Introduction

Julian Harrison Lead Curator, Harry Potter: A History of Magic

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels are a global phenomenon. The stories have sold millions of copies worldwide, have been translated into dozens of languages and inspired countless readers, young and old. But how many of those readers have paused to reflect on the magical traditions that lie at the heart of Harry Potter's world?

Opening at the British Library in October 2017, Harry Potter: A History of Magic is the first major exhibition to explore this rich and diverse aspect of J.K. Rowling's stories. From ancient amulets to medieval mandrakes, from unicorns (they really did exist) to bubbling cauldrons, there are often historical and mythological antecedents for the characters and scenes in the Harry Potter series. The exhibition strives to tell some of these stories and to celebrate the inspiration behind J.K. Rowling's own spellbinding creations.

The exhibition features many precious artefacts relating to the Harry Potter books and magic through the ages. First and foremost are items associated with J.K. Rowling. These include fascinating early drafts of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; original drawings by the author; and intricately worked-out plot plans for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Each and every one of these treasures bears testament to the author's creativity and craftsmanship, and to the enduring appeal of Harry Potter himself.

We are also delighted to showcase some of the original artwork of the artist Jim Kay. Kay has illustrated the first three Harry Potter novels for Bloomsbury (The Philosopher's Stone, The Chamber of Secrets and The Prisoner of Azkaban) to widespread international acclaim. We are extremely grateful to him and to Olivia Lomenech Gill, artist of the new illustrated edition of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, for their generous involvement and support.

It is an equal pleasure to present items from the British Library's own unrivalled collections, many of which have never previously been considered in this wider, magical context. On display are Greek papyri, Ethiopian talismans and Anglo-Saxon centaurs, Chinese oracle bones, French phoenixes and Thai horoscopes. Harry Potter fans can pore over Leonardo da Vinci's notebook, marvel at the Dunhuang Star Atlas, and gaze in amazement at the snowy owl in Audubon's Birds of America. To complement these British Library objects, we are also thrilled to have secured some amazing loans from a number of institutions and private individuals.

Harry Potter: A History of Magic is framed around some of the subjects studied at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There is Potions (and its more advanced cousin, Alchemy), Herbology, Charms, Astronomy, Divination, Defence Against the Dark Arts and Care of Magical Creatures. Focusing on each of these subjects has enabled the exhibition curators to delve deeper into the theme of enchantment through the ages. Potion-making, fortune-telling, harvesting herbs and spells to make you invisible all make an appearance. In the process, we have uncovered intriguing facts about many of the exhibits. Did you know, for example, that Leonardo da Vinci believed that the Sun rotated round the Earth? Were you aware that the ‘Abracadabra’ charm first originated as a cure for malaria? How many people knew that a ‘real’ mermaid was presented to the British Museum in 1942? Some of these facts, quite frankly, border on the absurd – according to The Old Egyptian Fortune-Teller's Last Legacy, which we examine in Divination, ‘a mole on the buttock denotes honour to a man and riches to a woman’.

The Harry Potter stories are rooted in centuries of popular tradition. Predicting the future, for instance, has a long history. The oldest items in the British Library's collections are Chinese oracle bones, which date as far back as 1600 BC. These ancient bones were used for a divination ritual at the court of the Shang Dynasty. In order to foretell upcoming events, the bone would have been engraved and then heated with metal sticks, causing it to crack – the diviners then examined the patterns of the fractures to interpret the future. One of these humble-looking bones is actually the oldest exactly datable object in the exhibition. On the front, the diviners observed that nothing of great significance would happen in the immediate future. On its reverse, however, the bone recorded a lunar eclipse, viewable at Anyang in China between 21:48 and 23:30 (give or take seventeen minutes) on the night of 27th December, 1192 BC. In order to have been inscribed in this way, the bone must have been in existence at that very same time. These artefacts have been known historically as ‘dragon bones’, emphasising their magical qualities. The ancient art of alchemy is at the heart of the first story, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In that book, the mysterious Stone in question had been taken in secret to Hogwarts School, where it was being guarded by a monstrous three-headed dog, named Fluffy, and a series of protective spells placed upon it by the teachers. It was Hermione Granger who was the first to realise the significance of a certain Nicolas Flamel. Having spent several frustrating weeks with Harry and Ron Weasley in the library, she suddenly pulled out an old book that she had put aside for a bit of light reading.

‘Nicolas Flamel,’ she whispered dramatically, ‘is the only known maker of the Philosopher's Stone!’

According to this ancient tome, Flamel was a noted alchemist and opera-lover, aged 665, who was living quietly in Devon with his wife, Perenelle. What readers of the Harry Potter stories may not have realised is that Flamel was a real person, a wealthy landlord who lived in medieval Paris, where he died in 1418. One of the star items in the exhibition is the actual headstone that marked the real Flamel's tomb, on loan from the Musée national du Moyen Âge in Paris.

Firenze the centaur was another to play a significant part in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, saving Harry from danger in the Forbidden Forest before going on to teach Divination at Hogwarts in the later books. In Greek mythology, Chiron was the greatest of all centaurs, renowned as a physician and astrologer. According to a medieval herbal in our exhibition, the plants known as Centauria major and Centauria minor (greater and lesser centaury) were named after Chiron. He is shown in that manuscript handing over these plants to Asclepius, the god of medicine and healing. Centaury was renowned as a remedy for snakebite. I am particularly pleased to reveal that we are also displaying one of my favourite medieval books, an 11th-century Anglo-Saxon manuscript containing an illustration of the constellation Sagittarius. This constellation takes its name from the Latin word for ‘archer’, and is depicted in these pages as a bearded centaur, with a white cloak draped round its shoulders, and drawing back its bow. This Anglo-Saxon manuscript is a precious survivor from another age, when our ancestors set great store in tracking the movements of celestial bodies.

Witches and wizards have long been associated with cauldrons and broomsticks. There are two historical cauldrons on show in Harry Potter: A History of Magic, on generous loan from the British Museum and the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle. One of those cauldrons, made almost 3,000 years ago, was found in the River Thames at Battersea, London, in the 1860s. Despite having rested in the silt for countless centuries, the Battersea Cauldron is extraordinarily well preserved. The other cauldron, in contrast, is no longer in pristine condition. It exploded when a group of modern-day Cornish witches were using it to brew a potion on the beach. These two items give real meaning to the first printed image of witches with a cauldron, found in a book published in Cologne in 1489. This illustration shows two elderly women placing a snake and a cockerel into a large cauldron, in a bid to summon up a hailstorm. Popular perceptions of witches as ugly, haggard and demonic can ultimately be traced to this highly influential publication.

Every witch or wizard, so we have always been led to believe, should be able to fly on a broomstick. As Kennilworthy Whisp noted in Quidditch Through the Ages, ‘No Muggle illustration of a witch is complete without a broom’. We are very happy to be showing in our exhibition a traditional witch's broomstick with an elaborately coloured handle. Its former owner, Olga Hunt of Manaton in Devon, used this broomstick for magical purposes – on a Full Moon she is said to have leaped around Haytor Rocks on Dartmoor, much to the alarm of courting couples and campers. There is also a little book entitled The History of the Lancashire Witches, describing that English county as ‘famous for witches and the very strange pranks they have played’. Alongside a picture of a jolly witch mounting a broomstick, the anonymous author declares, ‘Lancashire witches chiefly divert themselves in merriment and sport’ and are ‘more sociable than any others’. Any Yorkshire witches out there are probably already cursing in dismay.

Harry Potter fans will be familiar with the hazardous properties of mandrakes. According to medieval herbals, mandrakes could cure headaches, earache and insanity, but their roots grew in human form and would shriek when torn. A 15th-century British Library manuscript shows the approved way to harvest that plant, by attaching one end of a cord to the plant and the other to a dog. The dog would be encouraged to move forward by sounding a horn or enticing it with meat, dragging the mandrake with it. There were a number of comparable drawings that we could have shown alongside this manuscript, but we plumped eventually for a 14th-century illustrated herbal, containing an Arabic translation of the writings of Pedanius Dioscorides, a physician in the Roman army. Dioscorides was one of the first to distinguish between the male and female mandrake (or maybe we should rename them the ‘mandrake’ and the ‘womandrake’). Sadly for the romanticists among us, modern science now dictates that this identification is incorrect – there is more than one mandrake species native to the Mediterranean, rather than two separate sexes of the same plant.

This exhibition is alive with tales of human enterprise and endeavour. The discovery of phosphorus by the German alchemist Hennig Brand is shown in a magnificent painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, kindly loaned by Derby Museum and Art Gallery. Brand's discovery came about after he boiled down vast quantities of urine in a failed attempt to manufacture gold. The by-product was phosphorus, not quite every alchemist's dream. Elizabeth Blackwell illustrated, engraved and handcoloured her Curious Herbal to raise funds to have her husband, Alexander, released from a debtors’ prison. Alexander Blackwell assisted by identifying the plants she had drawn at Chelsea Physic Garden in London, until such time as she had absolved the debt. Once released he repaid his wife's kindness by leaving for Sweden, entering the service of King Frederick I, and getting himself executed for his involvement in a political conspiracy.

The poignant copy of A Curious Herbal on display in Harry Potter: A History of Magic has been annotated in Elizabeth Blackwell's own hand.

Some magical advice dispensed over the centuries now seems rather quaint in a modern context. Quintus Serenus Sammonicus, physician to the Emperor Caracalla, recommended that the ‘Abracadabra’ charm should be worn as an amulet around the neck, fixed with either flax, coral stones or the fat of a lion. An Ethiopian charm for changing oneself into various animals, and for which there is no counter-charm, reads as follows:

With red ink, write these secret names on a piece of white silk. To transform yourself into a lion, tie the silk to your head; to become a python, tie it on your arm; to turn into an eagle, tie it on your shoulder.

Magical creatures abound in the Harry Potter novels. Many of these fantastic beasts are J.K. Rowling's own creations, but others have illustrious precedents. Did you know that the French author Guy de la Garde devoted an entire study to the phoenix, entitled L’Histoire et description du Phoenix? The British Library's copy of this book is printed on vellum and contains a hand-coloured picture of a phoenix emerging from a burning tree. A 13th-century bestiary also describes the ‘Fenix’ in great detail. According to that manuscript, this mythical bird is so-called because its colour is ‘Phoenician purple’, it is native to Arabia, and it can live for 500 years. In old age, the phoenix is said to create its own funeral pyre from branches and leaves, before fanning the flames with its own wings, in order to be consumed by the fire. After the ninth day, it rises again from the ashes.

In the second task of the Triwizard Tournament, relayed in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry encountered a choir of merpeople in the black lake at Hogwarts. Merpeople were also once intended to feature at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, before the author had a change of mind. In a draft chapter subsequently rewritten by J.K. Rowling, the Ford Anglia flown by Ron and Harry originally crashed into the lake rather than into the Whomping Willow, leading them to see their first mermaid:

Her lower body was a great, scaly fishtail the colour of gun-metal; ropes of shells and pebbles hung about her neck; her skin was a pale, silvery grey and her eyes, flashing in the headlights, looked dark and threatening.

This description, although never published, echoes historical accounts of mermaids and mermen, creatures that were renowned, somewhat sinisterly, for luring people into the sea. One of my favourite exhibits is the specimen of a mermaid that had allegedly been caught in Japan in the 18th century. The creature has large staring eyes and a wide open mouth, reminiscent of Edvard Munch's painting The Scream. In actual fact it is a fake, a bizarre curiosity brought about by fusing together the upper body of a monkey and the tail of a fish.

No exhibition about the world of Harry Potter would be complete without mentioning the most magical of mythical creatures, the unicorn. Unicorns – and unicorn blood – played a key part in Voldemort's continued survival in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The blood, hair and horn of the unicorn have long been supposed to have medicinal properties, according to medieval folklore. In mythology, the creature came in all shapes and sizes. A poem by the Byzantine writer Manuel Philes described the unicorn as a wild beast with the tail of a boar and a lion's mouth, while Pierre Pomet's Histoire générale des Drogues illustrated five species, including one, somewhat ironically, with two horns, known as the pirassoipi.

When I discover a beautifully imagined unicorn that has been hidden for centuries inside the pages of a bestiary, carefully unfurl an illuminated scroll that promises to reveal the secrets of the Philosopher's Stone, or breathe in the earthy pages of a centuries-old herbal, my connection to our magical past becomes tangible and real. Now I invite you to share in this rare enchantment. Many treasures await – whether you are curled up on the sofa with this book upon your lap or exploring the exhibition at the British Library. As you gaze at the astonishing collection of artefacts in Harry Potter: A History of Magic, we hope you will be spellbound, too.

You were wondering, of course, how to make yourself invisible. According to one 17th-century manuscript entitled The Book of King Solomon called The Key of Knowledge, you simply have to recite the following words. Go ahead and try, but please don’t blame us if the charm doesn’t work!

Stabbon, Asen, Gabellum, Saneney, Noty, Enobal, Labonerem, Balametem, Balnon, Tygumel, Millegaly, Juneneis, Hearma, Hamorache, Yesa, Seya, Senoy, Henen, Barucatha, Acararas, Taracub, Bucarat, Caramy, by the mercy whitch you beare towardes mann kynde, make me to be invysible.