Character Discussion: James

[Hans Andréa]

No: HPFGUIDX 120499

This is the second post in a new series to air my
theory that Harry Potter is a new version of the
timeless message to confront humanity with the
alchemical path of liberation.

In the first one I discussed Lily as the
personification of the eternal principle in the human
being. We experience Lily as the voice in the heart
that makes us feel special, royal, full of spiritual
potential. It also speaks to us as the voice of
conscience. I'm not talking about fear of consequences
or fear of breaking rules. The conscience I'm talking
about is the inner urge to do the right thing morally
because of self-respect, or because we just want to do
the right thing to other people for its own sake. We
just don't want to hurt other people. We know others
have their own ineffable worth and we respect that
deeply. When we transgress that inner law of the heart
it hurts us and we feel remorse. Remorse in its purest
form is a deep regret at causing detriment to others,
even when they don't know we've done it, and no one
else knows. The conscience can be a hard master, as
most of us will know. Rejoice, for if you have a
conscience and know what remorse is, you know Lily,
and have her in your heart. Then you have the
potential of going the Path of total Liberation which
Harry is walking and which I've described in my essay,
"Harry Potter: Christian Rosycross in Jeans", in the
Group's files.

This voice is fairly passive in most people. It stops
them doing the wrong thing rather than prompting them
to do the right thing. However there comes a moment
when this inner voice becomes active. James is born.
James is what turns a person into a seeker. The word
"James" comes from the Hebrew name, "Jacob". It means
"follower", or "supplanter". James is the active force
that supplants the passive voice of the conscience.

James is the personification of the force in the human
being that makes him actively search for the meaning
of life. There is an intuitive feeling that our true
destination does not lie in this world and that the
latter is illusory and basically cannot satisfy the
inner hunger for peace, for goodness, truth and
justice.

What turns the passive voice into an active one? It's
the end product of many incarnations full of
disappointment, disillusionment and suffering. It's
the subconscious realisation that nothing in this
world can really satisfy the inner core of our being.
That all our endeavours are just mad rides on the
merry go round at Vanity Fair. That's James.

James learns to turn himself into a stag, as we all
know. The stag is the age old symbol for the thirst
for the Water of Life. The word "hart" is sometimes
used and I love that because it's so close to the word
"heart", where Lily lives and where this thirst comes
from. This word is used in the Revised Standard
Version of the Bible I read, and Psalm 42 has a
fantastic little piece which sums up everything I can
say:

"As a hart longs for flowing streams,
so longs my soul for thee, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God."

The Water of Life is the symbol for the original, pure
immortal life-force which enters the heart of those
who have this longing for it. I'll come back to that
later.

First I want to briefly discuss Grimm's fairy tale,
"The Glass Coffin", because a stag plays an important
role there, as I mentioned in my previous post. In
this fairy tale the hero wakes up one morning to the
sound of a stag and a black bull fighting. The stag
wins and lifts our hero up with its prongs (sorry,
couldn't resist that) and takes him to a desert (John
the Baptist). The stag puts the hero down and he finds
a cave with a glass coffin and a miniature castle. The
princess (Lily) wakes up and tells the hero what to
do. They kiss, everything comes back to life, and they
live happily ever after. The symbolism here is
extremely clear. The black bull symbolises the force
that imprisons us to this universe and the stag our
longing for liberation from it. The fight between the
two symbolises the many experiences we have through
innumerable incarnations until the stag wins. In this
fairy tale the stag is the brother of the princess
while in Harry Potter they're husband and wife.

I'm sure there must be many other stories containing a
stag with this symbolic meaning, and perhaps some of
you will point these out.

Lily and James marry and settle in Godric's Hollow. A
hollow is a small valley or dell (as in Rivendell).
Godric is a legendary figure who had a pet: guess
what. A stag!

Harry is born from the union of the lily and the stag.
When the heart actively thirsts for the Living Water,
its cry is answered and, like a quickening shower
after years of drought, an inflow of imperishable
life-force touches the heart. This enters the blood
and commences its journey through the whole body.
Harry is the new, immortal soul, our personal Messiah
promised to us since the time of the Fall.

The forces which keep us imprisoned in this universe
know what happens when a child is born to the lily and
the stag, and they try to kill it. The stag dies and
the lily sacrifices itself. The forces of
imprisonment, personified by Voldemort, are
neutralised and incapable of further harm for a long
time while the new soul demonstrates its immortality.

Of course in real life the immortal, eternal
thought-spark in the heart and the longing that
emanates from it don't actually die. They live on in
the new soul. When the new soul is born within the
seeker, it takes over the two roles. It becomes the
personification of those two forces: its inherent
goodness and its yearning for the Living Water and
liberation from this universe. This is why it is said
so often that Harry is like his parents. His
appearance is almost identical to his father's, except
that he has Lily's eyes.

Lily's sacrifice is a wonderful symbol of the seeker's
relationship to the new soul when it's born. The
seeker has to be prepared to sacrifice himself totally
to the new soul. This new soul is capable of
liberating the entire human being, as Harry shows in
the five books published so far.

When the new soul has reached a certain maturity it
can use the longing for liberation to free itself from
the forces imprisoning it on the astral plane. Lupin
teaches Harry to invoke the patronus, which is in the
form of a stag, as we know. In "Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban" Harry is attacked by 100
dementors. He invokes the stag patronus and this
drives them all away. The dementors symbolise the
black, demonic forces in the atmosphere and can not
only immobilise the new soul, but can even totally
suck out its vital energy. However what Harry Potter
tells us in this part is that the soul is
indestructible as long as it mobilises its longing for
the Living Water, for liberation. Another way to put
this is to express it in the words of Psalm 121: "I
lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence does my help
come? My help comes from the Lord". The hills
symbolise the spiritual height the seeker attains to
and the help is the spiritual power which drives all
opposing forces away.

What gives the stag the power to drive all evil and
opposing forces away? All forces in the astral plane,
i.e. all desires and emotions, have a certain
frequency of vibration. Obviously selfish and evil
feelings have a lower vibration while unselfish, noble
ones have a higher one. However the longing for the
life-force from the Real World outside our universe is
much higher in vibration than any force in this world,
and so it is supreme. It's scientifically invincible.
That is the message of Harry Potter. Drink the Living
Water and you shall return to your divine origins.

Hans

=====
Hans Rieuwers 
see you at Harry Potter for Seekers 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/harrypotterforseekers/
 



	
	
		
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