Wands, Meanings and Where it All Could Lead...

[abigailnus]

No: HPFGUIDX 35276

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "rachelrenee1" <rachelrenee1 at y...> wrote:
> Well, first we have to look at the "brother" wands of Voldemort and 
> Harry. They have the same cores for power, but Volemort has Yew and 
> Harry has Holly.
> 
> (The following paragraphs are paraphrases.) Well, Yew is 
> traditionally the tree of death and mourning. Widow's 
> broches from the Victorian era usually have a picture of a yew tree 
> on them somewhere. Yews are planted in cemetaries because they were 
> thought to feed in death and decay (i.e. corpses...humm, pleasant.)
> 
> Holly on the other hand, is associated with life. It is an 
> evergreen. It is alive even in the harshest of winters. This is the 
> reason it is a Christmas plant, both it and pine are alive and 
> symbols of life in the time of death and stasis that is winter. 

You know, this (fascinating stuff which illustrates once more just how well JKR did her homework) ties in to some 
thoughts I had a few weeks ago about Harry and LV's wands and pheonixes is general, which I will try, with very little 
hope of success, to articulate.

The pheonix is rather obviously a resurrection symbol (can it still be called a symbol if the resurrection is its core 
function?) the fact that it is closely tied to Dumbledore and the side of good (it's been widely suggested that the Order 
of the Pheonix is the light side's answer to the death eaters.)  This raises some intersting questions on the meaning of 
life and death with regards to good and evil in Potterverse.

Voldemort, representing and embodying evil, is all about the defeat of death.  The name "Voldemort" with which he 
had been associated with since he was a child, means "the death of death", his followers are the eaters of death, 
even his symbol is the Morsmordre - death of death again (I think - it's been a while since checked the lexicon.)  By his 
own admission, his final goal in the bad old days was to achieve immortality, and he worked very hard to protect 
himself against death so that, having been hit by the Avada Kedavra curse, he still managed to survive in some basic, 
bodyless form.

Taking these ambitions away from Voldemort's other ambitions (namely, ruling the world, killing muggles and muggle-
born wizards, and general murder and mayhem) they don't seem so terrible.  After all, what  could be better than 
conquering death?  Harry himself finds embracing death difficult to understand when he learns, in PS, that Nicolas 
Flamel has consented to have the Philosopher's Stone destroyed.  It's Hagrid who answers this question at the very 
beginning of the series when he says of Voldemort "Some say he died... Don't know if he had enough human left in 
him to die."

In other words, in Potterverse, evil isn't represented by death and good by life, but almost the other way around.  
Nicolas Flamel, a friend of Dumbldore's and hence a good guy, destroys the Philosopher's Stone which Voldemort 
covets.  It's no accident, in my opinion, that Rowling changed the Stone's function so that in destroying it Flamel 
accepts death.  This allows Dumbledore to state, so early in the series and with such importance, that "death is but 
the next great adventure."  Voldemort is evil not because he causes death but because he refuese to accept it - in 
trying to become immortal he becomes inhuman.

The pheonix, then, represents not immortality but resurrection - life *through* death, not without it, just as Harry's life 
is saved through the death of his mother.  To be a dark wizard, then, is to dispute the natural order of things - that 
everything must change and die - and attempt to change it.  Ignoring the relgious connotations of this claim (and 
that's some mighty big ignoring that I'm only managing by dint of being Jewish) I think this is going to be a theme in 
the series - death is only truly death when there's no one left who is willing to rise out of the ashes and try again.  I 
think this ties in to Dumbledore's speech at the end of GoF, in which he says words to the effect of "in order for evil to 
triumph it is only necessary for good men to do nothing."

Given all these thoughts I find it interesting that Harry and Voldemort both share wand cores from a creature 
associated with resurrection but with opposite woods - representing life and death.  This has a definite Star Wars-y 
twang where I would rather find no Star Wars-ness - the troubled young man seeks to find a way to master what 
frightens him and becomed the embodiment of evil in the process, and the younger man who learns that in order to 
vanquish his fears he must embrace them or risk the same fate.

I realise I've made very little sense - it's all very confused in my mind.  And I haven't really dealt with your theory.  
Considering my thoughts on the life/death issue I feel very strongly that Dumbledore was stating some basic truth of 
Potterverse when he said that no power can bring back the dead - accepting that death is coming is part of what 
makes the good guys good guys.  It's perhaps not impossible, though, that Harry will one day be able to block the 
unblockable AK curse (excepting the time he already did it as a fluke of wands.)

I hope | haven't lost everybody altogether.  I believe Harry is in for a lot of loss in the near future (basic storytelling 
technique requires that the side of light suffer some mighty loss before rallying back to defeat the side of darkness) 
and that how he deals with it, how he rises out his own ashes, will determine his fate far more importantly than 
anything else he does after.

Abigail, now back to Calculus which I at least have a chance of understanding.