[the_old_crowd] How to Reassemble using Horuscruxes

[Troels Forchhammer]

At 12:47 14-08-05 +0000, dungrollin wrote:

>Oooh. As soon as I read about Golpalott's third law, I wondered
>whether it could apply to Horcruxes as well as poisons... Could this
>be an underlying principle in magic in general? That the sum of a
>series of magics is greater than its parts, thus to undo them it is
>not enough to simply counteract each in turn, there is an additional
>*something* that must be found to complete the undoing.

On the other hand, in traditional folk-lore, you kill or crush all the 
parts containing the soul and that kills the baddie:

     In a Tartar poem two youths cut open the body of an old witch
     and tear out her bowels, but all to no purpose, she still lives.
     On being asked where her soul is, she answers that it is in the
     middle of her shoe-sole in the form of a seven-headed speckled
     snake. So one of the youths slices her shoe-sole with his sword,
     takes out the speckled snake, and cuts off its seven heads. Then
     the witch dies. Another Tartar poem describes how the hero
     Kartaga grappled with the Swan-woman. Long they wrestled. Moons
     waxed and waned and still they wrestled; years came and went, and
     still the struggle went on. But the piebald horse and the black
     horse knew that the Swan-woman's soul was not in her. Under the
     black earth flow nine seas; where the seas meet and form one, the
     sea comes to the surface of the earth. At the mouth of the nine
     seas rises a rock of copper; it rises to the surface of the
     ground, it rises up between heaven and earth, this rock of copper.
     At the foot of the copper rock is a black chest, in the black
     chest is a golden casket, and in the golden casket is the soul of
     the Swan-woman. Seven little birds are the soul of the Swan-woman;
     if the birds are killed the Swan-woman will die straightway. So
     the horses ran to the foot of the copper rock, opened the black
     chest, and brought back the golden casket. Then the piebald horse
     turned himself into a bald-headed man, opened the golden casket,
     and cut off the heads of the seven birds. So the Swan-woman died.
<http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/frazer/gb06600.htm>

The normal version of these tales have the soul located only in one place 
-- very often an egg.

One very interesting difference between the normal folk-tales and Rowling's 
use of the Horcruxes is that Rowling has one fragment remain in the body. 
Traditionally the body is vacated, but still controlled, by the soul that 
has been hidden away in a (supposedly) safe place, and the body becomes 
invulnerable and immortal. It is almost as if leaving the last fragment of 
the soul in the body makes the body vulnerable while the Horcruxes make the 
/soul/ immortal.

There is a strong sense in Rowling's books that the sum of a union is 
stronger than the sum of the consituents, but with respect to the 
Horcruxes, I think that we are seeing the reverse. The sum of the split-up 
soul is less than the sum of the whole (united) soul -- divided he falls!

Troels