1045–256 BCE), no later than the ninth or eighth century, each hexagram acquired a name, a brief description known as a “judgment,” and a short explanatory text for each of its six lines called a “line statement.” This highly compact document, less than 4,200 characters in length and probably first inscribed on strips of bamboo, became known as the basic text of the Yijing.” The first two hexagrams in the conventional order are Qian and Kun the remaining sixty-two hexagrams represent permutations of these two paradigmatic symbols. Each hexagram was uniquely constructed, distinguished from all the others by its combination of solid (-) and/or broken (-) lines. The Changes first took shape about three thousand years ago as a divination manual, consisting of sixty-four six-line symbols known as hexagrams. Smith explains its origins in his helpful scholarly guide: Two days after the Cromer pier image Rowling then updated her header to an image of the I Ching (or Yijing) – an ancient Chinese wisdom text used for divination, which is usually translated in English as The Book of Changes.

If this is correct, this means that Norfolk could be the location of the next case, as well as The Running Grave seeing Strike ruminating on memories of his childhood trauma in Norfolk.

Given what happened with the last two locations given multiple header postings, it seems a worthwhile guess that the murder/discovery of the body will occur on/under Cromer Pier. So, while in one sense this new header didn’t provide that much information, in another sense it might hold a big clue. There was a slew of white horses before Lethal White and the repeated headers of Highgate Cemetery before Ink Black Heart. As header-watchers know, Rowling has chosen Cromer Pier as a header before but it is also the case that we’ve seen her reposting similar header images before. Part and parcel of what Rowling called her writing ‘euphoria’ is engaging with Strike fans on Twitter and she responded to request for a ‘Strikey’ header on New Year’s Day with a new image of Cromer pier. Those of us who have written about alchemy in Harry Potter were delighted with this instinctive turn to alchemical metaphors for her writing (John – the magus on this subject! – has kindly put together a list of what I’ve written on this topic here) and it provided a twist on her sense of her process as ‘ the Lake and the Shed’– kitting up what had previously seemed a rather low-tech shed with the medieval hardware of an alchemical laboratory! Of course, I’ll have to revise everything I’ve done in the last seven hours, but who cares? Days like this, where writing’s a pure rush, make up for all those where you’re rewriting and revising and trying to make gold out of what you fear might be lead (and sometimes is). I know I should be out in the fresh air and the beautiful snowy landscape, but is there anything better than bashing out thousands of words – not all of which are crap – in a single sitting because your brain’s on fire and you’ve got to get the story down fast? No, there isn’t.

This return to playing games with fans on Twitter seems to be part of Rowling’s New Year writing roll, which she tweeted about on 3 January 2023: On January 12 th JK Rowling revealed the title of Strike 7 with a cryptic crossword clue on Twitter: if you ‘disentangle’ the letters of ‘the hanging venturer’ you get the answer The Running Grave.

The Running Grave: Strike 7, the I Ching and the Yarrow Stalks New information is coming thick and fast for Book 7, which we now know is called The Running Grave! Are you, like me, confused about ancient Chinese divination? Do you know your yarrow stalks from your divination coins? What on earth can this have to do with Norfolk? Help is at hand: Beatrice Groves, Research Lecturer and tutor at Trinity College, Oxford, and author of Literary Allusion in Harry Potter, has written a Hogwarts Professor Guest Post: The Running Grave: Strike 7, the I Ching and the Yarrow Stalks.

I ching sticks