Welcome back! John and Nick finish their back-and-forth challenge to come up with three examples of the ‘Fourteen Golden Threads’ in the work of J. K. Rowling, the plot points and story features that run through everything she writes.

In this second overview of the Golden Threads, Nick and John talk about Kanreki red caps and tackle three Threads each. Nick gives at least three examples for Evil Government, Occult tropes, and the Embedded Author. John responds with three or more ’for instances’ of the Search for the Real, Embedded Texts, and Shadow Doppelgangers. Enjoy!

New to the Lake and Shed Kanreki Birthday series? Here’s what we’re doing:

On 31 July 2025, Joanne Murray, aka J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, will be celebrating her 60th birthday. This celebration is considered a ‘second birth’ in Japan or Kanreki because it is the completion of the oriental astrological cycle. To mark JKR’s Kanreki, Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery, both Nipponophiles, are reading through Rowling’s twenty-one published works and reviewing them in light of the author’s writing process, her ‘Lake and Shed’ metaphor. The ‘Lake’ is the biographical source of her inspiration; the ‘Shed’ is the alocal place of her intentional artistry, in which garage she transforms the biographical stuff provided by her subconscious mind into the archetypal stories that have made her the most important author of her age. You can hear Nick and John discuss this process and their birthday project at the first entry in this series of posts: Happy Birthday, JKR! A Lake and Shed Celebration of her Life and Work.

Tomorrow? John and Nick respond to two readers’ requests for a brief introduction to Ring Composition. John reviews the four essential elements in a proper story ring and uses Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as his example. He shifts from his Shed (garage) to the backyard ger (‘yurt’) to deliver his message about the ‘meaning in the middle.’ Stay tuned!

Links to posts mentioned in today’s Lake and Shed conversation for further reading:

* David Martin reveals the Role of Books in the Hogwarts Saga

* When in Doubt, Go to the Library: The Books Within the Books (David Martin Podcast)

* Troubled Blood: Every Tarot Card Spread

* Rowling Talks Tarot on 60 Minutes (1999)

* Harry Potter and The Hanged Man: Part 1 Rowling’s Most Loaded Tarot Reference

* Harry Potter and The Hanged Man: Part 2 The Historical and Occult Interpretations

* Harry Potter and The Hanged Man: Part 3 Its Meaning in Rowling’s Written Work

* Troubled Blood: A Jungian Reading

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