Dear Friends,

In our other discussion group, Harry Potter for Seekers, we are discussing the symbolism of Harry's eyes, which are green. This seems to be rather important, but I need help understanding the symbolism, which is most probably alchemical. Thanks to John Granger we know (or at least have the strongest possible suspicions) that the greenness of their Lily Potter's eyes, and hence Harry's (who has his mother's eyes), points to Beatrice of Dante's Divine Comedy, who has emerald eyes. Jan van Rijckenborgh points out that Beatrice personifies the realisation of the divine potential in the human being, and of course I have been asserting for many years that Lily personifies the divine potential, while Harry personifies its realisation.

But this is only the beginning of our investigation! This doesn't tell us anything about WHY Beatrice has emerald eyes, and hence why Lily and Harry do. In fact I know nothing about the symbolism of emerald. And this is where I'm turning to you. Can any of you give us a clue as to what is the symbolism behind emerald? I think this is important, because green is such an important colour in Harry Potter, and in alchemy generally.

I'll tell you what I know; please have a think about this, and write to the group whatever occurs to you to help us in this investigation.

I'll start at the beginning: the oldest so called alchemical work is The Emerald Tablet, or  Tabula Smaragdina supposedly written by Hermes Trismegistus. Why emerald? What is so important about the mineral and the colour? What is its property that the symbolism is based on?

One of the most knowledgeable members of Harry Potter for Seekers, Audrey Spindler, has written the following in Message 3136:

>>Emerald (green) should also be important, especially the "smaragdine eyesight" symbol since, as often said, "at the end of the Great Work, when the alchemist has "discovered the quintessence of things" and has become the "Filius philosophorum, son of the philosophers and therefore eternal child in possession of spiritual gold, the initiated alchemist could have the smaragdine eyesight (that is emerald green)" (Enc. des Symboles, p.167)." Harry's green eyes in short will play their part..."

In the King's Cross chapter, Harry does not need to wear glasses anymore - he has reached the inner conjunction, quintessence, Dragon's Blood, the true smaragdine eyesight. He has truer vision now. <<

These are important clues, and they confirm my suspicions that emerald, both as a colour and a mineral, has an enormous symbolic meaning. But why??! Why should a person with smaragdine eyesight have true inner vision? Why does it symbolise the attainment of the spiritual gold, and the knowledge of the quintessence of things?

In Harry Potter you can't really separate emerald or green from ruby, or red. When one is present, so is the other. There is the obvious one of the two enemies: Harry and Draco, as well as the two contrasting houses they belong to. The red-green animosity runs like a red and green thread through the whole story.

It is especially emphasised in Part 4. It starts off very prominently with the World Quidditch Cup. The two opposing teams are Ireland and Bulgaria, and right from the start we are bombarded with references to green and red, the colours of the respective teams. Whole areas of the camping site are covered in green or red, and everyone is wearing large green or red emblems all over their clothing. And yet Krum, belonging to the "red" country, joins the 'green" table of Slytherin when he comes to Hogwarts because he belongs to a "water" school. I suppose red is a good "fire" colour, and green a good "water" one.

Red and green become extremely significant in the duel at the end of Part 4. Harry and Voldemort face each other. Harry's green eyes look straight into Voldemort's red ones. Then this is what happens:

A jet of green light issued from Voldemort's wand just as a jet of red light blasted from Harry's - they met in midair - and suddenly Harry's wand was vibrating as though an electric charge were surging through it; his hand seized up around it; he couldn't have released it if he'd wanted to - and a narrow beam of light connected the two wands, neither red nor green, but bright, deep gold.

I think this is one of the most beautiful sentences in the septology. There is obviously a resolution of opposites here. Voldemort with his red eyes issues the Avada Kedavra curse, which is green, and Harry with his green eyes issues the red disarming spell. The result is a golden cage which does as follows:

And then an unearthly and beautiful sound filled the air. ... It was coming from

every thread of the light-spun web vibrating around Harry and Voldemort. It was a sound Harry recognised, though he had heard it only once before in his life: phoenix song. It was the sound of hope to Harry. . . the most beautiful and welcome thing he had ever heard in his life. . . . He felt as though the song were inside him instead of just around him. ... It was the sound he connected with Dumbledore, and it was almost as though a friend were speaking in his ear. . .

This saves Harry's life. The worst curse - green - is absorbed, as it were, by the disarming spell - red - , which results in gold. Of course red is also the rubedo stage, which is the third stage in the making of the Philosopher's Stone - to  make gold.

Throughout the septology there is that conflict between red and green, which is resolved at the end of the story:

"You won't be killing anyone else tonight," said Harry as they circled, and stared into each other's eyes, green into red.

[...]

A red-glow burst suddenly across the enchanted sky above them as an edge of dazzling sun appeared over the sill of the nearest window. The light hit both of their faces at the same time, so that Voldemort’s was suddenly a flaming blur. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he too yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco's wand:

"Avada Kedavra!"

"Expelliarmus!" The bang was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that erupted between them, at the dead centre of the circle they had been treading, marked the point where the spells collided. Harry saw Voldemort's green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder Wand fly high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted ceiling like the head of Nagini, spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last. And Harry, with the unerring skill of the Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward. Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing. Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hand, staring down at his enemy's shell.

How intensely beautiful! How sublime. Harry Potter summed up in a formula: red + green = gold. Or emerald + ruby = gold.

But despite the beauty and the grandeur of this theme, it still doesn't answer the question: why emerald? why green? Why did Beatrice have emerald eyes? Why the Emerald Tablet? Why not the chrysoprase tablet?

Help me somebody!