Episode #34: The Wizard’s Soul
What kind of a soul does a wizard have? JK Rowling has left many hints as to the nature of the soul, as portrayed in the Harry Potter books. In this week’s episode, we tie it all together in an attempt to figure out the true nature of the wizard’s soul.
And in the news:
-
- HP and the Philosopher’s Stone one of the Top 25 Books of the Past 25 Years. Well done!
- Royal Mail in the UK will issue Harry Potter Stamps
- Wanna attend a book signing with JK Rowling in London on July 21?
- Amazon announced a new contest for kid HP fans. Don’t bother entering, our kid has it in the bag.
As promised, here is the link to the HPPC video podcast that featured our Top 10 Deathly Hallows Predictions. Great job, guys!
The HPPC Video Podcast iTunes feed is http://phobos.apple.com/We
and their RSS feed is http://feeds.feedburner.co
You can listen to this week’s podcast with the player below, or download it directly as an mp3.
May 25th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
To much to talk about . I need my vitimans as well as sleep.
May 25th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
About love being like the opposite of a murder/Horcrux: you ended up with the idea that when you love somebody it’s like splitting your soul, but you get part of their soul back so it balances out. A neat idea in general, but I’m not sure if it fits with the Potterverse rules. There’s also the problem of what happens to your soul if you love somebody who doesn’t feel the same way…
I think you were right about there being a relationship between love and Horcruxes, though. For me, the concept feels more canon-consistent if you focus on the connection forged rather than the soul-splitting. I have a very short essay at http://queenzigs.livejournal.com/3542.html that explains my take on it. I think it’s actually really close to what you were getting at, but without the soul-splitting love.
May 25th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Maya - I’ve been pondering this all day, too! I llike the idea that Greg and Penny offered, taht love adds something to teh soul, but I came to better grops with it as not separating the soul, but allowing the soul to swell — tehreby becoming larger and more powerful — through love. I think I like that idea a little better than the soul-swapping … for in allowing your soul to grow it stays grown. But whta happens if the love wanes? Do you lose that part of the swapped soul??
An intersting note I’m a little surprsied you didn’t bring you, G and P, is that JKR has refused to announce her own religious beliefs, on the grounds that it would give away too much of the seventh book. My sister takes that to mean that she’s a buddhist, and Harry will come back as a cow. (BTW, my sister is a very silly 14). But I’m interested in all of YOUR views on that … I don’t know where to lie! I somehow see a christian parallel coming up, but that doesn’t really kling (can’t think of english word, sorry) right either, for some reason.
May 25th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Actually, Elizabeth I believe in either the first or second episode we mentioned this about JKR- basically if she tells the world her religious beliefs we will know whether or not Harry will be a Christ-like figure and therefore be able to ascertain what his ultimate fate will be. Smart girl, that JK Rowling.
May 25th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
umm, tee-hee? Does mommy brain get me out? OOPS!
May 25th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
The movie was Tommy Boy! Yeah one of my favorite movies!
“Fat guy in a little coat!”
May 25th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Sorry I should be specific the movie Greg quoted was Tommy Boy!
May 26th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Noooo! I was gonna say where I knew the quote was from! I was so exctied that I knew it, and It hought I was gonna be the first one to say that it was from Tommy Boy.
=[
poo.
May 26th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
**I though
Correction.
May 26th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Rachael: Third times the charm…want to try again?
May 26th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
I thought it was though too don’t feel bad.
May 26th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Elizabeth- of course it gets you out! Also, my ego isn’t so big to assume that everyone remembers everything we have said in every episode. It is only a little big.
LuvsSnape- 3 harry Potter Prognostications points for you- 1 extra credit for an extra Tommy Boy Quote (I take your “fat guy in a little coat” and I raise you a “Lots of people graduate college after 7 years.”- “Yeah, they’re called doctors.”
Rachael- you have 2 Harry Potter Prognostications points. You can get some extra credit by offering another good line from that movie!
May 26th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
I was intrigued about the idea of love tearing a soul. The loss of a loved one and grief could very possibly be a soul tearer. Godric’s Hollow on halloween night? I dunno could be an interesting twist with the eyes being a window to the soul and Harry having Lily’s eyes. Perhaps if Harry is a horcrux he is Lily’s.
May 26th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
I remember everything Penny.
May 26th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Aaron- is that a promise or a threat?
May 26th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
No I really do LOL! No threat at least I don’t think it is.
May 26th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
“I can actually hear you getting fatter.”
=]
good enough?
May 26th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
Has anyone entered the Amazon contest yet?
I uploaded my video today.
=]
May 26th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Ok I was listening to see if I was getting fatter then remembered it was from Tommy Boy. I saw that movie on a bus deploying to some desert somewhere. I’m still stuck on Dumbledore saying more than once that no spell or magic can bring back the dead. Is he saying that just because Voldemort uses it to tempt him to the dark side or is there more to it? COntest? what contest? BTW Happy Memorial day everyone.
May 26th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
Rachael- Good one!!! you get points!
Aaron- guess you don’t remember everything.
May 26th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
I do I was just being funny Penny. Is it possible to have negative points?
May 26th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Negative points. I like it. Maybe it will stop the Aaron/Doasis fights.
May 26th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
We don’t fight. Just have a different view of the world thats all. She is liberal and likes Al Gore and I am well me.
May 27th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Soul: This is a very interesting subject. It got me thinking about Book 2. The bit of V’s soul in the diary – Tom Riddle at 16 (?) would have become physical with Ginny’s death. So does that mean there could be multiple V’s running around — if each bit can feed off of another’s death? Or would what was left of the original been able to join together with Riddle? Could it be like propagating plants – taking little “cuttings” and creating a “garden”? Or would Riddle just become the “host” to all the little hidden bits?
Love: I think love strengthens the soul while evil weakens it. It was love in Harry that prevented V’s inhabitation, and it was the evil in Quirrel that brought about his ultimate demise. I don’t think that there is any soul swapping when it comes to love — it just makes you a stronger person – even loving and loosing.
Aaron: What part of the military are you in? I ask because both my sons served. One is still in. He’s an MP out of Ft. Hood, TX. He is in Germany now about to go to Iraq for the third time. My other son was recently released, but he was with the 10th Mountain Division.
May 27th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
jgotaas — Where is your son in Germany?? I’m sorry he’s going to be deployed again … I just got so excited to read that he was in (what I consider) my second home.
I like your analogy on love … I think you said what I tried to!
E
May 27th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Hi! First time posting. Loved the discussion on soul. Here’s a quote from Sorcerer’s Stone by Dumbledore:
“After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
Seems to imply that mind/soul goes on to have an adventure after the body dies. Or at least, that death, as the great unknown, is no more than that - an unknown. A well-organized mind has to have come to terms with what can not be known. One would have to believe, at the very least, that Dumbledore considered the Great Question Mark as something to be embraced, not feared.
Dumbledore also mentions that Voldemort fears death above all, and if I remember right, mentions this in OOTP. I think D. tells V. that there are things worse than death.
Thanks for the podcast!
May 27th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
jgotaas,
I was in the Army 21 years. I retired out of Fort Hood and moved to Houston in 2005. My wife had gotten a job here and said it was my turn to follow her. I now work for the railroad so went from tanks to trains. Most of the fellows I know our going to Iraq for the 3rd time as well. I look at how the world changed while I was in and wonder what it will be like in another 20 years. Knowing people like your children give me a lot of faith in the future though. To those who choose to go in harms way we offer praise and prayre. To those who wait for them to come home there is no real comfort until they are safely home.
May 27th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
It’s just in!!! Virginia and I listened to 10 podcasts on our drive from florida to Kentucky then from Ohio to Kentucky and the Podcast about Hagrid caught my imagination. Just think with me well just think with me and Virginia kind of understood my persistant ramblings but here goes. Hagrid is mad his second father figure is gone Murdered!! his house burned to the ground and his future scattered at best. He is a clutz at heart will all things formal, but give the man a few drinks a crossbow and a pink umbrella with a wand in it and he is a formidable weapon. He is the punisher in the 7th book. Remember in the end of the sixth when the deatheaters hexes were just bouncing off of his tough skin. I don’t expect Hagrid to die, but he will get his…. Comando Style..
More Patrick Than Virginia but still the same we love the podcast
May 27th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
I love Hagrid and expect him and Grawp to cause some serious damage to the death eaters. I am guessing they will be key to swaying the giants away from old Volde as well. How bout that Penny?
May 28th, 2007 at 7:37 am
Aaron: Thank you.
Patrick and Virginia: I can’t wait to see (read) Hagrid kick some butt!! minus the drink, though, Hagrid gets sloppy — remember Fluffy?
May 28th, 2007 at 11:40 am
penny i am very impressed on you knowlege of Plato:)
May 28th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
What a great discussion! I did disagree with one point you made, about JKR contradicting herself in the way she represents the soul. You discussed that Lupin says once the dementors suck out your soul it’s just gone, destroyed, it for all intents and purposes ceases to exist.
The purpose of a horcrux is to make one immortal, which implies that a soul can’t ‘pass on’ unless it is complete. It must either all go or all stay. Thus is a part, however small is safely stored elsewhere the rest remains on earth. Not corporeal but also not ghost. (We don’t really know what happens to that fragment if it is destroyed, it might return to the collective to maintain the wholeness of the soul or it might be destroyed, like with the dementors. Either way it has been fractured beyond repair.)
The existence of ghosts implies that the wizard at least has a choice at the moment of death whether the soul stays here or moves on, but it is a one time choice that can’t be un-chosen. In book five, Sir NH Nick expresses to Harry that he sometimes regrets no allowing his soul to move on.
Dumbledore tells Harry that death is not something to fear, but just the next step on the journey, the next great adventure.
Taking all of theses together I think you can plainly see the main theme of the books, choice and the consequences of those choices. If someone, like Voldemort, cares about nothing but power they can choose to mutilate their soul, possibly destroying themselves in the process. At the very least becoming less human without a complete soul inhabiting their bodies. Or is someone, like NH Nick, fears death or what comes after death, they can choose no to go, but will forever be doomed to watch all others pass on and leave them behind. Lastly there are those like Dumbledore or Sirius or James and Lily, that accept that death is inevitable and must come to everyone, and that embrace it when it comes.
The dementors’ ability to suck out a persons soul, I think is just a touch of sometime life is not fair and you can’t always control what happens to and around you. It drastic yes, but everything in that would has been stepped up a notch.
May 29th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Ok I’m gonna stray a little off the subject. ( I know so unlike me.) Anyways I was at work talking with the guys and the boss comes up and says something like,”your still here? when are you gonna take a day off?” I said probably July 21st. He failed to see the significance to that date so I told him it’s the last Harry Potter book. He gave me an odd look and silently disappeared. Are we supposed to be like the early christians in the catacombs? After work I noticed I had been noted as passing an alcohol and drug observation test. Just thought that was funny.
May 29th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
The discussion on the soul was very interesting. I think you could have more strongly linked that to discussion of where the soul goes after death, how you become a ghost, etc. Though it’s true, Rowling doesn’t specifically say it’s the soul that goes on the next great adventure, but I think we can assume so. The idea of a horcrux splitting the soul so it can’t pass on to whatever comes after death would confirm that. I’ve just thought of a good question to ask if I ever get to meet Jo — what happens to a person, like Barty Crouch Jr., whose soul has been sucked out, when they die? They must die a natural death at some point, the body would wear out, it seems. So because their soul is already gone, they just die but don’t pass on?
I think I agree with those who have posted and said something to the effect that love and loving strengthen the soul while murder splits it. Whatever love does to the soul, it should be something opposite to what murder does.
May 29th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Georgia: 1
Laura Mallory: 0
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070529/ap_on_re_us/potter_protest
May 30th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
I thought there was a reference in the 1st book to the soul; specifically the scene in the Forbidden Forest when Harry sees the Voldyparasite sucking the blood of the unicorn. Firenze mentions that taking the life of a unicorn and drinking its blood sustains someone but only at a half-life. I may be wrong though. Please feel free to clarify.