A History of Magic- a Journey Through the Hogwarts Curriculum

by Pottermore Publishing

  Books written later in the 17th and 18th centuries debunked the idea that Flamel was an alchemist, recovering documentary evidence such as his will, but, due to the way these books were illustrated, they only served to have the opposite effect. This mythologising of Flamel continues today – there are Flamel tours in Paris; there is also a street named after him and another after his wife, as well as a plaque. Not to mention the depiction of him in modern works of fiction, and films… Who knows what he’d make of it all if he had actually lived all this time?

  According to legend, Flamel was instructed in a dream to seek out a book that would tell him how to make the Philosopher’s Stone. The legend states that Flamel travelled to Spain to find a Jew who could help him translate the work, and that he came back with the knowledge to develop the Philosopher’s Stone. A book first published in Germany in 1735 entitled Uraltes Chymisches Werck (‘Age-Old Chemical Work’) claimed to be a translation of this fabled book. It is full of strange alchemical symbols in different languages – principally Hebrew.

  One of the most striking images in the book is of a serpent and crowned dragon eating each other’s tails. This is a common alchemical symbol called an Ourobouros, symbolising the cycle of birth and death, and the unification of prima materia (‘primary matter’) with spiritus universalis (‘universal spirit’). This unification was essential to making the stone. Despite the beauty of the illustrations, the fact remains that Flamel wasn’t an alchemist and no one knows whether Rabbi Abraham Eleazar (named as the book’s author) was a real historical figure. Indeed, it’s extremely unlikely that anyone has come upon the secret to eternal life by reading that book.

  So why would anyone continue to read such a book when its contents are likely as fictional as the legends of the men who brought it into being? The answer lies in the compelling allure of magic, and the sense that magic is never false, but probably just poorly executed by the practitioner.

  Neville had somehow managed to melt Seamus’s cauldron into a twisted blob and their potion was seeping across the stone floor, burning holes in people’s shoes. Within seconds, the whole class were standing on their stools while Neville, who had been drenched in the potion when the cauldron collapsed, moaned in pain as angry red boils sprang up all over his arms and legs.

  Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

  We can’t ever be completely sure we’re not tapping into a power beyond our understanding, which resonates at some deeper level with how we perceive the world. It’s no coincidence that much of this powerful information comes in the form of books – books themselves exert their own magical influence by the way they are interpreted and shared, and how they transform our knowledge of our surroundings, real and imagined. For that reason, books about magic are especially powerful. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

  ‘A stone that makes gold and stops you from ever dying!’ said Harry. ‘No wonder Snape’s after it! Anyone would want it.’

  Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

  One of the most beautifully made alchemical treatises ever is a copy of a book called Splendor solis. It was originally made in Germany in 1582 and copied many times.

  The very first illustration is of an alchemist. He wears a vivid red robe and red hat and is wrapped in a glorious blue cloak. Using just one hand, he holds a large flask, which is filled with a golden liquid. Emerging out of the top of the flask is a black scroll, inscribed ‘Eamus quesitum quatuor elementorum naturas’ – Latin for ‘Let us ask the four elements of nature’.

  For an alchemist, Splendor solis was essential reading, not for its wonderful art, but for the secrets it contained. Its writer was purportedly a scholar called Salomon Trismosin, who claimed to have used the Philosopher’s Stone to conquer old age and who lived to be 150 years old. In reality, like many other alchemists, the true story of Salomon Trismosin is hidden in the mists of time, and Splendor solis was based on a patchwork of earlier sources.

  Other illustration highlights include an incredible flask containing a phoenix, chariots flying through the sky pulled by dragons, and what looks like a man emerging from a swamp. And amid the kings, phoenixes and three-headed dragons is supposedly a cycle and methodology for attaining the Philosopher’s Stone, which alchemists have pored over in the hope of uncovering its secrets.

  Another magical book that has fascinated scholars for centuries is The Book of the Seven Climes. The manuscript dates from the 18th century but it was the work of a 13th-century alchemist from Baghdad called Abū al-Qāsim Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-‘Irāqī, also known as al-Sīmāwī, which means a ‘practitioner of natural or white magic’. Throughout the book are illustrations of alchemists at work amid kilns, with flasks and various liquids being heated up. One of them – including a goblin-like man in a red hat, heating a flask surrounded by various birds – looks a lot like a series of hieroglyphics. This image was supposedly taken from a ‘Hidden Book’ by the sage-king of ancient Egypt, Hermes Trismegistus, who you may recall was depicted at the top of the Ripley Scroll. It was believed that he had mastered the mysteries of alchemy and recorded them as hieroglyphs on the walls of tombs, which al-‘Irāqī had painstakingly interpreted.

  In fact, the image has no alchemical significance whatsoever, but it does portray the now-lost monument of an Egyptian king. It is a historical moment snatched from oblivion, but one that is more significant to Egyptologists than to alchemists. It also shows how much our scientific methodology has changed over the centuries: today, we tend to explain processes in a strict, evidence-based fashion, whereas in the past we often interpreted symbols through a mystical prism.

  ‘You know, the Stone was really not such a wonderful thing. As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all – the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things which are worst for them.’

  Albus Dumbledore – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

  However richly the process was depicted in scrolls, manuscripts and books, questions about the nature and purpose of alchemy continued to be posed in works of art over history. The Alchemist is an engraving based on the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, one of the most significant Dutch artists of the Renaissance, and was created at some point after 1558.

  It depicts a poverty-stricken alchemist having one last throw of the dice at turning base metal into gold by using his last penny, taken from the now-empty purse his wife is holding. A scholar dressed in Italian clothes is reading books and giving instructions to the failing alchemist, but out of the window is a vision of the future as the alchemist’s family is welcomed into the workhouse.

  The print might be about the foolishness of the whole alchemical enterprise, but it was also a broader critique on people being taken for a ride by charlatans. Bruegel was showing how alchemy was being misinterpreted as a short-term drive for wealth and immortality. In an age when there were many problems with the Catholic church, the Reformation was beginning and Protestantism was emerging, the Philosopher’s Stone represented the secrets of the universe and the essence of life’s energy; a source of salvation. Alchemy was about the higher truth, but it was often misused to low ends.

  A second, huge painting called The Alchymist (with its subtle spelling difference) was an image of magic meeting science and was painted in the late 18th century by Joseph Wright of Derby in the UK. Resembling a religious painting, the grey-haired, bearded man at its centre could be a prophet bathed in celestial light, but his church is a laboratory and the heavenly glow is actually light from the chemical element he has discovered. It was based on a real historical event: the alchemist is Hennig Brandt in Hamburg, 1669, and he was attempting to discover gold. He was trying to do this by boiling urine of all things. Gold wasn’t the result, but the element he did discover was phosphorous.

  As glorious as the painting appears, the process was pretty disgusting. Brandt took 50 large buckets of urine (a thousand litres!) and let it sit for a
few weeks before boiling it down to a paste the size of a bar of soap. When the substance met the air it created the brilliant light and flame of the painting. The discovery took place a hundred years before Wright was born, but the instruments and clothing of the painting are contemporary with Wright: the setting was the past, but the science belonged to the future. The painting seems to deliberately create a tension between the religion in the surroundings, the science in the discovery and the magic in the alchemical search to transmute base materials to gold. Brandt’s experimentation marked a significant step in the development of chemistry, through the workings of mystical alchemy.

  ‘Hmm… What do you think, Harry?’ said Luna, looking thoughtful.

  ‘What? Isn’t there just a password?’

  ‘Oh no, you’ve got to answer a question,’ said Luna.

  ‘What if you get it wrong?’

  ‘Well, you have to wait for somebody who gets it right,’ said Luna. ‘That way you learn, you see?’

  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

  Of course, Harry Potter can count himself among the legions who sought the Philosopher’s Stone, in order to stop it falling into the hands of Voldemort. Its most fierce gatekeeper was the massive, monstrous three-headed dog, amusingly called Fluffy.

  It was standing quite still, all six eyes staring at them, and Harry knew that the only reason they weren’t already dead was that their sudden appearance had taken it by surprise, but it was quickly getting over that, there was no mistaking what those thunderous growls meant.

  Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

  J.K. Rowling illustrated the scene in 1991, six years before the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, as she worked out her plan for the book. Harry meets Fluffy when he is tricked by Draco Malfoy into being in the school corridor after hours with Argus Filch on his tail. Slipping out through a locked door into an out-of-bounds part of Hogwarts, he comes face to face with the petrifying pooch. The illustration captures the terrified looks on their faces at the moment when Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville and Gary encounter the dreadful dog. But who’s Gary?

  He was actually an early incarnation of Dean Thomas, who, in turn, got dropped from this scene entirely (as did Neville). J.K. Rowling’s working drafts and early illustrations of the Harry Potter series bear a lot in common with recovered manuscripts from other points in history. Sometimes, as in this case, they point to a deviation or a change, and sometimes (as in the case of the early working draft of ‘The Man with Two Faces’, the chapter that concludes the first novel) they show just how complete her detailed vision was to begin with, and how little it changed on its journey to publication. These early drafts were never intended for preservation, but like the development of science in the alchemical treatises, J.K. Rowling’s work-in-progress shows the development of her wizarding world.

  Pen and ink drawing of Harry and his friends by

  J.K. Rowling (1991)

  Fluffy is a call-back to Cerberus, the Classical three-headed mythological beast and guard dog to the gates of hell, which Hercules had to capture as one of his twelve labours. The depiction of Cerberus and Hercules by Aegidius Sadeler II, engraver in the court of Rudolf II in Prague (made some time between 1586 and 1629), made the gates of hell look like a flaming brick prison. What’s interesting about the image of Hercules dragging the dark, muscular, fanged beast in his left hand and the way it is composed is the angle. You’re compelled to follow the action from right to left, as opposed to the conventional Western habit of reading left to right. This inversion could be because we are in the underworld, where logic, physics and, indeed, art are turned on their head.

  What also links Cerberus to Fluffy and the Philosopher’s Stone is that in capturing Cerberus and taking him to King Eurystheus (who was so terrified he immediately jumped into a large jar to escape), Hercules gained immortality by completing his penance. And just like Harry in his epic struggle to find the Philosopher’s Stone, Hercules did so less through physical effort than through courage and strength of mind.

  The Potions classroom is a pivotal setting in the Harry Potter novels for the development of the characters’ brewing skills and also their own self-knowledge. Alchemy throughout history was about the transformation of base metals into gold and the promise of eternal life, but really it is about the journey of making something of your life and becoming who you are supposed to be.

  Growing up and entering your teenage years is a tumultuous time for anyone, full of fears and desires, but this was particularly so for Harry, Hermione and Ron as they embarked on their journey into the wizarding world.

  HERBOLOGY

  Herbs are familiar to all of us. We grow them in gardens, see a dizzying array of them on supermarket shelves and use them to add all manner of flavours to recipes. But in the past, when most people lived in the countryside, the plants and herbs that grew all around them were nature’s medicine cabinet. Herbology, the study of folk remedies and the use of plants, herbs and fungi as medical treatments, was practised and documented in scholarly books in many places on the planet. In this journey through herbology we’ll see how this knowledge was compiled into a series of books called herbals, how these helped develop the science of modern medicine, and also how the myths around the magical properties of certain plants, such as mandrakes, persisted for many, many years.

  Herbology is an important subject in the Harry Potter books, and becomes more central as the stories develop: from the Wolfsbane potion that alleviates the symptoms of Lupin’s werewolf problem in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to the Gillyweed Harry uses to breathe underwater in Goblet of Fire. In order to make Polyjuice Potion (which, you’ll remember, enables you to take on the appearance of another person), you need to pay attention in Herbology class, after all.

  PART 1: GREENHOUSES, GARDENING TOOLS AND SOME ‘HERBALS’

  Professor Sprout was a squat little witch who wore a patched hat over her flyaway hair; there was usually a large amount of earth on her clothes, and her fingernails would have made Aunt Petunia faint.

  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

  Professor of Herbology, Pomona Sprout, was actually illustrated by J.K. Rowling in 1990, some years before the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. In the drawing, Sprout is surrounded by all kinds of plants and cradles a cactus in one arm, while tendrils sneak out from a pot on the table. They might be sneaking around, looking for something to nibble.

  Pen and ink drawing of Professor Pomona Sprout by J.K. Rowling (30 September 1990)

  The plants are reminiscent of those you might find in gardens or around the English countryside, but with little twists that make them appear ever so slightly not of this world. The spider hanging off the witch’s hat perhaps indicates how welcoming Sprout was to lots of different flora and fauna.

  ‘Four to a tray – there is a large supply of pots here – compost in the sacks over there – and be careful of the Venomous Tentacula, it’s teething.’

  Professor Sprout – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

  If you want to grow magic plants in your garden, then you need magical gardening tools. The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall, in Southwest England, has some examples of gardening implements made for magical sowing and harvesting. These are made of bone and antler, the latter in particular being a material that has huge symbolic importance. Tools shaped from antlers, which rise upwards, were thought to connect the earth with the higher spirit world, and because antlers shed and regrow, they also symbolised the magic of regeneration and renewal.

  When it came to harvesting and digging up special and magical plants, it was important that the tools were formed from natural resources so that they didn’t corrupt the plants being harvested. There are many folktales about gardening: from making hot peppers hotter by planting them when angry, to guaranteeing a bountiful bean harvest by getting a pregnant woman to do the planting. Ritual and magic have an
intimate connection with sowing and harvest, one born of a close relationship with nature.

  At its most basic level, by finding out which plants were best ground or cooked together, people learnt about the processes of the natural world. A successful result often led to the process becoming ritualised, with people looking at the world around them and trying to understand how it related to them. Science and magic came out of the same search for knowledge about how the world worked.

  Three times a week they went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology, with a dumpy little witch called Professor Sprout, where they learned how to take care of all the strange plants and fungi, and found out what they were used for.

  Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

  Herbals have been around for centuries. They describe the appearance and properties of plants that can be used for preparing medicines. Back in the 12th century, medical practitioners would have been using a manuscript to study medicinal plants, but a medieval herbal included more than just plants and medicines; it occasionally gave you the myths and legends associated with how they got their names – embellishments which gave them more flavour and character. The illustrations could also be pretty extraordinary, depicting battles with rabid dogs and men urinating into cups.