what was Dumbledore's plan, really?

Thu Aug 18 14:57:38 UTC 2005

No: HPFGUIDX 137988

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Mari" <mariabronte at y...> wrote:

<regretful snip of reversals of fortune>

> Maybe I'm stretching things here, but I keep having the niggling
> feeling, when I put all this together, that an appearance of failure
> is a part of Dumbledore's plans.

Now bear with me because I am going on a winding road that ends up in 
this general area.

What is interesting in HBP is the appearance of The Tower Tarot 
card.  In another group, I wrote about the relationship between the 
Magus card (which I am equating with Voldemort and which I have 
discussed here as the basis of my theory that the missing Horcrux 
could the Ravenclaw's wand) and The Hanged Man card.  The Hanged Man, 
as you will remember, is the name of the pub in Little Hangleton.  I 
was doing some other reading and came across the note that the Hanged 
Man is the Tarot card which is the opposite of The Magus.

I read these various descriptions:

-------------------
1 - The Magician
To me, this card signifies someone who can take what they are given 
and mold it to suit them. Being able to control the forces around 
you. Reversed: being clumsy; unable to get anything to go right.

12 - The Hanged Man
A spiritual quest; this person is seeking knowledge and spiritual 
gain. In the Norse tarot, this card is represented by Odin hanging 
from the tree of Yggdrasil and grasping the runes, which signify 
knowledge and wisdom.  Reversed: Not seeing the spiritual side of a 
situation; maybe not  realising how important something is. This is a 
difficult card to give a general interpretation to; it is different 
in every reading.

http://handel.pacific.net.sg/%7Emun_hon/tarot/major.htm#fool
------------------------------------

and

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The Magus
This card signifies the divine motive in man, reflecting God, the 
will in the liberation of its union with that which is above. It is 
also the unity of individual being on all planes, and in a very high 
sense it is thought, in the fixation thereof. With further reference 
to the "sign of life" and its connection with the number 8, it may be 
remembered that Christian Gnosticism speaks of rebirth in Christ as a 
change "unto the Ogdoad." The mystic number is termed Jerusalem 
above, the Land flowing with Milk and Honey, the Holy Spirit and the 
Land of the Lord. According to Martinism, 8 is the number of Christ.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magician_%28Tarot_card%29

The Hanged Man
It is a card of profound but veiled significance. Its symbolism 
points to divinity, linking it to the death of Christ in Christianity 
and the stories of Osiris (Egyptian Mythology) and Mithras (Roman 
Mythology). In all of these stories, the destruction of self brings 
life to humanity; on the card, these are symbolized respectively by 
the hanged man and the living tree from which he swings. Hence, the 
Hanged Man represents the sanctity of all existence and its need for 
salvation by self-sacrifice. Its relationship to the other cards 
usually involves personal loss for a greater gain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hanged_Man
-------------------------------------

My first thought that The Magus is Voldemort (which I had already 
identified) and that The Hanged Man, his opposite, must be Harry. I 
ran this by my literary-based HP book group and the suggestion, from 
the person extremely well-versed in Tarot symbolism, came immediately 
back that The Hanged Man might more accurately refer to...Snape.

First I was reminded that we have the literal picture in the "Snape's 
Worst Memory" scene where he is literally hanging upside down in that 
scene.

So I looked at the descriptions again, and this caught my eye:

-----------------------------
Hence, the Hanged Man represents the sanctity of all existence and 
its need for salvation by self-sacrifice. Its relationship to the 
other cards usually involves personal loss for a greater gain.
------------------------------

This fits in with my own theory that this time Snape will choose what 
is right over what is easy and this time give up his own life (no 
time to put out my whole Snape theory; suffice it to say that I think 
the reason he seems so ambivalent in the book is that he himself is 
ambivalent and has not yet decided which side he will ultimately 
choose).Then I was provided with this information by someone in 
another subset of that group:

----------------------------------
Basic Tarot Story

As the Fool leaves the throne of the Goat God, he comes upon a Tower, 
fantastic, magnificent, and familiar. In fact, The Fool, himself, 
helped build this Tower back when the most important thing to him was 
making his mark on the world and proving himself better than other 
men. Inside the Tower, at the top, arrogant men still live, convinced 
of their rightness. Seeing the Tower again, the Fool feels as if 
lightning has just flashed across his mind; he thought he'd left that 
old self behind when he started on this spiritual journey. But he 
realizes now that he hasn't. He's been seeing himself, like the 
Tower, like the men inside, as alone and singular and superior, when 
in fact, he is no such thing. So captured is he by the shock of this 
insight, that he opens his mouth and releases a SHOUT! And to his 
astonishment and terror, as if the shout has taken form, a bolt of 
actual lightning slashes down from the heavens, striking the Tower 
and sending its residents leaping out into the waters below.

In a moment, it is over. The Tower is rubble, only rocks remaining. 
Stunned and shaken to the core, the Fool experiences grief, profound 
fear and disbelief. But also, a strange clarity of vision, as if his 
inner eye has finally opened. He tore down his resistance to change 
and sacrifice (Hanged man), then broke free of his fear and 
preconceptions of death (Death); he dissolved his belief that 
opposites cannot be merged (Temperance) and shattered the chains of 
ambition and desire (The Devil). But here and now, he has done what 
was hardest: destroyed the lies he held about himself. What's left is 
the bare, absolute truth. On this he can rebuild his soul.

Basic Tarot Meaning

With Mars as its ruling planet, the Tower is a card about war, a war 
between the structures of lies and the lightning flash of truth. The 
Tower, as Wang points out, stands for "false concepts and 
institutions that we take for real." When the Querent gets this card, 
they can expect to be shaken up, to be blinded by a shocking 
revelation. It sometimes takes that to see a truth that one refuses 
to see. Or to bring down beliefs that are so well constructed. What's 
most important to remember is that the tearing down of this 
structure, however painful, makes room for something new to be built.

Thirteen's Observations

No card scares a Tarot reader like the Tower - or the person they're 
reading for if that person knows anything about Tarot cards. It is 
however one of the clearest cards when it comes to meaning. False 
structures, false institutions, false beliefs are going to come 
tumbling down, suddenly, violently and all at once. What's important 
to remember as a tarot reader is that the one you're reading for 
likely does not know that something is false. Not yet. To the 
contrary, they probably believe that their lover is being faithful, 
that their religious beliefs are true and right, that there are no 
problems in their family structure, that everything is fine at 
work...oh, and that they're fine. Just fine, really.

Alas, they're about to get a very rude awakening. Shaken up, torn 
down, blown asunder. And all a reader can really do to soften the 
blow is assure the Querent that it is for the best. Nothing built on 
a lie, on falsehoods, can remain standing for long. Better to tear it 
all down and rebuild on the truth. It is not going to be pleasant or 
painless or easy, but it will be for the best.

Courtesy of http://www.leakylounge.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?
act=ST;f=65;t=10391;st=0
-----------------------------------

This was pretty exciting reading to me because, as I wrote to the 
group back then, while it's easy to read the Lightning Struck Tower 
as a terrible blow to the Order and to Hogwarts, I instead thought 
that it could also be read as a symbol of the beginning of  the 
reversal of Voldemort's power--the reversal of the Magus, leading to 
his inablilty to control the things around him anymore.

jujube