Trelawney and Ignorance

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 96874

Mo wrote:
We know that Trelawney doesn't remember when she makes
and ACTUAL prediction.  (in PoA, after HP's final, she
makes a prediction and then when HP tells her about
it, she doesn't recall it and thinks he is crazy)
 
I think Trelawney doesn't even KNOW that she made the
prophecy about HP or she would be all over it. <snip>
So, since DD is keeping things under wraps, he doesn't
let Trelawney know of her own prophecy, and
henceforth, Trelawney doesn't bother to think when HP
was born.
 
AmanitaMuscaria wrote: 
> <snip>I thought the interaction with Umbridge was JKR showing us a
cruelly funny disconnectedness of Trelawney with the real world, but
looking at it from T's utter unworldliness, it has a different cast -
I was seeing Luna as the 'holy fool' in this tale, but Trelawney fit
the role much better. <snip>

Carol:
I agree with previous posters that two points 1) Trelawney's inability
to remember her own prophecies and 2) the fact that most teachers have
no idea when their students were born are sufficient to explain
Trelawney's mistake about Harry's birthday. Even her
great-great-grandmother Cassandra probably wouldn't have known it had
she been in a similar position--seers aren't omniscient. They only
make ambiguous and sometimes infrequent prophecies. Also not knowing
Harry's birthday doesn't mean she doesn't know who Harry is. It's
stated in the prophecy but it isn't common knowledge. In fact, her
frequent allusions to Harry's death suggest the opposite--she knows
exactly who he is--The Boy Who Lived after his encountering Voldemort
as a baby but who might not be so lucky the next time around. (Also
she, like the other teachers, has no doubt been told that the
"murderer" Sirius Black is after Harry.) I think it's interesting that
she sees what she thinks is a Grim in the tea leaves and the crystal
ball without knowing that Sirius is an animagus and that Harry really
has been seeing a big black dog. Maybe Trelawney is not the total
fraud she appears to be, with only two real prophecies that anyone
knows about. Maybe she really does see things in the crystal ball--she
just misinterprets them.

Which reminds me of a manuscript I've been editing about New Age
religions in the 1990s, the very time frame of HP. Britain's New Age
Foundation actually teaches (taught?) the following courses: applied
astrology, dream analysis, and tasseography (tea leaf reading). Hm.
Whom do we know who could pass as an eccentric New Age Muggle and be
just the right person to teach those courses?

Carol, with apologies to any New Agers who might happen to be list members