Rowling Studies The Hogwarts Professor Podcast

This video podcast is the third in a series of three posts about the Hidden Hold of Horrors Golden Thread in the work of author Rowling-Galbraith. A Golden Thread is a plot point, scene, or character type that recurs repeatedly through an author’s stories, a commonality that is evident only when looking at the writer’s writings viewed as a whole. The ‘Hidden Hold of Horrors’ repeated scene is of a location underground, be it a cave, a cellar, a tunnel, a tomb, or a basement pool, in which a frightening confrontation, a Near Death Experience, flat out murder, or transformative revelation occurs.

The first post in this series was Nick Jeffery’s exploration and explanation of Rowling’s Church Cottage childhood home in Tutshill and its remarkable cellar beneath a covered access port, what has been mistakenly referred to as a “trapdoor.” In The Hidden Cellar Beneath J. K. Rowling’s Childhood Home, Nick shares why a building in West England on the border with Wales from the mid 19th Century that was built as a Church of England school would have a substantial brick and cement vaulted basement and what this room, originally a cistern to prevent cholera outbreaks, was probably like during Rowling’s childhood.

[Golden Thread Image: Wovex.com; Ladder to Cellar Under Access Port: Pinterest]

The second post was one I sent out yesterday in which I shared Nick’s and my off-the-top-of-our-heads catalog of everything subterranean, frightening, and damp in Rowling’s oeuvre, that is, her seven Harry Potter novels, eight Cormoran Strike mysteries, the Cursed Child ‘collaborative’ play script, her Beedle the Bard fairy tale collection and Ickabog “political fairy tale,” the three Fantastic Beasts screenplays, her border-line autobiographical Casual Vacancy, and the Dante-meets-Dickens Christmas Pig classic. Rowling Golden Thread: The Hidden ‘Hold of Horrors Downstairs, Beneath the Trap Door

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The morning after posting it, readers are already adding scenes Nick and I overlooked and I am kicking myself for not including the “deepest dungeon” in ‘The Warlock’s Hairy Heart’ and “the trapdoor beneath the rug” concealing the tunnel beneath Poem and Pretense’s sanctuary from the Loss Adjustors, a tunnel reached via a ladder. ‘The Tunnel’ takes them “to the bottom of the mountain” where Compass joins them for their flight to the City of the Missed across the Wastes of the Unlamented, Pig’s story turn and meaning-in-the-middle. As Nick and I note in the conversation above, a comprehensive list will require a repeated reading of Rowling’s complete writings. Please add the ones you think of that we missed in your comments below, especially for Cursed Child, the only book for which Nick and I drew a complete Golden Thread blank.

Those first two posts cover half of the four subjects Nick and I tackle in this Golden Thread conversation; the Ten Questions guiding that discussion with the relevant links and notes from our answers can be found below. What I want to write out here briefly are some notes about Golden Threads in general, their place in a Lake and Shed bifurcated critical environment, and then the importance of the ‘Hidden Hold of Horrors’ Golden Thread specifically for understanding Rowling’s work, its inspiration and intentional artistry, and for seeing what will happen in the remaining Strike novels.

Not to mention the meaning of Hallmarked Man’s fictional silver oligarch Murdoch’s name!

{Lake image source; Golden Thread image source; Shed image source]

Are ‘Golden Threads’ Evidence of ‘Lake’ Inspiration or ‘Shed’ Intentional Artistry?

Since the time of our first Hogwarts Professor Substack posts and podcasts, Nick and I have described what we are trying to advance here in the niche field of Rowling Studies is Fourth Generation work. For a discussion of the four generations of Rowling scholarship, listen to On Reading ‘On Writing.’ where we discussed the evolution of reader approaches to Rowling-Galbraith texts and how each generation, while typical of a specific time period, continues into the other generations (most of Strike-Ellacott fandom, for example, is reading that series as the ‘Shippers and speculators did the Hogwarts Saga during Potter Mania, the first generation of Rowling Studies).

What distinguishes Fourth Generation thinking is, in essence, (1) the incorporation of biographical material in understanding the inspiration of Rowling’s work (per her implicit instruction since the late 2019 Lake and Shed metaphor interview), (2) the creation of a gauge to measure the success or failure of her work out of the intention evident in her choices of literary tools, her Shed artistry, and (3) shifting the critical focus from the latest work and the book-next-in-queue to the oeuvre as a whole, everything she’s written. The bumper-sticker version of that?

Lake — Shed — Golden Threads.

Lake? Rowling describes the source of her stories’ inspiration as the ‘Lake’ of her unconscious mind, her personal issues, the events of her life, her reading and education. This is the work of Fourth Generation specialists who sift through what is known about Rowling’s life in pursuit of clues to the source material of her stories.

Shed? Again, Rowling’s bipolar metaphor for her creative process has a marker, her ‘Shed,’ that represents the alocal place ‘where’ she deploys her traditional tools to craft archetypal story out of her very personal Lake inspiration. These tools — I focus on seven — have a specific quality, both antiquarian and profoundly effective in producing the effect Rowling desires on her reading audience.

And, at last, the Golden Threads, which are not explicitly Lake or Shed findings, but, as noted above, “a plot point, scene, or character type that recurs repeatedly through an author’s stories, a commonality that is evident only when looking at the writer’s writings viewed as a whole.” Examples?

In two episodes of The Kanreki Series last July (here and here), Nick and I discussed fourteen Golden Threads in Rowling’s work: The Bad Dad, Writing about Writing, Violence against Women, the Evils of Fleet Street, Mother Love, Ghosts, Pregnancy Traps, the Lost Child with Grieving Steward, Evil Government, Occult tropes, the Embedded Author, the Search for the Real, Embedded Texts, and Shadow Doppelgangers. ‘Blood’ makes fifteen (see here, here, and here for that) and my post yesterday about the ‘Hidden Hold of Horrors’ is sixteen.

As Nick and I explain in the conversation above, most of these Golden Threads have a Lake element or point of origin, e.g., the Cholera Cistern cellar beneath Church Cottage. Understanding why Rowling returns to them again and again in reinventive ways in her work, though, requires more than a psycho-biographical connection. This is obviously the case with all the underground terrors to be found in Rowling’s stories.

[Basement Image from WallPaperAccess.com]

How are We to Understand the ‘Hidden Hold of Horrors’ Golden Thread? What does it mean?

As I listed at the end of yesterday’s post and the conversation with Nick above, Rowling’s childhood home with its hidden depths beneath the floorboards and neighboring graveyard and attendant ghosts is only one part of the explanation for the Hidden Hold Golden Thread. It’s a wonderful point of origin and launching pad for inspiration, certainly, but restricting the interpretation of her usage of this meme to nightmares and flights of fancy she had as a child about the sublimely subliminal spaces around her is, for lack of a better word, lazy.

Her use of these spaces again and again reflects, I’m sure, to a certain degree her psychological Default Setting from childhood memories of the ‘Wet Nightmare Place’ under the dining room table and next door. But Rowling’s mind was shaped as much by her bibliography, the books she read and loved, as by her biography, the exterior circumstances of her life. Her reading is the bridge linking her Lake and Shed creative process and it plays an outsized role in her Golden Threads as well.

Granting that the first inspiration of her unconscious mind may just have been childhood fears and fantasies, knowing that Rowling has read Homer, Virgil, and Dante and studied Greek mythology from her time at Wyedean Comprehensive through UExeter means that a Trip to the Underworld to speak to the dead is a touchstone of myth and epic. There’s a word for this commonplace, katabasis, the going-down-and-coming-back.

Odysseus visits Tiresias, Aeneas his father Anchises, Dante with Virgil tours the Inferno’s multiple levels — and Psyche is sent by Venus into Hades on the last of her purgative trials.· Rowling, having entered into these stories, knows they are delivery vehicles for the cathartic transformative change to be found in consultation with the dead and in thinking about death.

Joseph Campbell famously argued in Hero with a Thousand Faces that per James Joyce, ethnographers, and comparative mythology experts this descent into the nether worlds and return was an essential aspect of the “monomyth” or Ur story underlying all story and myth. Campbell’s more important contribution was arguing that this was not an abstract historical or literary assertion but one fundamentally important in every human being’s life and psycho-spiritual development.

The Journey to the Underworld from this perspective is that it represents the conscious entry into the Unconscious Mind, the Hidden ‘Depths’ of the Person Behind the Persona-Mask. Rowling has said that, if the writing dream had not worked out, she would have studied to become a psychologist. It is a touchstone belief of Fourth Generation Rowling Studies that, even though the writing gig did work out, that Rowling-Galbraith still became a psychologist in the sense of a person working to help her client-readers experience meaning (logos) more profoundly in their souls (psyche).

Every time we descend into the depths with Harry, Ron, and Hermione, with Cormoran and Robin, or with Jack Jones, we jump into a shared psychological crucible for our alchemical dissolution, purification, and reintegration. In this Golden Thread, we can see the Shed tools of literary alchemy, mythology, psychomachia, Christian symbolism, chiastic writing, and cathartic shock all at work.

And, though speculating about the novel-on-the-near-horizon isn’t a signature quality of Fourth Generation reading, I would be remiss not to point out that Rowling-Galbraith has left pointers in Hallmarked Man and throughout the Strike series that Robin Ellacott is on a ‘Heroine’s Journey’ — and overdue for a trip to Hades.

Pointers to Trips Underground to Come in the Cormoran Strike Series’ Remaining Books

Subscribers to Hogwarts Professor are familiar with Rowling-Galbraith’s use of the Cupid and Psyche Myth as a template for the Strike-Ellacott series, a use the author highlighted in a tweet after the publication of Strike 8. That myth is about the Soul’s trials to be worthy of Divine Love, Psyche being the Greek word for Soul and Cupid or Eros for love (Anteros for True Love). Psyche’s great trial is her descent into Hell at Venus’ command to receive from Persephone a gift for the Goddess of Beauty. As infernal as Robin Ellacott’s sufferings have been, Serious Strikers have been anticipating that she will at last ‘go there’ for real in Strike 9.

Iris T. M. wrote in The Rowling Library Magazine, Issue #99 (March 2025), her belief that Robin’s story arc conformed, intentionally or not on the author’s part, with ‘The Heroine’s Journey.’ See ‘Robin’s Heroine’s Journey: How J. K. Rowling’s Robin Ellacott from the Strike Series Follows the Classic Path of Self-Discovery’ in that archived issue of TRL (and say a prayer for the return of The Rowling Library in 2027!). Iris mentions psychotherapist Maureen Murdock as the original advocate of a ‘Heroine’s Journey’ distinct from a Campbell-esque ‘Hero’s Journey,’ but uses the ‘Aletis’ archetype of Jody Gentian Bower as her framework for tracing Robin’s story arc. It’s a brilliant exegesis and well worth reading in full.

It misses the mark, however, in at least three important respects.

First, it makes no mention of the Cupid and Psyche myth, which conforms to every ‘Heroine’s Journey’ marker and is Rowling’s only admitted mythological template for the series;

Second, it was written before the publication of Hallmarked Man so Iris T. M. could not have seen that Rowling-Galbraith gave a historical character, a 19th Century Freemason, silver millionaire, and author of Secrets of the Craft (see Ed Shardlow’s discussion of his importance here), the name Alexander Hughson Murdock. Taking that as a pointer to Maureen Murdock and her groundbreaking The Heroine’s Journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness, we’re obliged, I think, to look at the stages Dr Murdock assigns to this transformative odyssey.

Last, that look reveals a stage that Iris, Bower, or both neglect, namely, ‘Initiation and Descent to the Goddess’ after ‘Awakening to Feelings of Spiritual Aridity/Death.’ Iris following Bower looks for a ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ and attendant “descent into the underworld,” which she ties to Robin’s being buried alive at the UHC’s Chapman Farm in Running Grave. She argues that after this experience “two key stages remain in the Aletis Journey: Self discovery and integration—where she fully embraces her skills and authenticity—and the Establishment of a new home, where she builds a life that reflects her true self and her desires.”

A Murdock reading, in contrast, suggests that Robin’s descent into hell has not yet begun or is not yet over.

Heroine Journey’s Cycle image source; Maureen Murdock image source

Murdock’s ten stage Heroine’s Journey looks like this per HeroineJourneys.com with my notes in [Brackets}:

* HEROINE SEPARATES FROM THE FEMININE. The “feminine” is often a mother/mentor figure or a societally prescribed feminine/marginalized/outsider role. [Robin’s decision to pursue her vocation to be a private detective despite her fiancee’s and family’s disapproval, especially Linda’s]

* IDENTIFICATION WITH THE MASCULINE & GATHERING OF ALLIES. The heroine embraces a new way of life. This often involves choosing a path that is different than the heroine’s prescribed societal role, gearing up to “fight” an organization/role/group that is limiting the heroine’s life options, or entering some masculine/dominant-identity defined sphere. [Her move from secretary to detective to partner at the Agency]

* ROAD/TRIALS AND MEETING OGRES & DRAGONS. The heroine encounters trials and meets people who try to dissuade the heroine from pursuing their chosen path, or who try to destroy the heroine. [Insert list here of those who try to convince Robin to leave the Agency or to kill her.]

* EXPERIENCING THE BOON OF SUCCESS. The heroine overcomes the obstacles in their way. (This is typically where the hero’s journey ends.) [Partner status and respect of Strike and the Met as a First Tier detective]

* HEROINE AWAKENS TO FEELINGS OF SPIRITUAL ARIDITY/DEATH. The heroine’s new way of life (attempting the masculine/dominant identity) is too limited. Their success in this new way of life is either temporary, illusory, shallow, or requires a betrayal of self over time. [Robin’s growing awareness that her vocation as a detective is in an undefined but certain way in conflict with her life as a woman and the roles of wife, daughter, and mother]

* INITIATION & DESCENT TO THE GODDESS. The heroine faces a crisis of some sort in which the new way of life is insufficient, and the heroine falls into despair. All of the masculine/dominant-group strategies have failed them. [Strike 9! Robin breaks down but conferring with the Goddess-Crone, her Jungian psychoanalyst, she learns how imbalanced her life has become; she makes decisions a la those of Psyche in Hades per the Crone’s instructions]

* HEROINE URGENTLY YEARNS TO RECONNECT WITH THE FEMININE. The heroine wants to, but is unable to return to their initial limited state/position. [Ditto]

* HEROINE HEALS THE MOTHER/DAUGHTER SPLIT. The heroine reclaims some of their initial values, skills, or attributes (or those of others like them) but now views these traits from a new perspective. [I suspect this healing will be akin to Strike’s Chapel ‘conversation’ with the late Charlotte Campbell; for reasons to be discussed, I think Linda Ellacott dies in Strike 9 which precipitates Robin’s mental crisis]

* HEROINE HEALS THE WOUNDED MASCULINE WITHIN. The heroine makes peace with the “masculine” approach to the world as it applies to them. [Strikes 9 and 10]

* HEROINE INTEGRATES THE MASCULINE & FEMININE. In order to face the world/future with a new understanding of themselves and the world/life, the heroine integrates the “masculine” and “feminine” qualities/perspectives. This permits the heroine to see through binaries and to interact with a complex world that includes the heroine but is also larger than their personal lifetime or their geographical/cultural milieu. [The Alchemical Hermaphrodite or Rebis, Strike 10]

I think there are two more Golden Threads to be explored in Rowling’s work that are rooted in Tutshill’s Church Cottage and Rowling’s life there, both of which I began to pull in the conversation with Nick above, namely, the Nightmare Upstairs Room and the Neglected Dead Mother. But those will have to wait for another day!

Hats off in salute to Iris T. M. for her work with Robin’s ‘Heroine’s Journey’ (and Strike’s in TRL Issue #100)! Writing as she was before Hallmarked Man and not being familiar with Rowling’s Shed tools and how they work together, she still revealed the psychological template Rowling is deliberately following, it seems, if the Murdoch name drop is any indication.

The Hidden Hold of Horrors, then, is an especially rich Lake-Shed-and-Golden-Thread story point in Rowling’s work. Stay tuned for more of the same with respect to Mums and Upstairs Nightmares!

The Ten Questions with Notes and Links

1. Good day, Nick! What can you tell me about the trap door basement in Rowling’s childhood home, Church Cottage in Tutshill?

* The Hidden Cellar Beneath J. K. Rowling’s Childhood Home

2. So, it’s bigger than I once thought. Are you asking for the reasons I think you’re asking?

* Golden Thread discussion above

3. So, yes, that Ironbridge cellar and my recent revisits to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone with its gauntlet run beneath a trapdoor, made me wonder: is the nightmare basement a Rowling Golden Thread? It’s not as if all of them have been identified; you just came up with the Crimson Golden Thread this year --

* See here, here, and here for that.

4. How many Golden Threads have we discussed, John? Why do we care again?

* Golden Thread 1: Kanreki (Bad Dad, Writing about Writing, Violence against Women, the Evils of Fleet Street, Mother Love, Ghosts, Pregnancy Traps, the Lost Child with Grieving Steward)

* Golden Thread 2: Kanreki (Evil Government, Occult tropes, the Embedded Author, the Search for the Real, Embedded Texts, and Shadow Doppelgangers)

* Lost Child Golden Thread: Kanreki Finale

* See Golden Thread discussion above.

5. So it’s a Big Deal, really. Care to join me in reviewing Rowling’s work to see what’s lurking in her basements? (Harry Potter back and forth)

* Rowling Golden Thread: The Hidden ‘Hold of Horrors Downstairs, Beneath the Trap Door

6. How about the Stand-Alones, John: Casual Vacancy, the Ickabog, The Christmas Pig? And the collaboration exercises, Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts (back and forth)

* Rowling Golden Thread: The Hidden ‘Hold of Horrors Downstairs, Beneath the Trap Door

7. And Cormoran Strike? (back and forth)

* Rowling Golden Thread: The Hidden ‘Hold of Horrors Downstairs, Beneath the Trap Door

* Nick: “And the Dell, of course, in Lethal White’s Chiswell House, where the remains of the Shetland pony are dug up in the pink blanket.”

8. Okay, that was fun -- and we have sufficient evidence to say that Rowling thinks of the spaces downstairs as wet, scary, even horrible. So what? Tell me this isn’t just a Lake inspiration bit; what is this very deliberate artist choosing to do with the basement image? Do we have any bibliographic pointers?

* Discussion Above in text.

9. What about the psychological piece here? Rowling has said she’d have been a psychologist if the writing gig hadn’t worked out. Is her ‘underground’ piece of Harry’s Journey everywhere our moving into the subconscious of depth psychology?

* Joseph Campbell ‘Hero’s Journey,’ Joyce scholar, Jung disciple, monomyth advocate – myth not only historical but important as individual psychological template;

* Maureen Murdock ‘Heroine’s Journey,’ Jungian psychotherapist, writing for therapiss and patients not writers on Campbell model, “Initiation and Descent to the Goddess”

* Victoria Lynn Schmidt ‘Heroine’s Journey for Writers’

* Iris T. M: The Heroine’s Journeys of Robin Ellacott (TRL #99) and of Cormoran Strike (TRL #100)

10. Do you think we’ll be going underground in the last two Cormoran Strike novels?

* YES, we will!

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Nick Jeffery and John Granger met on Wednesday this week to talk about John’s epic ‘Index to the First Year of Reading Hallmarked Man’ that was posted a week ago. Both were delighted (and a little surprised?) by the range and depths of the work done here and elsewhere to unpack the eighth Strellacott mystery, easily the most carefully planned and unique of the Strike series.

Below are the ten questions Nick and John asked one another, brief versions of their answers, and links to points they made for listeners wanting to read more about the subjects and previous work mentioned. The conversation ended with a big THANK YOU to the Hogwarts Professor subscribers and the announcement of an announcement (!) coming next week of Real Time conversation with those supporters.

Enjoy this conversation and the links below to highlights from the previous year - and stand by for some exciting news about the coming year’s work at Hogwarts Professor!

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The Ten Questions, Answer Notes, and Links:

[Nota Bene: Nick’s questions to John are in Blue and John’s to Nick are red; Links with bullet points are Nick and John ‘Rowling Studies’ podcasts; non-bulleted links are posts.]

1 -- Happy Anniversary, John! Can you believe it’s been a year since Hallmarked Man was published? What Should we do in commemoration of the Strike Fandom Holiday?

* Three things? First, note how much our thinking about the Strike series has changed from our expectations about Strike 8 to our ever growing appreciation of the complexity and mysteries of Hallmarked Man;

* Next, maybe this is just me, but I wanted to chart somehow that progression and change from date of publication to where we are now, if only to get a clearer picture of where we’re headed – and

* Last, I want to have some kind of party, right? Some kind of gathering, the virtual kind obviously, to celebrate the milestones and our direction as readers --

2 -- So, Nick, I spent my weekend collating an Index of our Hallmarked Man Year’s Greatest Hits. The most shocking piece for me, frankly, was the amount of material we put up in the first months in addition to our podcasts. Do you remember the feeling of a second Kanreki blitz?

* Nick notes: stories of publisher bread crumbs and gaffes, ‘Robin is Sterile’ and ‘Charlotte was Murdered’ strikes, and fandom shock, disappointment and confusion;

* Our ‘hot takes’ here, reader speculations, beginning of Lake and Shed readings

From Hallmarked Man Index Post:

First Impressions: Overwhelm, Cryptonyms

* Three Cheers for The Hallmarked Man! Thoughts After the First Reading

* The Hallmarked Man: A ‘Blitz’ Lake and Shed Reading (with a few Golden Threads)

Hallmarked Man’s Flood of Names, Characters, and Plots

The Allegorical Cryptonyms of The Hallmarked Man, Part Three

Hallmarked Man as Key to Series Ending, Difficulty Intentional

* Hallmarked Man’s Three ‘Whose My Daddy?’ Set-Ups to Shock Readers in Strikes 9 and 10

* Why Hallmarked Man is the Best Cormoran Strike Novel and Will Be Considered the Key to Unlocking the Series’ Mysteries

Cupid and Psyche Template

* The Hallmarked Man’s Mythological Template

* Valentine’s Day Special: The Cupid and Psyche Myth within the Cormoran Strike Series: Both a Series Template and Traditional Delivery System for the Fundamental Choice in Human Existence, Eros vs Anteros

3 -- Rowling spurred that, John, with writing a very challenging book but also via the Cupid and Psyche tweet. Which of the flood of Fan Theories we discussed did you find the most intriguing?

* Ryan Murphy is Charlotte Campbell’s ‘Dirty Bomb’And Other Mind-Blowing Cogent Arguments and Ideas from Hogwarts Professor Readers

* Robin Ellacott’s Imminent Death and Its Out of This World Effect on Strike: The Christian Text-Within-the-Text of Running Grave Subtly Suggests the Ultimate Twist in Cormoran Strike’s Transformation

4 -- Talking about Robin’s Immanent death and the Charlotte Campbell ‘Dirty Bomb’ were fun, but, Nick, the Fiona and Katya revelations about Shanker may have been the Peak of the Year’s Finds and Reveals, no?

The Mysterious Suicides of Leda Strike and Charlotte Campbell Revisited Post Hallmarked Man: Has Fiona Down Under Revealed the Murderers of both Strike’s Mother and Milady Bezerko? Was a Busted Drug Deal with Gangsters and Campbell-Longcaster Incest and Adultery behind it All?

Dementia, Jewelry, and a Nine Inch Cock: The Mystery of Shanker’s ‘Old Man,’ His Given Name, and Why He’s Never Killed Jeff Whittaker: Katya Slonenko’s Deductions from Shanker Comments about His Dear Old Dad in ‘The Hallmarked Man’

* Shanker’s ‘Old Man,’ Leda Strike’s Tattoo, Her First Husband’s Real Name, and The Dress: A Conversation with Katya Slonenko about Her Strike-Ellacott Theories and Others from Reddit’s r/CormoranStrike Community

5 -- That was like reading Strike 9 in advance, John, wasn’t it? Shades of ‘Robin is Sterile’! But the wheels almost fell off the cart when it came to the Incest speculation. Funny that it was a Golden Thread through all her work, though, not just Hallmarked Man...

Incest Notes and Theories

* Jonny Rokeby was both Cormoran and Charlotte’s Father: The Incest Twist Rowling Has Hidden Inside the Strike Series

* Is Rowling’s Incest ‘Golden Thread’ the Key to Her Cormoran Strike Finale? That Seems to Be the Strong Trend in the Theories Offered by Serious Strikers at Hogwarts Professor

6 -- But, Nick, what a Year for a Trip to the Lake -- Rowling’s Charlie Kirk tweets, the Charm Bracelet, the Congenital Blood Disease -- was your cup running over?

JKR — VWD!

Rowling Tweets About Congenital Blood Condition: von Willebrand Disease

* Hallmarked Man and Rowling’s Tweets after the Shooting of Charlie Kirk

The Troubled Blood of J. K. Rowling: Blood as a Golden Thread in all her Works

* Blood! The Crimson Thread: Exploring the Lake Inspiration of Blood in the Works of J. K. Rowling

The Christmas Charm Bracelet Conversations with Elizabeth Baird-Hardy:

* The Christmas Charm Bracelet of Strike 9 Clues (Part One)

* The Christmas Charm Bracelet of Strike 9 Clues (Part Two)

Rowling Tweets about Changed Beliefs — and Her Beliefs about “Religious Faith”

Perhaps the most important of Rowling’s revelations in the past year were the ones she made about her beliefs consequent to the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Specifically on 12 September 2025 she wrote about the beliefs she has changed, in which tweet she concluded with thoughts about God and “religious faith:”

The distinction implicit in Rowling’s “God conundrum” is between (a) “religious faith,” conformity to the beliefs and practices of a specific revelation, and (b) belief in God. Her posture of enlightened agnosticism with respect to God, being unable to believe “without seeing proof,” while acknowledging the “God-shaped vacuum inside me,” an existential proof of same she experiences, is, frankly, only sophistry. It is verbiage draped over her all-too-human inability to reject those core beliefs she has qua postmodern that religious faith requires she reject for communion with God.

[If you struggle earnestly and honestly with these same issues, I recommend to you what I would to Rowling as I have to Nick, namely, that you read James Cutsinger’s Advice for the Serious Seeker and Ross Douthat’s Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. What Chesterton said about Christianity is as true about “religious faith” in general, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting but found difficult and left untried.” Pedestrian agnosticism and adolescent atheism today are less markers of sophistication and thoughtfulness, being ‘above the herd,’ than unthinking captivity to the zeitgeist and to one’s unexamined beliefs.]

7 -- That was a Big Year for us Lake Dwellers, John, but Hogwarts Professor, I think, will always be a Shed site until Rowling agrees to an interview with Veritaserum. And the Shed work we did with Hallmarked Man was significant; what was your favorite part of that?

‘The Group Adventure of Charting Hallmarked Man’ (Fourteen Posts) was a landmark event in Rowling Studies, frankly, and a proof that Strike 8 was one of if not THE most carefully planned novels — which proof serves as a corrective rebuke to readers who thought it was a careless melange of confusing and conflicting plot lines, the “worst of the series.”

* The Group Adventure of Charting Hallmarked Man’s Rings: Part Ten and Epilogue, Chapters 117-127 (post to the other thirteen posts in this series are at the bottom of this post)

8 -- For me the Gang of Five independent Ring Reading of Hallmarked Man will always be the stand-out of the past year. But you brought the Lake into the Shed with your Read-Along-with-Nick Book club this year! Two epic poems by the Brownings, a Bildungsroman classic by Dodie Smith, and another C. S. Lewis template -- what was the goal and what was the highlight for you in those readings?

Nick’s Reading List Online:

Rowling’s Admitted Literary Influences (December 2020)

Important Side Texts: The Ring and the Book, Aurora Leigh, I Capture the Castle,‘Till We Have Faces

The Ring and The Book – A Rowling Reading

* What the Hallmarked Man Epigraphs Reveal About Rowling-Galbraith’s Artistry and Meaning

A Rowling Reading of Aurora Leigh

* Talking About ‘A Rowling Reading of Aurora Leigh‘

A J. K. Rowling Reading of I Capture the Castle

* The Most Influential Book Rowling Read as a Child Wanting to Be a Writer is Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle

‘Till We Have Faces

C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’ and Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series (Part One) Is ‘Till We Have Faces’ the The Thematic Template for the ‘Strike-Ellacott’ Series?

C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’ and Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series (Part Two): John Granger’s thoughts on the seven points of intersection between CSL’s retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth and JKR’s use of the same myth as a psychomachian story template

* A Spirited Conversation about Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series and C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’: What does the 1956 re-telling of the Cupid and Psyche myth tell Serious Strikers about Rowling’s re-imagining of the same tale

9 -- Our Paid Subscribers, John, had the opportunity to read Livingston’s Traditional Theory of Literature with you. That took up a lot of your band-space, I know, because it led to your Symbolism of G posts. Why did you think republishing Livingston on Coomaraswamy was so important?

In brief, Nick, it was because the most important work we did in Rowling Studies, I think, was not the exercise in Ring Reading that served as a demonstration of what we already suspected, but the synthesis change in how we read Rowling, namely, a shift in our Critical Perspective and Orientation. That was represented by our reprinting The Traditional Theory of Literature by Ray Livingston and our printing currently my PhD thesis draft on this same subject.

The Livingston part of this Hogwarts Professor project for Paid Subscribers served as an in-depth introduction to the Perennialist interpretation of fiction, the counter and correction to Critique and to the profane reading of sacred art-in-story. It is the republication by chapters of The Traditional Theory of Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 1962), a book by Ray Livingston that makes reading the otherwise inaccessible Ananda Coomaraswamy the transformative experience it is.

If you want to grasp what Rowling is all about, why she has chosen the Shed tools she has and what those choices reveal about her Dante-esque intentions as a writer, you need to wrestle with The Traditional Theory of Literature. Or you can read my PhD thesis draft on the same subject, ‘A Revelation of the Real: A Perennialist Reading of J. K. Rowling’s Work’!

Chapter Seven: Conclusion and Appendix

(links to all the other posted chapters are at the beginning of this post)

10 -- Nick, you talk about our Guests on the podcasts, please, and our Guest Posts. I think that’s an essential part of what we do here, but coming from you, one of the great discoveries of Hogwarts Professor, it will mean a lot more

Podcast Guests and Guest Posts:

Dimitra Fimi

* Reading Rowling as Myth Maker and Myth Re-Writer: A Conversation with Dr Dimitra Fimi

* ‘Sleep Tight, Evangeline,’ Miniature Psalters, and the Head of Persephone: A Conversation with Dimitra Fimi: Nick and John sit down with the renowned Tolkien scholar to quiz her about the meaning of Rowling’s yuletide charm bracelet, mythological templates, and Strike9 title

Ed Shardlow

Guest Post: The Pride of Lions in ‘The Hallmarked Man’: Ed Shardlow discusses the many lions on the surface, behind a corner, or well-concealed within Rowling-Galbraith’s Eighth Cormoran Strike Novel

Hallmarked Man Notes: The Christmas Charm Bracelet Decoded, Tod Jameson and the Ectopic Pregnancy, and Venetian Blinds: Ed Shardlow shares his ‘Nuggets of Silver’ about over-looked meanings in Rowling-Galbraith’s Hallmarked Man

* The Hidden Narratives and Interpretive Ciphers Beneath the Surface Story of Hallmarked Man: Ed Shardlow speaks with Nick Jeffery and John Granger about Stories inside the Strike 8 Story that Re-tell the Story and Explain Its Meaning

The Hallmarked Man Meets The Ickabog: Strike 8 and Rowling’s Fractured Fairy Tale are Parallel Texts

* The First Seven Strike Novels Paralleled Their Seven Harry Potter Equivalents; What Rowling Work Did The Hallmarked Man Parallel? Ed Shardlow makes the Argument in Conversation with John and Nick that Strike 8 is a Fun Re-Visiting of the Themes, Scenes, and Characters of Rowling’s ‘Ickabog’ Fairy Tale

Katya Slonenko

Dementia, Jewelry, and a Nine Inch Cock: The Mystery of Shanker’s ‘Old Man,’ His Given Name, and Why He’s Never Killed Jeff Whittaker: Katya Slonenko’s Deductions from Shanker Comments about His Dear Old Dad in ‘The Hallmarked Man’

Katya Slonenko: Leda Strike’s ‘Mistress of the Salmon Salts’ Pudenda Tattoo: Strike Fandom’s Leading Tattoo Artist Explains What Tattoos Mean in the Strike Novels and Explores Why Cormoran’s Mum Would Put a Song Title in Ink Where She Did

* Shanker’s ‘Old Man,’ Leda Strike’s Tattoo, Her First Husband’s Real Name, and The Dress: A Conversation with Katya Slonenko about Her Strike-Ellacott Theories and Others from Reddit’s r/CormoranStrike Community

Solomon Schmidt

* A Pen to Change the World: Conversation with Solomon Schmidt, Rowling-Galbraith Biographer (Part One): Nick Jeffery and John Granger talk with Solomon Schmidt about the Adventure of Writing a Rowling Biography Today

* A Pen to Change the World: Conversation with Solomon Schmidt, Rowling-Galbraith Biographer (Part Two) — Nick Jeffery and John Granger talk with Solomon Schmidt about what he’d ask Rowling as a biographer if given the chance --and he asks them what they would ask, with and without Veritaserum

Conclusions: First Anniversary Status Quo

Three conclusions to an overly long Hallmarked Man Year One Review:

1. It’s Been a Great Year! I think we’re well positioned for Strike 9 and for another year of discoveries via a Slow Mining of Strike 8.

2. Next Year Promises to be Even Better! It may be a little slow in Strike fandom relatively speaking, but, with rumors of a Christmas Pig animated special and trailers for the adaptations of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in the air, we’re going to be very busy here. And —

3. We’ll Be Breaking New Ground Here as Always! We have found an online platform to host online courses and classes for sharing the heights, depths, and breadth of traditional reading, not to mention practical seminars in how to identify and use the tools that Rowling deploys.

All of which classes will be free or at a Close-to-Free discount for our Paid Subscribers here. That’s our thank you for your generosity and in acknowledgement of your brilliance. Stay tuned!

Hogwarts Professor is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

Nick and John get together to discuss three HogwartsProfessor posts about the All New Hogwarts House Emblems and Rowling’s commentary via three emojis about the recent trailer for the Bronte Studios adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. You can read those posts via these links:

The HBO+ Potter Trailer: The Meaning of Rowling’s Heart, Owl, and Lightning Bolt

HBO’s Harry Potter and the Alchemical Symbols

The New Hogwarts House Emblems and Their Alchemical and Plant Symbolism

Or you can just jump right into the conversation via the questions, notes and links below!

Hogwarts Professor is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The Ten Questions Guiding this Conversation: Nick in Red, John in Blue

1. G’day, John! Great to see you, your chin, and hairline again! You posted a short piece over at the HogwartsProfessor weblog this week about a seemingly meaningless Rowling tweet that shared a new trailer for the HBO+ adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. She only ‘wrote’ three emojis, but, even though you wrote was only several paragraphs long, it said a lot. Why do such a deep-dive into these perhaps offhand fan-servicing signals?

* All the signals or emojis are traditional symbols, so, offhand or not, they're markers of the choice a serious reader has to make about understanding Rowling's work properly;

* Is it literary sacred art as her Shed tool choices suggest or just creative personal expressions for our diversion and entertainment?

* Rowling is signaling us, as you say, that it is the former with these three emojis.

* T. S. Eliot, ‘The Dry Salvages’ (InterNet Poem)

We had the experience but missed the meaning

And approach to the meaning restores the experience

in a different form

2. Let’s take a closer look, then! The Heart, the Owl, and the Lightning Bolt -- what does the Rowling fan, from “ten years old to seventy,” see right away before they stretch for the traditional meaning?

* Heart – Rowling is pleased; we should be, too; heart as sentiment, love token.

* Owl – Hedwig in Stone, important message being delivered, ‘pet’ project of Rowling’s.

* Lightning Bolt – The Boy Who Lived’s signature mark, news out of the blue or ‘news flash’

3. And there’s more? What traditional meanings do these emojis have?

* The Heart to Rowling is a lot more than a token of sentiment. It is a Golden Thread in her work that the Heart is a pulsing symbol of the human spiritual capacity. Only the Eye does as much heavy freight of meaning lifting in her work and I think the Heart surpasses the Eye ultimately in importance except insomuch as she elides their meaning. Read The Heart is Not About Emotions and Affection but the Human Spiritual Center for discussion of the symbolism and the Golden Thread.

* The Owl, too, is an ancient and dynamic symbol, the reason frankly there is a Hedwig rather than Hedwig being the meaning of the token. Rowling clearly draws on her experience of owls in Greek mythology (and reading of C. S. Lewis’ Narniad drawing on the same source) in making the owl the vessel of communication and supernatural perception in her Wizarding World. None of the letters written by her witches and wizards need to be addressed because an owl is so attuned to everyone and everything that it is able effortlessly to understand where it needs to go, God’s own GPS. What is usually described as a symbol of Wisdom is clearly much more a revelation of a mind able to grasp the great interconnectedness of things which in turns takes us back to the Eye and the Heart — and what Rowling is trying to bring to readers in her transformative literature. (Contrast this Greek mythology symbolism with what owls represent in Christian scripture; quite the gulf between Athens and Jerusalem there!)

* But the wisdom piece is there, too! Rowling is writing at four levels of story that correspond with the four ways of human knowing, of which the last and most important is gnosis or wisdom, the so-called anagogical layer of meaning that no less a light than Flannery O’Connor said was the whole point of writing and reading. If you’re writing for the Heart or to illumine the Eye of the Heart, the goal is transformative imaginative experience fostering wisdom.

* And the Lightning Bolt? The forehead scar, the mark of Orestes, the Greek hero who avenged his father’s betrayal and murder, is another polyvalent and profoundly spiritual cipher as a lightning bolt. In it simultaneously the reader experiences simultaneously as we do in a thunder storm albeit imaginatively (1) sudden illumination or enlightenment, (2) from above, the heavens, the super-conscious realm, and, most important, (3) a reorientating shock, a cathartic shaking, the jolting moment that jars us out of our psychological rut and cage to see the world afresh with our ‘eye of the heart.’

* Rowling’s three emojis on her tweet about the fun trailer below can be read as fan servicing variations on the ‘thumbs up’ and ‘hand-clapping’ using tokens associated with the books. No doubt about that reading.

* I think it as important to note, however, the possibility that Mrs Murray is signaling to the HBO+ audience as well as the international of readers that this adaptation is about trying to reproduce as much as is possible in an iconoclastic medium some replica of the imaginative and transformative experience to be had in the books. The Heart, the Owl, and the Lightning Bolt all point to that experience and depth of meaning.

4. Which segues nicely to your brief post, Nick, on the HBO+ adaptations and its choices in how to represent the four Hogwarts Houses: Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin. (”Nitwit, Blubber, Oddment, Tweek,” anyone?) Can you review what the books say are the proper representations, the heraldic glyphs most appropriate to each house?

5. Has Rowling added content or context for why she chose those specific representations?

[Anelli-Spartz Interview discussion of four elements]

JKR: But they’re not all — don’t think I don’t take your point, but — we, the reader, and I as the writer, because I’m leading you all there — you are seeing Slytherin house always from the perspective of Death Eaters’ children. They are a small fraction of the total Slytherin population. I’m not saying all the other Slytherins are adorable, but they’re certainly not Draco, they’re certainly not, you know, Crabbe and Goyle. They’re not all like that, that would be too brutal for words, wouldn’t it?

ES: But there aren’t a lot of Death Eater children in the other houses, are there?

JKR: You will have people connected with Death Eaters in the other houses, yeah, absolutely.

ES: Just in lesser numbers.

JKR: Probably. I hear you. It is the tradition to have four houses, but in this case, I wanted them to correspond roughly to the four elements. So Gryffindor is fire, Ravenclaw is air, Hufflepuff is earth, and Slytherin is water, hence the fact that their common room is under the lake. So again, it was this idea of harmony and balance, that you had four necessary components and by integrating them you would make a very strong place. But they remain fragmented, as we know.

More on Elements and Humours at HogwartsProfessor:

* Ben Jonson’s Every Man and His Humor

* The Crimes of Grindelwald Group Portrait: A Study in Temperaments

6. Where did the Warner Brothers film adaptations depart from and stick to the page-and-interview House heraldry?

* The animal representations as often as not are facing in the wrong direction, sinister rather than dexter and vice versa; AND

* The Ravenclaw eagle of the books became a raven and their House colors become dark and light shades of blue rather than blue and copper.

7. But those corrections aren't the most interesting changes or corrections in these new House shields, are they? What are the extras we're given that weren't suggested in the original texts but implicit in the interview material?

[Hat Tip to Sad-Ad-9273 at r/HarryPotteratHBO for these screen catches!]

* Note the vegetation in the Banners and the Emblems: the acorns in the Gryffindor mean the Oak tree is its symbol; the white berries in Slytherin suggest holly, per Sandra Miesel Kopec, the laurel tree seems a match for Ravenclaw and ivy for Hufflepuff;

* Check out a website devoted to these things, ‘What Do Leaves Represent on a Coat of Arms,’ for the meaning of these plant associations with each house or share your own ideas in the comment boxes below!

8. What is with the ornamentation on those triangles? The Slytherin circle, the sideways line and paleolithic horse on Gryffindor, the Ravenclaw ‘V,’ and the Hufflepuff cup and ‘V’? Are these Founder’s treasure tokens that become Horcruxes? If so, are there traditional meanings as well as plot points, e.g., Tarot Card qualities?

[Hat Tip to LightAngel452 at r/HarryPotteratHBO for the brilliant graphic! LightAngel also picked up on the alchemical symbols.]

* The Emblems material that gets heady involves the melange of symbols and signs in their respective headboards;

* Slytherin has an easily discerned ‘S,’ the suggestion of the House’s signature serpent, and the Horcrux locket of Salazar Slytherin;

* Ravenclaw’s header with a little head turning and squinting has an ‘R,’ the V inserted looks like a diadem, and simultaneously it has what looks like an eagle in flight from a distance;

* Gryffindor does not seem to include the ‘G’ we’d expect, but the Sword of Gryffindor, and the paleolithic horse a Medieval knight be riding are evident;

* Hufflepuff gets the best of the lot, though, with its distractingly obvious cup obscuring how the ‘V’ within the inverted triangle and its bisecting line yields both the stripes of a badger and Helga Hufflepuff’s initials!

* That’s great stuff, Nick, but the real catch, I think, was what you shared in your post about the alchemical symbols for the Four Elements, the triangles illustrated in the Wikipedia page for such things and in The Book of Alchemy (Chapter 9, ‘The Four Elements,’ pp 111-128 [pdf numbering]; Air triangle 119, Water, Fire, Star of David 115, Earth “no predetermined figure” 113-114)

* The meaning of those triangles, especially their direction and the bisecting lines in the symbols for Earth and Air, can be found in Titus Burckhardt’s Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul, a book we can be pretty sure Rowling read because the Penguin paperback available when she was a Comprehensive student featured Rubeus Hagrid, hermaphroditic giant, with a dragon, both astride a Golden Snitch, on its cover:

* Burckhardt explains that the symbols are understood correctly in their harmonious combination or elision as the Seal of Solomon (‘Star of David’) [pp 74-75];

* The bisecting lines of the Earth and Air symbols is from the base lines of the triangle in the Seal that brings the whole into balance;

* Which representations align perfectly with Rowling’s attempt to explain the Four Houses as the Four Elements and how the goal or telos of each is its harmonious integration with the others, i.e., the Seal of Solomon;

* We may not be able to say that Rowling told Bronte Studios to use these symbols on their respective Hogwarts House emblems, but its undeniable I think that the HBO+ adaptations are going to be risibly rich in traditional symbolism that most readers may or may not notice but which they will not ‘get’ without some serious study.

9. And, John, you’re putting up a post later today about the New Potter Mania and how it will look like the old Potter Mania and still be qualitatively different. We’ll probably do a whole show to talk about that but what are the highlights?

* Not today, but very soon!

10. And I see you’re putting up material for the Paid Subscribers on just that subject?

* Paid Subscribers will be receiving chapters from the Perennialist PhD thesis draft I wrote that Dimitra Fimi rescued from the fireplace;

* I’m meeting with an online course platform owner today that I’m all but certain will be hosting the Wizard Reading Formula classes I gave in 2017 which will be free to Paid Subscribers;

* And which will serve as a run-up to and acid test for our ten week week ‘Lake, Shed, Golden Thread’ course that will launch in 2027, maybe even at Christmas time 2026 for folks to give themselves their friends and family as presents

* Stay tuned!

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Nick Jeffery and freshly Shorn & Clean Shaven John Granger sit down to discuss John’s two posts about the symbolism of the Letter ‘G’ in Strike 8. Part One of the series did the necessary work of demonstrating that, yes, the letter ‘G’ is all over Hallmarked Man, from the online guess that the murderer carved that initial into ‘William Wright’s back to the Witness G echoing with Green-jacked Gorilla-bearing man and a bit of calligraphic terrorism on the Agency door at street-level. The first also covered the accepted Masonic interpretations of why the ‘G’ is featured in the Compass and Square symbolism of their fraternity.

Part Two was a deep dive into more esoteric meanings given to the ‘G’ by Freemasons and by Rene Guenon, notable Perennialist, and into what associations Rowling-Galbraith tried to make between the seventh letter and the key hallmark of the book. It concluded with three answers to “So What?” including some fun speculation about a possible shape for the series, a shape highlighted in Strike 8, and with a discussion of whether Rowling-Galbraith’s subliminal artistry with ‘G’ worked or failed.

Perhaps the biggest take-away of this series of posts was to introduce subliminal coloration as the common denominator of Rowling-Galbraith’s signature seven Shed tools. Nick and John open their conversation about the letter ‘G’ with that subject and everything they discuss in the end folds back into that covert artistry.

As always, the Dynamic Duo covet your comments and feedback as the best follow-up to their conversation. Please jump right in!

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The Ten Questions and Relevant Links

1. Okay, John, let’s talk coloration. You mentioned some examples in famous authors’ work in Part One of your deep dive into Letter G Symbolism in Hallmarked Man; do we have coloration in Harry Potter? Another Strike novel?

* ‘Donegality’ in Planet Narnia, Michael Ward, the subliminal artistry of C. S. Lewis’ Narniad;

* From ‘Literary Alchemy: Sacred Science, Sacred Art, and the Alembic of Story’

C. S. Lewis, according to Michael Ward, author of Planet Narnia, also felt appreciating the “manner of the author,” his “various special tricks,” especially those connected to creating atmosphere, were critical to understanding the style of the Greats.

Again and again, in defending works of romance, Lewis argues that it is the quality or tone of the whole story that is its main attraction. The invented world of romance is conceived with this kind of qualitative richness because romancers feel the real world itself to be ‘cryptic, significant, full of voices, and the mystery of life.’ Lovers of romances go ‘back to fruit tree for its taste; to an air for… what? For itself; to a region for its whole atmosphere – to Donegal for its Donegality and London for its Londonness’ (Ward, 16).

Donegal was one of Lewis’favorite vacation spots as a child in Northern Ireland. Ward defined Lewis’ stylistic atmosphere as his ‘Donegality:’

By donegality we mean to denote the spiritual essence or quiddity of a work of art as intended by the artist and inhabited unconsciously by the reader. The donegality of the story is its peculiar and deliberated atmosphere or quality; its pervasive and purposed integral tone or flavor; its tutelary but tacit spirit, a spirit that that the author consciously sought to conjure, but which was designed to remain implicit in the matter of the text… the more influentially to inform the work and so affect the reader (Ward 75).

Ward’s concern is especially with Lewis’ character Aslan, in whom this donegality is “concentrated and consummated” as a “Christologically representative character” (Idem), but the thesis of Planet Narnia is that the “kappa-element,”[xiv] Lewis’ phrase for the informing, hidden “tutelary but tacit” style of a work, is astrological symbolism, each of the Narnia chronicles representing one of the seven traditional planets. Ward argues that Lewis’ subliminal artistry, the “inner weave” or style of his work in Nabokovian language, is the embedded mythological and astral metaphors to be found beneath the surface of each story. Twain is supposed to have said, “”If you would have your fiction live forever, you must neither overtly preach nor overtly teach, but you must covertly preach and covertly teach.” Lewis, believing as he did that “an influence which cannot evade our consciousness will not go very deep” (Lewis no date), wrote in astrological glyphs to reach covertly his reader’s unconscious depths or noetic heights.

* ‘The Eyes of Deathly Hallows’ in The Deathly Hallows Lectures, John Granger, and, briefly, here, and 2010 lecture at New York Public Library; and

* ‘The Cross Symbolism of Troubled Blood,’ John Granger

2. You list those eyes and crosses and I confess it didn’t strike me on my first and repeated readings that there were so many of those. What made you notice all the ‘G’s in Strike 8?

* I confess that I didn’t make anything of the letter ‘G’s repeated appearances in Hallmarked Man until I saw that Rene Guenon, the most famous and profoundly metaphysical of the first 20th Century Perennialists, had written a brief essay in his youth, ‘The Letter G and the Swastika.’ I made that discovery inadvertently when looking for something else in Fundamental Symbols, a posthumous collection of his writing (downloadable as pdf here).

3. Let’s play ‘Name a G passage;’ I’ll start with the G supposedly carved into William Wright’s back and you name another until we’re both out of examples...

Robin’s research into the death of ‘William Wright’ in the Ramsey Silver shop vault begins with an online observer saying out of the blue that a ‘G’ was carved into the victim’s back and that this was tied to the Secret Word of Freemasonry and the legend of Hiram Abiff’s martyrdom. Rowling-Galbraith has Robin mention this to Murphy at their first unofficial briefing on the case and Murphy all but explodes; he denies it was a ‘G’ and says he heard it was a “hallmark” instead.

The letter is associated with Freemasonry as their symbolic center (GAOTU) via a telephone message and in Strike’s meeting with ‘Hiram’ Hardacre.

We learn after Robin’s being attacked in Harrow’s that she was ‘Witness G’ in her rapist’s trial, the letter being to her something like a secret identity.

Strike not long thereafter finds a blood Red Letter ‘G’ painted on the street level door to the Agency which he hopes is a Masonic terrorist marker rather than the pointed suggestion that the Angel of Death is coming for Witness G.

I’d add that the Gorilla mask and doll of the Green jacket man that haunt Robin have some of their subliminal effect on her and the reader because of the initial guttoral sound of ‘Gorilla’ and ‘Green.’

4. The Freemason connection is the most interesting one even though the Masonic G isn’t carved into Powell’s back (it’s a Salem Cross and the only other twice played symbol is the orb and cross pendant Strike buys for the charm bracelet Christmas present). Who knew that the capital ‘G’ was such a big deal in Masonry?

5. At the end of Part One, I thought you’d pretty much covered the symbolism and were going to close in Part Two with what God and Geometry are about in Hallmarked Man, hence the coloration. Instead you wrote that the G being a one-letter acronym wasn’t enough. Why not?

* not Masonic -- no edges!

* not ancient Greek, Hebrew, or Sanskrit,

* not tied to craft symbolism,

* not a symbol!,

* the catechism answer “By letters four and science five, this G aright doth stand in due art and proportion’.”

6. So was Guenon’s essay the key to Rowling’s use of the letter ‘G’?

* Yes and no!

* His Symbolism of the Cross, Lord of the World, and The Great Triad chapters help a lot but from ‘The Letter G and the Swastika’ we learn that

* yod is God is gamma,

* catechism answer means four gammas or four yodhs which both yield swastikas (gammadion cross),

* GAOTUmeans Christ the keystone/cornerstone,

* the sequence of jumps from letter ‘G’ to Murphy’s Salem Cross...

7. Who backed Guenon up on this connection so you weren’t using the Perennialist hammer to drive in a screw or fasten a bolt?

* Cockburn, Crypto Curry, Albert Pike (via Tamara/Tamspells!)

8. If I accept the preponderance of ‘G’s in Hallmarked Man as coloration/Donegality (I do) and the meaning of the symbolism per your readers (I’m withholding skeptical judgement), what effect was this supposed to have on me the reader so I can tell you if it worked or not? If it was supposed to confuse me, boffo job!

* Nabokovian potustoronost,

* numinous quality in the air,

* Robin as ‘Witness G, ‘

* Strike channeling Tyler Powell at finish in Ironbridge

9. Will we see Freemasonry and its symbolism in Strikes 9 and 10?

Maybe! [Rowling-Galbraith] certainly has made us long for a big pay-off with respect to ‘G;’ see Sarah Keeler’s idea that it may be a pointer to Gillespie reappearing in Strike 9. I love that possibility and it certainly is in keeping with the HogwartsProfessor working thesis that Hallmarked Man is what it is to set up the next two books. If we’re going to see characters and themes bleed between the first book of the last three and its successors, why not its symbolism?

If I had to bet money on it, though, I think we probably won’t see more Freemasonry or Big ‘G’ payoffs. It kills me to say that given the investment I’ve made in books about the Masons (they’re on a shelf beneath the dust-collecting little library on Mormon history and scriptures I collected while writing about Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight books). I just cannot see her weaving the Mason characters from Hallmarked Man into story lines that give us resolution with respect to Charlotte’s and Leda’s supposed suicides twenty some years apart, Shanker’s family history, and the mysteries around Strike’s time with the military police, especially the IED that nearly killed him.

10. I thought you promised not to get into the Strike Series Shape Sweepstakes? You’ve already said you think it’s a seven part ring with a triangle-trilogy addendum and in Part Two you give us a Harry Potter shape for the decalogy structure -- or is it Christmas Pig?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

Late last month, John shared two theories about the Cormoran Strike series of novels, both from Katya Slonenko, a member of the Reddit r/CormoranStrike online fandom: Dementia, Jewelry, and a Nine Inch Cock: The Mystery of Shanker’s ‘Old Man,’ His Given Name, and Why He’s Never Killed Jeff Whittaker and Katya Slonenko: Leda Strike's 'Mistress of the Salmon Salts' Pudenda Tattoo. John corresponded with Katya while preparing those posts and invited her to join him and Nick for a discussion of her ideas, of life as a Redditor, and her thoughts about Rowling’s artistry and meaning. She accepted the invitation but said she wouldn’t be free until July to talk.

Hence the wait! As expected, though, speaking with her about her own journey to expertise in Rowling Studies, her ideas about the clues Rowling has embedded so carefully within the first eight books and especially in Hallmarked Man, and the Reddit posts of which she thinks Hogwarts Professor readers need to be aware was well worth the wait.

You’ll want to read those posts from June before listening to get the most out of this conversation, but, regardless of your preparation, John and Nick believe that every Serious Striker and Rowling Reader will be charmed and challenged by Katya’s remarkable insights, generous spirit, and winsome personality. The conversation includes three other Reddit community posts — about Leda’s ‘Carnival’ dress (Arachulia), about the real name of her first husband, and about the Harry Potter tattoo Rowling-Galbraith hid on a Strike novel character’s shoulder — which took the discussion above and beyond the two Katya theories in the June posts.

Nick and John close the conversation by inviting her back and they hope readers here will share the questions they want us to be sure to ask her on her return visit in the comment thread below. Or just ask her yourself! As she demonstrated on the threads beneath the June posts, she is generous with her time in responding to other Strike fans.

Can’t wait for more Katya Slonenko? Follow her at r/CormoranStrike, on Instagram (Tattoos!), on FaceBook, and check our her older, longer posts on Medium…

The Ten Plus Questions with Links

1. Welcome, Katya, and thank you for joining us! The serious readers at Hogwarts Professor have been buzzing about your Shanker and Leda r/Cormoran Strike Reddit posts and we’re thrilled to be able to talk with you about those ideas. First, though, tell us about your first Rowling reading experiences and how you started posting on Reddit about the Strike series.

2. I’m guessing that Reddit Strike fandom may be as unfamiliar to Hogwarts Professor readers as it was to me. What is it about the Pelican_Girl and TopRequirement670 moderated posts and that international community that you love the most?

3. Shanker! I confess -- I hadn’t given him a thought really beyond a doppelganger twin for Strike before Fiona from Adelaide introduced me to the ideas that he had to be involved in the death of Leda Strike and that the Riccis were also somehow party to it. Ed Shardlow shared your Reddit post on the subject and my mind was blown; you made a compelling case soon after the publication of Hallmarked Man last year that Shanker is a Ricci, the illegitimate son of Nico ‘Muccy’ Ricci, but to avenge Leda Strike’s death he has become a Met or MI5 informer.

Let’s start with the four pointers that Shanker gave Strike in one conversation that he is a Ricci-by-blood and what made you think of that connection:

* Shanker’s statement that his father had dementia or was senile;

* Shanker’s report that his dad taught that jewelry was the way to a woman’s heart;

* Shanker’s claim that his ‘old man’ was said to have a “nine inch cock;” and

* Shanker’s saying that his begetter “‘ad kids wiv abou’ ten diff’rent women.”

4. I see the trigger now that you’ve detailed it but you dug and made four more connections that were buried in the texts of the series’ other books:

* Shanker’s knowledge of the Ricci clan, especially Mucky,

* his Strike-witnessed working with Mucky in drug deals,

* “he deals cocaine and is good with a knife;” and, best of all,

* the reaction Robin had to both Shanker and Luca at their first meeting, the fun-house mirror upside-down reflection of the attraction half-siblings feel for another intuitively. Robin is viscerally repulsed and afraid of the half-sibling Ricci boys.

We cannot not see these connections after you point them out, but they’re nigh on invisible until they’re pointed out! Why do you think you saw them when we missed them -- and why do you think Rowling has taken such care to make them invisible in plain sight?

5. And Shanker is an MI5 informant? Where does that come from?

5.5 Let’s not forget that you also make an intelligent guess, the first one I’ve heard, about what Shanker’s given name really is, one based on the names of Nico Ricci’s two children out of ten for whom we have names.

* Katya shared not only her reasoning about why Shanker’s name is John or an Italian variant of the Evangelist’s name but also her theory about the parentage and name of the other remaining character in the series who also remains nameless: the mysterious ‘Strike’ with whom Leda ran away from Cornwall! (Be sure to read the comment thread for Redditor conversation about other possible Ricci children…)

6. Your thoughts about Shanker all feed into theories about Leda Strike and her mysterious death in the end, which brings us to another aspect of her life and death about which you’ve brought an important and unique perspective. I’m talking about the Mistress of the Salmon Salt tattoo. Did you know anything about tattoos, Katya, before writing this piece?

7. As a tattoo artist yourself, what do you make of Leda’s tattoo placement?

8. Tattoos are meaningful, powerful reflections or revelations of the person’s interior life or self-understanding (see the post about Katya’s ‘Salmon Salt Tattoo’ theory for much more on this). What do you think this tattoo communicates about Leda? Is it another example of Rowling’s text-within-the-text or a variant of her using cryptonyms to signal important information about a character’s inner life?

What Tattoos Mean in Cormoran Strike and a Catalog of Examples

* From Katya’s 2023 ‘Mistress of the Salmon Salt Revisited:’

I hear you asking - why can’t Leda’s be just a tattoo, without any deeper meaning to it? That’s because all the other tattoos in the Strike books have meaning and provide a clue to their wearers’ characters.

Here are some examples:

* Kelsey Pratt’s One Direction tattoo is an obvious link to her being a One Direction fan. (How Leda’s tattoo is different? She chose the name of the particular song, not the more generic name of the band, to be tattooed on her)

* Laing’s rose pierced with a dagger bluntly means violence to women. Rose is a woman in the language of symbols, while the dagger is… well, a dagger.

* Polworth’s St Piran’s cross means he’s a Cornish patriot. I’ll be surprised if it also doesn’t mark him as The Hanged Man (a symbolic bearer of a cross)

* Portia Bayliss’s trident refers to her Caribbean roots

* Edie had a small black heart on the knuckles because she was the creator of ‘The Ink Black Heart’ cartoon.

* Zoe’s tattoos are of ‘The Ink Black Heart’ characters she identifies with.

* Pez Pierce has The Beatles quote around his neck - Strawberry Fields was (is?) a place in Liverpool.

* Union Jack, a skull, and a Nordic “Chaos” rune give a good impression of what the Turisaz character will be about (all tattooed on visible spots like head or neck - he wears them proudly!);

* Same with Algiz and Uruz, sans the Union Jack and the skull.

* Noli Seymour’s tattoo stands for “Golden Prophet”. It denotes her connection to the Universal Humanitarian Church and her status there as the current Golden Prophet.

* An ace of spades was inked onto his left cheek, and a tattooed tiger covered his throat. - Jordan Reaney’s tattoos are pretty telling, too.

* Not a character, but still - JK herself has a tattoo, “Solve et Coagula”, which means - “I’m a writer of an alchemical detective series!” :D

So you see, all these tattoos are chosen to reflect their owners’ personal histories. That’s generally a feature of Rowling’s writing: if she describes a character, every little detail works for the portrait she wants to paint. There are no details put there “just because” - everything is important. How the characters dress and speak, what they eat and drink, what music they listen to, and what tattoos they have tell us something about the character.

What does Leda’s tattoo contribute to her portrait?

Nothing!

In Career of Evil, when we learn of its existence, the tattoo adds literally nothing to Leda’s portrait. Why is it mentioned in the story to which it makes zero contribution, except for serving as a plot device enabling the killer’s obsession?

Because it will be important later.

* Katya shared in her answer her theory from experience that Rowling-Galbraith had secretly marked a character as a Harry Potter fan by giving her a shoulder tattoo that Potter-heads would recognize!

9. Rowling’s Solve et Coagula tattoo: what do you think she is telling the world about herself? Is there a correspondence or tie between the author’s tattoo and its placement and Leda’s?

10. Whittaker quotes a line from the Salmon Salt song by the Blue Oyster Cult — “She was the Quicklime Girl” — while testifying at his trial on murder charges; what do you think that tells us about her death? Does it suggest it was suicide or murder? Do you think Whittaker did it?

11. And another one to make eleven! You thought at one point because of the meaning of ‘Mistress of the Salmon Salt’ that we had to take seriously the possibility that Leda herself was a serial killer. But you’ve changed your mind. Why is that?

* In addition to her own thinking on this subject, Katya shared yet another Redditor theory, this one from Arachulia about The New Dress that Aunt Joan said was the real reason that Leda had left her Nancarrow home in Cornwall with the mysterious ‘Strike.’ Enjoy!

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(Credit: Telegraph article, June 2017, J.K. Rowling at the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation party in 2007, wearing a floral diamond necklace and matching earrings, cf., Christmas Pig)

Solomon Schmidt, author of A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J. K. Rowling (Skyhorse, June 2026), sat down with us again to discuss what challenges he faced in collating and synthesizing almost thirty years of interviews for his biography. He also shares the three questions he’d ask The Presence if she’d consent to an interview, questions that he thinks she might answer; Solomon turned the tables on his interviewers who had to improv questions they’d ask without being told their interview with Rowling was over.

The necessary links to the book’s Amazon page and to the two Hogwarts Professor reviews are here:

* A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.com)

* A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.co.uk) Uk Edition

* A Pen to Change the World – the Biography of J. K. Rowling by Solomon Schmidt (Nick Jeffery)

* Book Review: A Pen to Change the World - The Life of J. K. Rowling (John Granger)

Five Questions for Solomon Schmidt, Author of A Pen to Change the World:

5. I said you didn’t get to interview Rowling, which is true, but you did have access to all her interviews that she has done 1997 to the present as well as the interviews and articles with her family, friends, fans, and business associates. How did you find, assemble, and sift through those interviews?6. If you had been allowed inside the gates of Fortress Rowling and you were only allowed three questions, what would you ask her? (This is a game John and I regularly play, and usually John’s questions would get him thrown out of an interview!)7. What discoveries that you made in your research were the most exciting to you?8. Rowling has said repeatedly through the years that the critical negative events of her life that reshaped her thinking and her work were the death of her mother and the abusive relationship she had with her first husband. Agree or disagree? What do you think were the most important positive turns in her life?9. Very few people I meet don’t have a fixed opinion about Rowling; the world seems to love and hate her in equal measure with little grey area between the two: adoring fans and political allies on the one hand and those that despise her work, her political efforts, or both. Where do you fall in that divide and how hard was it to represent the other point of view in your biography?10. I assume you’ve started researching your next biography though you’ll be neck deep in this book’s launch for a few months. What will you be working on next?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

(Credit: Neil Wilder, Edinburgh 1999, now in National Portrait Galley)

Solomon Schmidt, author of A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J. K. Rowling (Skyhorse, June 2026), sat down with us this week to discuss what moved him to write a Rowling biography at the height of her radioactivity as a supposed “transphobe” and the obstacles that Rowling, Inc., puts in the way of unauthorized biographers. He also shares the kindness and circumspection of the people who did agree to speak with him, to include Neil Blair and Jorge Arantes.

The necessary links to the book’s Amazon page and to the two Hogwarts Professor reviews are here:

* A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.com)

* A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.co.uk) Uk Edition

* A Pen to Change the World – the Biography of J. K. Rowling by Solomon Schmidt (Nick Jeffery)

* Book Review: A Pen to Change the World - The Life of J. K. Rowling (John Granger)

The second part of our conversation with Mr Schmidt will be posted next week. The first five questions he answered were:

1. What moved you to start this project? You've already written a biography of Alan Dershowitz and many more in the History Bites series; what made J. K. Rowling an inviting subject to you? What made it different from the other biographies you've written?2. You wrote in the acknowledgements at book's end that you didn't write the biography as a work of "literary criticism," but you do discuss everything she has written or collaborated on, Philosopher's Stone to Ink Black Heart. What would you have included in those discussions if you had been writing "literary criticism"?3. This is an "Unauthorized" biography which means you were researching and writing outside the gates of Team Rowling, simultaneously shut off from Rowling and her circle of friends and, one would hope, outside her ability to shape the narrative you put together of her life. You did, though, get some push-back from Rowling, Inc.'s legal arm at one point; what was that about?4. You weren't able to interview Rowling, her sister, her husband, her father, her daughter Jessica, Sean Harris, the Sisters of Swing, Michael the boyfriend, Lucy Shepherd, Pearl Biddle, or 'Starsky and Cox.' You did find and scored interviews with Jorge Arantes, Barry Cunningham (the publisher who signed J. K. Rowling to Bloomsbury), Steve Eddy (one of Rowling’s English teachers), Neil Blair (sort of!), and her American cousins, Ben and Bryony Rowling. How did you find these sources and what was it like sitting down to speak with them?5. I said you didn't get to interview Rowling, which is true, but you did have access to all her interviews that she has done 1997 to the present as well as the interviews and articles with her family, friends, fans, and business associates. How did you find, assemble, and sift through those interviews?

Please share your thoughts below as well as follow-up questions you wish we had asked! Part Two will be up in a week…

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‘Fiona F’ is a Hogwarts Professor subscriber in Adelaide, Australia, the truly down under capitol of the South Pacific island-continent. She works as an environmental scientist on the days she isn’t combing through the Cormoran Strike novels of Rowling-Galbraith in search of answers to the over-arching mysteries of that series.

The Hogwarts Professor Talking Heads duo invited her to a discussion of her potential solutions to two of the unresolved questions that have to be answered before the epilogue of Strike 10, namely, ‘What really happened in the ruled-a-suicide deaths of Leda Strike and Charlotte Campbell?’ Fiona seems to have broken both cases using information dropped as asides in Hallmarked Man.

The Ten Questions that guided their conversation are below with the promised links and Fiona’s time-lines and comments on the Moderator Backchannel they discuss.

In brief, about Leda’s death Fiona notes that we learn in Strike 8 that Shanker is familiar with ‘Barnaby’s, the preferred body-disposal business used by the London under-world, to include the Ricci Crime Syndicate. She connects that dot with (1) Strike’s memory of making a drug delivery for Shanker to the Ricci Godfather way back in the day when the two shared a flat and (2) Shanker’s near panicked warnings to Strike not to investigate the Riccis in Troubled Blood. Fiona’s theory? Means, motive, and opportunity point to the possibility that Leda’s heroin overdose was a Ricci ‘message’ to Shanker that he had better not cross them in a drug deal. Readers have missed this possibility because Shanker loved Leda like a mother, which love unfortunately made her a perfect target for the gangsters to ‘get at’ Strike’s adopted brother.

And Charlotte’s death? Fiona, unlike much of Strike fandom, accepts the Jeffery hypothesis (see here, here, and here) that Ms Campbell-Ross did not kill herself but was murdered in a staged-suicide (a la Leda Strike, Lula Landry, Jasper Chiswell, and Kevin Pirbright). After a close reading of Hallmarked Man, Fiona realized that Dino Longcaster, whom Tara Campbell married after she had divorced Charlotte’s supposed biological father, may have been, based on his fathering Rupert Fleetwood in an adulterous relationship, Milady Bezerko’s real sperm-donor daddy (and at home molester).

Which possible parentage would have made Charlotte and Valentine Longcaster half-siblings. Fiona theorizes from there that the baby Charlotte says was Strike’s was Valentine’s (a la Rupert and Decima’s Lion), that Jago Ross’ children might have been Valentine’s, or both. Valentine, Jago, and Tara shoot to the top of the ‘Charlotte Murder’ suspect list, with Sasha, Rupert, and Amelia as Tara’s agents all possibilities.

Fiona, Nick, and John discuss the various Rowling Golden Threads in play with each of these theories — incest, pregnancy traps, staged suicides — and how both Fiona’s Ricci-Shanker and Secret Charlotte theories are textbook illustrations of Rowling misdirection while planting clues in plain sight.

John and Nick are grateful to Fiona for getting up as early as she did to chat with them and for sharing her theories here with the Serious Strikers at Hogwarts Professor. Hats doffed with a bow from the waist in admiration and gratitude!

The Ten Questions With Links and Notes

1. Fiona, you, Nick, and I have been chatting on the moderator back channels since May and we’ve shared your Daddy Dino theory in which Charlotte was another Longcaster child conceived in adultery and Valentine was her incestuous lover and abuser. Nick and I discussed that idea on our ‘Incest Golden Thread’ program. But none of us know who you are really and I just learned you’re living in Central Australia. Tell us about Fiona, a Welsh name?, and what brought you to Serious Striker land?

12 April Fiona Comments on Moderator Backchannel:

In response to a post by Cheryl Rose Orrocks on 17 Feb 2026, my current theory is that Dino Longcaster is Charlotte’s father and that his son, Valentine Longcaster, will be revealed as her abuser and the possible biological father of Charlotte’s children. Hence the 2nd incest storyline will also involve the Langcaster family. This could be why Charlotte’s mother, Tara, despised Charlotte so much.

If Jago Ross is somehow linked to the matter of the DNA test involving Bijou and Strike, it may be because he had Charlotte’s birth children DNA tested to confirm parentage. Maybe Jago discovers he is not the biological father and assumes Strike is, hence the reason he wants to obtain Strike’s DNA results.

2. Nick was telling me the other day that he has been re-reading the series and it’s changed his thinking about how he would rank the books, especially in light of Hallmarked Man. I hope he’ll clarify what he means by that – and that you’ll share, Fiona, where Strike 8 is on your list of best to worst Strike novels and if or how it changed your thoughts about the first seven.

3. By the time this conversation is posted, I hope to have put up a short summary of your Birthday Party Theory, Fiona, or else it will be the text beneath this conversation. In brief, you lay out the calendar dates after Sacha Legard’s birthday party with respect to Charlotte’s death. Can you tell us why you thought that party had something to do with her death and how you went about setting up the time-line?

May 6 Fiona note on Moderator Backchannels:

In this video, your comments regarding Rupert Fleetwood and Charlotte’s murder (1:00:17) got me thinking. If Charlotte was murdered, her murderer was likely present at Sacha Legard’s birthday party.

After checking out several sources (books (physical copies) 7 TRG and 8 THM, Strike Fans, the Farting Faculty Lounge and Hogwarts Professor) I put together a rough timeline to assemble my thoughts.

* Saturday 21 May 2016: Sacha Legard’s birthday. Valentine and Cosima Longcaster are at the party. Rupert Fleetwood gatecrashes and he and Valentine have some kind of confrontation (refer THM Chapter. 36, pages 291 and 292). I presume Charlotte and Amelia would have been at the party as they are Sacha’s half siblings, however I have no evidence to support this.

* Friday, 27 May 2016: Strike listens to Charlotte’s voicemail messages. (TRG, Chapter 55, pages 421 and 423).

* Tuesday, 14 June 2016: Charlotte is arrested for assault on Landon Dormer (TRG, Chapter 59).

* Thursday, 23 June 2016: Strike deletes three voicemails from Charlotte before heading up to his attic flat (Chapter 61). Charlotte Campbell dies (commits suicide?).

* Friday, 23 December 2016: When Strike goes to the National Theatre to interview Sacha Legard (THM, Chapter 36, pg. 289). Sacha says he ‘was shooting a film in Mexico (Conquest?) when all this business with him [Rupert] and Dessie happened.’

I’m unsure when Sacha was in Mexico (before and/or after his birthday party on 21 May 2016). If he was filming in Mexico after his birthday then he may not have been in London when Charlotte died. If filming in Mexico finished before his birthday, he would have to be on the short-list of murder suspects.

As Charlotte loved tension, conflict, and rows, she may have overheard the confrontation between Rupert and Valentine. Presuming the confrontation was about DNA testing and Dino Longcaster being Rupert’s biological father, maybe the DNA results also contained information about other unknown (and related) people with a similar DNA profile to Rupert and the Longcaster’s (Dino, Valentine, Decima and Cosima) and Rupert threatened Valentine with this information. Valentine is scared of his father, Dino, and wouldn’t want the DNA paternity information to reach Dino.

If Valentine Longcaster (as possible Charlotte abuser), finds out he is the biological father of Charlotte’s children and realises that Charlotte has found this out, that could be a strong motive for murder, particularly as he was appalled by the incest between Decima and Rupert.

It will be interesting to see if Rupert makes an appearance in Book 9.

* See Louise Freeman Davis’ Strike and Ellacott Timelines at The Farting Sofa Faculty Lounge.

4. Your conclusion is a mind-blower as I’ve written in my notes you to invite you to wake up early down under to talk about it. To skip to the Big Reveal, you think, if Charlotte was at the birthday party or learned from Cosima or Valentine about the Dino-Decima-Rupert genetic conjunction, that Valentine Longcaster has to jump to the top of the Campbell-Ross ‘assisted suicide’ list. How so?

5. This is fascinating theorizing, Fiona, and it highlights what Nick has said that the complexity and crowdedness of Hallmarked is a marker of Rowling crafting a “target rich” environment for Books 9 and 10 possibilities. You wrote on 4 June that what if, instead of being molested at home by Trevik, her supposed biological father, she had been abused by a schoolteacher. Why did you think that was possible and how would it color your thinking about her life and death?

4 June Fiona Comment

Have you considered the possibility that Leda Strike (Peggy Nancarrow) was molested by a school teacher, rather than a victim of incest. Both scenarios are obviously awful. I have been pondering this because Leda/Peggy packed up and moved so often and Cormoran and Lucy never stayed in the same school for very long.

6. On 10 June you sent your magnum opus, the Leda Strike life timeline and a ‘Means Before Motive’ examination of her death. Again, why bother and how did you track down the dates?

7. What did the data reveal about Leda that you hadn’t seen before?

10 June Fiona Timeline for Leda Strike

I have been systematically going back through the Strike books using the JKR finder in an attempt to work out who killed Leda Strike.

I am relying on Rowling playing fair and that the answer to the question of Leda’s death and the evidence to support this has already been given to us in the books.

My attempt at Leda’s timeline and my murder theory are attached. There are gaps in Leda’s timeline and changing dates in the books. I mostly focused on Leda’s childhood, then the last few years of her life in London. I’d be interested in your thoughts.

Constructing Leda’s timeline was also about reaching a conclusion on whether Cormoran Strike was the product of incest. At this stage, I don’t think he was. The timeline doesn’t support the incest theory and I suspect Leda was away from St Mawes from when she married at 18 and left Strike Snr two weeks later until she returned to give birth to Cormoran at Truro hospital at age 20. Too many parties and gigs to go to!

I’d be interested in your thoughts.

Leda Strike Timeline

Peggy (Leda) born in 1954.

Ted and Peggy (Leda) mother died when Ted 16 and Peggy (Leda) 2.

Peggy (Leda) forcible separation from Ted at the age of two.

Peggy (Leda) lived with her paternal grandmother. Ted stayed with their father, Trevik.

Ted leaves home for National Service (age 18?)

Ted returns from National Service after Trevik dies. (age 25?) Married Joan. Peggy (Leda) (age 11?)

Peggy (Leda), at age 18, escapes her paternal grandmother, and runs away with a youth who’d come to Truro with the fair. Changed her name to Leda. Ted (32 years old).

Leda married youth from the fair when she was 18 years old. She had run out on her husband after only two weeks and that her sole motivation in marrying Strike Snr. (who, according to Aunt Joan, had arrived in St. Mawes with the fair) had been a new dress, and a change of name.

“Leda had never stayed still long enough to present a stable target. Often her children remained in a school for mere weeks before a new enthusiasm seized her, and off they went, to a new city, a new squat, crashing on her friends’ floors or, occasionally, renting. The only people who knew what was going on, and who might have contacted social services, were Ted and Joan.”

1990? Leda brought Shanker (age 16), who had been stabbed, home to their squat.

1991 Leda Strike met Jeff Whittaker.

1992 Nick Herbert and Strike had a joint eighteenth birthday party at the Bell pub in Whitechapel.

1992 Leda had fallen pregnant in Strike’s eighteenth year, while he was applying for university.

Leda married Jeff Whittaker in 1992.

Switch born in December 1992.

Leda died in 1994, (age 40?), when Lucy (age 19?) and Strike (age 20?)

8. Okay, now that we have Leda’s life in a mental picture, walk us through your Means Before Motive breakdown of the most likely suspects.

Fiona’s Theory about Leda’s death: Means before motive

* Means: Three Suspects

1. Member(s) of Ricci family or Ricci gang member.

2. Jeff Whittaker.

3. Shanker.

All had access to drugs.

* Motive

1. Unpaid drug debt (Whittaker) and Ricci’s killed Leda as a warning, or

2. Rival gang to Shanker’s cousin’s takes revenge (knowing Shanker is close to Leda) and kill Leda as a warning, or

3. Drug induced murder by Whittaker.

Shanker’s knowledge of organised crime in London is peerless. He knows what happened, blames Whittaker, but has never said anything to Strike. (Refer Troubled Blood, chapter 27, where Strike recalls helping Shanker make a ‘delivery’ in ‘92 or ’93 and Shanker’s reaction to Strike’s recall of that).

Maybe Leda was suffocated while she slept (similar to Margot Bamborough’s death), then injected with heroin by her killer.

* Opportunity

· Jeff Whittaker (lived at squat; a drug user).

· Shanker (frequently visited the squat; was close to Leda).

· Member(s) of Ricci family or Ricci gang member (local drug dealers) making a delivery.

9. So Shanker is both a suspect and a person of knowledge; he either did it or knew who did it? How important is Strike’s memory of the Ricci drug deal delivery for Shanker in all this?

10. The beauty of this theory is that it’s been so well set up; who has Shanker who revered Leda on their suspect list when she revered her so – and yet it was just that relationship that would have made her so vulnerable to targeting by the Riccis if Shanker stiffed them… Hence his warning Strike off the Riccis with such care in Troubled Blood and obscuring how he knows about Barnaby is Hallmarked?

John Notes 10 June

I’m intrigued by the Ricci-Shanker connection. Shanker knows about Barnaby’s and that Knowles was dispatched there; Strike sees Marco Ricci later in the story making a delivery to Barnaby’s. If I’m following your notes, Shanker’s panic about Strike investigating the Riccis in Troubled Blood isn’t out of concern for his adopted brother but from the fear that Cormoran will learn of his relationship with the family -- and, as you speculate, that Leda was killed by them as a message to young Shanker not to cross them. Shanker testified against Whittaker to scapegoat him and perhaps because he knew the Riccis would kill him if he told the truth.

* Great plot twist and one that explains the whole Knowles plot line in Hallmarked Man and the police interest in Strike’s source of information; Shanker is being presented as a dangerous criminal to readers who are blind (as are Strike and Robin) to the possibility that he was the natural suspect in Leda’s death because of his proximity to nihilist forces. The delivery Strike made for Shanker to Ricci and Shanker’s response to Strike’s memory is a critical catch in all this; well spotted!

I don’t think your timeline precludes either Ted being Strike’s father or Trevik molesting Leda as a young woman -- or another possibility. Her birth years and years after Ted’s suggests that Trevik was not her father, that her mother’s death wasn’t natural, and that Ted may have been Leda’s father via an incestuous relationship with his mum, both victims of Trevik’s abuse. Leda’s adoption by her grandmother after her mother died may have been to protect her from Trevik or her simply being cast out by him. Incest is a live issue, I think, in the Cornwall household.

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Last week Ed Shardlow posted his thoughts about The Hallmarked Man being written in playful but meaningful parallel with Rowling’s “political fairy tale,” ‘The Hallmarked Man Meets The Ickabog.’ Nick Jeffery and John Granger called him up both to congratulate him on Arsenal winning the Premier League Cup — Go, Gunners! — and to learn as much as they could about the parallels he noted. After acknowledging the correspondences with Casual Vacancy, the trio explored Ed’s argument about the Ickabog echoing just beneath the surface of Hallmarked Man, straight up and in inversion.

The Ten Questions, Links, and Helpful Notes

1. Nick, can you provide some context for this conversation? How did we get to the point that we expected Hallmarked Man to echo in characters, plot points, and themes either Casual Vacancy or The Ickabog? No one thought that was in the cards when Rowling-Galbraith and her publishers locked down the series at ten books.

* ‘Parallels Series Idea’ Pillar Post

* Evan Willis’ Tetractys Theory: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

2. Open subject for the triumvirate to discuss here: there are a bunch of Casual Vacancy parallels in Strike 8 that have to be acknowledged. Name your favorites; I’ll start this ball Rowling…

* Ironbridge and Pagford seemed to be sister cities

* each book ‘begins’ with the sudden and tragic death of a man who haunts the rest of the novel, Barry Obama Fairbrother and Tyler Powell

* The peanut allergy that Tyler and Andrew Price have; and

* The incest secret in the Longcaster and Wall families

3. Having noted those, Ed, why are you so sure that it’s The Ickabog which is the parallel text with Hallmarked Man? Is the quantity of the parallels you and others have found, their quality, or the overarching feel of the works?

* Ed’s Post: ‘The Hallmarked Man Meets The Ickabog’

4. I was surprised by your sheep parallel. I know my Ickabog memories are not fresh, but were there a lot of lambs and ewes in Strike 8?

* Ed’s Post: ‘The Hallmarked Man Meets The Ickabog’

5. And the fish?

* Ed’s Post: ‘The Hallmarked Man Meets The Ickabog’

6. Is there something akin to the Freemasonry of Hallmarked Man in The Ickabog?

* Inversion of ‘Political Fairy Tale’ with modern touches and gritty detective novel and Medieval coloration via Freemasonry symbolism and ritual

7. Sandy Hope, our partner in the Group Adventure of charting Hallmarked Man, had a bunch of parallels that she shared in the comment thread to your post:

* One of my favorite parallels you mention is the Old Forge and the Ickabog’s cave, in which both Robin and the Ickabog tell tragic stories of birth. The Old Forge also reminds me of the transformation of the dungeon once Mrs. Beamish gets a stove installed and starts baking and feeding the prisoners. Mr. Dovetail’s broken mind is restored by Mrs. Beamish helping him remember better times, and Robin’s own brokenness is soothed by Strike’s transformation from a self-serving, manipulative jerk to a selfless, compassionate listener and genuine friend. In both stories the fire is warm and purifying. Comment Url

* One of my favorite parallels was “sticking to the game plan,” the ill-fated idea shared by Strike via Uncle Ted and also Lord Spittleworth. RFM reminds me of Ma Grunter, trying to appear sober when they’re actually drinking on the sly. Dangerous Dick de Lion is not unlike King Fred the Fearless, who both have to learn about being contrite. Robin’s bracelet is rather like Daisy’s bandalore: both gifts are initially a hit but end up secretly hidden or stolen. Comment Url

8. My favorite parallels were between the incest and ectopic pregnancy in Hallmarked Man and the Ickabog’s manner of conceiving children and birthing them. Did you laugh out loud when you figured that out? I did when I read your post -- but it bears some explaining --

* Ed’s Post: ‘The Hallmarked Man Meets The Ickabog’

9. Let’s go around the table again and talk about the connection between the two books we haven’t talked about yet --

* Avenging Ghost of Beamish and Powell

* Eslanda/Jolanda

* Sandy Hope’s Footprint Clue

* Image of St George

* The monster’s cave, the Old Forge on Sark, and an ectopic pregnancy

* Woman talking monster into returning to human society

* Ed’s brilliant parallel Character list

10. You discuss in your post that you went through two stages before arriving at your conviction that The Ickabog was the model: first the overarching story and then on re-reading The Ickabog for specific detailed parallels. Do you think we should do a re-read of Casual Vacancy -- Nick is always ready for a trip to Pagford -- to see if there aren’t specifics there, too?

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In yesterday’s Hallmarked Man Notes: The Christmas Charm Bracelet Decoded, Tod Jameson and the Ectopic Pregnancy, and Venetian Blinds, Ed Shardlow explained three sub-texts within Strike 8 that, though invisible on first and second reading, pop up during structural analysis and in light of other Rowling-Galbraith notes.

* The Christmas gift charm bracelet that Strike gives to Robin, for example, appears to be a ring and a key to Hallmarked Man, a meaning that occurred to Ed in light of Rowling’s own bracelet gift to fandom last year as a key to Sleep Tight, Evangeline;

* John Granger’s posts about Strike 8’s cryptonyms similarly encouraged Ed to think about the meaning of ‘Todd Jameson’ and how the “egg-shaped” man had several names and seemed to be stuck on the Tube; and

* Ed’s efforts to finish his charting of each Part of Hallmarked Man brought up the theme of Robin’s blindness and mental struggles in Part Three’s chapter correspondences.

In conversation with Nick and John explore these ideas as well as the potential importance of A. H. Murdoch, a historical figure that Rowling-Galbraith invented whole-cloth, the meaning of his name (‘Alexander Hughson’), and the passages from his book, Secrets of the Craft, which of course are also Rowling-written.

Below are relevant links to the subjects the trio discuss and copies of the ten questions John and Nick asked Ed. Enjoy!

Links to Conversation Subjects

* Hallmarked Man Notes: The Christmas Charm Bracelet Decoded, Tod Jameson and the Ectopic Pregnancy, and Venetian Blinds

Charm Bracelets

* The Christmas Charm Bracelet of Strike 9 Clues (Part One)

* The Christmas Charm Bracelet of Strike 9 Clues (Part Two)

* 'Sleep Tight, Evangeline,' Miniature Psalters, and the Head of Persephone: A Conversation with Dimitra Fimi

Cryptonyms of Hallmarked Man

* The Allegorical Cryptonyms of The Hallmarked Man, Part One

* What do Tyler Powell, Rupert Fleetwood, Jolanda Lindvall, and Lady Jensen Have in Common?

* The Allegorical Cryptonyms of The Hallmarked Man, Part Two

* Wet Squibs, Islamic Cub Names, the Seven Strike Series Structure Theories, and How a Human Being Reads a Story

* The Lost Child Golden Thread in the Work of J. K. Rowling (Kanreki)

* The Pre Natal Infanticide Theory Explaining the Lost Child Golden Thread (Kanreki)

Rowling as Sacred Artist: A Perennialist Reading

* Ray Livingston's 'The Traditional Theory of Literature' (Chapter 1: Preface and Prologue)

* Ray Livingston's 'The Traditional Theory of Literature' (Chapter 2: Man, Society, Art )

* Ray Livingston's 'The Traditional Theory of Literature' (Chapter 3: The Creative Process)

* Martin Lings’ The Sacred Art of Shakespeare

* J. K. Rowling’s ‘G-Spot’ and ‘Triple Play:’ The Lake & Shed Secret of Her Success

The Ring Readings of Rowling’s Hallmarked Man Chapter Sets

* Index to the Group Adventure of Charting Hallmarked Man (scroll to bottom)

* Ed Shardlow’s ring notes for Part Three

A. H. Murdoch’s Secrets of the Craft Excerpt in Hallmarked Man:

[Strike skim read the entry under Degree Thirty Two.]

The Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret becomes with the degree’s endowment none other than a Christian Knight, the spiritual and legitimate successor of the Knights Templar…

When she elevates and illuminates, a pure and chaste woman is as silver, or the moon. The […] Freemason is sure never to mistake base lead for the nobler metal, else he may find himself forever entombed in the dungeons of lust and lasciviousness. (ch 53, pp 400-401)

The parenthetic ellipsis is in text, presumably there because “Murdoch’s book hadn’t been properly formatted, but scanned into digital form, so that the occasional word was illegible.”

The Ten Questions

1. We have a special guest today, Ed Shardlow, the author of a commissioned post that went up this week, one we begged him to write up. It’s a weird post erven for a site that embraces the exotic, weird in the sense that it’s actually three posts rolled into one. What’s up with that, Ed?

2. So the three topics are:

* The charms on the Christmas gift bracelet Strike gives to Robin;

* The meaning of Todd Jameson’s name; and

* Robin’s sight and memory issues, ‘Venetian Blinds’

Is there a thread running through these ideas?

3. Tell us your charm bracelet idea and the meaning you think each charm has --

4. And it’s a ring, right? What a hoot. --

5. I loved the charm bracelet piece, not only because you read it as a ring and showed that the charms together and separately act as something of a cipher for the book, but because you linked it with Rowling’s Strike 9 charm bracelet. Do you think per Shanker’s advice that Rowling-Galbraith is giving us jewelry as a gift, one that acts as a key to the work in Hallmarked and before Evangeline, because she wants to make up with us for the hardship readers are having with the book?

6. True confession, though I was laughing out loud and delighted with your breaking the Todd Jameson cryptonym, I was also pretty disappointed; that name was number 1 on my not-yet-written third cryptonym post. What consoles me is that I doubt I would have picked up on what you saw, which is mind-blowing. Tell us how you figured it out as well as what you found --

7. Now this is a new variant of Rowling-Galbraith inserting a text within the text. This ectopic sub-story isn’t a written text, a fairy tale, an epigraph, a song playing in the background, an illustration based on a mad detective’s Tarot card throws, or the story the bad guy is selling that we have to unwind and re-write; we’ve seen those books-inside-the-book before. This is Rowling concealing a narrative inside the narrative with really only the name to act as the cipher for the coded message. Hence her talking up the importance of names in this book (e.g. Jolanda -- violets)?

8. You make a fascinating connection with Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, and Todd Jameson, the Son Who Killed His Mother (?). Do you think she finally wrote in a Chosen One echo in the Strike series via Jameson?

9. I want to leave the board here because I know you have to run -- thank you for joining us on such short notice! -- and talk about something you’ve been sharing on the Moderator’s Back Channels, namely, A. H. Murdock. His Secrets of the Craft is another text within a text, right? Have you thought about his name or why Rowling gave his book that title?

10. When will you be done with The Ickabog project? Inquiring minds want to know!

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