Harry Potter and the Goblet of Wine


I have lately observed that I am moving through my life story backwards. When I was eleven I read Homer because he was abandoned in the attic of of a square brick apartment house in the Sonoran Desert. We lived in an upper quadrant of the building above which I found the books. Now I could go back and read Homer but it would be a disciplined task. At eleven I flew through both volumes, absorbed in the action. At 60 I have finally arrived at what would seem more fitting for eleven: Harry Potter. I am less absorbed in the action than in the author. I mean, I haven't been on the moon. I knew the story.

About a month ago I put the first volume in the bathroom where it's sure to get at least a page or two read every day for a trial period. It's the bathroom test. Some books get to see the whole house. I ended up propped in bed reading the last half straight through.

I enjoyed reading the story, but of course it is a children's story, and I didn't have to think much about following it or about the use of symbols. I found myself glancing admiringly at J.K. Rowling, as she composed it for her children. "Do you mind if I call you Jo?"

"Do you mind if I turn you into a dirty old man."

"By magic?"

"By observation."

I found myself thinking about certain qualities I admire in the English character, and especially an independence of thought combined with a classical education that develops into a creative eccentricity. I couldn't help noticing how beautifully literate J.K. Rowling is, to bring through such powerful symbols as the mirror where you see your heart's desire, which can block your way. And I was equally intrigued by the description of Quidditch, and the role of the Seeker in capturing the golden snitch. So while I was reading the story of Harry Potter on one level, on another I was thinking, "...women like this one produce the children who personify the best in western civilization."

The golden snitch and the Seeker seems to connect with a dream I had once, in which I was speaking from one location while having already moved to another. I was fooling two prospective teachers into looking at where I had just been, so that they could not locate me. It was one of a series of dreams I had which demonstrated to me that my path was to the abstract, and not into the African village where I had been accepted to study with a shaman. In one of the dreams his wife was feeling very superior to me because I could not sing, which to her was natural. But the dream also demonstrated she had trouble with abstraction.

In the most entertaining of the dreams, the shaman was dressed in the robes of an Indian guru, and was noticing that I was the only one not on the bus. Everyone else was operating as one village, and was already on board.

I was looking at some motor homes which represented American masculine energy. I won't bore you with details but they were Airstreams in garages. : ) I was looking at one of them which had some information for me on the side, when I realized I was supposed to be on the bus. I was hurrying out when I saw an old Chrysler Imperial, probably a 58 or 59, with the big fins and Montana license plates.

A little old man in a cowboy hat and boots crossed my path. I knew who he was. He was Joseph Henderson, with whom I had begun an analysis. One of my clients was connected to him through the Jung institute, and she always called him an old shaman. The dream was one of a series which insisted my knowledge path was a western style analysis with him, and not a diversion off into more (seemingly) exotic territory. It calls to mind my thoughts on seeing a Korean Baptist church. We are exotic to other cultures as they are to us.

Joseph's books are readable mostly by therapists, but in the sessions we had over a period of four years we focused almost exclusively on interpretation of dreams and of literature and art, I discovered he had also studied with Thornton WIlder, and that though it was a serious analysis, our shared reaction to a lot of my discoveries of my own unconsciousness was a kind of delight, which caused us to laugh a lot together.

This seemed like the Seeker and that which is in the game, but invisible to anyone except the Seeker. It is gold, and it is abstract, hard to see and harder to catch. Joseph didn't normally work with anybody who wasn't already analyzed, so he really saw me as a favor to our mutual friend. He asked me what I wanted, and I told him I wanted to strain my thinking through his to try and get out some of the misconceptions. It turned out to be the right thing to say.

I did the interpretation of my dreams and he corrected or added things when I missed or misunderstood symbolic content, and in that manner I learned more symbolic content. In group sessions with Brugh Joy, I likewise learned his understanding of symbolic content, and increased my own grasp of what is essentially a language transmitted through holography.

What makes Harry Potter so good is Rowling's clarity of connection to this language. She is a Shakespeare scholar, and knows something about alchemy, the symbols of which are are part of the symbol language of dreaming. The grasp of the philosopher's stone gives the wizard access to the archetypes which form the architecture of the psyche. Behind those images there is amorphous energy. Don Juan calls it "intent." Surrounding this amorphous energy with symbols allows us to relate to it.

This is what goes on in the lives of ordinary people like us. We are connected to these archetypal images, and to patterns which drive our fate, or destiny. An ordinary man, in the privacy of his inner thoughts, is connected to the archetypes of warrior, priest, orphan, poet, wanderer, king, prince, and many others. An ordinary woman is similarly connected.

Reading Homer and Beowulf for pleasure when I was eleven provided me with a knowledge of some patterns, so that when I was inside of them, I had something besides a personal reference. Having a way of understanding the impersonal aspect of events can mean the difference between growing and self-destructing.

Some battles take a long time. When Beowulf went down into the swamp to do battle with Grendel's mother, everybody except one friend gave him up for dead and went home.

Some battles last for generations.

Voldemort is more powerful than Harry's parents, and he kills them. But they are survived by a son he could not kill. We may not win the battle this generation, but we have children, and we pass along the connection to the Knowledge of the abstract as the evolutionary path to the future. The lightning bolt on Harry's forehead is a simple but effective symbol for brainpower. Voldemort by contrast drinks unicorn blood.

What threatens Voldemort is his time coming to an end.

I think he represents a power structure that is at an evolutionary dead end, but can't believe it can't hang on with some desperate measures and sufficient employment of fear and violence. I think of this old structure as being opposed to the language of art. That seems obvious in the prohibition on images in some strict Islamic sects. That is really a prohibition on abstract thought. "Anything you need to know is in this book."

"Yes master."

"Aren't you Tom Waits?"

"Yes, master."

The last time I drove across the Mohave I was listening to a biography of Einstein, which related that he went to a special school when he was young, a school which taught visualization. And much of what Einstein discovered later on was from his skill with picture thoughts.

Burroughs' work is characterized to the skill with which he evokes images with words. When asked if he had any advice for young writers, he said he didn't, but then he said there was one thing he could say: "If you can't see you probably can't show it to somebody else."

Jung used to say that the living water is always coming up somewhere, but it keeps changing. Where it came up yesterday it no longer comes up today. If you build a fence around it and start charging for it, it will go someplace else. Rowling seems to have provided a well for a lot of young people who otherwise wouldn't have been as connected to reading, and to the power of storytelling. She has water in the well.

The connection to the living water is the connection to the archetypes, and their emotional tones. Nothing Harry Potter does is driven by anything other than a genetic heritage, because he is raised by Muggles. I love this because it provides the young person the way of separating the archetype of the male and female, the original parents, and the alternative world of ignorance and narcissistic affection all around them. And the wizard is sleeping underneath the stairs. He is hidden inside the device which connects the lower floor to the upper floor.

I started to read Harry Potter once or twice a long time ago, but it didn't hold my attention then. I empathize with (I think it was Noam Chomsky) who said once his children were old enough to read the books themselves, he didn't read them anymore, so that he only read the first ones. I don't go to children's movies anymore, and I normally wouldn't read children's books now that I don't read them to somebody.

I don't know how far I'll get into the series. The second one is in the bathroom. It might escape or it might not. When I told my daughter I was reading Rowling she said, "It's about time." It's funny, but I thought she hadn't read her, either. It appears I'm the only one out of the loop.

The thing I like about Rowling is that she provides me interesting company. It's like when I was watching Linda fix rollups for grandchildren this morning. They were twittering with energy, a nine and an eight year old, a boy and a girl. They were helping, urgently looking for milk and eggs and jam and brown sugar and fussing about prickly pear jam being hard to spread.

"Use a spoon, like this."

Cody watches a moment. "Good idea," he says.

I was watching how much Linda loves them, and there is a special tenderness toward that side of a woman. It inspires country and western love songs. To counterbalance this Norman Rockwell moment I recalled a Burroughs piece about "The Sugar of Mary," which the vaqueros feared would get loose and turn the entire town into a cake.

I am enjoying Jo Rowling's company because I admire what goes on between her and the kids. She has brought stories to the young which have some living water in them, but aren't the Sugar of Mary. You can't fool kids. They know that words don't mean a thing if they don't wield a wand.

Posted: Sun - January 27, 2008 at 05:08 PM