Harry Potter and the Sign of Cain (C. Rosycross in jeans)/LONG

[iris_ft]

No: HPFGUIDX 100316

I will start singing the palinode for what I'm about to post, and 
saying I'm conscious of the weaknesses of this work. There are 
references to the Bible, and, though I'm a Christian, I didn't study 
religion. But I'd like here to add some considerations regarding 
what Hans wrote in his article `Harry Potter, Christian Rosycross in 
jeans (see message #11OOO11 and the list files). Of course, any 
comments are welcome.
Hans wrote:
"As mentioned above, Harry has a scar in the form of a bolt of 
lightning on his forehead. Jan van Rijckenborgh says, But the Lord 
said to Cain: `Whoever slays Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him 
sevenfold.' And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him 
should kill him. The fourth candelabrum in the head sanctuary blazes 
up like a streak of lightning to blind every adversary 10 Harry 
bears the sign of Cain, who symbolizes the Son of Fire, the fallen 
child of God."

Harry, bearing the sign of Cain? As I said above, I didn't study 
religion. I attended gospel when I was a child, but I never 
speculated about theology. In my memories, Cain was the guy who 
killed his brother and was sent out by God. He wasn't precisely the 
portrait of Harry. 
So I opened my Bible of Jerusalem and read the story of Cain. And I 
found very interesting parallels. But for the essential, not with 
Harry.
 Maybe, as I'm ignorant regarding theology, I'm completely mistaken. 
If it's the case, you will surely correct me. Let me tell you, 
however


1)	What the Bible tells us about Cain
Cain is the first child who was born to Adam and Eve after they 
committed the original sin and were expelled from the garden of 
Heaven. Eve sees him as `an acquisition'. Cain is a cultivator. One 
day, he presents God with the products of his work. But God doesn't 
accept this sacrifice; he prefers Abel's, Cain's young brother, who 
is a shepherd. Cain feels so much jealousy towards Abel that he 
kills him.
As a punishment, God sends him out, after marking him, so nobody 
will be able to hurt him.
Cain builds a town and has heirs. Amongst them, we can find the 
ancestors of blacksmiths, of nomad shepherds and of musicians. One 
of his descendants, Lemec, inaugurates the use of revenge.
We are very far from Harry Potter, aren't we?
Patience. We get closer when we consider that story with the Bible 
and its inner comments in one hand, and a Dictionary of Symbols in 
the other. 

2)	What the notes in the Bible and the Dictionary of Symbols 
tell us about Cain
The Bible tells us that Cain, as the eldest brother, is not God's 
favourite because he represents what God doesn't like, i.e., 
terrestrial greatness and lack of humility. God prefers Abel, 
because he is more humble. That implies Cain is not, and that he is 
arrogant.
Cain's arrogance appears rather clearly in his activities: he's a 
cultivator and a builder. In other words, he tries to equal God. 
Like God, he makes plants grow, like God, he builds a universe (a 
town). Unlike Abel the shepherd, who is only a guardian in God's 
creation, Cain since the beginning wants to be a creator. He's in a 
sense like Prometheus. He wants to be the master of his own 
universe, and there isn't much difference between saying that and 
thinking he's ready to reject God's power and laws. Why should he 
keep on obeying when he is himself a creator? He rebels against God, 
trying to equal His creation, but also destroying it, when he kills 
Abel. He wants his revenge because God didn't like who he is, and 
what he has done. So he becomes a murderer. 
A Dictionary of Symbols will tell you that, murdering his brother, 
Cain is an illustration of the fight of Man against Man. As his 
brother, Abel is also a part of Cain. Killing him, Cain in a certain 
sense kills himself. He's deprived of God's presence. And because of 
the mark God puts on him, he's doomed. The notes in the Bible say 
the mark is not a sign of infamy, but rather shows that by now, Cain 
belongs to those who will have bloody revenge as inheritance.
But as he assumes the consequences of his acts, the Dictionary of 
Symbols says he represents the responsibility of Mankind, and that 
for that reason, he is great.
Great, a murderer, an arrogant, a rebel?
It depends on the point of view. The Bible is a hermetic book, and 
that's why it gives way to so many interpretations. One could be the 
relationship between Cain and his mother, Eve.
She calls him her `acquisition'. Does it mean he's there to redeem 
her?
Let's look what Cain does before he becomes a murderer. He's a 
cultivator. In other words, he does what God told his father Adam to 
do as a punishment for breaking the rules of the garden of Heaven. 
The garden, that's interesting. Doesn't Cain try to give back Adam 
and Eve the garden they lost? Doesn't he try to avenge them for 
being expelled from the garden of Heaven? Doesn't he try to avenge 
his mother for the bad choice she made listening to the snake?

    
      3) And Harry Potter, in all that?
I can hear you saying: `But what does she want to tell us with her 
Bible and her Dictionary of Symbols? This is a Harry Potter group, 
and she's off topic.'
Let me remind you what we are examining: the story of someone who 
tries to equal God, who is arrogant, who is a murderer; the story of 
a son trying to take his revenge for something that happened to his 
mother; the story of a guy who gets into trouble, and who puts 
others into trouble because of what a snake has done several years 
before. Doesn't it sound familiar to a HP reader? 
But the time hasn't come yet to make Harry enter the story. 
So back to Cain.
The story of Cain is a prolongation of the story of Eve. It's 
finally the story of a family long, long ago. We have God as the 
founder of the family, Eve as the disobedient and punished daughter, 
and Cain as the grandson, born from his mother's disobedience, and 
wearing the burden of her fault as an inheritance. That situation 
will lead him to rebel against his `grandfather', trying to take 
over him, or trying to destroy what he did. All that because of a 
snake.
If we follow the track the serpent left in the Bible, we can see 
that, finally, it has the role of a founder. Without the serpent, 
there is no fault, no punishment, no Cain, and no descendants of 
Cain.
Cain is in a certain sense the heir of the serpent. He inherited 
from it his arrogance and his destructive force. Of course, he could 
have chosen not to follow the track the serpent left. But he didn't, 
because he and his mother had been rejected, and he wanted his 
revenge. He could have redeemed his family and his kind if he had 
been more humble, if he had accepted to forgive, as it was his duty, 
if he hadn't been self centred
He wasn't completely bad; he did 
other things, he created a lineage, and if we believe the Dictionary 
of Symbols, rebelling consciously he showed greatness. But he failed 
on the most important point. And since his failure, human kind is 
doomed to a never ending spiral of resentment and revenge.
Now, you probably understand I've been talking since the beginning 
about Tom Marvolo Riddle, alias Voldemort.
In my opinion, if someone shares common points with Cain in the 
series, it's him, more than Harry.

4)	Voldemort as an image of Cain
I said above that Cain was the heir of the serpent. That applies 
also to Voldemort. He bears the sign of the serpent on his reptilian 
face. And he proclaims he is the heir of Slytherin, whose symbol is 
the serpent. And whose adversary was named GODric.
This is not the only similitude.
He is also the son of a mother who disobeyed the rules of her 
community. Being herself the heir of Slytherin, of the promoter of 
the `pure-blood lineage concept', she shouldn't have married a 
Muggle. But she did, and doing that she committed what her kind 
probably considered like a fault. As if it hadn't been enough, her 
husband rejected her. We can even think that Tom Riddle Senior 
rejected his wife and son with the support of his family. Maybe 
that's why JKR tells us Tom Senior was living with his parents when 
young Voldemort came to kill them. Tom Marvolo Riddle killed his 
paternal side and then decided to become the most powerful wizard 
because he wanted to avenge his mother and to take his own revenge 
on the magical world.
Just like Cain tried to avenge Eve and to take his own revenge on 
God and His creation.
Tom Marvolo's mother was, like Eve, heir of the serpent. Like Eve, 
she gave birth to her child with pain, with so much pain that she 
died.
Her son would keep forever the regret of the lost maternal garden of 
Heaven, the garden of the serpent. In the fourth book, he looks like 
a monstrous reptilian baby. And this is what he is actually: the 
never grown up son of an exiled woman and a serpent. As an evidence 
of the strong relation between him and his defunct, rejected mother, 
look what happens when he has to kill another mother, Lily Potter: 
he first tries to spare her. Maybe because she reminds him of his 
own mother?
Like Cain, Voldemort wants to be a creator, so he provides himself 
with a spiritual lineage creating the Death Eaters.
And he destroys, he destroys. His spiritual lineage has nothing in 
common with Cain's lineage of shepherds, blacksmiths and musicians. 
It's a lineage of destructors and torturers. So we can say Voldemort 
is worse than Cain. There's nothing positive in what he does. 
There's only conscious destruction.  
And finally, when he comes to kill Harry, he repeats the murder Cain 
committed on Abel. He wants to kill one of the most humble creatures 
your can find, a baby. We can even find in his act the original 
jealousy: he wants to kill Harry because of a prophecy telling that 
the humble baby will become more powerful than him. So he tries to 
destroy him. But it's not the only thing he does when he curses the 
child.

5)	Harry and the Sign of Cain
Harry bears a scar Voldemort gave him. The prophecy said the Dark 
Lord would mark him as an equal. If Voldemort bears Cain's burden, 
then we can say, logically, that Harry's scar is the sign of that he 
shares by now that burden. So that he is an image of Cain too.
And we can't deny it; by several aspects Harry is also heir of the 
serpent. He is able to talk to snakes, and in the fifth book, he 
turns into a snake in one of his nightmares. He is able to be 
jealous, to rebel, and even to be rough towards his best friends. 
Just like Cain and Voldemort do.
Cain didn't choose to be the heir of the serpent, neither Voldemort, 
neither Harry. 
But there's a huge difference between Harry and his predecessors. 
He's able to forgive.
He didn't want Remus and Sirius to kill Peter. He never plans to 
take his revenge. He's able to act positively. 
What Cain did when he killed Abel, what Voldemort did when he marked 
Harry, were  vile acts. They were unable to bear their 
consciousness, that burning consciousness they had inherited from 
the serpent, so they decided to take their revenge  killing an 
innocent. 
Maybe they felt soiled by their terrible inheritance, so they chose 
to soil another one, to punish him for their own suffering. But Abel 
and Harry were not responsible for what Cain or Voldemort were 
living. 
Voldemort chose to soil Harry, to kill him, as he chose to become 
the Dark Lord. Now, we can understand better why JKR doesn't agree 
that `with a hug and some affection', Lord Voldemort could happen to 
be a good guy. He had a consciousness, and he made deliberately the 
bad choice. He was pleased to impose his burden on Harry; we can see 
it in the Chamber of Secrets, when he underlines with delectation 
their similitude.
 `I'm doomed and unhappy, so everybody has to share my condition, 
especially you, Harry Potter, because in you I have an identifiable 
example', that's probably his only ethic. 
It's mean and abject. 
Will Harry become like him? 
We can bet that, for a matter of suspense, JKR will lead him through 
dangerous paths. 
But he doesn't seem to show the same reactions as Voldemort's. 
In OotP, admittedly, he shouts and he isn't always nice with his 
friends, because he suffers. But when he realizes he is possessed 
and feels dirty, soiled, he stands apart; he cuts himself from the 
others, because he doesn't want to hurt them. 
At the end of the same book, when he knows definitely he is `a 
marked man', he stands apart too. 
Harry bears a burden, he's in chains, but he tries to act 
positively; something Voldemort didn't manage to do. His scar burns, 
but he doesn't want the others to be burned. Harry is strong enough 
to face his own consciousness, and to make the right choice, because 
he is humble and able to forgive. And also because he wears another 
mark, besides of the Sign of Cain: he wears the Sign of Love.

6)	Of a very old story
I will finish coming back to Hans theory of the Path of Liberation. 
I agree with a possible esoteric reading of the series. However, I'd 
like to underline the pragmatism we can find in that story. After 
all, suffering, revenge and destruction are the lot of humankind, 
since the beginning and everywhere around the world. We all know 
stories of hatred that passed through the generations. It happens on 
different levels. It happens between the members of a same family, 
between countries; it's a matter of psychoanalyze, of sociology, of 
politics, and there's a constant parameter: the next generation 
generally has to pay for the former one. From the parent who abuses 
his children because he has been abused when he was young to the 
families that hate each other for ancestral reasons; from the rival 
communities to the states that only know war as a form of 
communication, we all bear the Sign of Cain. We know there's no 
greatness in resentment and revenge, but we can't always liberate 
ourselves from our chains. And finally, maybe that's what makes 
Harry's success: we hope he'll be able to put an end to that never 
ending spiral. At least on a fictional level, we would have an 
escape.

Amicalement,

Iris