Egyptian sphinxes were apparently much friendlier – though they still possessed ferocious strength. In both traditions, however, they’re found as guardians in front of temples, where they ask riddles of those who approach. In The Historie of Foure-Footed Beasts, published in 1607 by an English vicar called Edward Topsell, a sphinx appears alongside more common (and real) animals like rabbits, cats and even a version of German artist Albrecht Dürer’s rhinoceros.
Topsell admitted that he cribbed a lot of the information from an earlier German work, Historia animalium. But The Historie of Foure-Footed Beasts is important, as it’s the first book published in the English language explaining the animal kingdom.
In it, we’re told that toads have a ‘toadstone’ in their heads that will protect people from poison; lemmings graze in the clouds; elephants worship the sun and the moon, and become pregnant by chewing on mandrake; apes are terrified of snails and weasels give birth through their ears.
Topsell describes the sphinx as having the face of a woman, with the bottom half of the body being apelike and covered in hair, not much like a lion at all. It has a ‘fierce but tameable nature’ and can store food in its cheeks until it’s ready to eat, like a guinea pig. Its voice is that of a man: ‘sounding as if one did speak hastily with indignation or sorrow’.
Topsell describes the Riddle of the Sphinx as it appeared in Greek mythology from the story of Oedipus. That riddle asked: what is the creature that walks first on four legs, then on two legs and lastly on three? The answer is man – you start off crawling as a baby, then you walk, then you walk with a stick. It’s hard to tell whether Topsell believed these creatures really existed or not. He certainly liked to write about them as if they did.
Then she spoke, in a deep, hoarse voice. ‘You are very near your goal. The quickest way is past me.’
‘So… so will you move, please?’ said Harry, knowing what the answer was going to be.
‘No,’ she said, continuing to pace. ‘Not unless you can answer my riddle. Answer on your first guess – I let you pass. Answer wrongly – I attack. Remain silent – I will let you walk away from me, unscathed.’
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Every year around a million people head to Times Square in New York City for New Year’s Eve celebrations. At midnight, a huge illuminated ball drops from a specially designed flagpole on top of 1 Times Square, a building famous for its dazzling advertising displays.
But if you go behind the advertising hoardings, the complex electrics for the LED lighting and the tangle of internet wires, you’ll find an almost deserted building.
This was once the headquarters of the New York Times and it’s the building that gives Times Square its name. The New York Times located their office there in 1905 and the owner, Adolph Ochs, had his office right at the top: an observatory – guarded by eight gargoyles. In 1908, it was Ochs who came up with the idea of the illuminated ball descending a pole as the crowd counted down to midnight.
Since he had last seen it, the gargoyle guarding the entrance to the Headmaster’s study had been knocked aside; it stood lopsided, looking a little punch-drunk, and Harry wondered whether it would be able to distinguish passwords anymore.
‘Can we go up?’ he asked the gargoyle.
‘Feel free,’ groaned the statue.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Gargoyles came about from a simple need to drain water off the roofs of the massive, monumental religious structures that sprung up in northern Europe before the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. If you have to do it, do it in style! Rainwater would run off angled or gabled roofs, drain down into gutters and then into a gargoyle – a water spout, which would deflect the water away from the building, preventing damage to it.
The New York gargoyle is not really a gargoyle at all. The word comes from the French gargouille, meaning ‘throat’, but if it’s purely decorative, it’s actually a chimaera. Both look scary and are implacable defenders against the dark arts. The reason gargoyles look so frightening – all horns, teeth and beaks – is to frighten evil spirits from religious buildings and literally regurgitate that which would damage them, in the form of water. Inside, you’re safe. In the New York skyline gargoyles are sentinels, keeping guard over cathedrals, bookstores, banks, offices and schools – all with the best vantage points in the city.
1 Times Square was only the tallest skyscraper in the world for a short time; its record didn’t last a year and the newspaper moved out within a decade. The building was sold, resold and renovated. In the Nineties, it was finally completely hidden by the advertising displays we know today. But it’s still there, unseen by the millions that pass by. As for one of the New York gargoyles – it now lives on the third floor of the New-York Historical Society museum, continuing its endless vigil.
He pushed his greying hair out of his eyes, thought for a moment, then said, ‘That’s where all of this starts – with my becoming a werewolf. None of this could have happened if I hadn’t been bitten… and if I hadn’t been so foolhardy…’
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry’s favourite teacher of Defence Against the Dark Arts was Remus Lupin: warrior in the First Wizarding War, close friend to Harry’s departed parents, teacher of the Patronus Charm, provider of chocolate in a crisis… and werewolf.
In the wizarding world, it’s hard to be a werewolf. The monthly transformations take their toll on the body. They are largely shunned by the wizarding world, with few career options or chances of friendship. If left alone, the werewolf will injure itself in frustration, or if it gets desperate.
‘My transformations in those days were – were terrible. It is very painful to turn into a werewolf. I was separated from humans to bite, so I bit and scratched myself instead. The villagers heard the noise and the screaming and thought they were hearing particularly violent spirits. Dumbledore encouraged the rumour… even now, when the house has been silent for years, the villagers don’t dare approach it…’
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Back in the 15th century, Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg was considered one of the greatest preachers of his age. His sermons were so popular that they even built him his own pulpit in Strasbourg cathedral. He was known as ‘the educator of Germany’. During a series of sermons for Lent in 1508, he (naturally!) decided to cover werewolves.
Collected in a publication called De Emeis (‘The Ants’), alongside a woodcut of a fierce wolf attacking an old, bearded man, von Kaysersberg’s sermon listed seven reasons why werewolves attack people: 1) hunger, 2) savageness, 3) old age (of the werewolf, not its victim), 4) experience, 5) madness, 6) the devil and 7) God, for reasons which aren’t immediately clear.
There was a terrible snarling noise. Lupin’s head was lengthening. So was his body. His shoulders were hunching. Hair was sprouting visibly on his face and hands, which were curling into clawed paws.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Tales of werewolves also sometimes formed a part of witchcraft trials. There were occasional accusations of lycanthropy – transforming into a wolf – along with wolf charming or wolf riding. Throughout the 16th to 18th centuries, there were sporadic trials across Europe in which men and women confessed that a demon had given them a ‘wolf skin’, which they hid under a rock when they weren’t using it.
It’s possible that Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg was aware of stories about lycanthropy, but several of his sermons were copied down and published without his approval, so there is a chance that this lupine-themed sermon was attributed to him when he never actually said it. Nonetheless, the powerful legend of shape-shifters had begun to take hold in central Europe five hundred years ago, and it still haunts popular culture today – let’s face it, it’s hard to look at a full moon without thinking about Lupin and that transformation.
You’ll need to be prepared to face a number of strange and sometimes frightening creatures such
as werewolves in Defence Against the Dark Arts. The subject at Hogwarts is beset with calamity, its roll-call of teachers cursed with dark secrets or uncontrollable character traits (not to mention physical transformations!). In the beginning, the lessons teach a form of protection against Dark Magic and dark creatures, and for Harry, all of that is in aid of the best cause of all: defeating Lord Voldemort. No one said that would be easy, as the nature of the evil he embodies changes many times during the character’s development. Harry needs more than a snakelike wand to cast out that particular evil, but he succeeds – eventually.
CONTENTS
POTIONS
Part 1: From Apothecaries to Cauldrons
Part 2: Leechbooks and Bezoar Stones
Part 3: The Philosopher’s Stone – An Alchemist’s True Calling
HERBOLOGY
Part 1: Greenhouses, Gardening Tools and some ‘Herbals’
Part 2: Flower Pressing, Flower Temples and Stink Lilies
Part 3: Mandrakes and Gnomes
POTIONS
‘As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don’t expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses… I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death — if you aren’t as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.’
Professor Snape — Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
We all know that Harry became a dab hand at Potions with a little help from the Half-Blood Prince; this was a fictional example of the handing down of knowledge over the centuries when it comes to mystical brews. Potions have been made for thousands of years – associated with bubbling pots and mysterious ingredients, they have been brewed to make medicines, drugs and poisons.
Alchemists dabbled a lot in potions, as well as making the legendary Philosopher’s Stone, which could reportedly transform base metal into gold and held the key to everlasting life. Potions can even be concocted to conjure different weather events. Their use in the community was well established, which has been proven by the medical books handed down through history, advocating their use.
Medieval apothecaries greatly contributed to the development of medical science; it is an art still practised to some extent in the pharmacies of today. Snape made Potions sound scary (he would, wouldn’t he?), but it’s also a fascinating subject.
PART 1: FROM APOTHECARIES TO CAULDRONS
Then they visited the Apothecary, which was fascinating enough to make up for its horrible smell, a mixture of bad eggs and rotted cabbages. Barrels of slimy stuff stood on the floor; jars of herbs, dried roots, and bright powders lined the walls; bundles of feathers, strings of fangs, and snarled claws hung from the ceiling.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
When Harry and Hagrid visited the apothecary in Diagon Alley, they were met with an assortment of ‘slimy stuff’, herb jars, roots, powders, feathers and claws. Historically, an apothecary served as a sort of chemist or pharmacist, and texts recording symptoms and prescriptions have been found originating in the ancient societies of China, Babylon and Egypt.
Apothecaries kept guides for supplying remedies. If you walked into an apothecary shop with a cough, migraine or headache, the owner would open their book of secrets. In a typical 14th-century manuscript, there would have been a lot of illustrations and recipes, which would point to lots of ingredients from the natural world. People from the Middle Ages had a much closer working relationship with these natural ingredients than we do today.
One such manuscript once belonged to King Henry VIII of England, an avid book collector, and was eventually acquired by the physician and collector Sir Hans Sloane, the man after whom Sloane Square in London is named. Because it would have cost so much to make the book originally, it would have been rarely opened but kept instead as a valuable possession, probably belonging to a monastery and other wealthy individuals before ending up in the royal collection.
The manuscript was beautifully made, coloured with a combination of reds, golds and a dark yet vibrant blue pigment – one of the illustrations within it depicted the apothecary consulting with a client. The client sits while the apothecary stands, conveying the higher status of the customer. But apothecaries themselves were high status – at the top of the tree in society alongside lawyers and property owners. They were wealthy, too.
It turned out that Hagrid knew quite as much about unicorns as he did about monsters, though it was clear that he found their lack of poisonous fangs disappointing.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
One magical being strongly associated with apothecaries from the Middle Ages was the unicorn. It was not unusual to see spectacular signs hanging outside apothecary shops in the shape of a unicorn’s head.
One such sign, dating from the 18th century, now resides at the Science Museum in London. Probably from England or the Netherlands, the unicorn’s head is carved from oak. It appears happy, healthy and alert, with a hint of a smile and a bit of a goatee.
Extravagant shop signs were common in cities like London. They acted like logos and were an early form of branding, as well as being a useful way of navigating the streets when much of the population was illiterate. The result was streets festooned with an array of gaudy and memorable signs made from heavy wood and wrought iron, in the shape of giant frying pans, keys and coffins.
The health-and-safety conscious might spot a potential problem here, and on one particularly stormy night in London in 1718, this problem was brought home to the population. The powerful gusts of wind that whistled down the city’s streets caused a huge shop sign in Bride Street in the Spitalfields area of the city to collapse – four people were killed.
This was one incident of many, but it seems that 18th-century London was slow to realise the potential dangers, because it wasn’t until 1762 that a government commission was undertaken to see what they could do about it. It was decreed that signs had to be laid or mounted flat against buildings, which is why most shops and restaurants have signs like that now. Pubs proved to be an exception to the rule – luckily for the Leaky Cauldron!
Of course, the unicorn that was used to signpost the apothecary’s shop wasn’t real – but its horn was. Except for the fact that it was actually the tusk of a narwhal.
Narwhals are whales and are known as ‘the unicorns of the sea’ on account of the spiral pattern on their tusk and their rather elegant physical appearance (somewhere between a dolphin and a whale).
These ‘unicorn horns’ were rumoured to have unique medicinal powers – from curing leprosy to being a potent aphrodisiac. But most intriguingly, they were considered to be a universal antidote to poison. Right up until the 1780s, the French royal family had unicorn horn (in the form of a narwhal tusk) dipped into their drinks to proof the drink against poison.
Accordingly, the tusks were worth huge amounts of money and carried a lot of status. Queen Elizabeth I had two, one of which was part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom. From today’s perspective, the idea of having a unicorn-horn cure might seem naïve, but even now most people don’t know how their medicines work, or how they are chemically composed. In that sense, to the majority of people, taking unicorn horn would not have been that different to taking most medicines today – you take it, hope for the best and don’t think twice about it when you get better.
‘And the steam rising in characteristic spirals,’ said Hermione enthusiastically, ‘and it’s supposed to smell differently to each of us, according to what attracts us, and I can smell freshly mown grass and new parchment and —’
But she turned slightly pink and did not complete the sentence.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
One of the major figures in the Harry Potter series is the Potions master, Severus Snape, who contains many conflicting qualities a
nd provokes a range of emotions: from fear to respect to pity. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, a new Potions master takes the reins – the founder of the ‘Slug Club’ himself, Professor Horace Slughorn. In an early working draft of Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling traded notes with her editor about a scene in which Hermione was impressing Slughorn with her knowledge of the love potion Amortentia. Hermione was keen to show that she knew that it smelt differently to each person and that the smell depended on what attracted that person. She said she smelt freshly mown grass and new parchment, before she abruptly checked herself.
The other smell is never identified in the book, but it is implied these are smells that the subject loves. In 2007, J.K. Rowling revealed the unnamed Amortentia aroma that Hermione identified: the scent of Ron Weasley’s hair.
In the real world, potions classes have been going on for a long time – hundreds of years, in fact. In the Ortus sanitatis (‘The Garden of Health’), a famous medieval textbook, there is a woodcut of a potions class held in Strasbourg over five hundred years ago. It shows inattentive students gazing at stones in their hands in front of their tutor – not so different from a Potions lesson at Hogwarts!
This book is the earliest printed encyclopaedia of natural history, from 1491, but you might not recognise it as a typical reference book. In it, there are creatures we know, such as crocodiles, but also dragons, harpies and unicorns. The rivers it depicted contained both fish and mermaids and the book portrayed how the European scientific community saw the world in the late 15th century. It included plants and animals from the natural world and their medical uses, but also a world full of wonders and extraordinary creatures.
A History of Magic- a Journey Through the Hogwarts Curriculum Page 4
