Destroying soul bits

[zgirnius]

No: HPFGUIDX 141944

> > zgirnius, previously:
> > First, killing Voldemort (or any other person) I would presume 
does
> > not kill the soul. While this has not been explicitly stated in 
the
> > books, the soul in Christianity (most likely the source of JKR's
> > ideas about the soul) is the thing that lives on after someone
dies.
 
> a_svirn wrote:
> Personally, I by no means sure that this mutilated "thing"
that "lives
> on" after the loss of its host can be called a soul in a Christian
> sense. If indeed Christianity is the source for Rowling's 
inspiration
> on the subject of horcruces it must be a very warped form of
> Christianity.

zgirnius:
Sorry, I am afraid I have not made myt position clear...

I am not suggesting that Horcruxes come from any form of Christian
theology. They are a twist on the idea that a wizard can hide his 
heart in a box away from his body to make himself unkillable, a motif 
which occurs in folktales/mythology. What I am trying to suggest 
*does* come from Christianity is her idea of, generally, what the 
soul is. And I think this is a reasonable supposition. Book-
externally, Rowling has stated she is a Christian, and she writes in 
the context of a culture which is historically largely Christian. And 
she chooses to call the thing that gets torn by a murder a 'soul', 
which would have certain connotations for a lot of her readers. Book-
internally, we see no religion explicitly in the WW, but evidence 
that Christianity has probably had its influence on the Potterverse 
as well (Christmas and Easter holidays, christenings, St. Mungo). So 
when people like Slughorn and Dumbledore start discussing something 
called the soul, and offer no explanation as to what, exactly, that 
is, I feel it is reasonable to suppose we and their listeners are 
supposed to have some idea what the soul is without such 
explanations. (The soul is the immortal whatever that lives on after 
a person dies, and goes to wherever it is souls go).

The idea that certain heinous acts, including murder, do damage to the
soul is also, I feel, reconcilable with not-very-out-there Christian
ideas. The most 'stereotypical' Christian view, I suppose, is that
souls go to Heaven, or to Hell, (or to Purgatory, or to Limbo),
according to the just deserts of the individual soul, (beliefs about
which of these and under what cirsumstances precisely vary widely, I'm
no expert in comparative Christian theology). I've definitely
encountered somewhere the idea that 'evil' souls don't actually go to 
a literal Hell of devils with pitchforks, and 'good' sould don't 
actually get issued golden harps and halos in order to join a literal 
Heavenly Choir, etc. That the miserable eternal fate of 'evil' souls 
is more along the lines of oblivion, or an eternal Sundering from 
Oneness with the Deity, or something along those lines. The whole 
soul-splitting thing would in this case be more of a mechanism that 
explains how this might work. One's evil acts can damage the soul and 
prevent it from meeting its intended Eternal Reward. Possibly, there 
could be a mechanism or mechanisms for healing the damage, (remorse, 
good works, faith, Grace, the appropriate Sacrament, what have you, 
again, varies according to flavor of Christian belief). In this light 
Horcrux-making would be especially harmful to the maker, since it 
would artificially ensure no such healing would take place during the 
maker's (prolonged) lifetime.

I am not saying, by the way, that Book 7 will reveal the whole series
to be some sort of heavy-handed explicitly Christian allegory, or that
I would want it to be so. Just that I think the general idea of a soul
as the 'immortal spiritual part' of a person is what JKR has in mind. 
I am also not saying this idea is *unique* to Christianity-that just
happens to be the flavor of religion I (and presumably JKR) know most
about. Christianity has undeniable roots in the Jewish faith, and IMO
got some of its ideas and imagery from various other places as well. 
Any religion with notions of an afterlife or reincarnation, and the 
belief that one's actions in the earthly life to some extent 
correlate with the quality of that afterlife or reincarnation, would 
work.