Halftime Talk

Yes, I finished the fifth picture and that means I am half way through my series. It’s time to recap what I tried to transpose and check with what I really realised. Dante’s Paradise is a piece of cultural heritage. Many artists have tried their luck with this material. I wanted to discover it for my own and I wanted to see it through eyes nobody else before me had seen this place. So, I set off with JKR’s Hogwarts castle and its inhabitants in mind. And today, after finishing with the Moon Sphere, I feel, like I am on a good way.

The Moon Sphere is how Dante enters into Paradise. It is the sphere for those who abandoned their vows. As such it still has the shadow of earthly life lying on it. Vows are a subject for itself in JK rowling’s Harry Potter series. We have to deal with life debts and unbreakable vows. And they are all connected with the name of Professor Snape.

As he is the dungeon dweller in Hogwarts castle – and for my purpose, the dungeons of Hogwarts equate to the first sphere of Paradise – he would probably be the first choice picture-wise coming to mind. His watery potions would tie in nicely to the watery aspects of the moon too. At least we use his office and potion ingrediences in the pic.

However, more so womanhood and female magic – to create new things, to nourish and feel – connect with the moon. In most languages other than German the moon is female. The full moon here stands for the woman in the high of her power, as the mother and wife.

Tonks is the one woman who becomes pregnant in the series. In m picture her bubblegum pink hair falls like a curtain, covering the magic at work in her belly. The hair here works like the curtain behind the Popess on the second card of the old Marseille Tarot set that hides the female magic in the temple behind her.

Her round belly is also the moon. And the moon spots Dante discusses with Beatrice shape up to a phoenix as the child is the quintessence of the relation of two people in love: One becomes Two, Two becomes Three, and out of the Third comes the One as the Fourth.

And that leads us back to the (almost) broken vow. It is a marriage vow I had in mind. Remus Lupin gave it to Tonks. But his boggart, and therefore the thing he is most afraid of, is the full moon. Sure, you can say it is because he is a werewolf. He fears that his animal self takes control of him once a month.

But wasn’t it also his animal self that was afraid of a close relationship with a woman? And wasn’t it also his animale self that made him want to flee once he saw himself faced with the responsibility of a family? He was ready to abandon his vow immediately. And that made Tonks and Lupin perfect inhabitants for the Moon Sphere in Professor Snape’s dungeon office.

Tags: Alchemy, art, Dante, Maria Prophetissa, Moon, painting, Paradise, Pregnancy, Remus Lupin, Tonks, Werewolf