The prophecy - a maverick view....

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 128332

I have tended not to post on the topic of the prophecy because, after 
it came into the public domain nearly two years ago, it has been the 
subject of endless discussion. Folk who have joined the group over 
that period may not know that threads on this are rife because of the 
convoluted searching system of Yahoo. Having been reading some of the 
latest comments and ruminating on them, I thought I would add a few 
thoughts of my own which may, or may not, be relevant.

I have always been rather sceptical of prophecies since, as a Sixth 
Former, I was involved in a school production of "Macbeth" where it 
is shown that prophecies can be very open to misleading and 
misinterpretation.

However, there are some interesting parallels with the Shakespearian 
prophecies and those currently exercising our collective mind.

In case some readers are not familiar with the story of Macbeth, let 
me give a potted version of the events. Macbeth is a Scottish 
nobleman – the Thane of Glamis.  Returning from a battle he is 
greeted by three witches who hail him with his title and also name 
him Thane of Cawdor and prophesy that he will become the king of 
Scotland. He is then greeted by messengers from King Duncan who bring 
news that he has indeed become the Thane of Cawdor.  He returns to 
his castle of Dunsinane where Lady Macbeth persuades him to kill the 
king while on a visit to fulfil the prediction.

He later visits the witches and sees three apparitions who prophesy 
that (1) he should beware of Macduff, the Thane of Fife, (2) he 
should not worry about opposition "for none of woman born shall harm 
Macbeth" and (3) "Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be, until Great 
Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him"

[This scene has a link to Harry Potter because, in the "medium that 
dare not speak its name", the song which is sung at the opening of 
the Hogwarts school year (Double, double, toil and trouble) draws its 
words from this latter scene.]

After a reign of oppression and terror, MacDuff escapes to England 
returning with an army to face him. As they approach Dunsinane, the 
soldiers are told to each take a branch from the trees of Birnam Wood 
and carry them to give an impression of a larger army. An alarmed 
Macbeth is told by a messenger: "I look'd towards Birnam and anon 
methought the Wood began to move."

Finally, Macduff  and Macbeth meet face to face and Macbeth throws 
the third prophecy at his opponent to be faced with: "let the Angel 
whom thou still hast serv'd tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's 
womb untimely ripp'd" and in the fight which follows Macbeth is 
killed.

So the prophecies are fulfilled but not in the way expected.

As an aside, JRR Tolkien was so disappointed at the way Shakespeare 
resolved the Birnam Wood prophecy that, when he wrote the Two Towers, 
he created the concept of the Huorns – the trees which could move.

The point here is that the way in which Birnam Wood coming to 
Dunsinane Hill was fulfilled and also the concept of "of woman born" 
were very different to the outcome expected by Macbeth. 

Prophecies are notoriously difficult to interpret as Macbeth found. 
The Delphic oracle was noted for its enigmatic and sometimes baffling 
pronouncements and the prophecies of Nostrodamus have been bandied 
around for a lot longer than those of Sybill Trelawney. So, what 
about our famous or infamous prophecy?  We are told that the 
one "with the power to vanquish" the Dark Lord would be born at the 
end of July. As has been pointed out on numerous 
occasions, "vanquish" in no way means to kill. My dictionary 
gives "to defeat thoroughly, conquer, overcome, overwhelm, rout, 
trounce".

This has already happened – more than once. Voldemort was vanquished 
at Godric's Hollow; but was it by the "one with the power"? 
Continuing, if Harry is the one, then he repeated this defeat when 
Quirrell failed to kill him and Voldemort was banished from a 
physical form again. So he has been vanquished twice at least. OK, he 
returned in "Goblet of Fire" but does not seem to have recaptured his 
earlier powers and influence to the same degree. So, in a way, this 
part of the prophecy has been met. If you consider the thirteen and a 
half years between Godric's Hollow and the rebirth of Voldemort, the 
Dark Lord was out of commission from late 1982 to whenever he managed 
to possess Quirrell a year or so before the events of "Philosopher's 
Stone" and then out of action physically from then until the rebirth 
spell was activated  on 24th June 1995. So Harry has demonstrated the 
power to vanquish twice; when next?

But then we reach "and either must die at the hand of the other for 
neither can live while the other survives". This to me is a 
contradiction in terms. Both Harry and Voldemort are alive. This 
contradicts the prophecy; one of them should be dead and one should 
be surviving
. So what do we make of this? Do we allow it to drive us 
round the twist while we try to analyse what our Delphic Professor 
has said?  And then the question of one dying at the hand of the 
other is open to so many interpretations. Harry could  attempt to 
kill Voldemort or vice versa; the latter has already had several 
attempts in one way or another. A situation could be created to cause 
a death perhaps by misadventure, not direct killing; Harry or 
Voldemort could attempt to lure the other into a trap or a dangerous 
location. Harry (for I consider he is less likely to try a direct 
attack) could be attacked by Voldemort and kill him in self-defence
..

The whole matter is like a tennis net – full of holes. We can argue 
the semantics of "either" and "neither" but I think there are other 
areas which equally need to be addressed as I have attempted to point 
out here.

To put one more ingredient into the recipe, the use of the 
word "live". In the Macbeth prophecy, we saw that the use of the 
word "born" was not what we expected. Coming at "live" from a 
different angle, Jesus remarked at one point "I have come that they 
may have life and have it to the full" (John 10:10). Could this mean 
that, say, Harry could not live life to the full, to have a 
satisfying and normal life while Voldemort remained and had not been 
dealt with? Could this be that his life will be constricted and 
hedged about and thus not as fulfilled as it ought to be for the 
moment? This might be a possibility to answer the paradox of both 
living while both also survive.

I think I've confused myself even more now
..