Cold-Blooded Walk To Destruction: Part 1- Dumbledore
Cold-Blooded Walk To Destruction: Part 1- Dumbledore
This post is a continuation of the Lightning Struck Tower meta where I brought up symbolism associated with Harry, Snape and Dumbledore. This will go into each of their respective deaths and Biblical ideas and symbols surrounding it.
Albus Dumbledore
The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth - Psalm 145:18
"You will find that I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me... Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it." - Albus Dumbledore, CoS.
Quite early on in the series, Dumbledore is established as the God figure, with Fawkes as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.
"You must have shown me real loyalty down in the Chamber. Nothing but that could have called Fawkes to you."
In the climax of Chamber of Secrets, Harry is rewarded for his faith in Dumbledore (“He isn’t gone as you might think!”) with the appearance of Fawkes, who both helps him defeat the Basilisk by pecking out his eyes, giving him the Sorting Hat (which belonged to Gryffindor, and had his sword), dropping the diary (the source of Tom’s power) onto Harry’s lap who instinctively stabbed it, and heals Harry’s wound with his tears. During the Pentecost, the Holy Spirit appears to the apostles as tongues of fire and grants them wisdom, protection, and healing.
We see this connection again in GOF, when Harry and Voldemort’s wand connect via Priori Incantatem, because they share the core of the same Phoenix: Fawkes. For Harry, the golden web of light is a source of hope and Voldemort, a source of fear.
And then an unearthly and beautiful sound filled the air....It was coming from every thread of the light-spun web vibrating around Harry and Voldemort. (...).It was the sound he connected with Dumbledore, and it was almost as though a friend were speaking in his ear.... (GOF)
it was Voldemort's wand that was vibrating extra-hard now...Voldemort who looked astonished, and almost fearful..(GOF)
After Dumbledore’s death, Fawkes’ mourning song, a lament, strengthens and comforts Dumbledore’s mourners. Essentially embodying the Holy Spirit which descends on the believers and grants strength in faith and wisdom to spread the word of God.
Somewhere out in the darkness, a phoenix was singing in a way Harry had never heard before: a stricken lament of terrible beauty. And Harry felt, as he had felt about phoenix song before, that the music was inside him, not without: it was his own grief turned magically to song that echoed across the grounds and through the castle windows. - (HBP)
Harry resolves to carry on Dumbledore’s mission of destroying the Horcruxes at the end of this book. As in the GOF, where sound of the golden web/ Fawkes’s song is “connected with Dumbledore”, the Holy Spirit in the Bible, Jesus declared, “The Holy Spirit will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
Point of Interest: The cave chapters, where Dumbledore drinks the Drink of Despair can be seen as a version of the time Christ drank from the cup of suffering the night before his death. Read the Gethasemane story here.
part 2: Snape, Part 3: Harry coming up.
