Souls, ripped and otherwise

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 141562

Deborah wrote:
> The question that has started to fascinate me – especially in view
of all the recent posts about the effects of causing someone's death –
is, what in the Potterverse constitutes a soul?
> 
> We heard, with Harry and Luna, sounds of twittering conversation
from behind the veil. Luna is confident that they are the dead. How
does she know? By faith? By optimism – who would not want to see their
beloved parents again? Just by having been born into the WW and
knowing things that Muggle-reared Harry does not? And are these the
"souls" of the dead, assuming that she's right, or are they something
else? <snip>

> And yet we know that there are souls, and they do get damaged when
> murder is committed. <snip> How long does this last? We know that LV
is fleeing from death; he demands physical immortality, being perhaps
unwilling to take the leap in the dark which is faith in an immortal
soul. So his soul, if it will never be immortal, must be redundant.
Disposable. Rippable. And he might as well use it to do something
useful, like horcrux creation.  I could imagine that when all the
horcruxes (horcruces just doesn't look right!) are destroyed, the one
wizard who shunned death most passionately could be the only one to
suffer total and eternal extinction of self. Not a bad irony, but
rather trite.
><snip>
> 
> The trouble with understanding WW souls is partly that we have never
been told what they are, <snip> What do witches believe? <snip>> 
> 
> Deborah, who doesn't think the ghosts prove anything either way (but
> she's been wrong before!)

Carol responds:
You've forgotten one crucial element, the fate of people (wizard or
Muggle) when their soul is sucked out by a Dementor. Something
particularly horrible happens--apparently total annihilation of the
essential self (or whatever the soul is). The physical body bereft of
a soul can still die, I'm sure--Barty Jr. was still breathing after
the Dementor left him--but whatever normally happens to the soul won't
happen to his when his heart stops beating and his body ceases to
function.

And the Veil (or rather, whatever is beyond the archway that the Veil
covers) certainly suggests that there's some kind of life after death
(death is one of the mysteries that the DoM is studying, and the
veiled archway is apparently the portal to that world or that state of
being), as do the shadow figures emerging from Voldemort's wand with
their personalities intact--even the old Muggle Frank Bryce. We also
have Dumbledore's view of death as "the next great adventure," which
suggests that he has faith in some sort of afterlife very different
from the nothingness to which the soul-sucked Barty Jr. is condemned.
(That punishment wouldn't be so horrible if it weren't regarded, even
by the Muggle-born Hermione, as worse than death.)

And the ghosts do, I think, tell us something about the existence of
an afterlife. Dead wizards have the *choice*, as NHN tells Harry, of
whether to stay on as shadows of their former selves or face what lies
beyond. NHN chose to become a ghost, apparently because he was afraid
to find out what happens to those who pass into the unknown.
Interestingly, so did the Fat Friar, who would seem unlikely to choose
ghosthood  since he theoretically believed in a Christian heaven.
(Then again, those medieval friars enjoyed their earthly pleasures if
we accept Chaucer's corrupt friar as a typical specimen.) Sirius Black
chose *not* to become a ghost, either because of his courage or
because he felt no desire to linger near Hogwarts, much less Azkaban
or 12 GP. (Maybe he also hoped to see James and Lily again, and he
certainly knew that they had not become ghosts.) That doesn't take us
any closer to what really lies beyond the Veil, but it certainly
suggests that something is there (otherwise, there could be no
choice): perhaps an eternal afterlife very different from the earthly
immortality Voldemort craves (which at some point would surely become
a burden, especially if immortality doesn't include immunity to old
age. Tithonus, anyone?).

I'm pretty sure that you're right about Voldemort denying himself
spiritual as opposed to physical immortality because he has separated
his soul fragments. (On a side note, perhaps the two kinds of
immortality are symbolized by the wood in Voldemort's and Harry's
wands: yew = earthly immortality and holly = eternal life, pagan vs.
Christian ideas of immortality? JKR is after all, a Christian, though
what vestiges we see of Christianity in the WW are wholly secularized.
And DD's funeral service doesn't provide us with any clue as to what
witches believe. It appears to be a wholly secular tribute to his
memory, with only the enigmatic ghost phoenix or Patronus or whatever
it is hinting at the fate of DD's soul.)

To return to Voldemort, committing murder almost certainly damages the
soul, but if the murderer doesn't rip off a fragment along the
perforations, so to speak, and encase the fragment in a Horcrux, he
still has his damaged soul within himself and therefore has access to
whatever lies beyond (as well as, possibly, a chance for healing and
redemption, but I don't want to discuss that here). IOW, Peter
Pettigrew, to take a clearcut example of a wizard multiple murderer,
can choose, as Voldemort cannot, to become a ghost or to face whatever
awaits him in the afterlife because his mutilated soul is still within
him. (Wonder if Ghost!Wormtail would still be an animagus, able to
turn into a ghost rat? That might be a bit disturbing to the ickle
firsties if he decided to haunt Hogwarts.) Snape, if he dies in Book
7, will face the same choice, and would make a most interesting ghost,
though I believe that his courage would enable him to face the world
beyond, especially if he's redeemed. But Voldemort, IMO, has denied
himself either option. He must continue to exist in some earthly
fashion, either "less than the meanest ghost" or embodied in his
current snake-man form, or he will be annihilated as surely as if he'd
shared Barty Jr's fate. If I'm right, the desire to become immortal
has paradoxically denied him access to the true immortality beyond the
Veil.

Carol, who believes that Luna and Dumbledore are right but has no idea
how we'll find that out