[HPforGrownups] Dumbledore's and Ron's watches (Was: Harry can still contact Dumbledore ?)

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 168834

From: justcarol67 <justcarol67 at yahoo.com>
>Sent: May 16, 2007 12:57 PM
>"Dumbledore . . . took a golden watch from his pocket and examined it.
>nIt was a very odd watch. It had twelve hands but no numbers; instead,
>little planets were moving around the edge" (SS Am. ed. 12). DD uses
>it to tell time, apparently; he consults it, says "Hagrid's late," and
>puts it back in his pocket. Whether it has other powers is unclear,
>but it reminds me of Mrs. Weasley's clock, which has a hand for each
>member of the family, more than of a Time Turner. (Twelve planets?
>Maybe wizards count Pluto and the moon as planets and presciently knew
>about Eris, but that's still only eleven. The sun as a planet???)

Since there is a long tradition of astrological practice in Great Britain, it is not unreasonable to assume that JKR has more knowledge of astrology than the average American (who, at most, knows some "sun sign" astrology).

The ancients saw that the stars were pretty much fixed in their positions in the sky. But there were several objects that, from the point of view of the Earth, appeared to move agaisnt the background of stars. These were called "planets", and included the Sun and the Moon. They also divided the sky into 12 equal sections, and called them the "signs", after a prominent constellation that appeared in each one. In Western Astrology (and therefore the one with which JKR is probably most familiar), the constellations were only labels; Aries started at the moment of the spring equinox (in other words, when the Sun was directly over the Equator); the rest of the signs went from there. Each sign was "ruled" by a planet. The fact that there were only 7 planets was a sore point. When Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto were discovered, astrologers added them in, but that was still only 12. Ceres, Vesta, Chiron, and Black Moon Lilith are all candidates for the last couple of planets, although Eris is a major candidate, as well.

One can guess in the WW, there are better telescopes than the Muggles have, and therefore they have discovered a few new planets.