Luna or Diana

[Nora Renka]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, sean dwyer <ewe2 at a...> wrote:
> So, my favourite new character. Who is she really, and what is she 
doing?

<snip>

> Robert Graves in his amazing book 'The White Goddess' believes that 
> Diana and Luna are two faces of the Triple Goddess: Diana, the
> Earth, Luna the Sky (moon in all phases), and Persephone the 
> Underworld. Each have three phases. Another source says Diana was 
> of the heavens, Luna the earth, and Hecate/Persephone the 
> underworld.

One quick note: you *do* know that White Goddess is pretty much 
completely and utterly discredited as a work of serious scholarship 
on myth, right?  It's a fun read, but it's ultimately way more about 
Robert Graves, his period and their obsession with what myth meant to 
them and his ideas of poetic inspiration, than anything else.  His 
kind of wide-spreading structuralist equivalency, and Joseph 
Campbell's as well, are not taken seriously on the academic level by 
people who study mythology, particularly classical mythoi, seriously.
Sure, every figure that has the same overt figures looks related, but 
only when you wipe out all the background context.

When it comes to myth 'Greco-Roman' is also deeply misleading, as 
well.  Roman religion and Greek religion are fundamentally truly 
profoundly different.  The borrowings and adaptations of Greek 
mythical figures into Roman ideas either 1) put them into a wildly 
different cosmological scheme 2) took place in an era of witty 
skepticism fully aware of what they were doing (Ovid, for example).

> Hence her apparent qualities and no little mystery. If JKR sees her 
> as twin sister of Apollo (and astrologically Harry is a dark Leo), 
> that is intriguing. The family he never knew he had? His true 
> complement? If he projects as Apollo, what is it in him that she 
> reflects as Luna? As a Leo, Harry is a king, is Luna therefore a 
> queen? Is that to do with the hidden royalty suggested by HBP? Does 
> Luna represent maturity in some way for Harry? Or is she a mirror 
> in which he sees something he hadn't recognised before?

I don't think it really means much of anything.  JKR uses mythology, 
sure, but she uses it in a highly idiosyncratic way, and just as 
often splits things off completely from their source--in other words, 
she may use a basic and obvious connotation, but I can't think of any 
cases where it goes deeper.  Remus Lupin is a great example (at least 
so far); he doesn't have a twin, he's not descended from divinity, 
and I don't think he's going to be murdered after founding a city.  
She just wanted the wolf connotations, which are really almost too 
twee for words, and does give away something to the astute reader.

Lots of the names have symbolism, but they seem primarily restricted 
to such within the little world that she's created.  I don't see any 
future to the intricate schemes of plot detection founded on 
mythology, or alchemy, or history.  She's definitely a sentimental 
artist, and not a naive one (to borrow that time-worn yet useful 
distinction).

-Nora was, once upon a time, a classicist, and still loves to talk 
shop