I’ve recently been introduced to Louise Freeman’s Double Ring Theory of the ten book structure of the Strike-Ellacott series written by Rowling-Galbraith. It’s a lot of fun for those of us who enjoy tracking the author’s parallelism and Dr Freeman is one of the very few Serious Strikers that play the chiasmus game and build on the ring composition work done with Harry Potter. Hallmarked Man, I think, will tell us whether her preferred image or Evan Willis’ Tetractys Theory — see ‘Why the Cormoran Strike Novels are a Ten Book Series’ and ‘Is Tetractys Theory the Best Explanation of Why the Cormoran Strike Series is Ten Books in Length?‘ — is the better model; from the little I’ve read, I prefer Mr Willis’ because of his grasp of traditional hermetic symbolism.
What I like about the double ring theory, overlooking the intricate web of parallelisms between the Strike novels Dr Freeman has detailed, is the symbol itself. If oriented on a different axis, if true, the double ring structure reflects one of Rowling’s favorite Christian symbols, namely, the ICHTHYS fish as the conjunction of heaven and earth. See ‘Rowling’s Favorite Painting and What It Suggests about Her Artistry and Meaning‘ and the explanation of the mother of pearl fish necklace pendant of Mazu Mace in ‘Running Grave, Part Nine: A Ring Reading (A).’ In a nutshell from the latter:
The fish has been a symbol of Christ since the Apostolic era, being a glyph of two intersecting circles representing heaven and earth, the seamless conjunction of which spheres is the incarnation of the Logos as Jesus of Nazareth, perfect God and perfect man. On the horizontal, this intersection of circles is the Vesica Piscis “fish vessel” or Mandorla “almond” so important to Christian iconography and vertically as below it is the ICHTHYS, Greek for ‘fish,’ that was and remains a token of recognition between Christians (the Greek word is an acronym for ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior’).
If Dr Freeman is right, and, again, few if any Rowling Readers track parallels as well as she does, then its importance may be less about wedding bands than the Strike-Ellacott psychomachia of Spirit and Soul conjoined in the unconditional love of Jesus Christ as represented in the Vesica Piscis. Apologies all around if this traditional symbolism has already been discussed by Dr Freeman and others!
For those wanting an introduction to finding and understanding symbols in traditional art as well as Rowling’s work, see ‘Traditional Symbols in Harry Potter and Cormoran Strike: A Perennialist View.’ One of the symbols discussed there is that of the heart — and how appropriate is that for a Valentine’s Day post? It is so appropriate that I have spent the day playing with the Parallels Series Idea to come up with a pictorial representation of the mirrored structure of those series that yields both a pair of swans and a Cupid’s heart. Join me after the jump for all that!
Two of the great challenges to the representation of the Harry Potter series as a ring composition was (1) Joyce Odell’s detailed description of how Order of the Phoenix is a prolonged repetition of Philosopher’s Stone and (2) all the parallels linking Prisoner of Azkaban and Deathly Hallows. There was also the matter of the many pointers to Goblet of Fire throughout the series. Long story short, the pristine turtle-back structure of original modeling was blown up by those additional lines:
My 2010 solution to those challenges was to re-draw the sequence of the original circle so that Goblet of Fire was in the circle’s center and the two linked pairs of 1-5were adjacent on the near circle:
The beauty of that structure, besides making Goblet the “crucial” book as Rowling explained in 2000, is that the circle is completely drawn by books in sequence and the adjacent pairs, 1-5 and 3-7, covering the holes in the circle perimeter. (Aside: Dr Freeman’s double-ring theory would need real strong connections between Strike books 1 and 6 as well as 5 and 10 to be complete rings and I don’t think anyone has conjoined Cuckoo’s Calling and Ink Black Heart to date.)
In honor of Valentine’s Day, though, how about we re-draw the Harry Potter series circle as an S-curve and then do the same for the Strike series which mirrors the Hogwarts Saga through its first seven books. Potter first:
What’s fun about this representation is that the 1-5, 3-7, and 1-4-7 links, the last being the series axis are, if anything, easier to see though not drawn in. The equal but opposite character of the mirrored front and back halves of the septology, too, something critically important for getting the ‘Alchemy’ theory is also relatively in-your-face compared to the other circle-asterisk. Fun, no?
Let’s do the same with the Strike series’ first seven books:
If you’re not up to speed on the relationship of the Strike series books to one another, you can catch up via the reviews I made after the publication of Running Grave; see here, here, and here for the reading of the Strike series as a seven book ring — and S-curve!. As with the Potter series which it mirrors, the fun connections between 1-5, 3-7, and 1-4-7 and their inversion is, well, strikingly rendered by this image.
I said that the Strike-Ellacott books “mirror” the Potter seven thus far which is a reference to the Parallel Series Idea. For more about that, see the Hogwarts Professor Pillar Post on the subject for the links made between parallel numbers in both series by myself, Louise Freeman, Beatrice Groves, and a host of Serious Strikers. Rowling has refused to answer direct questions about that which, in an upside-down way all but confirms it is true.
Taking the word “mirror” seriously, how about representing these parallel series as mirrored reflections?
And there is your Valentine’s Day treat! See it?
The first thing is the answer, sort of, to the mystery of all the paired swans in the Strike-Ellacott series, about which read here, here, here, and here.
If you’re still not seeing it, check out this picture:
Image from BirdSpot.co.uk
The Valentine’s Day quality of this, as I hope you already guessed, is the Cupid’s heart so popular in the candy given out today:
Image courtesy of iStockPhoto
That was a lot of work for a cute Valentine’s Day post, I admit, even given the importance of swans and ‘heart’ in Strike and the symbolic weight Rowling gave ‘heart’ in the Potter books.
It can’t be meaningful, alas, because there are still three more books in the Strike-Ellacott Shakespearean romance. Even if we draw in wings on our mirrored swans-series (if Hallmarked Man parallels Troubled Blood and Strike 9 Deathly Hallows?), I think we’re at a dead-end on this one, which brings us circling back to Louise Freeman’s double-rings and Evan Willis’ Tetractys theories. Any suggestions that I am having a go at laughable structural models for book series in progress in the playful pictures above should be disregarded.
Happy Valentine’s Day to to y’all from arctic Oklahoma!
