[HPforGrownups] Re: Thoughts on Portraits

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 164942

From: Debi <dobbycat at gmail.com>
>I have seen, many fantasy and sci fi movies & tv shows with the split person
>theme, in all of them when a person gets split into two people, from that
>moment on they become two different people. This theme is used in many clone
>movies and books also, the clone has the memories up to the point he or she
>existed, but from that point on clone and original become two different
>people.

Bart:
Not that JKR knows this, of course, but the clones with the memories of the original go from science fiction into fantasy; Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (which doesn't only show that uncertainty exists, but very accurately measures the margin of error) kind of guarantees you can't exactly duplicate a human mind. Cloning does occur naturally, by the way; identical twins are clones (although I don't recall if the Pavrati twins are identical). 

On the other hand, I see dead people speak all the time. Every time I watch a rerun of I LOVE LUCY, pretty much everybody on the screen is dead. therefore...

Debbi:
>Is it possible that the magic used to make the portraits 'come alive' is the
>type that gives them the essence of the person they represent, but from that
>point on they become their own original selves? They are still very much
>like the person whom they are based on, who that person was at that period
>and time, we all change with time and experiences, but then based on that
>personality and the very different or narrow views (being pictures they can
>travel or experience more than what comes before them) they become a
>slightly different 'person'?

Bart:
It has been established that portraits have memory AND personality. However, the fact that they are capable of original thought (such as Phineas mourning Sirius) implies that there is a piece of the original's soul in the portrait, which sounds kind of dark artish to me. Now, in modern occultism (which JKR has admitted no education in, but that does not mean that she was never exposed to it), the human being has an ephemeral part and an immortal part (the latter could be called "the soul"). The mind is split between the two, where the emotional part of the mind (attached to "I want") is ephemeral, while the rational part of the mind is part of the soul (having worked for a number of years with brain injured children, I can see where the ideas came from). One might magically get around Heisenberg, and duplicate someone's thought patterns, but, without a soul, these duplicates could only think in the moment; they cannot rationally plan for the future. 

Given this, ghosts would be lower consciousnesses attepting to move on along with the souls. Think of it like the monkey trap; there is a piece of fruit in a jar with a mouth big enough for the monkey to put its hand through, but not enough room for its hand AND the fruit. The monkey, only able to think in the present moment, will not let go of the fruit, and is therefore trapped. Similarly, the lower part of the ghost's mind, unable to think past the present moment, traps the soul just on the other side of the Veil. 

Bart