Up until now, I had given short shrift to The Christmas Pig by J.K. Rowling, until today when I fell down a rabbit hole that led me to a decadent royal palace (for a change) in the Land of the Lost, where the crimson King Power rules with an iron fist. And there, I immediately fell for one of his courtiers:
But first let's set the scene.
... the golden palace doors.
... over the threshold of the palace. They now stood on a thick crimson carpet
which was soft ....Twin fires burned beneath two
marble fireplaces on either side of a magnificent staircase with golden
bannisters.
And now let's meet the secondary character who has so enthralled me that he has to be the first one I have to introduce, including all his lines and mannerisms (for they give off a personality vibe rather similar to that of yours truly!):
... ‘and that,’ she said,
pointing to a ball of orange light, inside which stood a young man with a plump,
smiley face, ‘is Optimism. They’ll entertain you while I tell His Majesty his
guests have arrived.’
...Optimism came
bounding over ..., beaming from ear to ear. He had
round, innocent eyes and, like Happiness, gave off a pleasant warmth. After
seizing ... hand and shaking it, ... he cried, ‘Marvellous to meet you! What jolly good Things you are! I feel
as though I’ve known you forever! Let’s be best friends!’
... said Optimism, bouncing excitedly
on the balls of his feet.
...
‘Well, I’m sure you’ll find him! Everything will work out splendidly! And
you’ll love our king! He’s a very good Thing –’ for just a second, Optimism’s
smile faltered, but then he beamed as widely as ever ‘– deep down, you know!’
His theme colour is orange, my favourite. He gives off a pleasant warmth. He is "bouncing excitedly on the balls of his feet," and, to cap it all, he's Optimism personified! Absolutely my cup of tea... (guess my Enneagram type and get free virtual Dermark Samhain treats!) Moreover...
‘Oh, I’m sure it will be a smashing story!’ said Optimism, still beaming. ... wondered how he could smile so much without his face hurting.
...
Optimism settled into the seat opposite
..., smiling as widely as ever.
‘There’s no need to be nervous!’ he called across the table. ‘I just know
everything will turn out wonderfully!’
...
‘And you, Optimism?’ demanded King Power.
‘I told them everything would work out wonderfully!’ said Optimism, his lip
wobbling. ‘I told them you were good and kind, Power!’
‘VOTE!’ thundered Power.
‘Well, I vote “no”,’ said Optimism, with a little sob. ‘And I’m sure that deep
down, Power – deep, deep down – there’s a little bit of good in you, and when
you’ve thought it over, you’ll change your mind and let them live in the palace
with us!’
‘SHUT UP!’ roared Power.
...
However, there is a dark side to this story, and the reason why is that King Power and all his courtiers had owners, also known as masters, in the Land of the Living, AKA our own Muggle Earth, who lost them, and that was how they wound up in this palace/courtly setting.
To start with the Crimson King himself:
The crimson figure standing in the
doorway made even Ambition, who’d entered the room behind him, seem dim
by comparison.
Beauty, Optimism, and the Principles bowed, while Memory dropped into a deep curtsey and fell silent at last.
... the figure casting the
scarlet light. He was a big, fierce-looking man with a sour expression and a
jutting jaw.
‘Welcome,’ he said, in a booming voice.
...
‘QUIET!’ yelled Power, banging his huge fist on the table. One of the crystal
goblets toppled over and cracked.
...
‘My owner,’ said Power, beginning to pace up and down, ‘lost me by failing
to stamp down hard enough,’ he smacked one huge fist into the other hand, ‘on
his ENEMIES!
‘Together, we ruled an entire COUNTRY! To keep me, my master kept the
PEOPLE,’ as Power bawled this word, he screwed up his face in disgust and
hatred, ‘in their proper places, which is to say, ON THEIR KNEES!’ he
thundered, a mad look in his bright red eyes. ‘But THEN,’ he bellowed, ‘a boy dared CHALLENGE my master in PUBLIC! And THAT CHILD,’
shouted Power, ‘gave the PEOPLE courage to REVOLT!’
Power’s voice rose to a scream. ‘AND I WAS SUCKED DOWN HERE, TO
THE LAND OF THE LOST!’
Then Lady Ambition, his right-hand woman, ambassador, representative, and queen in everything but name, a scheming female figure who reminds me of Lady Mac... that Scotswoman with the bloodstains:
Here the mysterious figure threw back her hood. She glowed with violet light as Happiness had shone with gold, but gave off no heat. Her face looked older than that of Happiness, and rather less kind.
'... we have a royal family here ... I am His Majesty’s ambassador. ....'
...
The violet lady accepted the news that they were ready to follow her with a brief
smile, which showed her rather pointed teeth, then led them towards the palace,
her black cloak flying behind her in the breeze.
...
‘The king’s in charge of the Loss Adjustors here ..., and I’m His Majesty’s representative. Good evening to you!’ she said grandly to the pencil sharpener and the mallet, who both bowed as each opened a door. The mallet’s head was so heavy he nearly toppled over, but saved himself by clutching the door handle. ‘
Good evening, Your Excellency,’ they said together.
At the foot of the stairs stood the very same diamond earrings .... They seemed to be employed now as maids, because
they took the violet lady’s black cloak, bowed, then wriggled away, disappearing
through a side door.
...
Now that she was
unrobed, their companion filled the hall with her violet light. A tall, thin woman,
she looked down at them as she said, ‘My name is Ambition.’
‘How does someone lose their ambition?’ ...
‘By being a fool,’ said Ambition coldly. ‘My mistress and I achieved great
things together. She’s a politician – or rather, she was. She suffered a small
setback – lost a trifling vote – but that oughtn’t to have mattered!’ cried
Ambition, coming to a sudden halt, ... Her eyes
emitted sparks, ... ‘We could
have recovered from that setback and climbed together to even greater heights!
But no… she lost me, the weak-willed fool!’ shouted Ambition, shaking her fist
at the finding hole in the ceiling.
The sound of her words echoing off the marble walls seemed to bring
Ambition back to herself. She took several deep breaths. ‘My apologies,’ she
said stiffly. ‘I’ve lived here in the palace for several years now, waiting for her to
find me again. Sometimes I fear it will never happen… ....'
...
Hope says even: ‘Ambition has forgotten what night it is, up in
the Land of the Living.’ (ie Christmas Eve during the setting of the novel)
Happiness radiates golden yellow light, just like a Hollywood star, because her owner/mistress was a celebrity actress:
... a
dazzling golden light. It was as though the sun was sitting beside them.
‘I’m not a burning coal,’ said the same lady’s voice as before, which came
from the very middle of the blazing light. It was so bright that ... had to close ... eyes for a moment, but he could see the Thing, even through ... ‘I’m
Happiness.'
....
A blaze of golden light filled the dining hall, as Happiness entered.
‘I – I thought you needed a rest after your long journey, Your Highness,’ said
Ambition nervously, dropping into a curtsey as Happiness moved into the room,
shedding golden light all around her.
‘I didn’t think you’d want to be bothered
with this tedious bit of business, the very evening you arrived.’
‘How did you get OUT?’ demanded Power. ‘Come to that – how did you get
through THOSE doors?’
... the extreme brightness of Happiness, and ... if ... peeped at her sideways, ... could just make out the form of a
smiling woman in the middle of the dazzling light.
...
‘How were you lost?’ ...
‘Through carelessness,’ sighed Happiness. ‘My owner is an actress. She’s
charming and talented, but she wasn’t as kind as she should have been to the
people she cared about, nor as hard-working as she might have been, even though she loved her job. Her gifts once brought her friends and success, but through
laziness and selfishness they slipped away and now, sadly, she has lost me, too.’
‘How will she get you back again?’ ...
‘It will be difficult,’ said Happiness, ‘because she’s looking for me in all the
wrong places, and as she isn’t used to admitting fault, I’m afraid I may be in this place for a long time… perhaps forever.'
Then little old Memory, whose owner appears to be an old lady with Alzheimer's:
A ball of indigo light entered. ... a very old lady shuffling
along in its centre.
‘Good evening,’ she said in a high, cracked voice.
...
‘This is Memory,’ said Optimism.
Memory peered ... for a moment or two, then said, ‘Eighty-five years ago my mistress owned a pig, but hers was of china; what we call a
piggy bank. Its sides were painted with little blue flowers and she used to keep
her pocket money inside it. One Sunday afternoon, eighty-four years ago, my
mistress’s younger sister, Amelia Louise—’
‘Memory,’ said Beauty with a yawn, ‘nobody’s interested. Nobody cares.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it will be a smashing story!’ said Optimism, still beaming. ... wondered how he could smile so much without his face hurting.
‘—broke that piggy bank with the little blue flowers—’
'We’ve heard this at least a thousand times already,’ groaned Beauty, while
Memory continued to mumble.
...
‘Eighty years ago,’ piped up Memory, ‘my mistress’s sister, Amelia Louise,
was caught lying when—’
...
‘Sixty-nine years ago,’ said Memory, in her high, cracked voice, ‘my mistress
and her sister, Amelia Louise, went to see a movie called The Fugitive—’
‘Memory, concentrate,’ snapped Ambition. ‘We’re taking a vote. ...'
...
The old lady glowing with indigo light turned her gaze .... There was a long silence. Then Memory said, ‘No. They don’t
stop me remembering things. I like them.’
The six Principles take the appearance of middle-aged gentlemen in business suits (their light sky blue) because their businessman master sacrificed them in the name of greed:
The door at the far end of the room opened again. Six balls of glowing sky blue
light entered the room, each of which had an identical man inside it, all of them
small and neat and serious-looking.
‘Good evening,’said the six blue men, speaking with one voice, and drowning
out Memory, who continued to mumble her story about the piggy bank. ‘We are
the Principles.’
They bowed in unison ...
The Principles seemed to have heard ..., because they answered together,
‘We are the Things who make humans behave with honesty and decency. Alas,
our owner – a businessman – lost us one by one in pursuit of riches. He is now a
wealthy crook. He likes the money, yet he is unhappy, because he knows he was
better-loved and respected while he still had us. Unfortunately, lost Principles are
among the hardest Things to find, so we expect to live here forever. We have
therefore taken on a new job. We attempt to keep the king on the path of
righteousness.’
‘And does the king often need your help?’ ...
Hope is a strongly-built female with pink light and angelic wings (she's the only courtier with wings) and she is somewhat an outsider at the palace, maybe because Hope is the virtue of underdogs, and, unsurprisingly, her mistress/owner turns out to be a female political prisoner living in a sordid prison in a dictatorship (Rowling had lived in Salazar's Portugal for a while, and even named Slytherin's founder after the Portuguese dictator):
... a woman
as tall as Ambition, though far more strongly built. She was very beautiful, but
the soft pink light she gave off was less bright than that of the other Things.
Unlike her fellow royals, she had wings: not stiff, upstanding wings of golden
plastic, ... but vast feathery wings
of white shading to deep pink, which trailed behind her on the floor like a train.
Hope is very honest, even saying: ‘Ambition has forgotten what night it is, up in the Land of the Living.’ (ie Christmas Eve during the setting of the novel)
In Chapter 49, 'The Story of Hope', we also get the story of her owner/mistress:
‘How were you lost, Hope?’ ...
‘That’s a sad story, I’m afraid,’ came Hope’s voice, over the beating of her
wings. ‘My owner is in prison.’
‘Prison?’ .... ‘What did they do?’
‘Nothing wrong,’ said Hope. ‘On the contrary, she was doing a good thing:
protesting against a ruler very like Power. The ruler was furious, so he locked
her up, pretending she’d broken the law. The judge was too scared to rule against the president, so my owner is currently in a cell with ten others, where there isn’t
enough to eat and barely room to lie down.’
‘That’s terrible!’ ...
‘It is,’ agreed Hope. ‘At this moment, she can’t see how things will ever get
better for her, because they’ve told her she’ll be in prison for twenty years. She
lost me when she heard the length of her sentence, but she’ll find me again, and
sooner than she thinks.’
‘How do you know?’ ...
‘She has a wonderful family and many friends outside the prison walls,’ said
Hope. ‘When she realises that they’re working hard to free her, she’ll find me
again and I’ll help her bear her situation, dreadful though it is. I may not shine as
brightly as my friend Happiness, but my flame is harder to extinguish.’
But, surprisingly, of my favourite character Optimism's owner in the Living World there is nothing to be said in the novel. Who was Optimism's owner? Rowling never gives us the slightest hint of backstory.
Given that King Power and all his courtiers are the same gender and probably around the same age as their owners in the Land of the Living, I have a hunch that Optimism's owner is male and probably still young... But what happened to him in order for this young fellow to lose optimism? Trauma? War PTSD? Drug addiction? Heartbreak? Surely a combination of at last two of them above is a subject too mature to be discussed in a middle-grade novel like The Christmas Pig, hence why the subject of Optimism's owner was left vague.
Beauty, by the way, whose backstory and owner/master in the Living World are not given either, is subversively portrayed as male, a dashing narcissist bathed in a green glow (maybe a reference to the dangerous arsenic-laced Paris Green dye?):
In front of another fire, in a ball of emerald light, stood a very handsome
young man who was examining himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece. He
looked delighted with what he saw there.
‘Good evening,’ he said, without taking his eyes off his own reflection, but
turning his head this way and that, to get a better view of his profile.
‘That’s Beauty,’ said Ambition, indicating the green man,...
We can only assume that Beauty's master was also young and male, and that he was most surely disfigured in one way or another, thus "losing beauty" and that was how this personification wound up at the Palace of King Power, in the Land of the Lost.
PS. THE PALACE SCENE IN THE CHRISTMAS PIG AS PSYCHOMACHIA
... a questionable host, Power, who, like Lucifera, is a dangerous ruler consumed with pride. His “ambassador” Ambition may not seem to be quite as dangerous as Lucifera’s councilors, but her pointed teeth, like Beauty’s mirror, make both of them quite similar to Spenser’s personified Sins, and it is important to note that Power did not invite the Principles to dinner, only Beauty, Ambition, and Optimism, the Things that will allow him to get what he wants.
By the time we enter King Power’s palace, this symbolism is well established and what Rowling writes in the chapters about the vote taken among palace inhabitants we get a much larger picture of soul than just its inner essence and noetic capacity.
The palace becomes a stage for the drama played out in every conscious person between the inner life of love, hope, and blessedness and the path of pursuing exterior advantage and power; the players are aspects of every person who must decide if they will serve King Power, a stand-in for ego and pride, or Jack Jones, the Christos (Saviour) within us.
On the side of Power are Ambition, Beauty, and three of the six Principles. The arguments Ambition and Power advance to win these votes are the necessity of carrying out punishments according to the letter of the law regardless of the injustice involved, a payout of some kind, i.e., personal advantage, and, obscure at first but clarified in Power’s rage, the threat of violence. They do their best, in addition, to lock-out voters they don’t want to participate in this run-off election in the capitol building or palace (‘capitol’ is derived from the word for ‘head’ and I think it helps to think of the palace as the movie location for our soul aspects debating whether Peter or John will triumph, whether the Heart lives or dies in that assembled body.
Memory, the mother of the nine mythological muses and a necessity for coherent thinking, is represented as a good-hearted if obviously senescent older woman. She votes against King Power despite being bullied by Ambition and told by Green Beauty she is a bore because “They don’t stop me from remembering. I like them” (206). Memory has a clear connection with tradition and only those with great recall or prodigious study of history appreciate the primacy of the Heart in the human person.
Three of the six Principles are persuaded by CP’s plea that turning Jack and himself over to the Loser would be murder and “that’s the worst crime of all!” Principles, who claim to be “the Things who make humans behave with honesty and decency” (199) based on their inner prompting in resistance to external temptations, clearly are not sure votes when it comes to choosing between the Petrine law and Johannine justice.
Optimism votes against the King though he, too, is brow-beaten by King Power. Optimism gives the first impression of superficiality and of being a glad-hander. It turns out he is only a mental posture that is sensitive first to the “deep-down, you know!” (199, 206) — and Jack and CP are the deepest aspect of the soul, that is, the Heart — so he votes that they not only be saved but also that the king “change your mind and let them live in the palace with us!” (206). He presents the possibility of Ego and Pride co-existing peacefully in the thinking of the same individual mind with the humble but all-powerful Heart and Conscience. Certainly an optimistic idea given the profundity of the contraries, like Harry and Draco being buddies.
Hope and Happiness were not told about the meeting or invited by Power and Ambition. The Principles were told to stay in their rooms but elected to come because “it would have been against ourselves” to stay away. Happiness, in contrast, was locked in her room and left unaware of the vote. Both she and Hope were locked out of the Palace room in which the vote was to be held.
Ambition had told that she was lost by her owner, a politician, after the “small setback” of not winning a “trifling vote” (194). She clearly has counted the votes in advance, consequently, and been sure that Hope and Happiness will not be on the side of Power. Why?
Hope clearly is an interior virtue, one somewhat akin to Optimism but is the strength and sustenance primarily to the underdog, the person or, in this case, the faculty of soul that has little to no exterior aspect or power. It is easy to imagine Hope residing in the Heart; this attribute certainly proves to be the saving virtue Jack demonstrates having acquired in the Land of the Lost during his confrontation with the Loser in his Lair. She is the bain of Power and the friend of Happiness and the Heart.
Happiness is warmth and light, so, as mentioned, she is representative of the logos light of the world that is the inner life of every human This is difficult to see at first because we have been taught to think that happiness is getting all things we want, especially advantage, pleasure, and power. Rowling is careful to have Happiness explain to the hide-aways in her gondola that she is more of a cross between empathy and healthy self-awareness:
‘How were you lost?’ ...
‘Through carelessness,’ sighed Happiness. ‘My owner is an actress. She’s charming and talented, but she wasn’t as kind as she should have been to the people she cared about, nor as hard-working as she might have been, even though she loved her job. Her gifts once brought her friends and success, but through laziness and selfishness they slipped away and now, sadly, she has lost me, too.’
‘How will she get you back again?’ ...
‘It will be difficult,’ said Happiness, ‘because she’s looking for me in all the wrong places, and as she isn’t used to admitting fault, I’m afraid I may be in this place for a long time… perhaps forever.'
The actress is not a reflective person, is unkind even “to those she cared about,” is negligent with respect to her vocation, which is to say, her defining idea, is insensitive to the spiritual light and darkness of her environment, and, worst, “she isn’t used to admitting fault.” These qualities expel Happiness — and all of them are the marks of someone insensitive to the logos within his or her self, the capacity to love another person as oneself, and, as noted above, to feel remorse or repentance after injuring or being insensitive to the others who share the same ontological ground. Happiness, as Ambition recognized, is a sister of Heart, more eudaimonia — ‘blessedness,’ “the good composed of all goods; an ability which suffices for living well; perfection in respect of virtue; resources sufficient for a living creature” — than self-focused cheer on account of faring well and having great pleasures.
As Ambition must have anticipated, hence her attempts to have the meeting in the mind about Heart without Hope or Happiness, the ‘Do or Don’t turn them over?’ will not win the majority of the qualities of mind. King Power, however, our ego exteriorization as a character, is a true servant of the Loser who feels free to break the rules of His own kingdom. He sics the Palace Loss Adjusters on Jack and CP who escape them by the blinding light Happiness gives off and by Hope’s rapid and powerful intervention to save them.
If Compass were telling this story, she would provide a moral or motto; my re-telling should list a simple explanation of Rowling’s allegorical decision making process in the Palace.
- The question in play is whether Power or the Heart will be the guiding concern of Everyhuman, whether their focus will be on the inner Up There (Living World) or on worldly exterior concerns in the visible plane.
- The vote is very close because, especially today, trusting the Heart to discern what is best for the person in the long and short term rather than faculties adept to calculating privilege depends entirely on the presence of Hope and Happiness, the virtues the Power-ego will do everything to prevent them to have a voice in the decision.
- In the rare case that the Heart wins, fair and square, Power — the demands and concerns of exterior life, the desire for approval and confirmation from without but not above or within — will do everything to divide the Heart-servant from the Truth to be found on the Island of the Blessed.
- If Power decrees his rule overrules the law within the mind, the Heart is fed to the loser and the Heart-within dies. The death of “the Living Boy” or Heart, akin to the murder of the ‘Boy Who Lived,’ is the spiritual death of the person and their surrender to the ephemeral understanding to be had on the horizontal plane divorced from the greater reality Up There.
- The light of Happiness and the wings of Hope deliver the Heart from the dualistic or dis-integrating forces serving ego and pride, the powers of corruption in alliance against the Heart, to a paradise well removed from the Palace of the Soul and its capacities. Heart learns the Truth necessary to defeat the Loser-Satan, a shade of life without the inner life of love-logos, and return to the greater reality Up There in which the Heart can experience accept the Love.
This is a Medieval Morality Play, one very similar in construction to the Chamber of Secrets confrontation between Harry the Heart saving his best friend’s sister from the Memory of an Ego that never knew his mother’s love. (Not to mention the ties to Memory, Ambition, and Beauty; can you say ‘Gilderoy’?). I close here with the promise of writing more on the anagogical psychomachia of this story and of Rowling as a sacred artist depicting the soul’s journey to perfection in the Spirit.
... the Psychomachia in the Palace of Power vote of Soul Faculties to decide the fate ...
Hope and Happiness, though borderline mythological compared to other lost Things, play the roles of ex machina saviors ...
