• For pain, the author recommended eating snakes. Burnt scorpions, he said, would cure kidney stones.
• Earthworm powder would make a tooth fall out quickly, as would the ashes of burnt ants and ant eggs.
• Eating grasshoppers supposedly cured a stomachache.
• Sea foam collected from the shore would cure baldness if you rubbed it on your head or make your teeth white if you brushed with it.
• To lose the desire for wine or beer you only had to drink a glass of it from a jug in which an eel had been placed to die. That probably also cured the desire for eels.
This may seem like harsh medicine compared to Madam Pomfrey’s mixture of a little magic and a lot of chocolate. However, HarryCulpeper’s book was once required reading for any educated doctor. An equally popular book by Culpeper, The Complete Herbal, is the source and inspiration for the names of some of Rowling’s plants. (See Herbology)
Aconite was said to have been created by Hecate (pronounced “HEK-u-tuh”), the Greek goddess of witchcraft, from the foamy saliva of Cerberus, the nasty three-headed dog that guarded the underworld.
has already learned about some very strong ingredients that doctors like Culpeper prescribed regularly.
Aconite. Also known as monkshood and wolfsbane, this is the key ingredient in Wolfsbane Potion, which prevents Remus Lupin from becoming a werewolf. Doctors once prescribed small doses of this herb to calm patients’ nerves. It can be very poisonous in large doses, so hunters dipped spears and arrows in it to kill large animals. That’s how it got the name wolfsbane. (“Bane” comes from the Old English bana, meaning destroyer or killer.) And because it worked against real wolves, a legend arose that it worked against werewolves too.
Belladonna. Essence of Belladonna is mentioned in Goblet. The name, Italian for “beautiful woman,” refers to the women who used it to make their pupils larger and their skin paler, which they believed made them prettier. Also known as deadly nightshade, it can be quite poisonous. It has been used throughout history to calm the nerves and make patients go to sleep. In large doses it can make people experience strange visions, so it has long been associated with witches.
Bezoar. As Harry learns during his very first Potions class in Stone, a bezoar is a “stone” found in a goat’s stomach, which works as poison antidote. Hard as it may be to believe, bezoars truly exist and were used just that way. They are hard balls of hair or undigested vegetable fiber sometimes found in the stomachs of animals like goats and cows, which chew cud. The name itself comes from Persian words meaning “protector from poison.” In The English Physician it is described as such, as well as “a notable restorer of nature . . . [that] makes a merry, blithe, cheerful creature.” There were many ways to prepare it. One cure for fever mixed bezoar with powdered deer’s horn, crushed pearls, snakeskin, and crab’s eyes and claws—all rolled into a ball with jelly. Perhaps that truly did make patients merry and cheerful; or perhaps they stopped complaining to avoid the dose.
Hellebore. In Phoenix, syrup of hellebore is used in the Draught of Peace. For thousands of years doctors have used hellebore the same way. A sedative, it was commonly given to people suffering a mental illness. It has been used this way for so long it even appears in a Greek myth. When the goddess Hera became angry with King Proetus of Tiryns, she made his daughters go mad. Under her spell theyAconite, belladonna, and hellebore were said to be used in the mixture that was spread on broomsticks to make them fly.
Studying for his O.W.L.s in Phoenix, Harry reads about three plants with odd names—scurvy-grass, lovage, and sneezwort. These are also real plants. Harry reads that they supposedly warm the brain and make a wizard hotheaded; and indeed they were once used by doctors to make potions that would warm the blood.
believed they were cows and wandered through pastures until a doctor cured them with hellebore.
Nettles. In Stone, Snape teaches the students to make a potion with nettles that will cure boils. This is just how doctors used the plant: to dry out sores. In The English Physician it is described in words Snape might use: “singularly good to wash either old, rotten, or stinking sores and gangrenes [dying flesh], and such as fretting, eating, or corroding scabs, manginess, and itch, in any part of the body.”
Nettle tea was also recommended by doctors in the spring to cure the common cold. That may be what the witch Gertie Kettle had in mind when she picked nettles for tea in Queerditch Marsh, and thus became one of the first eyewitnesses to the game of Quidditch, as recounted in Quidditch Through the Ages.
Wormwood. This is an ingredient in the Draught of Living Death—for good reason. Wormwood gets its name because it was used to make a medicine that would kill stomach worms. However, it is more famous for the drink also made from it: absinthe, a green liquor that became notorious for causing so much harm to drinkers that it was outlawed in many countries. In the late 1800s many artists such as the painter Vincent Van Gogh and the poet Charles Baudelaire claimed it gave them creative visions. Doctors believed it made drinkers go permanently mad.
PLEASE DON’T EAT THE DAISIES
Amazingly, some of the ingredients mentioned above are still used in medicines. In fact the pills and ointments we use today are often made from chemicals found in plants. And in many countries, herbalists still mix the natural ingredients.
Just as surprising as the real potion ingredients are the ones entirely from legend:
Asphodel. This is an ingredient in the Draught of Living Death mentioned in Stone. In Greek mythology, the asphodel, a type of lily, was well known as the flower of the underworld and the dead. Persephone, queen of the underworld, loved the asphodel, and it was said that in the afterlife souls might walk in fields of it. Long ago it was eaten; and it was thought to be a favorite food of the dead, so it was planted near tombs.
Bicorn horn. Powder from it is an ingredient in Polyjuice Potion, the concoction that allows Ron and Harry to change into theirMost people dislike the taste of absinthe, which must be sweetened because wormwood is very bitter. It tastes so bad that a legend arose: when the evil serpent of the Bible was driven out of Paradise, wormwood began to grow where the snake had slithered.
In real life daisies were used to cure practically anything, from backaches and bruises to sore eyes.
Flux-weed, an ingredient in Polyjuice Potion, was said in real life to heal broken bones.
Slytherin enemies Crabbe and Goyle in Chamber. The Bicorn is a mythical animal, said to eat only husbands who are pushed around by their wives. According to legend, it is very fat. (The legend is supposed to be funny. Don’t blame me if it isn’t.)
Daisy Roots. In Azkaban, the class makes Shrinking Solution using daisy roots. In legend it has long been thought that daisy-root potion makes a person small. The poem “Kensington Garden,” by Thomas Tickell (1686-1740), tells how a cunning fairy, Milkah, keeps a kidnapped prince of England, Albion, from growing:
For skilful Milkah spar’d not to employ
Her utmost art to rear the princely boy;
Each supple limb she swath’d, [wrapped] and tender bone,
And to the Elfin standard kept him down;
She robb’d dwarf-elders of their fragrant fruit, [dwarf-elder berries]
And fed him early with the daisy’s root,
Whence through his veins the powerful juices ran,
And form’d in beauteous miniature the man.
Albion grows to just twelve inches tall, though he is a giant to the ten-inch-tall fairies.
Knotgrass. This plant is a key ingredient in Polyjuice Potion, which changes a person into someone else. In real life it was often used as a remedy. Knotgrass juice supposedly stops nosebleeds, says Culpeper; if the plant is boiled in wine “it is profitable to those that are stung or bitten by venomous creatures . . . [and] kills worms in the belly or stomach.” Made into tea it had even more uses.
Folklore offers another use, related to the shape-shifting power of Polyjuice Potion: like daisy roots, it supposedly stunt
s growth. In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a young man rudely tells a woman who is self-conscious about being short: “Get you gone, you dwarf; you minimus, of hindering knotgrass made.” Shakespeare’s friends and fellow playwrights Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625) make a similar reference in one of their plays: “We want a boy . . . kept under for a year with milk and knotgrass.”
It’s a fair bet that Harry would struggle in Potions class even if someone nicer than Professor Snape were teaching it. It’s hardThe seed of some ferns is so small it can’t easily be seen by the naked eye, leading to the notion that carrying a pouch of it could make a person invisible.
See Cauldrons Herbology
enough to keep track of the ingredients, much less the recipes. And it turns out there’s history to learn, also—not Harry’s favorite subject. But Snape’s potions—at least those he teaches in Hogwarts’ first few years—aren’t impossible to master. Muggles have done it for years.
What Makes Harry a Universal Hero?
THE DETAILS OF HARRY’S LIFE ARE WELL known to his fans. Some of them have even deduced facts J. K. Rowling leaves out, such as the year he was born (see sidebar).
HARRY THE HERO
But if we understand Harry’s character deeply, it is not solely because of the facts. It seems that Harry, for all his unique qualities, is a very familiar hero. He is, from the very start of Stone, what readers might call a legendary Lost Prince or Hidden Monarch—just like Oedipus, Moses, King Arthur, and countless others in every culture. He never knew he was a wizard—or even that the magical world existed—before receiving the letter inviting him to Hogwarts.
Making him even more familiar, he is, at least by the Dursleys’ strange standards, an Ugly Duckling. They think everything aboutHarry’s birthday is July 31, 1980. The newspaper story about the Gringott’s Bank robbery in Stone tells the day. The year is revealed by Nearly Headless Nick’s 500th Deathday in Chamber. It takes place in 1992, and Harry is twelve. J. K. Rowling’s birthday is also July 31—but 1966. 205
On her website, Rowling mentioned a happy accident regarding Harry’s wand, which is made of wood from the holly tree. After imagining that wand, she learned that in Celtic tradition certain parts of the year were associated with specific trees, like the zodiac in astrology or monthly gemstones. “Entirely by coincidence,” she writes, “I had assigned Harry the ‘correct’ wood for his day of birth.”
him is odd. So they treat him as Cinderella was treated, imprisoning him in a world far less interesting than his birthright, forcing him to sleep under stairs when a four-poster bed awaits him at Hogwarts, and feeding him scraps, which makes him astounded at the abundance of Hogwarts feasts.
HOW HARRY SEES HIMSELF
Though Harry’s introduction to the wizard world instantly offers the recognition he so desperately craves—everybody he meets has already heard of the great Harry Potter—he still feels self-doubt. The lightning scar is not the only mark Voldemort left. There was a deeper consequence to that battle. Some of Voldemort’s psyche found its way into Harry. He worries about the question that stumped the Sorting Hat early in Stone: is he a Gryffindor, with the virtues that implies, or is he a Slytherin, susceptible to evil? In Chamber, Dumbledore explains a view of good and evil that has shades of gray, not just dark and light. The bit of Voldemort in Harry, he explains, simply makes him less conventional and more resourceful than the average Gryffindor. It also helps him understand Voldemort, which is an advantage. In future battles, this extra strength and knowledge—for example, the ability to speak with snakes that he gained from contact with Voldemort—will continue to help Harry.
BLOODLINES
Harry’s mother, though a powerful witch, was Muggle-born. For those who care about bloodlines, like Draco Malfoy, Harry’s status is inferior. But Harry seems, if anything, stronger for coming from mixed blood.
In fact, his conversations with Draco echo an incident in the childhood of another great British wizard, Merlin, in a legend recounted by the early historian Geoffrey of Monmouth: “A sudden quarrel broke out between two of the lads, whose names were Merlin and Dinabutius. As they argued, Dinabutius said to Merlin: ‘Why do you try to compete with me, fathead? How can we two be equal in skill? I myself am of royal blood on both sides of my family. As for you, nobody knows who you are, for you never had a father!’ ”
But Merlin’s nemesis, like Draco Malfoy, had a knack for prideful mistakes. His outburst attracted the attention of messengers for King Vortigern, who had been told to find a boy with no father. The young Merlin was brought to the king, and his career began that day.
Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote in Latin, so for his collection of legends about the Welsh wizard Myrddin, he gave the wizard a Latin name, Merlinus. That’s the source of “Merlin.”
THE HARRY WITH A THOUSAND FACES
Harry’s adventures also follow a familiar pattern. Scholar Joseph Campbell wrote at length about “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” the common character central to cultures all over the world. From Odysseus of ancient Greek myth to Luke Skywalker of Star Wars, these heroes and their legends bear a striking similarity. Harry makes it a thousand and one.
Campbell summarized those stories this way: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered and decisive victory is won. The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
The hero’s journey has three stages, which Campbell labels Departure, Initiation, and Return. Within those stages are common themes. A glance at any of the books reveals
evidence of the pattern:
I. Departure
The hero is called to adventure.
As Campbell describes it, the hero is first seen in our everyday world. He is beginning a new stage in life. A herald may arrive to announce that destiny has summoned the hero.
The very start of Stone fits this design. Harry is suffering a dreary life with the Dursleys when he learns a place is waiting for him at Hogwarts. Because the Dursleys have intercepted previous letters, Hagrid arrives to collect him.
Harry continues to spend summers with the Dursleys, so later books also begin with Harry in the ordinary world.
The hero may refuse the call to adventure. He may have any number of reasons, from everyday responsibilities to a selfish refusal to help others. But if he does, he will find that he has no choice in the matter.
Although Harry does not go through this step in Stone, he does in later books.
In Chamber he is annoyed by the public attention his earlier adventure has created, and craves anonymity. But his intrepid character makes it impossible for him to ignore the mysterious occurrences—which, as destiny would have it, are directed at him.
In Goblet, even though he decides not to trick the Goblet of Fire into accepting his entry for the Triwizard Tournament, it selects him anyway.
In Phoenix, he is summoned to appear before the Ministry of Magic to face criminal
charges. He cannot avoid a conflict with the bureaucrats angered by his proclamation at the end of Goblet that Voldemort is back.
The hero meets a protector and guide who offers supernatural aid, often in the form of amulets.
This occurs again and again. In Stone, Hagrid has been one of Harry’s protectors since birth. He was the wizard who first took Harry to the Dursleys when Harry was a baby. Soon after they meet again, when Harry is on his way to Hogwarts, they visit Diagon Alley, where Hagrid arranges for Harry to buy a wand and other wizarding supplies. As a birthday present, Hagrid also gives him an owl, Hedwig. As well, Dumbledore has been a protector and guide. In Stone, he gives Harry the invisibility cloak. And in Azkaban, Harry learns that Sirius has been protecting him.
The hero encounters the first threshold to a new world. The protector can only lead the hero to the threshold; the hero must cross it alone. He may first have to fight or outwit a guardian
of the threshold who wants to prevent the crossing.
The climax of each of Harry’s adventures begins with a solitary journey past a threshold.
In Stone, Ron can help Harry figure out the right chess moves, and Hermione can help Harry figure out which potions will get him through the black flames, but only Harry can go into the last chamber, where he confronts Quirrell.
In Chamber, although he and Ron and Lockhart all travel down the drain to face the basilisk and save Ginny Weasley, Harry must make the final portion of the dangerous journey alone.
In Phoenix, Mr. Weasley can lead Harry right to the door of the Wizengamot, but Harry must enter the room alone. The monsters in that room are as bad as those in any secret chamber.
In Alice in Wonderland, Alice also faces a challenging chess match.
The hero enters “the Belly of the Whale,” a phrase drawn from legends like the story of Jonah to signify being swallowed into the unknown.
Harry is in “the Belly of the Whale” whether he plunges into the Chamber of Secrets, sneaks into Lupin’s hideaway under the Whomping Willow in Azkaban, or faces the Wizengamot in the courtroom deep underground that Rowling refers to as a dungeon.
II. Initiation
The hero follows a road of trials. The setting is unfamiliar. The hero may encounter companions who assist him in these trials. Invisible forces may also aid him.
The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter Page 12
