Basilisks and weasels

[burnoweatherhead]

No: HPFGUIDX 90699

After a thread on LJ which introduced the mythology of basilisks and 
weasels (hp_theories, crediting Jamie/phantom_heart) I researched 
this some more 
and discovered the following, which I'm presuming hasn't been posted 
before and isn't well known.

(pace Jamie)Of the three things that can kill a basilisk, weasels are 
its main enemy (the others are a cock crowing and the herb 'rue, a 
plant that could withstand the basilisk's poison breath, and it was 
used by weasels to heal themselves if they were injured during 
battles with this monster). Cue some significant stuff to be used in 
the Last Battle of Book 7?

>From classical times the notion has existed that basilisks' skin 
would repel snakes and spiders. It is said that such a skin was hung 
in a temple to Apollo and in another to Diana to ward off swallows as 
well as snakes and spiders.

On exploring this further, I think some of this might turn out to be 
crucial to the coming books - 'basilisk' is Greek for 'little king', 
which is in Latin 'Regulus'. Do we now know what happened to Sirius' 
younger brother?!

The weasel thing is affirmed so strongly in research, with quotes 
from Democritus and Pliny, that I think Ron is going to be the key to 
defeating LV. JKR has said that there are things in Book 2 she hid to 
be revealed in later books. I think this is the main one. Had Ron not 
been stuck behind the fall of stones, he would have done the job. If 
Regulus was the 'little king', then LV is the great king (and the 
basilisk also represents 'the evil one' in passages of Isaiah) and 
Ron will defeat it with the sacrifice of himself. (My own theory is 
that he'll do it with polyjuice potion, pretending to be Harry.)

Interestingly there's also stuff about the unnatural birth of the 
basilisk in Isaiah too. One site said 'The birth of the basilisk is 
anomalous. It is not part of a normal reproductive cycle, but is, 
rather, a genetic fluke, producing a monster.

And the quote is from Is.59:5 ...they conceive trouble and give birth 
to evil. They hatch the eggs of vipersand spin a spider's web. 
Whoever eats their eggs will die and when one is broken, an adder [or 
basilisk] is hatched.

In older translations the word is basilisk, but it was thought to be 
a hooded king cobra (whose traditional enemy is the mongoose).

(I also think this fits in with the 'Knight2King' theories, and 
the 'Weasley is our king' theory.)

Anyone wanting to explore this further can just google for 'weasel 
mythology basilisk'.

Burno