Believing Harry is not a Horcrux

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 139990

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "saraquel_omphale" 
<saraquel_omphale at y...> wrote:

Saraquel:
> First, I think my post was somewhat ambiguous as to what I was 
> questioning, for which I apologise. The idea that I was really 
> interested in was about whether the soul is different to the 
> mind/intellect/personality/Psyche. (let's use the word psyche here, 
> although I must admit, I don't know the full implications of that 
> word.) If, in JKRs world, it is not the psyche, then, what is it?  
A 
> container perhaps? What is it's nature/purpose?  It is this 
question 
> which has puzzled me when thinking about the soul.  
 
> If the soul is greater (for want of a better word) than the psyche, 
> then what is the nature of that greatness, and is there any 
evidence 
> in canon that can point to that? For the soul, (in the world of the 
> books rather than in Christian belief) to be just a container seems 
> to me to be doing it an even greater disservice than equating it 
> with the psyche.
 
> When I looked at the evidence, it seemed I could only find canon to 
> support the Psyche theory.  What would really interest me is if 
> someone could look at it with a different pair of eyes and 
interpret 
> what is there in a different way.  


Geoff:
I have suggested that I see the psyche as being the same as the soul -
 I did point out that etymology of the word shows a link to the Greek 
word for soul anyway.


> >Geoff wrote:
> >I believe that our whole being reflects our personality but
> >after death, it is our soul which will continue into "the next 
great
> >adventure".
> 
> Saraquel:
> From what Luna says to Harry at the end of OotP, and from the 
> whispering which Harry hears beyond the veil, it would appear that 
> the mind (originating the words/sounds) and some sort of body 
> (whispering them) is also in evidence beyond the veil. I do think 
> that the body is separate, but this topic is covered by me in 
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/139763 
> 
> >Geoff wrote:
> >We do not know precisely what form a Horcrux takes. Is it 
tangible? 
> >Is it invisible? How do we know that it is there? I have a mental 
> >vision of it being like a piece of A4 paper which is being torn 
> >into smaller bits; a silly idea but it is one that has stuck with 
> >me. As a mathematician myself, I would agree with those who have 
> >suggested that it doesn't divide itself neatly into fractions of 
> >the whole.
> 
> Saraquel:
> I think we need to distinguish between a horcrux-as-container and 
> the actual soul fragment.  

Geoff:
I must apologise here for my sloppy English. I really meant the soul 
in my picture of an A4 sheet of paper and the subdivision of it.

I think we are having problems here in dealing with how we visualise 
soul, mind and spirit - not only in the Wizarding World but in our 
own real world.

How do we look at our soul or our mind? Are the two the same - or is 
the mind a "subset" of the soul because I believe that we /will/ 
carry memories and our own idiocyncrasies over into the next life? we 
are dealing with intangibles here. we cannot point to an X-ray of the 
brain and say "the soul is here". It cannot be pinpointed. So if we 
have these trouble in real life, we have got to accept the same 
boundary parameters in the Wizarding World. Which leaves me still 
wondering how to keep umpteen million gigabytes of memory and 
personality in a diary.....