In rereading some of the FAQs at the end of The Deathly Hallows Lectures, I came across Brother Granger’s bit on beheadings. Though I appreciate and agree with his assessment of Rowling’s fascination with A Tale of Two Cities, I doubt that her primary intent was merely to give a head nod. Yes, she said that Darnay’s line was the single greatest in English, but we cannot forget how she intended to get to the end of her series. It was not her tertiary source of Charles Dickens, but rather her secondary source of Abraham Lindy, that first promoted beheadings. Always keep the alchemy of the series at the forefront of your mind. Let’s revisit some of the beheadings throughout the series (see the end of DHL):

• Buckbeak’s near-offing
• Ron’s Severing Charm on his Dress Robes
• The fake-wand battle where the parrot eats the head off the fish
• Harry’s prediction of his own death-by-decaptataion (via Trelawney)
• The Weasley twins’ Headless Hats
• Nearly Headless Nick
• The Headless Hunt

As is normally the case, I believe “Headless Hunt” to be a clue from Rowling, challenging us to pick up on these things. What does Lindy have to say about all this off-wit-‘is-head business?

The decapitation or dismemberment of the bird, lion, serpent, dragon, tree, man or king signifies the dissolution, putrefaction and division of the body, the matter in the alembic, at the black nigredo, the first step in the [alchemical] opus. This stage, which is a time of sacrifice and lament, is sometimes referred to as the caput mortuum or caput corvi (see crow, raven). . . The Six Keys of Eudoxus clearly equated the dissolution of the matter with the beheading and death of the bird: “the wise Artist ought to dissolve the body with the spirit: he must cut off the Raven’s head.”

Wha?

For those of you who’ve read all seven Harry Potter books, continue reading.  It’s simple. At the nigreddo stage, the alchemist must strip off any matter that would burden the rising of the soul toward illumination and perfection (what they call “the philosopher’s stone”). The easiest way to get the juice out of a Gusher is to bite off the top. It’s morbid, but for an Alchemist, the easiest way to get the soul out of a burdened, vile body is to cut off the head. The vast majority of Rowling’s interactions with headlessness come to us at the tail end of the nigredo and the beginning of the albedo. Think of Buckbeak. We think he dies in book three by the end of the nigredo. However, immediately afterward we start getting the information we need (albedo) about time travel, Hermione and everything else. You cut off the head of the “raven” to get the soul out.

Here’s my question: Who best symbolizes the nigreddo in the books? Who is always oppressing Harry? Who flaps in with black hair, black robes just like a raven?

Severus Snape.

Coincidentally, Granger thought at one point that his name meant “Sever His Nape.” You know the front part of the neck we call the Adam’s apple? That’s what the old guys called a “nape.”

Check out Granger’s count in the FAQ:

1. George Weasley (looses an ear)
2. Mad-Eye Moody (not sure exact manner of death, but his magical eye was removed from his head and placed in Unbridge’s office door)
3. Bathilda Bagshot (Nagini comes out of her neck)
4. Harry, Ron and Hermione (all physically injured to some degree by wearing the locket horcrux around their necks)
5. Hermione (throat almost slit @ Malfoy Mannor, blood is drawn)
6. Wormtail (strangles himself after harry reminds him of life debt)
7. Snape (bitten by Nagini in the neck)
8. Neville Longbottom (sorting hat bursts into flame while on his head)
9. Nagini (Nevill beheads snake with sword of Gryffindor)

Never mind that the number on the list for creation (four) is the soul-triptic of Harry and his friends, or that the number of duality (two) is Mad-Eye Moody’s eye that sees through things just like a window, or that the number of origins (three) is a history teacher, or that the number of unwholeness (six) is Wormtail, or that the number of New Creation (eight) is Neville post-Harry’s resurrection.

What’s Rowling’s favorite number? What is “the most magical number”?

7

Number seven on the list of beheadings in The Deathly Hallows  is Sever-his-Nape. Harry went underground in every book and seven times in book seven, pointing us to this death-resurrection motif. Could it be that there were beheadings in every book to warn us for the coming seventh beheading in book seven? Did you see in the second movie how Voldemort severed Snape’s nape before Nagini even got to him? But why?

Let’s read further in Lindy:

The protagonist in Andreae’s The Chymical Wedding likewise must witness the beheading of the king and his entourage who are clothed in black garments: “Finally, there stept in a very cole-black tall Man, who has in his hand a sharp Ax. Now after the old King had first been brought to the seat, his Head was instantly whipt off, and wrapped up in black cloth.” The mercurial blood or water of life is collected in a golden bowl and used to resurrect the dead bodies. The beheading of the king on his knees (symbolizing the raw matter) is illustrated. . .

Snape, as the Prince, might as well have died on his knees, but that’ not my point. My point is that as he’s dying, Harry takes his memories. In the movie, they are symbolized as tears. It’s terribly simple to see the water of life connection. And what do these memories reveal to us?

Harry takes them into the silver bowl of the pensieve and uses it to get the albedo of albedos, the clue of clues. He uses it to resurrect the memory of his dead parents. He discovers the last piece of the puzzle, the last thing he needs to know that he must throw off the body that entangles, to cast off life itself and die. It is only after the crow, the prince, is beheaded by the executioner that Harry’s spirit can rise to the occasion. His mother’s eyes and memory live on in him, despite the fact that his father’s lesser traits oppressed another. It is in killing off the jerk father that his loving mother lives. Oedipus anyone?

Where’d she get this idea?

I imagine it started back in her college years when she read a classic English piece about a man who died so that the life and memory of his lady-love might go on, even if it was in the arms of that other jerk.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

– Severus Snape.