l've read em all

l am YET to start the most recent one....l have been occupied

 

i plan to begin soon tho :)

bahh...i must get the 5th one! :stunned:

my fav is 3rd :cool:

i love Harry Potter! I am like the biggest fan ever! I have a whole shrine devoted to Harry Potter! lol.

:lol:hey britlove welcome!!! ;)

yes welcome..everything is bigger in texas ;)

it's nice to read it, no more that it .

:)

what country owns this flag? :kiss:

LifeIsForLiving_Amanda,

i meant you ...

belarus...my im from america i just love that flag looks like a skirt i used to own :kiss:

:lol: :lol:

:embarrased:

;) <<my flag would be like this so!!! just kidding!!! HONESTLY!! :stunned:

it's kinda regular don't ya think? there are may more flags much more beautiful

mine for example :D

kidding. no really, like hmm nepal?! barbados? ((((((israel))))))) :)

wow you are writing lots of messages

me :)

yeah u. :)

:cool:

my fav was the 3rd

yeah the 3rd was really good and unpredictable but my fav is still the 4th ;) :P

THIRD :angry: :angry: :angry: i cant remebr all of th foruth :/ :/ :cry:

My favorite is definitly the fifth. It was more mature, IMO. Showed that they're not really kids' books.

 

EDIT: Just for emphasis, I'd thought I'd post a part of one of my friend's essays.

 

That being said, I've only recently been made aware of the symbolic significance of the hippogriff and it greatly surprised me. I'm going to be doing much more digging on this subject because I find it fascinating and don't think it can be covered in just a few simple lines.

 

One of the reasons that I am so impressed with this series is Jo Rowling's overall knowledge of what I consider to be arcane mythological creatures such as grims, hinkypunks, kappas, grindylows, veelas as well as knowing the morphological appearance of the roots of mandrakes.

 

She also uses names that have great significance, such as:

 

Hedwig the patron saint of orphans

 

Lily as a name means purity and as a flower is associated with Mary, Mother of Jesus.

 

People also mentioned the meaning of Sirius Black and its association with the Dog Star.

 

There is also the symbolic significance of the different woods used in magical wands. They aren't all simply branches of pine trees carved into pretty shapes.

 

Harry's wand is made of holly which is a wood associated with Jesus.

 

I had earlier (like a year ago earlier), found a website that had an extensive list of the meanings of different trees that I had found fascinating. I tried to find it again tonight, but did not have success in finding the same one. Here is a link to one that has some interesting meanings. What I found before was that willow (Lily's wand) was associated with: Willow: Love, Divination, Protection, Healing. (Although it differs on the site that I referenced.) And yew, the wood of Voldemort's wand is associated with graveyards and with death.

 

Both cores of Harry's and Voldemort's have phoenix tailfeathers, another mythological symbol for death and resurrection. Something that is also strongly associated with Christ. Harry was unconscious for a period of three days after his altercation with Quirrell/Voldemort. I think that is significant as it is echoing Christ rising up on the third day.

 

Mr. Ollivander also produced wine from Harry's wand during the "Weighing of the Wands" chapter in GoF.

 

These all have very powerful symbolic meanings that are not noticed on first blush. Possibly when the entire series is over, it still will not be noticed by the vast majority of readers. However, I doubt that these things were done by coincidence.

 

So we get back to Buckbeak being a hippogriff and what it might mean. Yes, for plot purposes we needed a big beast that would be fearsome and cause damage to Draco in the Care of Magical Creatures class to necessitate the trial of Buckbeak. But like I mentioned before, that could have been accomplished by a mere winged horse. In Greek Mythology, Pegasus the famous winged horse had sprung up from the body of the gorgon Medusa when she was beheaded. (Another decapitation motif, yeesh.) Pegasus was wild and swift and resisted taming. The only ones who could come near him were the nine muses. That is until the great tamer of horses Bellerophon had fallen asleep in Athena's temple and dreamed of a golden bridle that would allow him to ride Pegasus. When he awoke he had that magic bridle in his hand and he was able to successfully ride that famous horse.

 

Besides that, we have in canon Hagrid trying to blame his injuries sustained from Grawp on an Abraxan horse to Umbridge. (See Hagrid's tale, Scholastic, p. 437.)

 

Jo Rowling did not need to use the hippogriff in her story, but she did. She also had Dumbledore's emphasis on the power of love being "a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there." (The Lost Prophecy, Scholastic, p. 843) Put those things together and I find it to have an incredibly powerful meaning.

 

This is not a light and fluffy series, regardless of how many warm fuzzy fanfics are written having been inspired by these characters. These are big, powerful themes that I find compelling.

 

*Nods*.

:o