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May 22 - May 22, 2022
They made their way back up the crowded street to the Magical Menagerie. As they reached it, Hermione came out, but she wasn’t carrying an owl. Her arms were clamped tightly around the enormous ginger cat. ‘You bought that monster?’ said Ron, his mouth hanging open. ‘He’s gorgeous, isn’t he?’ said Hermione, glowing. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Cats at the time had a bad reputation, and even Gessner describes them as being in possession of ‘ingenium calliditas’ or a ‘cunning character’. Edward Topsell, the first translator of Gessner’s work, noted that: ‘The familiars of witches do most ordinarily appear in the shape of cats, which is an argument that the beast is dangerous to soul and body.’ Elsewhere, Gessner asserted ‘that men have been known to lose their strength, perspire violently, and even faint at the sight of a cat’.
Cats impart an air of mischief because, although they’re usually found in a domestic setting, their independent behaviour when they go out of the house can seem uninhibited. When you lock eyes with a cat in the street, you are probably both thinking, ‘What are you up to?’ It’s that individuality and sense of potentially getting up to no good that has historically made cats subject to such negative speculation about their character.
Even though Hedwig is female in the Harry Potter books, the movies used a male snowy owl to play the part since his completely white feathers looked great on camera and his lighter weight made it easier for the then-child actors to carry him.
Unlike those of most birds, owls’ eyes aren’t at the side of their heads, but facing front – just like people. If you look at an owl, it will look right back, which might explain the mysterious connection that some people (and wizards) have with owls.
A griffin itself is a mythical beast with the body of a lion, and the head and wings of an eagle – essentially something that is completely impossible in the real world. As such, Ariosto uses the knights mounted on Hippogriffs as a symbol of the impossibility of and contradictions between chivalry and passionate love, and how that love is complicated in the chivalric tradition.
The phoenix has long been imagined as a beautiful, magical bird that consumes itself in fire but rises again from the ashes, symbolising rebirth and hope.
It was said that the phoenix could be found in Arabia and that it lived for 500 years before it made its own funeral pyre from leaves and branches, sat within it, fanned the flames with its own wings and caught alight. After the ninth day, the legend had it rising from the ashes reborn, with clear symbolism derived from the story of the resurrection of Christ.
Magical creatures are as central to the Harry Potter stories as Harry, Hermione and Ron.
But magic has always crept in, because fundamentally humans want to believe in the unbelievable – that a narwhal tusk is actually a unicorn horn – and so the bestiaries and cabinets of curiosity from the medieval period onwards have found a thrilling new life in the Harry Potter stories and Fantastic Beasts film series. If you care enough for magical creatures in your imagination, they will enhance your life in return!
