Rowling Studies The Hogwarts Professor Podcast

This is the second of a series of posts about the literary alchemy of J. K. Rowling, a discussion jumpstarted by a post by ‘Iris’ at a Strike fan website, an article that championed a Jungian perspective on this subject. The first post in this series, Literary Alchemy – A Primer for Those Interested in J. K. Rowling’s Artistry, both explained what the ‘Iris’ post asserted and reviewed much of the critical literature that the brevity of the S&E Files article prevented her from discussing. See that post for links to this material.
The conversation between Nick Jeffery and John Granger above was recorded in the same spirit as the first post was written, namely, simultaneously a welcome to Strike fans and Rowling readers who have learned about literary alchemy only recently and an introduction to the work of the last twenty five years on this subject. Upcoming posts in the series will include a counter-point discussion in the debate Rowling is fostering about whether a psychological or spiritual perspective is better for understanding art and life and a review of the alchemical signatures that crowd Rowling-Galbraith’s Hallmarked Man.
This post is largely links to sources for points Nick and John discuss in their naturally enthusiastic and contrarian conversation, question by question. Enjoy!
1. Welcome to the Conversation! (Nick) I just sent out an article about literary alchemy, John, in response to an article written by ‘Iris’ and posted on the Strike-Ellacott Files website, a piece titled ‘What is Literary Alchemy? Spotting symbols that map Strike and Robin’s growth.’ What advice or guidance would you give to, say, Cormoran Strike readers who are brand new to the subject?
* There are three types of alchemy and it is important to understand the common ground they share and the differences between them;
* The first type is alchemy proper, which is to say ‘metallurgical alchemy,’ the sacred science of purifying metals and the adept’s soul via the creation of a Philosopher’s Stone that will transform lead to gold and exude an elixir of life, the drinking of which will bestow immortality;
* The second and third types of alchemy derive from interpretations of metallurgical alchemy’s aims and the symbolic texts detailing the work in the hermetic laboratory;
* Literary alchemy is the use of metallurgical alchemy’s language, colors, sequences, and symbols in plays, poetry, and story to foster an edifying and transformative experience in the artist’s theater or reading audience;
* Psychological alchemy is Carl Jung’s use of metallurgical alchemy’s texts during and after WWII to illustrate his ideas of the integration of the conscious and unconscious aspects of the human mind;
* Metallurgical alchemy was practiced in China, the Levant, India, and Europe within the revealed religious traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity until its degeneration in the late Medieval period and eventual evolution into the strictly materialist chemistry we know today;
* Literary alchemy has been a continuous stream in literature from Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the Metaphysical poets through to Dickens, Yeats, the Inklings, Joyce, Nabokov, and J. K. Rowling;
* The academic study of “alchemy in literature” was the province of Baconian and allegorical readings of Shakespeare (cf., Beryl Pogson, Peter Dawkins, Martin Lings) until the late 20th Century and the advent of academic specialists in ‘Hermetic Studies,’ e.g., Stanton Linden, Lyndy Abraham, and Charles Nicholl (cf., Cauda Pavonis: A Journal of Hermetic Studies, 1982-2000).
* Jung and his followers used their psychological interpretations of metallurgical alchemy as allegories of the soul to interpret mythology (cf., Erich Neumann, Marie-Louise Von Franz, Robert Johnson);
* Jungian analysis of story using Jung’s ideas of subconscious archetypes within a collective unconscious was popularized by Joseph Campbell in his guides to Joyce’s Ulysses and his more well known works on mythology (e.g., The Hero With a Thousand Faces);
* ‘Isis’ in her S&E Files article, ‘What is Literary Alchemy?,’ suggests that Rowling-Galbraith is writing an allegory of soul transformation in the Cormoran Strike series using metallurgical alchemy’s symbols and sequences as understood by Carl Jung and his disciples rather than as used by English writers since the 13th Century;
* It’s a challenging theory, the depth of which is hard to grasp without an appreciation of the types of alchemy, what they have in common, and their differences in approach and subject matter.
2. The Lake: (John) What I found most fascinating in your post, Nick, was your best guesses about where Rowling would have learned about literary alchemy. She claimed in 1998 that she’d read a lot of alchemical texts from which she set the “magical parameters” of the Hogwarts Saga; if you had only three chances to name one of those books, what would you choose?
* Charles Nicholl’s The Chemical Theatre;
* Titus Burckhardt’s Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul (or Mirror of the Intellect: Essays on Traditional Acience and Sacred Art);
* Lyndy Abraham Summerhaze’s Marvell and Alchemy or her Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery;
* Martin Lings’ The Secret of Shakespeare
3. Carl Jung, Alchemy: (Nick) I see you’re chafing at the bit, John, with book titles I haven’t mentioned so let me name-drop the author not on my list because, as you pointed out, he wasn’t really a literary alchemist so much as a psychologist who discussed alchemy as a means of illustrating his own ideas about the ‘Great Work.’ You’ve written, though, that literary alchemy as with metallurgical alchemy is a subset of soul-allegories or Psychomachia. Don’t Jung’s ideas jibe with that?
* Yes and no!
* Jung’s ideas of the soul and archetypes (or archetypal forms) are based on late 19th Century Volkischer German ideas, which is to say, modern and materialist (some say ‘vitalist’) premises. His hostility to Christianity and Judaism was grounded in his acceptance of Darwinian evolution and derived philosophically from Nietzsche (see Richard Noll’s The Jung Cult and The Aryan Christ).
* He conflates the spiritual with the psychological, consequently, and embraces integrated individual psychological health as the telos of human existence, none of which is consistent with traditional metallurgical or literary alchemy (see Titus Burckhardt’s Mirror of the Intellect, Philip Sherrard’s ‘An Introduction to the Religious Thought of C. G. Jung,’ and Harry Oldmeadow’s ‘C.G. Jung & Mircea Eliade: ‘Priests without Surplices’? Reflections on the Place of Myth, Religion and Science in Their Work.’
* Psychological alchemy, insomuch as it is ‘Jungian,’ is well removed from the other two types of alchemy. Which is not to say that Rowling is not a Jungian and hence a Jungian psychological alchemist.
4. Back into the Lake: (John) You covered in your article, though, Nick, the several reasons to think it possible, even probable that the evidence from Rowling’s life suggests she is using Jungian ideas in her literary alchemy. Iris over at S&E Files obviously thinks that is the case. What are the for and against ideas with respect to Rowling being a Jungian?
There’s Plenty of Evidence That Rowling IS a Jungian Writer:
John Granger’s discussion in Troubled Blood: A Jungian Reading
* Robin’s name-dropping Jung in conversation about astrology;
* The Jungian notes sounded throughout Strike 5: Archetypes, Synchronicity, Persona;
* The connection between Jung’s illustrated ‘New Book’ and Talbot’s ‘True Book;’ and
* Pointers to Cupid-Psyche myth as understood by Jungians (see below)
The Advent of Prudence Dunleavy, Jungian Psychologist, in Ink Black Heart
* Hard to imagine a more sympathetic portrait of a Jungian than half-sister Prudence!
* She clearly was the genius behind the Rokeby reconciliation in Hallmarked Man
The Cupid and Psyche myth underpinning the Strike series
* A Mythological Key to Cormoran Strike? The Myth of Eros, Psyche, and Venus (note the discussion here of the Jungian understanding of this specific myth)
* Ink Black Heart: Strike as Zeus to Robin’s Leda and as Cupid to Mads’ Psyche
* ‘Rowling Points to Myth of Cupid and Psyche in order to Console Strike Fans Disappointed with Hallmarked Man‘
* The Hallmarked Man‘s Mythological Template (Nick Jeffery, John Granger)
Anything Else? Oh, yeah —
* Rowling studied mythology in her ‘Classical Studies’ program at UExeter and almost certainly encountered Jungian interpretation of myths there (e.g. the work of Neumann, Johnson, Campbell).
* Rowling told Val McDermid if she had not become a successful writer she would have sought training and certification as a psychologist.
* Her work reflects a broad reading in psychology (cf., Louise Freeman Davis’ ‘J. K. Rowling and the Phantoms in the Brain,’ ‘Cormoran Strike and the Itch that Cannot Be Scratched’) and it is likely that she has read her fair share of Jung and Jungian authors during her studies.
* Rowling benefited from psychological therapy and exercises herself when suffering from depression, the experience of and recovery from which she depicted in story via the Azkaban Dementors and Robin Ellacott’s treatment for PTSD in Lethal White.
And There is Plenty of Evidence That Rowling Is NOT a Jungian Writer:
* Rowling has never been asked or revealed how she learned about literary alchemy; this includes, of course, any reference to Carl Jung, whose work was not focused on literary alchemy per se but a psychological interpretation or explanation of metallurgical alchemy’s symbolism.
* All that Rowling has revealed about her experiences as a patient seeking help with depression are about Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), which treatment modality owes nothing to Jung or to Jung’s students.
* It is possible that Rowling encountered esoteric metallurgical alchemy, the precursor to literary alchemy, in her study of astrology, the complementary traditional sacred science to alchemy, a skill-set with which we know she was accomplished. That route to alchemy would have led her to Perennialist interpretations of alchemy, most notably Titus Burckhardt‘s Alchemy, Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul; the paperback cover of the Penguin Metaphysical Library edition of that book (1974) features an androgynous giant named REBIS standing on a dragon and a winged golden sphere (i.e., Rubeus, Norbert, Snitch).
* As mentioned above, it is more likely that she encountered literary alchemy in her study of Shakespeare. The year she was studying for her A Levels, she traveled to see a production of King Lear which has prompted the idea that it was on her list of texts to prepare for her tests. The most challenging interpretation of Lear then in print was Charles Nicholl’s The Chemical Theatre (1980), a book that explains almost every scene in perhaps Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy as a parallel step in the Great Work of alchemy. If the budding astrologer was fascinated by this allegorical interpretation of the Bard, the most popular work in print at that time that championed reading Shakespeare as the author of soul allegories was Perennialist Martin Lings‘ The Secret of Shakespeare (1984).
* Literary Alchemy is a tool set employed not only by Shakespeare but by a host of Rowling favorite authors to include Dickens, Nabokov, Lewis, and Tolkien. This view of alchemy, that is, as an allegorical depiction of the soul’s transformation that affects that same cathartic experience in its theater or reading audiences, is the one found in Rowling’s work, which is well removed from psychological alchemy, an analytic art which, though it springs from metallurgical alchemical texts, does not aim at the transformation at work in the sacred art or the science of traditional alchemy.
* Rowling’s use of chiastic structures and psychomachian allegory, tools that complement literary alchemy in spiritual perspective and aim, make a Jungian rather than a literary and Perennialist view of alchemy seem unlikely.
* Alchemy: Jung, Burckhardt, or Maclean? John Granger, April 2007
* Rowling’s Soul Triptych Psychomachia: Is It From Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’? John Granger, September 2024
5. The Debate at King’s Cross: (Nick) So, John, you’ve mentioned Jung quite a few times in your posts about the Mythological framework of the Strike series and even written about the Jungian ideas of animus and anima with respect to Cormoran and Robin’s relationship. You seem fairly confident, though, that Rowling is writing from the traditional esoteric ideas of alchemy a la Shakespeare rather than Jung’s. Why is that?
* Everything you just said!
* As noted, Jung’s ideas are modern and psychological while the stream of literary alchemy in English Literature is almost exclusively more Medieval and pointedly spiritual;
* The Most Notable Exception: Angela Carter’s The Passion of the New Eve (1977), that reads like a Jungian ‘Red Book’ slide-show (think Bombyx Mori) or a transgender Odyssey written for feminists. Rowling has never mentioned her to my knowledge but it would be surprising if she hadn’t read this book more than once. What Alana Bolton Cooke wrote about Carter’s Passion could be said about Rowling’s literary alchemy if she is a Jungian writer (or about Galbraith’s fictional Elizabeth Tassel?):
Angela Carter in The Passion of New Eve (1977) uses the exoteric phases of alchemy and Carl G. Jung's theory of esoteric alchemy as a means of demonstrating allegorically the idea ofrebirth and renewal. The purpose of this allegorical method is to produce an 'alchemical' change of thought in the reader about sexuality and gender associated with women's repression and liberation.
In the novel Carter develops themes and ideas explored in her essay, The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History (1979), an analysis of the Marquis de Sade's pornography and its affect on the roles of men and women in society. The clash of opposites involved in combining alchemical symbolism, feminism and pornography within the fiction can be seen as representative of the state of chaos present in alchemy before the beginning of change.
The circular narrative and alchemical structure of the fiction creates a literary version of the alchemical process as it brings together opposites involved in chaos, represented by events and characterisation that the protagonist, Evelyn/Eve, experiences, until, in the manner of alchemy, harmony is reached. The harmony created represents women's empowerment.
Carter uses Evelyn's individuation process to encourage growth within the reader by altering patterns of thought to bring about change through self-confrontation and self-knowledge. The structure of Carter's fiction, thus, corresponds to the process of esoteric alchemy contained within the structure, imagery and symbolism of exoteric alchemy. The fiction is designed to stimulate the unconscious of the reader and make conscious hitherto unknown and repressed thoughts about gender and sexuality to bring about change in the lives of men and women.
* I think what Rowling said she was trying to do with Harry Potter’s meeting with Dumbledore at the dream-like King’s Cross strongly suggests she is aware of the two approaches and wants readers to discuss them – but that she has made her own choice, however conflicted she may be.
* In her 2008 interview with Adeel Amini, Rowling said that her hope for Harry’s post-mortem conversation with Dumbledore at King’s Cross was to stimulate “a debate” among readers about whether it was a psychological moment, that is, a fantasy in which Harry understands what he’s been missing all along, or a spiritual event in which he is actually speaking with the late Headmaster:
Enough Potter-plot, I think. Moving on to a slightly more contentious issue, Rowling has categorically said that she does believe in a higher power, a statement reinforced by her childhood church-going (“Till I was 17,” she clarifies). It must be difficult to reconcile her religious beliefs with those that denounce Harry Potter as anti-Christian, I wonder aloud. Rowling’s expression does not change a fraction. “There was a Christian commentator who said, which I thought was very interesting, that Harry Potter had been the Christian church’s biggest missed opportunity. And I thought, there’s someone who actually has their eyes open.
“I think he said it before the publication of the seventh book, and with the publication of the seventh book I think that clarified a lot of people’s view on where I was standing. But I should emphasise that I am not pushing a specifically Christian agenda, and indeed till the very last moment in book seven, one can interpret what happens to Harry after he presents himself with death as him going into an unconscious state in which his subconscious reveals to him what he already knew.” I hum in faux-comprehension of what she’s referring to; luckily my clued-in companion is nodding wildly. Proceed.
“Any re-reading of Chapter 35 will show you that there’s nothing that the Dumbledore he sees tells him that he couldn’t have guessed for himself or already realised, and of course there’s a key piece of information that Dumbledore doesn’t articulate that Harry has realised. So you can deliberately interpret it that way, or you can say that he did go into a state of limbo beyond which there was another life, and that idea was expressed repeatedly, and most explicitly at the end of book five, Order of the Phoenix, where Harry understands that there is an ‘on’, that you do go on.
“I wanted there to be a debate there, so of my three main characters - when they come into the room which examines death at the Ministry of Magic - Hermione, the ultimate sceptic and a hyperrational person, hears nothing behind the veil and is scared of it. Ron is just uneasy; Ron is someone who does not grapple with anything deeper than beer, if he can avoid it. Harry’s drawn to it, and therein lies Harry’s slightly reckless, almost morbid streak, because Harry does have a hint of that dangerous adolescent trait which is the attraction to death.” Heavy.
Obviously with this ambiguity, you do get a fair degree of misinterpretation as well; there is a certain section that does dislike Harry Potter intensely. “Oh, vehemently,” says Rowling, before muttering under her breath “…and they send death threats.”
* I think that “debate” she’s trying to foster is between the psychological, call it ‘Jungian’ “just inside your head” subconscious perspective, and the authentically spiritual view of her work (well, of art and human existence, too, of course). And that this debate is one she has had for most of her life. Check out her comments about the “greatest missed opportunity” and explain to me how that doesn’t line up with her preferring the spiritual, albeit “not explicitly Christian,” to the psychological and humanist.
7. Jungian Readings of Rowling’s Work: (Nick) John, you’re familiar with what has been written by Potter Pundits because of your PhD critical literature surveys; what are the better ones about Rowling and Jungian psychology and what do they emphasize?
Here are seven off the top of my head (and Thesis ‘Works Cited’ drafts):
* Grynbaum, G.A. (2000). The Secrets of Harry Potter. The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal: Reviews From a Jungian Perspective of Books, Films and Culture, [online] 19 (4) pp. 17-48
* Patrick, Christopher and Sarah (2007), ‘Exploring the Dark Side: Harry Potter and the Psychology of Evil,’ in Mulholland (ed.), The Psychology of Harry Potter, BenBella Books, pp 221-232
* Gerhold, C. (2011). The Hero’s Journey Through Adolescence: A Jungian Archetypal Analysis of “Harry Potter.” PsyD. The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
* Rectenwald, Bob (2019). ‘Carl Jung’s Impact on the Work of J. K. Rowling’
* Skipper, Alicia and Kate Fulton (2021) ‘Out from the Shadows into the Light: Persona and Shadow in Harry Potter‘ in Anne Mamary (ed.) The Alchemical Harry Potter: Essays on Transfiguration in J. K. Rowling’s Novels, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2021, pp 79-96
* The Unfolding Journey, Jung’s Shadow Self in Harry Potter: Confronting the Darkness Within (YouTube video)
* My own Troubled Blood: A Jungian Reading
Bob Rectenwald’s piece is the best of the six I didn’t write but it shares the several faults all the Jungian pieces make:
* the first failing of even the best Jungian readers is the assumption that Rowling is a Jungian, which is an open question;
* the next is that Jung’s ideas (and Joseph Campbell’s) are indisputably true; and
* the last is, when alchemy is mentioned, the critics do not clarify either the commonalities of or the differences between literary alchemy, psychological alchemy, and Jungian analytic psychology.
* Note, though, that Rowling, while aware of such Jungian tropes as the Hero’s Journey, tweeks it shamelessly, adding a symbol of Christ and resurrection scene in every Potter story (cf., How Harry Cast His Spell, ‘The Harry’s Journey,’ pp 21-28).
* Read her brief PotterMore piece on alchemy and note that it is written in such a way that it can be read as confirmation of either a psychological or spiritual perspective on alchemy and art:
One interpretation of the ‘instructions’ left by the alchemists is that they are symbolic of a spiritual journey, leading the alchemist from ignorance (base metal) to enlightenment (gold). There seems to have been a mystical element to the work the alchemist was engaged upon, which set it apart from chemistry (of which it was undoubtedly both an offshoot and forerunner).
This “original writing” by Rowling, especially the words “spiritual” and “mystical,” suggests that she is a Perennialist rather than a Jungian, at least with respect to her understanding of alchemy. But the debate is still possible with Jungians who read those words as cyphers for the subsconscious contact they hold we have with archetypes.
8. Back to the Alchemy: (John) I think the real question of whether Rowling’s literary alchemy is predominantly literary and spiritual or psychological in orientation comes down to the postmodern confusion about the immaterial aspects of the human person, which is to say, the soul (or mind, psyche) and the spirit. Rowling’s recent work may seem prosaic or secular to a casual reader who compares it to the relatively otherworldly and “obviously” symbolic Potter books, but she loads each Strike book with Shakespearean romance of soul and spirit, i.e., alchemical dramas, and hermetic tropes.
I’m writing a piece now about the lions, dogs, incest, and the red man and white woman in Hallmarked Man, each of which are touchstones of alchemy. I think, though, that your work with Rowling’s favorite books and her epigraph sources, Nick, point to a strong spiritual rather than psychological foundation in Rowling’s work —
* Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
* Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
* The Victorian Women Poets in Running Grave
* Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
* Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book
* The Jungian love of the I Ching, Running Grave’s epigraph source
9. Jung in Running Grave: (Nick) Rowling’s favorite writers, from Shakespeare and Nabokov to C. S. Lewis and Victorian Women poets, all clearly believe in a world-transcending spiritual realm. Given the quantity of the Jungian scholarship in Rowling Studies that Iris referred to and you’ve mentioned, it’s curious -- if Rowling is aware of it and is resistant to it -- that she doesn’t push back against it explicitly in her work. Can you think of a character that seems something like Jung in the books, someone as bad as Prudence Dunleavey is good?
I can think of three:
* United Humanitarian Church’s guru Jonathan Wace in Running Grave: his “psychologizing of religion,” the comparative religion avenue to denial of any true faith, the psychological critical analysis of a patient using mythological tropes (”Artemis”), the cult leader, and the abuser of women and children -- he’s a ringer for Jung!
* Paul Satchwell, one-eyed serpent with a one-track mind, in Leamington Spa, a true Jungian artist working psycho-sexual motifs graphically on canvas:
Naked figures twisted and cavorted in scenes from Greek mythology. Persephone struggled in the arms of Hades as he carried her down into the underworld; Andromeda strained against chains binding her to rock as a dragonish creature rose from the waves to devour her; Leda lay supine in bulrushes as Zeus, in the form of a swan, impregnated her.
Two lines of Joni Mitchell floated back to Robin as she looked at the paintings: “When I first saw your gallery, I liked the ones of ladies…”
Except that Robin wasn’t sure she liked the paintings. The female figures were all black-haired, olive-skinned, heavy-breasted and partially or entirely naked. The paintings were accomplished, but Robin found them slightly lascivious. Each of the women wore a similar expression of vacant abandon, and Satchwell seemed to have a definite preference for those myths that featured bondage, rape or abduction. (Troubled Blood, 542)
* And then there are the Masons, kind of an old school Jungian cult in Hallmarked Man. Like the UHC and “harmless” fraternal and charitable group with Christian touches but which doesn’t change a man or human nature per Hardacre (and which harbors the rich and powerful like Lord Branfoot).
* Coupled with Prudence, the Front of Jungian Beliefs, we get the front and back of Jung in Rowling’s work, a characteristic touch of Rowling nuance as she did with Islam in Hallmarked Man.
10. Conclusion: (John) I’m obviously not a Jung fan and I don’t think Rowling is writing Jungian psychomachia in alchemical symbols a la Angela Carter, but I see how people would come to a contrary conclusion; Rowling’s ‘spiritual not religious’ public statements and political positions with respect to Same Sex Attraction and abortion line up much more easily with New Age and Jungian types than with any kind of orthodox Christianity.
The great thing about essays like Isis’ at S&E Files is that it brings more people into the conversation of what literary alchemy is and the various approaches to it. You’ve been reading about literary alchemy for several years now, Nick; what do you think the person whose first encounter with the subject was the S&E Files article do to hone their alchemy detection skills?
* “Read your books and online talks, John!”
* How Metallurgical Alchemy Worked and How it Became Literary Alchemy (from Deathly Hallows Lectures, Chapter 1):
Alchemy, in a nutshell, was the science for the perfection or sanctification of the alchemist’s soul. This heroic venture I need to say straight off is all but impossible today because the way we look at reality, at ‘things’ per se makes the Great Work itself almost an absurdity. Unlike the medieval alchemists, we moderns and postmoderns see things with a clear subject/object distinction, that is, we believe that you and I and that table are entirely different things and between them is there is no connection or relation. The knowing subject is one thing and the observed object is completely ‘other.’
To the alchemist that is not the case. His efforts in changing lead to gold are based on the premise that he as the subject will go through the same types of changes and purifications as the materials he is working with. In sympathy with these metallurgical transitions and resolutions of contraries, his soul will be purified in correspondence as long as he is working in a prayerful state within the Mysteries (sacraments) of his revealed tradition.
Now, historically there was an Arabic alchemy, a Chinese alchemy, a Kabbalistic, as well as a Christian alchemy; each differs superficially with respect to their spiritual traditions but in every one, the alchemist was working with a sacred natural science or physics to advance his spiritual purification. This was only possible because he looked at the metal he was working with as something with which he was not ‘other’ but with which he was in relationship, artifex and artifact in sacred art imitating and accelerating the work of the Creator creating a bridge, so that, as lead changes to gold or material perfection, his soul was going through similar transformations and purifications.
The common ground is the logos in every created thing, to include persons (cf. John 1:9), which are all continuous with the Logos fabric of reality. As much as the alchemist identifies with this metaphysical ground, purifying himself of the ‘old man’ or ego-driven individual and identifying himself with the spiritual Heart or light within him, that light will become his dominant quality, hence his “illumination” or “enlightenment”. And lead or solid darkness turning into gold, hard light.
How does this edifying magic become the scaffolding for Harry’s adventures? Largely through the genius of William Shakespeare. Hermetic wisdom and alchemical efforts were such commonplaces in Elizabethan England that Shakespeare and his contemporaries recognized, I think. that the magic of staged drama is essentially alchemical. If we groundlings are all watching what’s going on up on the stage and everything is working the way it’s supposed to, the subject-object distinction dissolves inasmuch as we identify with the characters and their agonies through our logos-imaginations. As they go through their changes, like the metals in a crucible, we identify with them and pass through the same cathartic moment.
As the great dramatists of that period realized, “if what we’re doing is alchemical, why don’t we use alchemical imagery and language, too?” And, voila, literary alchemy is born. This stream of English literature in which narrator or characters and the reader or audience in correspondence pass through the stages of the alchemical work, the black the white and the red (basically dissolution, purification, and then perfection) runs through the next five centuries of poetry, stage work, stories and novels. You may not have recognized it, but its a big part of things you have read.
* Literary Alchemy: Sacred Science, Sacred Art, and ‘The Alembic of Story’:A Perennialist Explanation of J. K. Rowling’s Signature Hermetic Symbolism


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

Nick Jeffery and John Granger met up last Sunday — St David’s Day in Wales and the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy — to talk about John’s first Hallmarked Man names post, ‘The Allegorical Cryptonyms of The Hallmarked Man, Part One: Ten Cratylic Character Names and their Embedded Meanings.’ In addition to reviewing the high points of that post, Nick offered his insights about the first names John tried to decipher and John added context to the ‘Name Game’ Rowling Readers globally have been playing for 29 years now, Saturn return.
Seven high spots of their rollicking conversation:
* Nick shared his belief that Rowling creates the character names she does as much for herself as a writer as for her readers. If the character matches the name, as he sees it, then she has a constant reminder of what that imaginary man or woman does, says, or won’t do or say;
* John pushed back on that, first because we’ve been told she changed character names while writing them, but more because of what a name is, namely, an image or icon through which the reader experiences the archetypal reference to which Rowling is referring. He thought this was complementary to Rowling’s other Shed tools (alchemy, mythology, ring writing, Christian symbolism, etc.) and argued that, as with the other anagogical artistry, our work in consciously excavating the hidden meaning of names was in keeping with the Hogwarts Professor corrective mission (Eliot’s "We had the experience but missed the meaning" challenge in The Dry Salvages);
* Nick through light into John’s American blind spots with respect to Rupert (Army jargon! and a comic strip bear), Jensen (a posh car in the 60’s that had maintenance issues), and the Welsh undercurrents of Tyler, Griffiths, Ian (Ianto!), and Powell. And the River Fleet, a now invisible tributary channel flowing through the heart of London to the Thames!
* John supplemented what he wrote in the post about the mythological backdrop to the Lindvall, Powell, and Griffiths names with what he thinks now are Christian symbolism, too, especially with respect to the love Tyler shows to Jolanda/Chloe;
* John expanded, too, on Names being another Rowling method of “exteriorization,” a subject he covered at length in his ‘The Christmas Pig: A Quadrigal Reading’ in that epic post’s anagogical section, and the importance of that artistry in working the magic of transformation readers experience in her work;
* Nick put John’s mind at ease about ‘Ian Griffiths,’ the name of Hallmarked Man’s sex trafficking, short, psychopathic rape-murderer, being a cipher for ‘John Granger;’ and
* The two agree in conclusion, after an intense back and forth about the Peter-John Rule in Rowling Studies as applied to Strike 8, that the first ten names that John discussed in his post seem to confirm the Hogwarts Professor working-hypothesis that the last three books will be a trilogy involving many of the same characters to resolve unresolved questions and mysteries of the first seven book ring-set.
John and Nick both referenced the work of Professor Beatrice Groves: check out her exegetical work on the name of The Silkworm’s ‘Owen Quine’ here, her post about Rowling’s connections with the ‘Never Forget’ Campbell clan, and her chapter on Cratylic Names in Literary Allusion in Harry Potter.
Nick is working on another ‘Rowling Reading’ segment about a Hallmarked Man epigraph source, Matthew Arnold’s Merope: A Tragedy, John has more Strike 8 names in queue to decipher, most notably Danny DeLeon and Oliver Branfoot, John and Nick are both charting Part Nine of Hallmarked in which the meaning of names plays a critical role, and Nick is writing the itinerary for a bonus trip to Rowling’s home town that will be a bonus in the Hogwarts Professor online class in preparation.
As always, thank you for your subscription to Hogwarts Professor as well as thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts in the comment boxes below. Stay tuned!
Hogwarts Professor is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



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

Nick Jeffery read Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book, a Victorian epic poem about a murder mystery in 17th Century Italy, to test a theory. John Granger’s best guess after surveying the chapter headings of Hallmarked Man last September was that, of all 77 sources for the 139 epigraphs in Strike8, Browning’s poem was the most likely to hold a secret message or special meaning inside it. John had said something similar about another Browning poem and Ink Black Heart, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, and Nick had confirmed that through his own reading and confirmation by Rowling herself. He thought John’s track record of spotting important epigraph sources merited a test reading
.He published his findings on Friday in a post titled ‘The Ring and The Book – A Rowling Reading.’ In brief, the murder in Browning’s poem is a point-to-point model for the Ironbridge murder mystery in Hallmarked Man with characters in Rowling-Galbraith’s book — most notably, Chloe Griffiths, Tyler Powell, and Ian Griffiths — having their astonishing equivalents in Ring. The less obvious but more important links between the two are in their implicit feminism and other messages:
Both works critique abusive relationships and patriarchal power: Guido’s control of Pompilia and Dino Longcaster’s control of Decima Mullins. The legal system (Books 8–9 especially) is satirized as formalistic, pedantic, and often blind to moral reality. True justice requires personal moral intuition beyond mere evidence or procedure. The Pope’s monologue (Book 10) weighs this tension most profoundly. In The Hallmarked Man the police are slow to act on new information gained by Strike and Robin and Farah Navabi manages to hoodwink the courts into escaping punishment for her part in Patterson’s crimes.
The Ring and The Book dramatizes the eternal struggle between good and evil. Pompilia embodies instinctive purity, sacrificial love, and spiritual insight despite her suffering. Guido represents sophisticated, calculating evil that twists morality to justify cruelty. Browning affirms that evil exists but that good can somehow arise from or shine through evil’s consequences. In The Hallmarked Man evil is real, monstrous, and often cloaked in normalcy or power structures, but it can be exposed and defeated through persistence, intuition, and moral courage.
Nick also discusses in this article the chiastic structure of Ring (!) and the ‘conversation’ he heard between Robert Browning in this poem with Aurora Leigh, the masterpiece by his late wife. His ‘Rowling Reading’ of Ring and the Book, consequently, will soon be a touchstone piece not only in Rowling Studies but Browning Studies as well (#ArmstrongBrowningLibraryAndMuseum @ Baylor).
As they have done before with Nick’s ‘Rowling Reading’ articles. the Hogwarts Professor team recorded their conversation about the piece (listen to their discussions of I Capture the Castle and Aurora Leigh). Seven High Points of that Ring and the Book epigraph conversation include:
* Nick’s review of why Serious Strikers and Rowling Readers should read The Ring and the Book along with the story of his immersion in it;
* John’s explanation of why he was so confident that Browning’s poem was a template of some kind for Hallmarked Man even though only six of Strike8’s 139 epigraphs were taken from it;
* Their survey of Rowling’s previous work with epigraphs — Deathly Hallows and Casual Vacancy all the way to Running Grave and Hallmarked Man — for works with similar embedded-in-the-epigraph texts and those without one (or in which it hasn’t yet been discovered);
* Nick’s discussion of Rowling’s previous comments about epigraphs and her answer to the question, ‘Which Came First, the Epigraph or the Story?’;
* John’s best guess pre-publication about the text that will be the epigraph source in Sleep Tight, Evangeline and which Strike text it will most resemble with its Whiskey Shambles title;
* Nick’s commitment to exploring Blue Oyster Cult epigraphs in Career of Evil to see if one of that band’s albums, all of which supposedly had sci-fi themes and story continuity, served as a text-within-the-text for Strike3; and
* John’s suggestion that the relationship of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning, a great love with a shared vocation, might be a point of reflection for Serious Strikers as a template for understanding the Strike-Ellacott partnership.
Nick and John will be recording their group charting of Hallmarked Man’s Part Eight this week with Sandy Hope and Ed Shardlow (and Presvytera Lois?), a survey of readers is in the works, and the long-awaited close look at the Strike series in light of the Cupid and Psyche myth draws ever nearer. Stay tuned!
The Ten Questions, Epigraph Charting, and Links to Previous Epigraph Discussions Here and Elsewhere:
The Ring and The Book – A Rowling Reading, Nick Jeffery, February 2026
Intro to Epigraphs 101, John Granger, September 2022
The Heart is Not About Emotions and Affection but the Human Spiritual Center, John Granger, October 2022
A Rowling Reading of Aurora Leigh, Nick Jeffery, November 2025
Beatrice Grove’s Pillar Post Page at HogwartsProfessor.com
* Scroll down for Prof Groves’ posts about epigraphs and literary allusion in Cuckoo’s Calling, The Silkworm, Troubled Blood, and Ink Black Heart
Lethal White: Ibsen’s ‘Rosmersholm’, John Granger, December 2018
Rowling, Dylan Thomas, and the I Ching: Three Thoughts on Strike7’s Epigraphs, John Granger, April 2023
‘Deathly Hallows’ and Penn’s ‘Fruits of Solitude,’ John Granger, October 2008
The Aeschylus Epigraph in ‘Deathly Hallows,’ John Granger, October 2008
Maid of the Silver Sea Epigraphs: Louise Freeman Davis’ Collected Posts, 2025
The Faerie Queene Epigraphs in Troubled Blood
* Scroll down the Troubled Blood Pillar Post for the Faerie Queene commentary by Beatrice Groves, Elizabeth Baird-Hardy and John Granger
Robert-Galbraith.com Posts about the Epigraphs in Each Book
* Hallmarked Man’s Epigraphs: The Poetry
* Hallmarked Man’s Epigraphs: The Prose
* Scroll Down the site’s ‘Features’ Page for all the other Epigraph Posts
Agents of Fortune: The Blue Oyster Cult Story, Martin Popoff, May 2016
Pompilia: A Feminist Reading Of Robert Browning’S The Ring And The Book, Anne Brady, May 1988
Roman Murder Mystery: The True Story of Pompilia, Derek Parker, January 2001
Sleep Tight, Evangeline: Nick Jeffery and John Granger talk with Dimitra Fimi
Hallmarked Man Epigraphs: The Tally Sheet
Matthew Arnold: 17 poems, 25 epigraphs, 6 from Merope: A Tragedy
* 3, 17, 52, 103, 108, 110 (Merope), 21, 33, 68, 38, 97, 41, 45, 59, 58, 69, 73, 76, 80, 86, 96, 106, 119, 122, 124
Robert Browning: 26 poems, 38 epigraphs including frontispiece, 6 from The Ring and the Book
* 44, 75, 62, 64, 102, 118 (Ring and Book), frontispiece, 2, 9, 11, 107, 13, 16, 20, 26, 28, 32, 35, 37, 114, 39, 42, 93, 44, 75, 47, 51, 62, 64, 67, 116, 71, 77, 79, 84, 87, 120, 90, 91, 100, 102, 109, 118, 126
A. E. Housman: 5 works, 25 poems, 28 epigraphs, 10 from Last Poems
* 1, 5, 7, 53, 19, 92, 56, 65, 74, 105 (Last Poems), 23, 30, 34, 36, 40, 43, 46, 49, 57, 63, 78, 82, 89, 94, 98, 112, 115, 125
John Oxenham: 1 work, 26 epigraphs
* Parts 1-10, Epilogue, 15, 18, 22, 25, 27, 55, 60, 66, 83, 85, 88, 95, 111, 113, 127 (Maid of the Silver Sea)
Albert Pike: 3 works (?), 22 epigraphs, 16 from Morals and Dogma
* 4, 16, 12, 121 (Liturgy), 8, 10, 14, 29, 31, 48, 50, 54, 61, 70, 81, 99, 101 (Morals and Dogma), 24, 72 (Ancient and Accepted Rite?)
Most epigraphs: Robert Browning
Frontispiece: Robert Browning
Most from one poem: Tie, Robert Browning 6 Ring and Book, Matthew Arnold 6 Merope: A Tragedy
Most from one novel: John Oxenham 26 Maid of the Silver Sea
Most from one didactic or discursive argument: Albert Pike 22 (24?) Morals and Dogma
Conclusions: Ring and Book your best bet as template, Re-read Maid of the Silver Sea, read Merope: A Tragedy
Tally Sheet of Epigraphs for Ink Black Heart:
Poet: epigraph numbers, (total)
* Christina Rossetti: 8, 14, 22, 24, 25, 35, 38, 50, 52, 54, 56, 84, 86, 90, 98, 103, 105, 107 (18)
* Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 12, 21, 33, 39, 42, 45, 47, 58, 67, 71, 72, 82, 96, 101, 102, 104 (16; all but #s 21 and 58 from ‘Aurora Leigh’)
* Mary Elizabeth Coleridge: Book, 1, 18, 20, 49, 79, 81, 91, 93, 94, 106 (11)
* Emily Dickinson: 11, 31, 53, 58, 59, 65, 70, 76, 99 (8)
* Charlotte Mew: 16, 17, 40, 55, 66, 92, 95 (7)
* Felicia Hemans: 6, 10, 15, 63, 100 (5)
* Amy Levy: 7, 23, 32, 80, 85 (5)
* Jean Ingelow: 9, 27, 29, 37, 64 (5)
* LEL!: 62, 68, 69, 83 (4); see also Rossetti 52 ‘LEL’)
* Mary Tighe: 36 (Psyche), 43, 60, 88 (4)
* Helen Hunt Jackson: 4, 87, 89 (3)
* Joanna Baillie: 13, 21, 34 (3)
* Augusta Webster: 44, 48, 51 (3)
* Emily Pfeiffer: 3, 75 (2)
* Charlotte Bronte: 19, 74 (2)
* Adah Isaacs Menken: 30, 57 (2)
* Constance Naden: 41, 46 (2)
* Mathilda Blind: 61, 97 (2)
* Mary Kendall: 73, 77 (2)
* Martha Jane Jewsbury: 2 (‘To My Own Heart’)
* Anne Evans: 28
* ‘Michael Field’ (Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper): 78
The Heart and Vision epigraphs in Ink Black Heart by chapter number:
* Heart: 20, 106 (MEC); 21, 67; 52, 107; 68, 85; 2; 63, 80, 85; 17, 40, 55, 95 (Mew); 19, 74; 27; 30; 36, 60; 87 (23)
* Vision: Frontispiece, 1, 49, 81 (MEC); 22, 25, 38, 90, 98 (CR); 59; 3; 34; 95; 57; 88; 48; 46 (17)
Tally Sheet of Epigraphs for Cuckoo’s Calling:
* Frontispiece: Rossetti -- A Dirge
* Prologue: Lucius Accius, Telephus
* Part One: Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
* Part Two: Virgil, Aeneid
* Part Three: Virgil, Aeneid
* Part Four: Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis
* Part Five: Virgil, Georgics
* Epilogue: Horace, Odes
* [Closing Poem: Tennyson, Ulysses]
Brackets/Latch: 19th Century English poets (see Groves)
Most epigraphs: Virgil (3); no other author has more than one
Most frequently referenced work: Aeneid (2), shades in Ulysses
Center of Chiasmus: Aeneid (true if ring has 5, 8, or 9 parts)
Turtleback lines: Not evident in authors list, perhaps in meanings of specific epigraphs
Conclusions:
* Read Aeneid to look for Cuckoo’s parallels;
* Study epigraphs to look for parallels
Online Literature Review for ‘Epigraphs of Cuckoo’s Calling:‘
https://robert-galbraith.com/epigraphs-of-the-cuckoos-calling/
* 2025 connecting the dots between epigraphs and chapter set to follow (generic)
* No mention of Strike as Aeneas
https://strikefans.com/the-cuckoos-calling-epigraphs/
* Reprinting of epigraphs without commentary
* No mention of Strike as Aeneas
https://thesefilespod.com/blog/the-cuckoos-calling-epigraphs/
* Includes a very helpful link to The Rowling Library and an article there about the ‘real world’ crime serving as a template for the Landry murder
* No mention of Strike as Aeneas
https://mugglenet.wpenginepowered.com/2017/09/literary-allusion-cuckoos-calling-part-1-christina-rossettis-dirge/
* Brilliant discussion of the Rossetti poem but curiously without reference to resurrection meaning
* No mention of Strike as Aeneas
https://mugglenet.wpenginepowered.com/2017/09/literary-allusion-cuckoos-calling-part-2-tennysons-ulysses/
* Brilliant discussion of Strike as Ulysses
* No mention of Strike as Aeneas, curious becauseh Virgil models Aeneas on Ulysses
The Ten Questions of This Conversation (Sort Of!)
1, (Nick) So, John, I finally wrote up my findings about The Ring and the Book as the story template for Hallmarked Man’s murder mystery and, as we did with my posts about Aurora Leigh and I Capture the Castle, let’s talk about it, expanding on the correspondences between the Browning poem and Strike 8. The natural place to begin is with your guess about Ring and the Book being a template based on your tally of the Hallmarked Man epigraphs, a theory you shared on our first show post-publication. Can you explain your process and what made you so confident about Ring and the Book?
2. (John) Looking at that tally, then, Arnold’s Merope and Oxenham’s Maid of the Silver Sea are quantitatively more likely equivalents to Aurora Leigh in Ink Black Heart, but the Browning frontispiece, number of his epigraphs, the hidden quality of the Ring and Book poem titles, and the relationship with Barrett Browning made it seem the most likely. That the poem is considered one of the great feminist tracts written by a man didn’t hurt. I still want to go back to the Arnold poem, though, because of the centrality of his epigraphs in the center Parts and Oxenham deserves a re-read, too, or just a trip to Louise Freeman Davis site, the home of Oxenham Studies online. What struck me while reading your post, Nick, was in the correspondences you found between Ring and the Book and Hallmarked Man. Can you give us the highlights of that?
3. (Nick) The Ironbridge murder mystery, then, is largely lifted from the death of Pompilia. Which is unusual isn’t it? Has Rowling-Galbraith ever used her epigraphs to point to the template of her story?
4. (John) I think, then, that at least four of the previous Strike novels give us the embedded template, per Beatrice Groves The White Divel and The Revenger’s Tragedy (and even Hamlet) gives us important clues about The Silkworm crime, Rosmersholm and its incestuous backdrop inform the murder of Lethal White, the Janus deceiver in Faerie Queene should have been a give-away about the poisoner in Troubled Blood, and, as Rowling confirmed and you demonstrated Nick, Aurora Leigh is the working model for Ink Black Heart. I think the closest Rowling epigraph suggestions to story template was in the Rossetti poem that opens Cuckoo’s Calling and the Aeschylus epigraph in Deathly Hallows. What has Rowling said, though, about her epigraph sources? Do they precede the novels or follow the writing?
5. (Nick) So it’s not one or the other, I think, that is, she has a template in mind and if the source doesn’t have sufficient quotable pieces to serve a epigraphs for the whole book, she uses other sources from the genre in play or that highlight her central theme (cf., the Gray’s Anatomy heart epigraphs in tandem with the hearty women Victorian poets in Ink Black). What I’m struck by here, though, is the shift in importance of epigraphs to Rowling-Galbraith. The numbers are startling, no, between Cuckoo and Hallmarked?
6. (John) Not only do we see a jump from eight or nine epigraphs in Strike1 to 139 in Stike8, but Team Rowling is pushing readers to think more seriously about them by posting reviews of the epigraphs in each book, drawing the dot-to-dot correspondences. I confess the Strike novel whose epigraphs are not like the others, Nick, is Career of Evil and its Blue Oyster Cult lyrics. You’ve been reading a book about Blue Oyster Cult so I’ll defer to you in this despite my great fondness for heavy metal groups with sci-fi themed lyrics...
7. (Nick) What about the book we haven’t got in hand, John: Sleep Tight, Evangeline? We have been told -- sort of! -- the title is from a 2014 song from an American blues band called ‘The Whiskey Shambles.’ Which of the previous epigraph models Rowling has used, from Deathly Hallows to Hallmarked Man, do you think we’ll be seeing in Strike9? What are your thoughts on that, especially as the best link we have for Sleep Tight, Evangeline is from a rock and blues band?
8. (John) So I hope that we’re going to see another Running Grave type epigraph experience in Evangeline, though Grave was unique among Rowling novels and their epigraphs in not having a story-book, poem, or play as its primary source. The I Ching, cannot be a story-template per se because it is a divination tool or means to reflection. Unless you think Pike’s Morals and Dogmas Freemasonry encyclopedia qualifies as an equivalent of sorts to the I Ching? That’s another outlier, isn’t it?
9. (Nick) To put a Fourth Generation focus on this, John, we should be looking for a technique that Serious Readers can use for Sleep Tight, Evangeline to hunt for the embedded source if its hidden as were Aurora Leigh and The Ring and the Book. You’ve found the ones no one else noticed in Ink Black Heart and Hallmarked Man, how did you do that and do you think the same method will work for Cuckoo and Career as well as Evangeline?
10. (John) So, yes, I found them but you had the first confirmed by Mrs Murray and then connected the dots between the Browning poems and Rowling’s work. If this method is going to work on Cuckoo, Career, and Evangeline it will have to involve a spotter and a shooter, though they can be the same person. The spotter technique is nothing but grunt work; chart the epigraphs used and spot the author most frequently referenced and the work of theirs most frequently cited. The shooter work is actually a lot more involved and interesting; tell us about your experiences with the two Browning’s’ epic poems, that thrill of discovering correspondences. Do you think that excitement is something Rowling is offering her readers a a treasure hunt or as a point of reflection in terms of meaning?


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

Last November Nick and John introduced Dimitra Fimi, the magnificent maven of Tolkien Studies and Professor of Fantasy and Children's Literature at the University of Glasgow, to students of J. K. Rowling’s work. In that discussion, ‘Reading Rowling as Myth Maker and Myth Re-Writer: A Conversation with Dr Dimitra Fimi,’ she shared her thoughts about Rowling’s creative use of mythology in Harry Potter but especially in the Cormoran Strike series.
The Hogwarts Professor team asked her to join us again because of Rowling’s yuletide charm bracelet gift to Strike fandom and the recent announcement of the Strike 9 title, Sleep Tight, Evangeline. Her insights about the Longfellow poem as a possible even likely source of the next book’s epigraphs are engaging, but it is her expertise in the arcane area of miniature books as well as mythology and the light each shines on the two items attached to the last link of the charm bracelet that open up exciting possibilities
.
Her idea is that the Psalter on the ninth link of the charm bracelet may actually be, unlike the other tokens on the bracelet’s nine links, an object that will play a part in the story, a miniature book. It turns out that one inch high books were something of an industry as curios in the 19th and early 20th century, a means of demonstrating technological mastery.
Dr Fimi discussed several projects she has been a part of in conjunctions with nano-technologists and the librarians at the University of Glasgow’s special collections division. The one that has the most obvious link to English literature is the ‘Tiny Alice project,’ a contemporary effort to minituarize Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories to unfathomable minuteness:
The Tiny Alice Project has produced one of the world’s smallest books: a tiny reproduction of Lewis Carroll’s children’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). All 78 pages and 26,764 words of the story have been transposed on to a tiny silicon chip, with each page just the width of a human hair (60 microns). Each individual letter is just two microns high, and made from pure gold!
Click on the icons below to find out more about the project, the technology behind it, and Lewis Carroll and his interest in the minuscule. Via the tabs above you can also discover the long tradition of miniature books, and teaching resources.
Clip: Twixter link to tweet above
You can read Dr Fimi’s write-up of ‘Tiny Alice’ and the Miniature Book exhibition she curated at the University of Glasgow to highlight their special collection of these treasures at her 2019 blog post about them. Pictures that include annotated miniature books — copies in which their owners made notes in the miniscule margins of the printed pages — can be seen here.
Later this week, Nick will be sharing his thoughts on Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book as the Ironbridge Murder story’s template within Hallmarked Man, John, Nick, Sandy Hope, and Ed Shardlow will be parsing the ring within Strike8’s Part Seven, and more about Longfellow’s Evangeline — stay tuned!
The Ten Questions Guiding Today’s Conversation with Dr Fimi with the Necessary Links for Fun Follow-Up:
(Intro) So everything Serious Strikers are thinking and talking about this month made me think of you, Dimitra, and to write you hat-in-hand with an invitation for your return to HogwartsProfessor to share your perspective, knowledge, and first impressions. Thank you for making time to join us!
1. (John) Jumping right in, then, two of the charms on the Strike9 or ‘Evangeline’ bracelet are Fimi areas of unique expertise: the Psalter and the Head of Persephone. I had urged readers to read your Miniature Books in Children’s Fantasy at A Kind of Elvish Craft: The Dimitra Fimi Substack Site in the links after our conversation here last November but I confess to being surprised still when you asked for the dimensions of the Psalter charm after Nick and I posted our thoughts on the subject. For those who haven’t read your ‘Miniature Books’ post, please share how one of the world authorities on the writing of J. R. R. Tolkien became interested in the smallest of texts, the ‘Little Books’ of 19th century printing.
2. (Nick) So you asked for the dimensions of the Psalter, you weren’t thinking as we were that the Psalter charms would be a box holding a folded up paper with a psalm, maybe two, inside it. You’re thinking it might actually be a complete Coverdale Psalter? Is that possible?
3. (John) What Nick and I hope to contribute to the nascent field of Rowling Studies, as you know, is a refocusing of the scholarship and the serious reader attention about her work on to her Lake Springs -- the biographical part of story inspiration -- her Shed Tools or intentional artistry, and the Golden Threads, the plot points and themes that run throughout her work, i.e., to bring Rowling Studies more in line with all literary scholarship about notable authors, living and dead.
One of the Golden Threads we talked about in our Kanreki series last summer was the ‘Embedded Text,’ the books inside a book topos that is in almost every book Rowling writes (Kanreki Golden Thread posts one and two). Detective fiction is always about an embedded text, the narrative ‘written’ by the criminal to prevent the detective from reading the real story of what happened and Rowling-Galbraith often makes this narrative an actual book (Dumbledore Chocolate Frog Card, Tales of Beedle the Bard, Bombyx Mori, Talbot’s ‘True Book,’ The Predictions of Tycho Dodonus, etc.). How do you think a Psalter miniaturized book would appear in a Strike novel?
4. (Nick) Has an author used a miniaturized book before in this way? Were there 19th Century Psalters that people wore as talismans or carried as the original Pocket Books?
5. (John) And what about the Head of Persephone charm on that bracelet? It’s on the ninth and last link, paired with that Psalter. You shared your first thought about the Persephone charm, a hopeful note, on the comment thread here. As our go-to authority on Greek mythology, I’m dying to know more of your thinking about (a) the specific charm and its relation to the Cupid and Psyche myth-template to the Strike series, (b) its pairing with the Psalter, and (c) its position as the last charm on the bracelet. Do you still think it’s a sign that Robin will survive Sleep Tight, Evangeline?
6. (Nick) As someone immersed in mythological studies and more than familiar with Rowling’s use of myth, do you think the Jungian interpretation of that myth as the ‘actualization of feminine identity’ is a better lens through which to read that embedded text or is the Spenserian lens of Eros/Anteros, False Cupid and Cupid more helpful? Or is this not a case of Either/Or but Both/And? Valentines Day Special
7. (John) Rowling is a close reader and admirer of J. R. R. Tolkien, though that is more evident in the clear pointers to his work in her own work than from her interviews. How does her use of myth contrast with that of Tolkien and Lewis? (See John’s 2008 post about Rowling’s debts to Tolkien and the two part podcast with Tolkien scholars and Rowling Readers Dr Amy H Sturgis and Dr Sara Brown here and here for more on that influence.)
8. (Nick) In an in-person meeting with UK Serious Strikers last week, Rowling shared with them and later via X with everyone the title of the ninth Strike novel, Sleep Tight, Evangeline. We’re pretty sure that title refers to a song by an American Blues group called ‘The Whiskey Shambles’ (story of the hunt, why Whiskey Shambles is a good bet). There is a famous poem, though, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called ‘Evangeline,’ one perhaps not as famous as ‘Aurora Leigh’ or ‘The Ring and the Book,’ other texts Rowling may have used as back-drops to her novels, but still another poem very famous in its own time akin to those epics. Is its subject matter as good a match-up with the possible direction of Sleep Tight as the Victorian poetry back-drop is with other Rowling models?
9. (John) You’re a native Greek speaker; what does ‘Evangeline’ mean in Greek? Is it a common name in Greece or is it a ‘Virtue Name’ in the Puritan tradition of grace-filled names (cf., Credence Barebone is probably a reference to an Englishman named “Praise-God Barebone, whose son Nicholas may have been given the name If-Jesus-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned[3]“).
10. (Nick) Don’t leave before trying to tie together the pieces of this conversation! Is there a thread joining the Psalter, the Head of Persephone, miniaturized books, and the title Sleep Tight, Evangeline?
Dimitra Fimi is Professor of Fantasy and Children’s Literature at the University of Glasgow and Co-Director of the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic. Her Tolkien, Race and Cultural History won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies and she co-edited the critical edition of A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages which won the Tolkien Society Award for Best Book. Her Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies. Other work includes co-editing Sub-creating Arda: World-building in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Work, its Precursors and its Legacies and Imagining the Celtic Past in Modern Fantasy. She has contributed articles for the TLS and The Conversation, and has appeared on numerous radio and TV programs.
When the rightly famous and beloved ‘The Great Courses’ series decided to offer a Lord of the Rings entry for their catalog of the very best in scholarship for adult-learners, they asked Dimitra Fimi to create ‘The World of J. R. R. Tolkien,’ one of their most popular courses and one you can enjoy in an Audible edition.
Links Promised in Conversation:
A Kind of Elvish Craft: The Dimitra Fimi Substack Site
* Miniature Books in Children’s Fantasy
* Parabasis: A Tribute to Dionysis Stavvopoulos
* On Tolkien’s Letter 131 (4): “Romance” vs. Science
Dimitra Fimi articles at ‘The Conversation’
* After 150 years, we still haven’t solved the puzzle of Alice in Wonderland (2015)



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

Happy Valentine’s Day!
Mrs Murray met the UK StrikeFans.com contingent and Badly WiredLamp (“and friends”) on Thursday to talk about the Cormoran Strike novels. Yesterday, Friday the 13th, Rowling tweeted about the secret she had told them — the title of Strike9:
Nick Jeffery found the most likely source of the title Sleep Tight, Evangeline, assuming it is not an anagram, in six minutes:
BadlyWiredLamp who was at the Rowling meeting congratulated Nick on twixter seven minutes later: “Well done for finding it Nick!” with a hand salute emoji. Which semi-confirmation from a witness suggests he is spot on.
Even more impressive, Nick wrote up a flash post about The Whiskey Shambles and other ‘Evangeline’ possibilities at the HogwartsProfessor weblog, ‘Sleep Tight, Evangeline – Title Release for Strike 9.’ Nick and John will be discussing this news as well as the Psalter and Head of Persephone charms with miniature book, Tolkien, and mythology expert Dimitra Fimi this weekend for a post here next week. See her ‘Miniature Books in Children’s Fantasy’ to prepare for that conversation. Stay tuned!
But it’s Valentine’s Day! John and Nick celebrate this Hallmark Holiday with a journey through the Cormoran Strike novels’ V-Day celebrations and a discussion of the various Valentines and Cupid’s in the story, with special emphasis on the Cupid and Psyche myth that Rowling has suggested is the series story template.
That suggestion came the week after Hallmarked Man’s publication in the first of her Public Service Announcements to “Robin and Strike fans:”
This image came as a surprise even to Hogwarts Professor subscribers because, though we have been writing and talking about the Cupid and Psyche myth as one of the mythological templates behind the Strike series since early 2021, it was the first time Rowling had acknowledged this publicly. Since the September revelation of this connection by the author and the appearance of the head of Persephone at the end of her Strike9 clues Christmas Charm bracelet, Strike fandom is now on board with the idea.
Which on-boarding Nick and John celebrate with this Hearts and Flowers conversation, in which:
* Nick reviews the Valentines Day events in the Strike series, the importance of which makes 14 February to Serious Strikers what Halloween is to Harry Potter fans;
* John discusses the post American Bar office scene in Troubled Blood that let the cat out of the bag about the Cupid and Psyche myth just beneath the Strellacott romance;
* Nick updates that with Rowling’s PSAs and charm pointers to the Trials of Psyche in Robin’s story;
* John lays out how and where Hallmarked Man features Valentine Longcaster, the character with the Cupid name, and a Valentine’s Day conflict with dogs to Guard the Gates of Hell (from charting Parts Five and Six);
* Nick journeys back to Cuckoo’s Calling and explains how Lula Landry’s death and Robin’s first meeting with Strike are twist on Cupid and Psyche with Venus, Psyche, and Cupid, Hephaestus, and Ares all with their equivalents in Charlotte, Robin, and Cormoran;
* John ups the ante of the conversation by bringing in Edmund Spenser and C. S. Lewis, two writers Rowling loves, both of whom wrote stories that turn on Cupid and Psyche, and suggesting that Galbraith, in using the Eros-Anteros distinction of those writers in the Strike series is answering allegorically the core question of human life: whether to focus the soul on the ephemeral body and its desires or on the noetic faculty of soul, the Heart, logos within us;
* Nick and John then discuss Robin and Strike’s individual relationships Cuckoo to Hallmarked in light of Cupid-False Cupid and taking turns going through the Strike novels with a look at the principal murder victim and murderer and their respective relationships;
* John shares the Jungian interpretation of Cupid and Psyche as the mythic representation of feminine actualization, the chrysalis of female identity;
* And more!
Below are the links to posts on this subject mentioned in their back and forth and to a translation of the original myth. Happy Valentines Day — and stand by for more discussion of Sleep Tight, Evangeline, the Psalter and Persephone Charms, and all things Strike and Mythology with Dimitra Fimi.
Links Mentioned in the Valentines Day Celebration Conversation:
Rowling Points to Myth of Cupid and Psyche in order to Console Strike Fans Disappointed with Hallmarked Man (8 September 2025, Nick Jeffery)
Nick shares the context of Rowling’s tweet (fan disappointment!) and the background information about the illustration she chose for it.
The Most Pleasant and Delectable Tale of the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche (Apuleius)
A translation of the Silver Age Latin tale from Apuleius’ Golden Ass.
A Mythological Key to Cormoran Strike? The Myth of Eros, Psyche, and Venus (22 April 2021, John Granger)
The first post to discuss Rowling’s use of this specific myth within Cormoran Strike, it is essential reading and comes in four parts:
* a discussion of Rowling’s stated beliefs about the soul and how it is the focus of her story-telling,
* a review of her psychological artistry in Potter and the post Potter novels and screenplays,
* a synopsis of the Eros and Psyche myth, and
* a point to point look at the parallels in the story thus far with speculation about novels to come.
Robin’s Two Perfumes: The Meaning of Philosychos and Narciso (9 June 2021, John Granger)
The names of Robin’s baseline perfume, Philosychos, and the one she and Strike choose at story’s end, Narciso, both point less to the bedroom than to Robin’s allegorical, psychological, and mythological role as Psyche in the series.
Erich Neumann in his Amor and Psyche: The Psychic Development of the Feminine describes this discipline as a “prohibition against pity” which “signifies Psyche’s struggle against the feminine nature.” …
Psyche’s last trial involves her having to confront death, a “marriage” to which she was condemned as a sacrifice at the story’s start, a meeting she can only survive by transcending her feminine qualities of nurturing and pity. She must become, if only temporarily, a narcissist to pass through Hades and return to the world of the Sun and to Cupid. The myth, in Jungian lights, is about her transcending the accidental self, here her feminine and sexual relation to Eros or Cupid, for “ego-stability” leading to “individuation,” ascent to the greater, immortal Self.
Robin as resident psychologist and loving soul is the Psyche-cipher of the Strike mysteries. She differs from the relatively passive Human Beauty of the myth in her active and determined “struggle against the feminine nature,” her “What. I. Do!” She not only wrestles with her desires for domesticity and maternity in her thinking but stands up to Strike-Cupid in their Valentine’s Day Street Fight and demands his respect or at least more considerate behavior. But she is still struggling with her difficulty to be the narcissist rather than the Great Mother when circumstances and her heroine’s journey of psychological individuation demand that.
Reading Rowling as Myth Maker and Myth Re-Writer: A Conversation with Dr Dimitra Fimi
Nick Jeffery and John Granger converse with Dr Dimitra Fimi about Harry Potter, Cormoran Strike, Tolkien, Jane Eyre, and the Mythological Artistry of J. K. Rowling, Hogwarts Saga to Hallmarked Man
The Hallmarked Man’s Mythological Template
‘Cupid and Psyche’s importance for grasping the depths of Strike 8, from the “necessity” of the Silver Vault and the three men in Robin’s life, to spaghetti carbonara and ‘Maid of the Silver Sea’
Ink Black Heart: The Mythic Backdrop (10 September 2022, John Granger)
What Rowling is depicting in Robin’s journey through the events and mystery of Ink Black Heart include a trap set by Venus, one that takes Robin to a personal and professional underworld or hell, her survival and endurance of every temptation by her determination to be steely rather than empathetic, especially with respect to a certain “lame fellow” (!), and her re-surfacing from hell a changed person, one worthy of begrudging Venereal approval (or Zeus’ intervention — Rokeby!).
Ink Black Heart: Strike as Zeus to Robin’s Leda and Cupid to Mads’ Psyche (10 November 2022, John Granger)
These traditional portrayals of the every person’s human and divine aspects, soul and spirit as man and woman in dynamic, cathartic relationship — think Romeo and Juliet, Redcrosse Knight and Una, Cupid and Psyche — are perhaps, with her alchemical symbolism, sequencing, and coloring, Rowling’s greatest literary ‘reach’ and achievement in the Strike series, albeit one largely lost on her her vast reading audience. The deliberate conjunction-melange of archetypal psychology, mythology, and spiritual allegory in these novels is, especially in combination with her hermetic artistry, intertextual playfulness (Aurora Leigh!), and chiastic structures, testimony to the author being one of the most accomplished and challenging writers of the age in addition to the most popular (and least well understood, even by her fans).
Hallmarked Man: Freemasonry and J. K. Rowling (7 February 2024, Nick Jeffery)
The Royal Arch degree is unique in England for including the ceremony of “Passing the Veils” symbolising the path to enlightenment that a mason undergoes as he progresses in the craft. Given Peter Rowling’s upward social mobility from working class apprentice to engineer and moving from the Bristol suburbs to middle class Tutshill, it isn’t beyond reason to wonder if Peter might have been tempted by the social and career advantages that freemasonry might have offered him and exposed a young Joanne to some of the symbolism.
Edinburgh, as well as being the home of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, is also home to if not the oldest lodge in the world, then at least the one with the oldest records. Lodge of Edinburgh (Mary’s Chapel) No. 1 has minutes of meetings from 31st July 1599. There have long been arguments between this Lodge and the one in Kilwinning on the other coast of Scotland as to which is the oldest. (see IVº of the Rite of Baldwyn above)
J. K. Rowling’s ‘G-Spot’ and ‘Triple Play:’ The Lake & Shed Secret of Her Success (21 September 2024, John Granger)
I want to try tonight to explain as succinctly — and as provocatively — as possible why I think Rowling’s ‘Lake and Shed’ metaphorical explanation of how she writes offers a compelling reason for both why she writes and why readers around the world love her novels the way they do. I call this her ‘G-Spot’ and ‘Triple Play’ because it is her point of singular genius, the defining quality that separates her from contemporary story-tellers, which involves ‘Shed’ artistry of three particular literary tools, all subliminal, which work together to achieve her aims.
The Hallmarked Man’s Flood of Names, Characters, and Plots (22 September 2025, John Granger)
Rowling’s seven Shed tools — psychomachia, literary alchemy, ring composition, misdirection towards defamiliarization, Christian symbolism, mythology, and inter-intratextuality (writing about reading and writing) — are all about the transformation of the human soul by cathartic experience in the imaginative heart, i.e., our spiritual reorientation. These traditional tools alone don’t do it, of course; her capacity for creating archetypal characters that we care about in profound fashion is what gives the tools their grip on the heart.
But, if a writer uses these tools in his or her Shed, the game being played and its stakes are not in question. Everything Rowling has written to date, with greater or lesser success (largely dependent on her control of the final product, cough*Warner Brothers*cough), shares this aim. Her global popularity testifies that much more often than not she hits her target to the delight of her readers.
I assume this was her aim in Hallmarked Man. It’s early days on the full exegesis of Strike8 in light of Rowling’s Shed tools, Lake springs, and Golden Threads, but there are encouraging signs. My third reading of the book included my first ‘Aha!’ moments with respect to the mythological template of the series, the Shed tool Rowling was openly urging her readers to think about in her recent Cupid and Psyche tweet.
Jungian Interpretations of ‘Cupid and Psyche:’
* Erich Neumann: Amor and Psyche: The Psychic Development of the Feminine (A Commentary on the Tale by Apuleius)
* Paul Diel: Symbolism in Greek Mythology: Human Desire and Its Transformations (A “psychological study of the symbols condensed in the fate of the mythological hero”)
* Robert A. Johnson: SHE: Understanding Feminine Psychology (An interpretation based on the myth of Amor and Psyche and based on Jungian mythological principles)
* Marie-Louise von Franz: Golden Ass of Apuleius: The Liberation of the Feminine in Man (originally A Psychological Interpretation of The Golden Ass of Apuleius)
‘Tamspells’ Point to Point Correspondence List of Events in the Strike-Ellacott Novels and the Myth of Cupid and Psyche
The list ‘Tamspells’ made will be Nick and John’s starting point in their upcoming conversation with her about how to see the myth beneath the surface of the story
Cupid and Psyche Myth Highlights to Look for in Your Review at Home of the Strike Series:
* Jealousy of Venus
* Psyche’s Wedding/Funeral March to Mountain Crag
* Psyche Rescued by Cupid, stuck with his own arrow
* Retreat to Hidden Castle, Love in Darkness
* The Two Sisters
* The Confrontation with Lamp and Knife
* Psyche’s Return Home; Death of Sisters (Pan cameo)
* Psyche’s Search for Cupid/Venus: Ceres Interview
* Brought to Venus (Worry and Sadness)
* First Trial: Seeds and Grains (Ant)
* Second Trial: Wool from Golden Sheep (Reed)
* Third Trial: Crystal glass for Black Stygian water (Zeus, Eagle)
* Persephone Odyssey: Box for Beauty (Tower instructions)
* Barley Cakes for Cerberus and Two Coins for Charon
* Must ignore: “a lame man driving a mule loaded with sticks, a dead man swimming in the river that separates the world of the living from the world of the dead, and old women weaving.”
* Meal in Underworld with Persephone
* Return Trip, Falling to Temptation
* Cupid intervention; intersession and deal with Zeus
* Olympian Court Date
* Marriage of Cupid and Psyche post Ambrosia, birth of Pleasure
Strike Novel Victim Eros Anteros Murderer Eros Anteros Cuckoo’s Calling Lula Landry Evan Duffield Marlene Higson,Yvette Bristow, Guy Some, Jonah Agyuman John Bristow Alison Creswell Yvette Bristow The Silkworm Owen Quine Kathryn Kent Leonora/Orlando Elizabeth Tassel Michael Fancourt Owen Quine? Career of Evil Kelsey Platt Rock Band Leader Ray Williams, (Hazel Furley) Donny Laing Rhona Bunyan, hostage women Agnes Waite Lethal White Jasper Chiswell Ornella Seraphin, Kinvara Patricia Fleetwood Raphael Chiswell Kinvara Hanratty Ornella Seraphin Troubled Blood Margot Bamborough Paul Satchwell Roy/Anna Phipps Una Janice Beattie Steven Douthwaite/Diamond Dead Mother Dennis Creed Louise Tucker Agnes Waite Ink Black Heart Edie Ledwell Philip Ormond? Joshua Blay, Grant Heather Ledwell Gus Upcott Anomie/Paperwhite, Vikas BhardwajMorehouse Katya Upcott The Running Grave Daiyu Wace, Kevin Pirbright (Jacob) Louise Pirbright Abigail Glover Patrick, Baz Jennifer Wace The Hallmarked Man Tyler Powell Anne-Marie Morgan Chloe Griffiths/Jolanda Lindvall Ian Griffith Jolanda/Sapphire Rita Lindvall?


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