People who have been following me for a while are familiar with this emblem, from Atalanta fugiens, showing the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone.
Michael Maier, Atalanta fugiens, 1618.
I’ve explained the significance of the man and woman, small and large circles, square and triangle at some length. For a story, we need to focus on the triangle. In spiritual alchemy, the triangle represents soul, spirit, and body. Heinrich Khunrath helpfully labeled the sides of the triangle in this emblem. In red capital letters you have Anima (soul), Spiritus (spirit), and Corpus (body).
Heinrich Khunrath, Amphiteatrum sapientiae aeternae, 1602
The only fantasy novel I’m aware of where the authors marks his or her characters as Soul/Spirit/Body is Elizabeth Goudge’s The Little White Horse.
Most commonly, authors mark their male protagonist, the Male Principle of the Work, as heart and their female protagonist, the Female Principle of the Work, as mind. If they have a companion, he or it will be marked as Body. If you look back at the Mundus Elementaris that I just posted you’ll see that Sun corresponds to Cor (heart) and Moon to Cerebrum (brain).
[Someone left a couple of comments recently saying that I had made up all these alchemy rules–to fit my OTPs, apparently. So I’m posting some emblems again to show how alchemical ideas were developed over centuries, and not created by me lololol.]
The characteristics of a “heart” character are pretty much what you’d expect: courage, self-sacrifice, occasional rashness and impulsivity. Harry Potter is the perfect embodiment of a “heart” character. Rowling goes beyond giving him the appropriate personality traits; she has other characters comment about Harry’s “good heart”, or she describes his heart responding in various situations. Just check the books sometime and see how often “Harry” and “heart” appear close together.
The characteristics of a “mind” character are if anything even more obvious. “Mind” characters are knowledgeable, book-smart, and sometimes overly cautious. Hermione captures the defining features of herself and Harry, the “mind” and the “heart,” in her speech at the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: she is “books and cleverness,” while Harry is “friendship and bravery.”
An author can of course use BOTH a name and personality traits to mark characters. In The Alchemyst, Michael Scott calls his female protagonist Sophie Newman. Sophia is the Greek word for “wisdom.” In fact, several of the images from the famous alchemical manuscript Aurora consurgens depict Sophia/Wisdom. (Scott’s Sophie is also very smart, very clever.)
Aurora consurgens, early 1400s
What about the Body character? There isn’t one in every alchemy story, but when this does appear, the markers are predictable. Body characters are focused on their bodily needs–they are hungry, thirsty, and, in adult stories, lusty. And they are often fearful. Think of Papageno in Mozart’s opera, the Magic Flute, who breaks his vow of temperance and starts eating and drinking on stage, lamenting his lack of female companionship. Or Wiggins in The Little White Horse (he’s a beautiful, vain King Charles spaniel, always focused on his next meal). Or Ron Weasley, who is constantly hungry. Or Sméagol/Gollum, who eats compulsively though his main lust is for the Ring.
In the Wizard of Oz, Frank Baum used the heart/mind/body triangle in a completely different way. Rather than marking his protagonist, Dorothy, as heart, as you would expect, Baum assigns heart, mind, and body characteristics to her three companions. The Tin Man is in search of a heart, the Scarecrow in search of a brain, and the Cowardly Lion in search of “some nerve,” in other words the courage that Body characters typically lack.
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In A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin also follows a non-standard path. His two protagonists, Jon and Daenerys, are not going through their transformational journey together. They are not Frodo and Sam or Harry and Hermione, with the “mind” character complementing the “heart.” No, Jon and Daenerys must both be heart; this fact is underlined when other characters refer to Jon or Daenerys having a “good heart.” Both are brave and self-sacrificing, though Dany’s self-sacrificing nature does not reveal itself until she flies north of the Wall to rescue Jon. Neither Jon nor Dany is particularly clever or wise–perhaps wisdom will come.
