[HPforGrownups] Arithmancy (was: JKR's priorities ...)

[Jennifer Boggess Ramon]

No: HPFGUIDX 32015

At 4:55 PM -0500 12/20/01, Elizabeth Dalton wrote:
>
>Numerology is the practice of converting names , dates, and other facts into
>numerical representations and manipulating them mathematically to find out a
>"true number" associated with them. Each number is thought to have certain
>properties. (I'm by no means an expert on this, but I think that's the gist of
>it.)

This is essentially correct (I'm not an expert either, but numerology 
is one of my fortunetelling hobbies).  It's multileveled, though - a 
particular name, for instance, can be interpreted by the names of the 
letters taken as a group, then by the digits in their sum, and so on 
- you keep adding the digits until you get down to a single digit, 
the so-called "true number".

>(Strictly speaking, numerology is a form of divination, but 
>evidently the wizard
>world differentiates between forms. I'm not sure why this should be the case.

Given that Hermione hates Divination and loves Arithmancy, there must 
be some fundamental difference in the Potterverse.

My best guess: Divination as taught by Trelawney is almost entirely 
intuitive.  Gazing is a matter of flinging one's inner eye wide open 
and hoping tere's something there to look at.  Tea leaf reading is 
not too different; you take a random pattern of flecks and "read" 
various meanings into them.  The students try to do tea-leaf reading 
"by the book," without the intuitive interpretation, and don't get 
anything that Trelawney recognizes as useful.  When Trelawney makes 
her real prediction, it's so intuitive it shuts her conscious mind 
down for a bit - she's practically just a medium for it.  (This 
argument breaks down over palmistry, which really is mostly a set of 
fixed correspondences, but we really don't see much of that in the 
book.)

Numerology, on the other hand, isn't really an interpretive method; 
"four" is "stable" no matter how you look at it.  However, there is a 
certain ammount of "puzzling out" when connecting the different 
levels of digits.  In short, it's an intellectual method that 
Hermione can get behind.

>I
>wouldn't say that numerology requires any more math than astrology would, for
>example.

Astrology requires a _lot_ of cold calculation if you don't have a 
computer.  However, Harry and Ron seem to be able to get by with a 
lot of, um, "intuitive" stuff when doing planetary charts for 
Trelawney, without bothering with the math, and she seems quite 
pleased with them.

>Then again, it might be that JKR has something completely different in
>mind when she says numerology.)

This is certainly possible.

>Gramatica is more obscure. There's something nagging in the back of my mind
>about this term. It may be just some of JKR's pseudo-Latin terminology, but
>maybe not. But under this spelling the only references I can dig up, online or
>in my own references, seem to be to the surname of a football player.

It looks to me like a combination of "grammar" and "gematria."

"Grammar" is related to the term "glamour," in the sense of "casting 
a glamour over someone" - that is, a spell.  "Spell" in the magical 
sense and "spell" in the putting letters in order sense are also 
related.  Originally, the act of writing was thought to be magical in 
and of itself - someone made weird marks on papyrus, and someone 
miles away could look at the paper and know what the first person was 
thinking!  Here, it might refer to the rules for writing words and/or 
numbers so as to give them magical force.

"Gematria" is the name for the Kabbalistic system of numerology, 
which not only ascribes meaning to the digits but associates them 
with major cosmic forces.  Using gematria, one could supposedly make 
an inscription that had magical effects; one common use of this in 
folklore is creating a golem and animating it with a gematric 
inscription.

Amulets and Talismans are curiously absent so far from the Hogwarts 
curriculum.  Perhaps they are an advanced subject that combines 
Charms and Arithmancy?

>Elizabeth
>(who is nearly as skeptical as Hermione regarding the value of most forms of
>divination, but likes reading about systems as a hobby)

  - Boggles
(who is quite fond of her Tarot cards and Runes, but can't scry worth a darn)

-- 
  - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon			boggles at earthlink.net
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