Alchemical Structure in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Intro

This is a post on further thoughts on the relationship between structure and characters in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The content actually goes back beyond at least my own work on chiasm and I think beyond Dr Granger’s own work on ring composition in the Harry Potter series. It goes all the way back to his 2002 book The Hidden Key to Harry Potter:Understanding the Meaning, Genius, and Popularity of Joanne Rowling's HarryPotter Novels, between the release of books 4 (2000) and 5 (2003), which was the first thing that I read by Dr Granger. At that point he was emphasizing alchemy most heavily, and I am sort of returning here to applying a little of his method to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

The only thing I would note further at the outset is that alchemy and ring composition are not competing structures. What I am going to be emphasizing here is not so much the relation of plot events to each other as chiastic-paired elements, but rather the relation between characters as the primary actors in that narrative, their positioning in relation to each other on a symbolic level. As I have said elsewhere, I think that level of characterization is equally important.

Basic Alchemy

Alchemy is most known for the attempt to turn base metal (most commonly lead) into a “noble metal” (usually gold), and so it is, at root, defined by transformation, which is done by way of the crucible, a sort of cup or dish, with certain elements used in certain orders and heat applied. However, Alchemy is significant beyond the merely physical, and the physical elements are symbolic of non-physical. In its fullest form, alchemy is about producing not physical gold, but the “golden soul.” In this sense, while it is most commonly known as the precursor of chemistry, its thinking is really more properly the precursor of psychology, which seeks to produce the healed soul, and indeed, Carl Jung, one of the seminal fathers of modern psychology, devoted an entire work to Psychology and Alchemy (I have had it on my shelf for a while and hope soon to delve into it).

In the process, there are four elements surrounding the crucible, one on each side. On the top there is the “white,” on the left is the red sulfur, on the right is quicksilver (mercury), and on the bottom is black for the base metal/material human. From the interaction of these, gold/the golden soul is produced in the crucible by some process in which heat is the catalyst. The symbolic application of this principle to human beings, e.g. in psychology, should be fairly evident: through the heat of some kind of trial, various elements in a persons life—their spiritual side (white, on the top, is usually taken as symbolic of pure spirit), their material body (black on the bottom), their fiery or animal or more volatile side (volatile sulfur on the left), and their more cool reasoning side that is less fettered by biological animal psychology (quicksilver on the right)—interact to transform the person as a whole into the golden soul, the perfected soul, the healed soul.

The “Magnum Opus” (“great work,” the process) of alchemy is described as having a set number of stages, although the number varies. It can vary according to major grouping, but it is also the case that individual numbering systems have undergone development. So, for instance, the twelve-stage, seven-stage, and three-stage descriptions of the process are distinct conceptions, but the three-stage—nigredo (black), albedo (white), rubedo (red)—developed from the four-stage description in the fifteenth century when thinkers began subsuming a “yellow” (citrinitas) stage that originally was thought to be between the white and red stages into the red stage itself.

Alchemy in Harry Potter:

The base for Dr Granger’s work in The Hidden Key is what is known as literary alchemy, which is basically the well-attested practice of using the structures of alchemy as the structures of literary works. For instance, Chaucer is said to have developed an alchemical form of satire that some claim plays even in Terry Pratchett’s use of satire in his discworld series. This is obviously the most fitting use of alchemy, since narrative is, at base, about the transformation of characters through the plot.

I’m not going to detail the seven-stage process here but simply note that Dr Granger, of course, applies it to the seven books of the Potter series. At the time he wrote The Hidden Key, he had only the first four books with which to work, but given the presence of other alchemical material in the books, the principle is sound. Among those elements is that, according to legend, the real historical person Nicolas Flamel was an alchemist. Finding evidence that he was an actual practitioner (or attempting to be) of the physical art is difficult, but he was a scribe and manuscript seller and it only stands to reason that some theoretical work on literary alchemy and/or work on alchemy as a spiritual or personal discipline turned into legends on his actually practicing the physical art (I have some further thoughts on literary alchemy in conjunction with Dantean structure and therapeutic theme in my post on the found-footage horror film As Above, So Below, which begins with the search for Flamel's tomb in Paris). But what is most undeniable in this present discussion is that Rowling has him on the page as an alchemist who produced one of the traditional goals of alchemy, the philopsopher’s stone (sorcerer’s stone in the US Scholastic edition, because apparently, unfortunately, our culture can’t handle the word philosophy without falling asleep or asking when the game in on), and this means that she definitely has alchemy on the brain in writing the Harry Potter series.

The three-stage description of alchemy is interesting in this respect and worth a mention in passing because it works so well with the last three books of the series, Order of the Phoenix, Halfblood Prince, and Deathly Hallows. Dr Granger was writing about this on his Hogwart’s Professor site between books 6 and 7, so he had only books 5 and 6 with which to work, but the evidence it pretty tight: the stages are black, white, red, and book 5 has Sirius Black die, and book 6 has Albus (Latin for white) Dumbledore die … and we have a character whose first name is the Latin for “red” … Rubeus Hagrid. I was really scared Hagrid was going to die in the last book, but I think she emphasized his role in Harry’s life in a different way.

The key element of alchemical structuring for Harry Potter, though, is the presence of the four things around the crucible as four characters in Harry’s journey. The most obvious is Dumbledore, whose first name, Albus, means white and who thus occupies the top as pure spirit. Voldemort is at the bottom as black for pure matter in the form or radical materialism, believing that nothing is worse than material death. On the left, Ron’s red hair and fiery Irish disposition is the volatile red sulfur, and on the right, we have Hermione’s cool reason. Indeed, her name comes from the name of the Greek god Hermes, who was replaced by the Roman god Mercury, an alternate name for quicksilver. Harry himself is the golden soul produced in the crucible. When discussing this part in The Hidden Key, Dr Granger brought in some helpful illustrations from actual alchemical texts depicting the golden soul as small golden ball with wings, basically the model for the snitch that Harry becomes so adept at capturing. The Potter books that followed Dr Granger’s original book provided a few other nice little examples of Harry as the golden soul too: in book 6, Ginny wins Harry the golden soul right after she captures the golden snitch in his stead for the quidditch cup, and in book 7, we find out that polyjuice potion made with Harry’s hair turns golden. He’s the quint-essence, the fifth element, the alchemical golden soul.

All in all, a wonderful bit of exposition done very eruditely on Dr Granger’s part in that book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and found it immensely enlightening and uplifting. And just recently, some thoughts struck me on the possibility of similar crucible structuring of the character relationships in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Fantastic Beasts:

So, who are the four that surround the alchemical crucible in Fantastic Beasts and who is the fifth that will be found in the crucible? I need to tread lightly here in how I justify my reading, particularly regarding the women—for, I am probably far too obvious of a writer for the reader not to have already guess that the four are Newt, Queenie, Tina, and Jacob—but also regarding Jacob.

So, the basic breakdown:

Newt= top/white/spirit

Queenie=left/sulfur

Tina=right/quicksilver

Jacob=bottom/black/matter

Aaaaaaand …. Jacob=transformed golden soul in the middle of the crucible.

Jacob (bottom: pure matter; middle: golden soul)

Obviously, I’m saying this happens a bit differently than in the Potter series, because we have only four characters. But keep in mind that Potter could be viewed as more strictly the adaptation or modification of the system by having the golden soul be a fifth character. In the stated goal of the physical “practice” (the envisioned practice, whether or not anybody ever actually did it), which is in turn a symbol for the transformations in literary alchemy, the goal is to turn the lead itself, the base material itself, into gold, so we could have Jacob undergoing transformation of some kind. I’m not necessarily imagining him actually being able to become a wizard or something like that, although who knows. I’m mainly imagining him and Queenie being able to marry as symbolizing a new era in relations in the US. Or maybe the transformation has already happened on the level on which it needs to happen by him surviving the obliviation rain and reconnecting with Queenie. But one way or another, I think the infusion into the magical world of his wonder as a no-maj discovering that magic exists is symbolic of a much needed and hopefully soon coming transformation in the magical world in the US and that this connection and the fact that it takes place in his person make it fitting to place him as the gold in the crucible into which the base matter has been changed.

But first, I have to justify calling him the base matter, especially since that is the place Voldy occupied for the Potter crucible and, and Jacob is no Voldy … he’s a truly wonderful and endearing and charitable and noble and brave human being.

The key issue is that we’re talking about the symbolic value of certain aspects of the person, not all of their qualities. The biggest quality that Jacob has that Voldy does not is very close to the one that Harry had that differed from Voldy, although it's the one Dumbledore had to pretty much club him over the head to get him to realize: Jacob has a really strong streak of liking in him, if not love. Even if we haven't yet seen him have the opportunity to display self-sacrificial love on the level done by Lily and Harry, Jacob Kowalski has a genuine charitable streak in him a mile wide. His statement that he wants to make people happy by baking is genuine, and the guy sitting on that bench in that bank, while he may have felt a little overwhelmed by the idea of competition for the bank loan, genuinely meant "may the best man win."

In order to put Jacob in that bottom, pure matter  slot I have to divorce it completely from the prejudice and directed interest of the monster Voldy. And I think it is right to divorce it so. Matter in and of itself is not evil unless one is Gnostic, which JKR as an author is not. I would even argue that she had an irony going against Gnosticism  in Harry Potter: Draco’s grandfather, Abraxas, is named after the Gnostic god of the heavens, which seems most fitting because he is the patriarch of a family dominated by “keep our secrets to ourselves” mentality and this was precisely the thinking of Gnosticism, “gnosis” being “secret knowledge” lorded over others for control; but Lucius has put their precious knowledge in the service of a half-blood who wants it for pretty much the same goals as any power-grubbing, self-aggrandizing muggle banker (or son of a real estate mogul from Queens).

Another way to put it might be to say that Voldy is an actual materialist. Jacob is only a person who is limited to working with matter in the usual ways governed by physics and chemistry etc. The difference between the two men is that, when Jacob encounters that there is magic, he wonders at it no matter whether or not he can perform it himself or capitalize on it for material gains or even being able to view himself as powerful, whereas Voldy has only ever wanted it as a means to material and psychological power.

I’ve written in my post on chiasticstructure in Fantastic Beasts that Jacob is something essential to the magical world, but he is so precisely by being non-magical (and responding with wonder when he finds out that magic exists), and, given that being in this non-magical relation to the material world is not an evil, Jacob occupying the bottom is natural. He's just also destined for more, for perceiving magic in the world and wondering at it.

But, as I said above, when he comes into contact with the magical world, when he becomes aware of it, it is precisely being in the bottom slot that makes him eligible for coming to the center as the golden soul, the soul transformed by the vision of the magical world of wonder.

A last thing should be said on Jacob. I’m not sure how this might all play out in future installments. My chiasm exposition has focused mainly on institutional reaction to conflict, specifically the “will to kill” and the view of magic it embraces (“magic is might,” rather than source of wonder), but in that post I also formulated that obliviating Jacob is a metaphorical form of killing when we take into account what he says about the cannery versus the bakery, that he is dying there (and he definitely seems to latch onto encounter with the magical world, which is what they want to obliviate, as a pardon from that death sentence). I’m not sure how tightly what I am discussing now will tie into the larger progression of the series vis-à-vis the themes that are developed by means of the chiastic structure. It could be that Jacob’s alchemical transformation will take the whole series in parallel with the chiasm themes, or it could be that his transformation is complete already as the no-maj who made it through obliviation to remember that magic existed just from the face of a beautiful woman smiling at him and that there will be other alchemical set ups of this kind in the following installments.

Newt (top: pure spirit)

Newt’s position at the top as white/spirit is a little trickier to prove than Albus Dumbledore’s occupation of that slot in Harry Potter, first of all because that positioning was blatant in the first name: Albus=White (Latin). Secondly, Dumbledore is so obviously the “sage” character (or the “mentor” archetype in Jungian terms etc), not just for Harry or even for just Hogwarsts: supreme mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards and chief warlock of the Wizengamot.

Newt’s placement, though, is strictly with respect to the others in the quartet: he is the older, wiser, and more experienced in the magical world at large. First, he comes from England, which is closer to the European situation in which the greater history of the organized magical world has occurred. Second, on his own, he has the broader experience of the things that can and do exist and occur in the magical world. Tina has read books and knows the basics of obscuriels … Newt has actually interacted with one.

And that interaction is key for his character. I noted in my post on chiasm in Fantastic Beasts that I think Newt is a very rich character, that he has a certain sadness about him but also a certain sympathy. How can one not have a certain sadness about them when they have been there while an eight-year-old girl is dying from being an obscuriel? In the “sadder but wiser” way, he is the sage character. I’ll just add it again here that I think, as was the case with Dumbledore, the sympathy is key to the sage character being good as a sage: Newt genuinely wants to get to know Jacob as a person (there is no scientific value for Newt as a zoologist in the knowledge of why Jacob wants to start a bakery … he asks that as a sympathetic human being wanting to know, as a person, the one whom he will call a friend at the end of the movie and come back to help with the collateral for said bakery).

Tina (right: quicksilver)

Tina’s is the easiest placement to defend. As Queenie says, “Tina’s the career girl.” That requires education, and aurors especially need to be perceptive, insightful, and quick-witted in their investigation work.

Queenie

Ok, here goes the one where I could really shoot myself in the foot, but hopefully I won’t.

I’ll start it off by saying that, while I would have to look it up to make sure exactly how much of this is Dr Granger in The Hidden Key and how much I added, the full reading that I endorse on the sulfur and quicksilver elements to the left and right of the crucible is that they are, respectively, the “sensate soul” and the “rational soul” in the medieval philosophical system of three categories of soul: vegetative, sensate, and rational (I’m willing to credit him with the whole, but my guess is that the full equation with the “sensate” soul and “rational” soul in the medieval system of thinking about souls is mine simply because that’s the sort of thing I have running around on the brain all the time, thinking about the debate between bipartite and tripartite anthropology and all that). So, my reading of Fantastic Beasts, by placing Queenie on the left as sulfur, posits her as the “sensate soul.”

Just to recap that system: the vegetative soul is what plants have, and its principle is simple growth; the sensate soul is what animals have and its principle is the capacity for sensation; and the rational souls is what humans have and its principle is the ability for rational thought and language based in the capacity for reflexivity, the ability to perceive, to sense, the self (this is one of the reasons I buy what I’ll describe in a moment as an “accrual” theory, because the ability to sense the self is a progression of the same ability as is in the five senses).

(Note: In all of this, keep in mind that “soul” is here being used in a sense entirely separate from that of “spirit”—that does not mean that it can later be coupled with a belief in humans as spiritual beings or that, as I believe, that, in humans, the soul and spirit are the same “thing” on the level of substances in the human person, but it should be kept clear that, here, the focus is on the soul as simply an animating life force that makes a body living, be it plant, animal, or human.)

One of the places I want to avoid confusion is in not being taken as calling Queenie more “animal,” because it is not what I mean, but it is true that, for the medieval, the “sensate” soul is what animals have. There is debate on whether humans have it too, and that is wrapped up in the debate over whether humans progress from one type of soul to another, leaving the former behind as we gain the new, or accrue the sensate on top of the vegetative and the rational on top of both vegetative and sensate, such that the human has all three. The answer depends in part on what exactly you think a soul is. Personally I buy that the human has all three (we never stop growing in some way or another until we die and we don’t naturally lose the capacity of the five senses before death), and that is in part why I buy the bipartite argument that the “soul” is not a third “thing” or substance in the same way that body and spirit are “substances.”

But my position on the bip and trip debate and the debate over accrual versus a progression through only one kind at a time is, as the English like to say, by the by. My main point is to clarify what I mean by placing Queenie as the “sensate soul” in the sulfur position (and, very importantly, to avoid being slapped in the face by any women who read this). I definitely don’t mean that I place her there for the same reason that Ron is placed there in Harry Potter, which is his volatile temper.

The word I would use for it is “sensuality,” which of course comes from the same word as “sensate” and means, in its most basic form, emphasis on sensory data, on sensation. I hesitate to use it though for reasons similar to those for which I am very cautious about using the category “sensate” soul and its accompanying categories of animal/biological psychology.

The reason that I press on with both “sensate/animal” soul and “sensuous” is that I believe they fit and that positive gains in understanding can be made without demeaning Queenie. As for animality, as I related in my post on Tolkien versus Shakespeare, even somebody as traditional as Tolkien (in his essay on fairie stories) did not have a problem with the proposition that humans are animals, simply with the proposition that humans are only animals. I don’t think that Queenie’s representation of the sensate side of humanity means that she is any less dignified in the intelligence aspect.

The only further defense I would add is that I myself don’t mind being thought an animal in a loving way. A good friend has five daughters, and every one except the youngest, who has only turned four, has loved riding on my shoulders. Various methods of getting there have been employed (one favored climbing my back from the ground up while another favored things like hitting me flying from the top of the back of a couch five feet away, usually having approached the couch at a run, and climbing from there), but what has been invariable is that, once riding on the neck, the hands come down on the side of the face, especially when there is stubble or beard. I think it is largely  unconscious and that it’s kind of like petting a puppy for them … and you know what? I have no problem whatsoever with being thought of as a puppy dog (although there was one time when one of them on the ground wanted Uncle Brett to go with her to pet an actual puppy at a festival in town—she was 3 or 4 and very determined to do it because the other kids had, but still kind of scared—and the actual puppy, who was very playful, got a bite on my goatee, which was out long at the time … that kind of hurt).

The mere fact that attachment to creature comforts led Slughorn to be a bit cowardly at times does not mean that there is not a very real positive aspect of realizing the comfort of sensation. Queenie smiles; she giggles; she likes seeing Jacob’s mouth obviously water as the strudel takes shape in the air and as the smells of the cooking hit him (a writing prof once gave the standard direction “don’t tell us … show us … use sensory data” and added that smell is the hardest to get and, for that very reason, the most effective). She like stalking to Jacob about the experience of feeding her grandfather’s owls, and it’s probably not out of an intellectual focus on animal rights (although I’m sure she has a respectable commitment to that issue when it arises, but I don’t think that even Newt’s focus is entirely intellectual); its because of the sensations involved.

As far as the word “sensuality,” the reason I approach using it with some trepidation is that it gets a bad rap in some circles in being equated with terms like “cupidity,” which means basically lustfulness. I’m as bashful as the next conservative and actually do have an issue with gratuitous sexual detail and all (which is often done, when it is done, hoping that somebody will object for attention), but I don’t think that this is what goes on with Queenie. Tina says (mentally) not to flirt, and while I don’t think that this is because Tina is a prude (I think she really is weighed down with the tension of the issue that they will be required to obliviate Jacob eventually), flirting on any level is taken negatively by some (and so the unspoken adherence to psychologically unhealthy gnostic thinking gives rise the the unjust practices of Manichean authority [it's ok to give in to the bad stuff as long as you're allied with our power base] and the cycles keep repeating). But the fact is that Queenie is a single woman in the prime of life with a very active heart/soul in a living body and Jacob is a very interesting and endearing and noble guy who naturally catches her fancy, and I don’t think that the extent to which she engages Jacob on a sensual level by flirting goes out of bounds.

What I mean by casting her as the “sensate” (“sensual”) soul is simply that she is the character with whom it is most emphasized that she is in tune with her bodily senses as a way to communicate, meaning communicating with the other by way of indicating that you’re experiencing certain sensations, such as the smile and the giggle and the wink, which indicate that you yourself are having fun in the conversation. I think Tina is well adjusted in this respect too, but she’s also a bit more bookish and nerdy … which is a great fit for dear Newt. Queenie is the one, though, in whom we see most clearly a sensate soul experiencing romance … as I said in another post, the making and giving of cocoa is a very important little ritual in the magical world of Queenie Goldstein.

Conclusion

So, my main point here has simply been to try to show an alchemical crucible structure in the character relations in Fantastic Beasts and to say that I think it can operate in conjunction with the chiastic structuring just fine. I wanted to do a piece like this in part to strengthen focus on the characters level of the work. I’ve emphasized before that I think that the character level is of equal importance with the structural and thematic levels (and I’ve expressed negative reaction to the Cormoran Strike novels, or at least Cuckoo’s Calling, which is the only one that I have red and which gave me no incentive to read further installments, and Mad Max: Fury Road on this level), and so I wanted to do this piece as a way to explore that character level in a little more formal way, closer to the formal level on which structure and theme are examined.