Harry Potter and Tarot

[queenie]

There are multitudinous fan-created Harry Potter tarot decks out there - and of course, none can be "right," because there are as many interpretations of Tarot as there are readers. But those here who are interested in the matter should have a place to discuss it.
Take, for example, the first Harry Potter tarot deck that I ever saw. I don't remember who illustrated it, now, but it influenced my way of thinking about Tarot for many years - I showed it to my mom, and she would approve of some cards and disapprove of others.
I remember that Harry was cast as the Fool (with Hedwig in tow) and Sirius as the Hanged Man; Lupin was the Moon and Dumbledore the Star. Fred and George together were Temperance (now I wonder about how appropriate that one was...) and the Sorting Hat was the Wheel of Fortune (spot-on.) Snape was Death, but Voldemort was the Devil.

And then of course there's the discussion of the Minor Arcana, and which one corresponds to which House. We thought we had it figured out in elemental terms:
Earth = Hufflepuff = Pentacles
Water = Slytherin = Cups
Fire = Gryffindor = Wands
Air = Ravenclaw = Swords

And then the founders' relics dropped in and changed everything!
Locket = Pentacle = Slytherin
Cup = Cup = Hufflepuff
Sword = Sword = Gryffindor
Diadem = What the heck Wands? = Ravenclaw

Oh well. It's a place to start, at least. What do you think?

[birdg]

I'd agree with the original interpretation, regardless of the founder's objects (though I appreciate how tempting it is, given that two of the objects fit with tarot suits). But Hufflepuff, like Pentacles, represents Earth just as Wands like Gryffindor represents Fire and so on and so forth.

I've always been interested in seeing how people interpret the Major Arcana, Snape as the Hanged Man, Dumbledore's death is often used for the Tower and Voldemort is almost always The Devil. I'd think the Dementors would be a good choice for Death. Beyond that it gets tougher as there are certain characters that could fit various cards.

This reminds me of the time I tried to fit the Four Cardinal Virtues to the four houses but Temperance always seemed like the misfit.

[queenie]

The House-Elves are Temperance? The Ghosts? The Teachers? Oh, Temperance seems to be a homeless virtue at Hogwarts...! Maybe Hagrid?

Yeah, I agree with the original interpretation too - it might have been interesting if she had decided to go with more Tarot-themed Horcruxes, but the four Houses were pretty strongly established along elemental lines anyway, so it seems wiser to just contemplate them along the original schemes.
The Dementors as Death - I don't know. Death is not a negative card for me, just representative of change and suddenness - the Dementors, if anything, are the anti-change. They force someone to live entirely in the past, and they drain a wizard's magic and hope. Now, for Harry, because meeting the Dementors for the first time inspired a new way of thinking about his mother, and inspired him to learn the Patronus Charm - I think that, as a general force, Dementors are not very Death-like, not at least as represented in the Tarot.
Now, a Death card that showed a Dementor and a Patronus pursuing it - now that might work with Death as I see it in the Tarot.

But, as I keep saying, it depends heavily on one's own personal interpretation of each card. The above is all just my opinion.

[vegablack]

Have you seen Nasubiona's tarot cards. She takes a different direction than other people do. She doesn't use the earth, fire , water, air association of the suits so much as her own feelings for the house and the card. "Wands became Gryffindor, Swords became Slytherin, Cups became Hufflepuff, and Pentacles became Ravenclaw." She will also place a character on a card if the card signifies them even if they aren't in the house of that suit. So the three of Hufflepuff (the three of cups) was the marauders because this is the card of cameraderie, friendship, exuberance and teamwork.

The cards are beautiful. She gives the reasoning behind every card. I find her reasoning very interesting.

Here is the URL: www.nasubionna.net/tarot/

[MWPP]

I see "Death" as transition/change...

So would vote for something with Harry walking into the Forest saying he was about to die, and/or with the shades of his parents, Sirius, and Remus as working for it. He makes a monumental change when he does that.




.

[queenie]

Maybe the forest itself. I see a path in the forest - at one end of it is Harry entering with Draco, with the dead unicorn before them, and along the path are Harry's other adventures in the Forest (meeting the spiders, losing Wormtail in the underbrush, meeting mad Mr. Crouch, giving Umbridge the slip, and sipping Felix Felicis) and at the very end is Harry entering the forest with the shades of his parents at his side*. Every time he's entered the forest (and I admit, I can't think of a time in book 3 or 6 where the forest is that big of a part), the plot of the book takes a dramatic turn, and Harry is forced to take the initiative, or finds things go out of his control.

* I admit that would have to be a very very big card!

But the Forest as Death could actually work very well.

And yes, vegablack, I had seen those cards before, but I hadn't looked at them closely before, because I wasn't really studying Tarot yet. Now when I look at them again I'm really impressed with how beautifully they're illustrated, and how well-thought out. I mean, the Patronus as the Star, The Mirror as the Seven of Cups, and Quirrel as the Hanged Man - just brilliant! Thanks for re-introducing me.

[starsea]

Death is definitely a point of great change and transition... you could pick any number of things from the HP series for that. Personally, I always think of Cedric's death as the turning point of the series: not only is it the first major loss of Harry's innocence, it's also when Voldemort comes back.

[vegablack]

Yes, I think JKR saw it that way too. I think she was foreshadowing Cedric's death when she had the Centaurs remark that the innocent are the first to die when they were commenting on the death of the Unicorn in book one.

[Rugi]

Apr 2, 2009 17:07:56 GMT -5 starsea said:

Death is definitely a point of great change and transition... you could pick any number of things from the HP series for that. Personally, I always think of Cedric's death as the turning point of the series: not only is it the first major loss of Harry's innocence, it's also when Voldemort comes back.

Good point. It's also the moment when the deaths really overtly expand beyond Harry. Totally changed the scope of the conflict.

[queenie]

Cedric's death was also the moment that the series took a definite turn to the grown-up, the mature and serious. Which also fits with the Death card - it's hardly seen as a card of going to a simpler, happier mindset. It's dramatic change, the wool being stripped from one's eyes, so to speak. So Cedric's death changed the tone of the books, too.

What I wonder now is, who (or what)'s the Magician? The first HP Tarot I saw presented Mad-Eye Moody as the Magician. The Magician is, I think, a difficult card to assign in general.
I sketched out a deck assigning the Majors to characters in Avatar the Last Airbender - I ended up picking Zuko (in Season Three) as the Magician, but I saw another that drew Avatar Roku as the Magician, whereas Roku seems indefatigably Hierophantish to me.

[vegablack]

I really know very little about tarot. But I thought the magician was about sleight of hand, the search for wisdom and unity with an element of playfulness and ambition. How about
Dumbledore? I know we want something more wise or powerful for him but that was my thought.

Take it from where it comes, though

[starsea]

Well, if we take Harry as The Fool, the figures of the Major Arcana are people he encounters on his journey, so I guess that Dumbledore fits the profile of the Magician, although I always thought he had a bit of the Hierophant in him as well...

[queenie]

Well, considering all the various schemes that Dumbledore is pulling throughout the books - how he prepares Harry to be sacrificed to Voldemort, keeping secrets from everybody - I think Dumbledore has plenty of the Trickster archetype in him - and the Trickster is one way of looking at the Magician.

Also, I think of the Magician and the Fool as being very closely linked - along similar lines to the High Priestess/Empress and Emperor/Hierophant (or alternately HP/H and E/E, whichever floats your boat, and I feel like I'm shipping my own Tarot deck.) Almost like the Magician and Fool are two sides of the same coin, or like the Magician is a slightly wiser version of the Fool.

I think that in this respect, Dumbledore makes a very good Magician, but I can also see where he might make a good Hierophant.

[vegablack]

I was thinking also of his playfulness, the use of candy as passwords and his silly word games.

(I must admit that I barely know what the Hierophant is.)

I think a lot of the characters could fit into many of the different cards. Maybe you need to make a statement with the cards -- tell a story. Pick some important cards and choose who will be those cards and then place the others accordingly.

This is a stupid question. Could Dumbledore be both cards at once in the same deck?

[queenie]

May 13, 2009 1:05:56 GMT -5 vegablack said:

I think a lot of the characters could fit into many of the different cards. Maybe you need to make a statement with the cards -- tell a story. Pick some important cards and choose who will be those cards and then place the others accordingly.

This is a stupid question. Could Dumbledore be both cards at once in the same deck?

You sound very interested in tarot, vegablack, so I would say that's enough qualification to participate in a casual discussion like this one.

And you're right - just about everyone in the books has several roles that they play - not only to Harry, but as a member of the world at large. Luna Lovegood, for example, in Nasubionna's HP Tarot, is cast as the High Priestess. This is very apt for her. However, in a different deck - one which paid less focus on Harry, I could see Luna as the Fool. Or the Moon. Or even Death. So it would be possible to think of many decks where everyone has a different card.

And can a person be on more than one card in the same deck -well, my personal deck, the Harmonious Tarot, uses illustrations that were not created for Tarot - rather, they're drawn from the picture books and storybooks that the artist illustrated over his lifetime. As a result, the same character is on the Strength card as on the Tower, and the same woman appears on the Ace of Pentacles, Five of Cups, Nine of Swords, and Queen of Wands. (Really makes me wonder what her story might be.)

On the Avatar the Last Airbender deck I drew, I united the Fool (Aang), the Magician (Zuko), Justice (Toph) and the Star (Katara) to create the World.

So, I would answer a tentative yes, you can have a person in more than one card in the same deck, as long as each card quite clearly highlights a different aspect of that person.

[starsea]

Absolutely, Remus, for example, could embody both The Hermit and The Moon.

[queenie]

I just got an idea for what the World card could look like in a Harry Potter deck - (from thinking of the Tarot of a Moon Garden, imagine that, Starsea ). The card symbolizes completion, the end of one cycle and the start of something else, love, travel, all sorts of good, good things. The enigma of the World is usually presented as a young woman dancing or floating in a wreath or an ouroboros (a snake eating its own tail), with the four symbols of the Evangelists (lion, eagle, man, and bull) around her.
It might seem to go without saying, but the image of little Lily Potter, running after the train that her brothers depart on, waving good-bye, with her parents smiling behind her, and echoing Ginny Weasley's run after her brother's train at the start of the series, sounds like a very good candidate for The World.

[starsea]

May 31, 2009 2:33:14 GMT -5 queenie said:

I just got an idea for what the World card could look like in a Harry Potter deck - (from thinking of the Tarot of a Moon Garden, imagine that, Starsea ).

Wow, can't imagine why.

It might seem to go without saying, but the image of little Lily Potter, running after the train that her brothers depart on, waving good-bye, with her parents smiling behind her, and echoing Ginny Weasley's run after her brother's train at the start of the series, sounds like a very good candidate for The World.

I like that idea... or the five of them standing together on the platform, Harry's world now complete.

[queenie]

Nasubionna's Harry Potter Tarot has been updated - the Four of Wands and Ten of Wands have been added (Harry receiving his Hogwarts letters, and Hermione overworking herself with the Time-Turner), plus two new Majors: the Lovers, (Harry and Ginny) and the Chariot (Ron in the giant chess game). The Star has been changed - it was the Patronus, but now it's Fawkes the phoenix, and the Patronus has been moved to Strength.

I think that the Patronus as Strength works very well - it worked well as the Star, too, but N points out that the ability to summon a positive memory in the face of despair takes great inner courage, and that the Patronus is also a solution found using nonviolence, self-control, and fortitude.

She makes a very good case for Harry and Ginny as the Lovers, too - pointing out that the Lovers can also be a card about making an ethical or moral choice, as Harry does when he decides to chose Ginny's safety over their happiness together.

What do you guys think?

www.nasubionna.net/tarot/