence, the part Hermione plays in Harry’s alchemical transformation.

Ron, the redheaded, passionate boy, is a cipher for alchemical sulfur. Together with Hermione, and in their disagreements and separation, he acts to transform Harry from lead to gold in each book, as discussed above. For readers who wondered whether Hermione was meant for Ron or Harry in the end, this point suggests the eventual love match of Ron and Hermione.

“Medieval alchemists adopted from the Arabs the theory that all metals were a synthesis of mercury and sulfur, whose union might achieve various degrees of harmony. A perfectly harmonious marriage of the mother and father of metals might produce gold.”
⁹
When Ron and Hermione stop quarreling and hook up, as we saw first in
Half-Blood Prince
and finally in the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry’s “perfection” is near.

The alchemical wedding doesn’t have to be of this pair, certainly, but we need to see a marriage of contraries that is somehow sacramental. It should also end in death and the appearance of a child—the philosophical orphan.

The
rubedo
as the final stage of the Great Work features the wedding of the Red King and White Woman, their copulation and death, and the birth of the orphan. The “chemical wedding” is an image central to alchemy, from Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet
(1595) to Lindsay Clarke’s
The Chymical Wedding
(1997). Bill and Fleur’s wedding is this marriage of choleric Weasley and phlegmatic Gaul, the Red King and White Woman of the formula we see onstage in
Deathly Hallows.
The marriage and death of Tonks and Lupin are what give us Teddy Lupin, philosophical orphan.

The chemical marriage of the imbalanced “quarreling couple” of masculine sulfur and feminine quicksilver results in opposing qualities being reconciled and resolved; they must “die” and be “reborn” before recombining in a perfected golden unity. The end of alchemy is the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone, which is the transcendence of this imbalance, impurity, and polarity. It is also, you recall, about the creation of the transcendent alchemist, the saintly God/man often represented by a hermaphrodite or “s/he,” a person who is
both
male and female. Here polarity is not resolved as much as it is transcended and embodied in a harmonious unity, an incarnation of love and peace.

We’ll talk again at chapter’s end about whether Harry has transcended his internal Gryffindor/Slytherin divide and become the Hogwarts hermaphrodite and Philosopher’s Stone. Don’t bet against it.

In chapter four we discussed this staple of nineteenth-century gothic and romantic fiction, about a creature or pair of creatures that have complementary figures or shadows, and whose shadows reveal aspects of their character otherwise invisible. Think of Stevenson’s
Jekyll & Hyde
, Stoker’s Count Dracula, Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. Rowling points to these shadows in her principal characters in a variety of ways: as Animagi, half-breeds, Mudbloods, threshold characters living in two worlds (Squibs and rebels and double agents), twins, multicross magical creatures, and, most important, Harry and Voldemort, sharing blood and soul pieces.

Many characters in Potterworld—itself divided between magical and Muggle domains—have twins or antagonistic complements, and many others live a double existence between worlds. This pairing is a marker of literary alchemy and points to the anagogical meaning of such work.

The alchemical work is about changing the soul from lead to gold—from spiritual atrophy and failing to dynamic virtue—in order to create a person whose character is the conjunction of all contraries. Becoming an embodiment of opposites, the alchemist gains the image and likeness of God. In literary alchemy, therefore, we should look for a hero (or lovers) who dies to ego concerns, sacrificially and out of love for others, a hero who becomes semi-divine in this sacrifice. In
Harry Potter,
we see just that in the title character’s transformations and near deaths in each and every book—Harry’s “people saving thing.”

This pattern of loving sacrifice and Harry’s acceptance of even the
pursuit
of death holds from
Philosopher’s Stone
to
Deathly Hallows
. Before we look at
Deathly Hallows
as the alchemical
rubedo
of the series and at Harry’s walk into the forest in this hermetic light, here are two notable alchemical texts you’ve probably read to illustrate the five qualities I’ve highlighted with Harry.