The Alchemy of JK Rowling

Chapter 11 - Harry 7

The Seven Trials(3):

The fourth trial is a giant game of chess with pieces that whack each other quite vigorously when they win a move. The children have to take the places of some of the pieces and play a winning game to get to the other side of the board and continue their quest. This game reminds us of the chess game played in The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosycross on the seventh day. Christian Rosycross tells us that the game he saw represented virtue against vice. We could see the chess game in Harry Potter in the same light. Notice, too, that it is Ron who directs the game. In other words, it’s the old earthly personality that has the important role to play here.

What Harry Potter is telling us here is that the earthly personality needs to have a very good sense of what’s vice and what’s virtue. He must have a very strong faculty of distinction between right and wrong. At the end of the game, Ron sacrifices himself to the white queen so that Harry can checkmate the king. The earthly personality has to sacrifice itself so that the New Soul can go on its glorious triumphal march back to its Fatherland. This is the meaning of the words, He who is willing to give up his life for my sake shall find it. In the New Testament this is represented by the beheading of John and the entry of Jesus on to the centre of the stage. Fortunately Ron doesn’t die at this stage but is merely knocked unconscious by the queen.

The fifth trial is a gigantic troll which is guarding the passage. However the three children have already passed this test in an earlier venture and so they don’t have to do it again. The troll is already lying there unconscious.

Once again it was actually Ron who defeated the troll. He cast a spell which lifted the giant’s club and smashed it down on its skull. We can learn from this that the earthly personality has to learn to control the tendencies and passions of his lower nature and its mentality. Ron, to his surprise, finds that he is capable of greater things than he knew.

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