The Alchemy of JK Rowling

Chapter 61 - The Golden Snitch

The snitch is the winged sphere on top of the caduceus. It’s a golden sphere with wings.

The caduceus is extremely ancient and goes back at least to ancient Egypt. The Egyptian god Thoth was shown carrying one. This god is identified with Hermes Trismegistus, writer of the Corpus Hermeticum. The Greek God Hermes is also shown as carrying a caduceus. It is an extremely important symbol in the teachings of liberation, for it symbolises the liberated human being. The central staff is the ‘tree of life’, i.e. the serpent-fire channel or spinal cord. The two serpents are the left and right strings of the sympathetic nervous system. The sphere at the top is the new consciousness. The wings symbolise the ability of the new consciousness to fly to great heights. It is not earth-bound like the ordinary human consciousness. The fact that Hermes carries this staff shows that the new consciousness can communicate with God.

Each snake coils around the staff three and a half times, makes seven coils in all. Harry is a ‘seeker’ for the new consciousness. The symbolism fits perfectly. When the new soul is born in the human being, it is unconscious. The person concerned has to seek to make the new soul conscious. He flies through ‘the game of life’, looking for the new consciousness. All around him is the interplay of opposites. This world consists of pairs of opposites, such as good and evil etc. When the seeker finds the snitch the game ends. The seeker enters the new consciousness which links him with God and he is no longer part of the world of opposites. He is a citizen of the Sixth Cosmic Plane, the Kingdom of Heaven, Nirvana.