Soul Hunting, Truth, Denial and Reality (was Re: What might Lilly have known that DD didn't?)

[rebecca]

"rebecca" <dontask2much at ...> wrote:

>snip<.
>
> Hello, what if LV *didn't* try a AK on Harry? I agree with you that the
> definition of the word "kill" is probably not what everyone thinks 
> generally
> it is. I would equate what I'm speculating more with what the Dementoids 
> do
> when administering a kiss on their victims, or perhaps a form of soul
> possession as LV did with Quirrell. DD did say in PS/SS that Quirrell was
> "sharing" his soul w/ that of LV. And Nagini apparently does have a mind 
> of
> her own, if we take what DD says to heart.
>
> Now, through too much sci fi viewing over during my meager existence, what
> if LV's mission to GH was to collect Harry's soul and keep it himself?
> That's a hell of trophy of the murder of a perceived enemy, given the
> prophecy that LV believes, isn't it?
>

>Lyn now:

>Yes, it would be quite a personally significant trophy. I'm unsure of the 
>exact thing that LV
>wanted to/ did do to Harry, but I'm growing more and more sure that he 
>wanted to do
>something beyond destroying his body.

Rebecca:

What turned me on to this concept was during the bout with the flu a couple 
weeks ago when I decided to watch my collection of Babylon 5 DVD's.  Strange 
the ideas you get when watching a space opera and have an addled slightly 
baking brain, hm? Probably should be outlawed...

Episode 2 of the first real season is entitled "Soul Hunter", written as all 
D5 episodes are by  J. Michael Straczynski.  JMS, as he signs his notes to 
his fans, felt that this was one of the episodes he hoped would "generate 
discussions, arguments, even a bar fight or two." One of the races he 
created which are represented on the station, the Minbari, fear soul 
hunters, even warning and educating their people from birth actively about 
them. The Minbari believe that the soul hunter's method of preservation is 
true death, for it cuts a soul off from the rest and diminishes the next 
generation of Minbari.

Soul hunters believe when a person dies, the soul expires into oblivion. 
However, soul hunters have a prescient attraction to death - if they so 
choose they can capture and preserve a soul "for the greater good" at the 
moment it leaves the body. They carry with them a bag full of the souls they 
have "saved", each in its own glass vessel.

The various other characters on the show take their own stands about this, 
which of course vary depending on their theological. cultural, and 
philosphical beliefs about what a soul is. And true to real life, JMS also 
mentions in his backstory about the episode with fans that he had problems 
with some members of the production staff having a theological problem with 
the episode's content.  As he also said, the basic concept goes back to the 
beginnings of civilization (that your soul can be captured somehow) and 
includes the issues *behind* the soul...where does it come from, where does 
it go, does it survive the death of the body, or does it go on. While he 
admitted the episode was creepy, he was very proud of  it nonetheless.

LV at the moment isn't a harvester of anyone's soul but his own, but in the 
present, he views himself as immortal, doesn't he? Most characters in 
mythology and literature who believe they achieve or have achieved 
immortality often begin thinking they are *gods.*

>Lyn:
>It is a very curious thing, this whole issue of all the wizarding world 
>learning of LV's
>"demise" by his attempt to AK an infant. As you point out, the WW in 
>general didn't have
>any information about the prophecy, didn't know about Hxs, and probably 
>weren't even
>particularly aware of Harry (who had been christened in private and been 
>hidden most of
>his life). Makes you wonder what they told themselves, or were told, about 
>why LV
>bothered to try to AK an infant. Makes you also wonder why this small 
>community of
>wizards where everyone is related and everyone knows each other's business, 
>all took
>what happened that night as so significant, yet so easily accepted that HP 
>should then
>drop out of site for the next ten years. Not a hint of curiosity? Where the 
>hell was Rita
>during this time--she should have been all too eager for the expose "Child 
>who destroyed
>HWMNBN is found hidden with Muggles."

Rebecca:

I think you've hit the nail on the head and gratefully, I salute you. Why? 
Because I like seeking what the truth is, from a *philosophical* 
perspective. This marries with with something that DD said in PS/SS when 
telling Harry that the truth "is a beautiful and terrible thing,and should 
therefore be treated with great caution." Truth, knowledge and wisdom are 
all intertwined in philosophy. Many think that applies to just Harry's 
related truth's about why LV tried to *kill* him, and I would submit it 
applies to everything in the WW society, including the propensity for 
propaganda displayed by the Ministry through the Daily Prophet. Wouldn't it 
be fabulous to have seen those Prophet issues way back when? You know, it 
was a rumor about all of it - did the Ministry influenced Prophet actually 
publish anything of substance about GH?

Pandering to what people want to think rather than what really *is* promotes 
deceiving one's self about reality - this is a major issue in the HP series. 
Fudge in GoF is a true representation of this with his obvious self denial 
of LV's return: the Dursleys and their denial of magic and Harry are a case 
study of it.   DD also mentions that the WW is in denial about how they 
treat their fellow magical cousins and creatures, and Harry even has to 
battle this denial in OoP in physical way overtly when Umbridge has him 
write the line " I will not tell lies" in his own blood.  Ok JKR, I get the 
message -the WW society has a definite problem with reality. :)

The problem with self deception or the denial of reality is that eventually 
as that condition progresses, 2 things happen:  1) the condition bleeds to 
other areas and 2) reality and the truth rears its head until denial is no 
longer possible. The latter is the progression I think I we're seeing in the 
books, particularly with HBP. The reality of LV, if he weren't a wizard and 
were present in our world today, is that he is a thief and a sadistic serial 
murderer, probably afflicted with antisocial personality disorder - he is a 
criminal. There are members of the DE who are going to figure this out as 
the DE's start to be affected *themselves* with those close to them at LV's 
direction - the Malfoys are one example and my bet is others will be too. 
It's a fact that people only change their thoughts or actions when there's a 
direct endangerment or incentive. Regulus figured it out, and look how far 
he went?

What if the Ministry had come out with a dossier to the public on LV, 
including the fact he's a half blood and not a pureblood - and that his 
given name is Tom Riddle? It's not common knowledge those 2 things, are 
they? Forget listing who the DE's are, and focus on dumbing this guy down to 
what he is: a criminal who must be stopped. Part of the reason that the WW 
at large doesn't use his given name is that yes, they fear him, but no real 
information about Tom Riddle has been provided to them to decrease this 
fear, has it?  It doesn't even appear that anyone (other than DD)  has tried 
to find out about him at all!  Instead, they hide behind calling him HWMNBN 
or YKW and make him less than human, thereby increasing the fear about him. 
Futhermore, now the Ministry and the Prophet have seemed to have granted 
Harry, in the effort to make an "equal" with LV, the same kind of notoriety: 
The Boy Who Lived now matured to The Chosen One in HBP. Compare that to what 
Harry did when telling his story to the Quibbler - he provided accurate 
information that started to "shift" perception of Quibbler readers that LV 
was back and what he is capable of doing.

Rebecca, are you on crack, you might ask? The answer is no, I'm not.  I have 
a very hard time with the media in the US when serial criminals are 
sensationalized by some catchy names like DC Sniper, BTK, the Hillside 
Strangler, and the Zodiac. It sensationalizes an dehumanizes a criminal in a 
subconscious way to the point where the rest of the law abiding public is in 
a panic - if you'd been in DC during the Sniper episode and got caught in 5 
hours of rush hour traffic going home when your normal commute was an hour 
(and this happened several times over a period of 6 weeks for me), you'd 
understand just how panicked people and officials were. And how rampant 
rumor was - good lord, the things we heard.

>Lyn:
>Just weird, a whole mythology is created and celebrated with abandon for a 
>couple of days,
>then dropped in a heartbeat. I really hope JKR will offer something to 
>explain this, though I
>don't have much hope. Really, where is this WWs curiosity, "why Harry, how 
>Harry, where
>Harry".  It really does seem that the WW took the story it was fed quite 
>uncritically, much
>as many still do.

Rebecca:

It has been said that lies become rumor -- given enough time, rumor becomes 
myth -- myth becomes legend and there is always a fragment of truth in 
legend.  I'm of the mind that we'll see that legend/myth broken in the next 
book because I think the full truth known to the public,  not just Harry and 
Company, and LV's defeat are linked.

Notice that the myth is not fed with "Lily died for her son", just that the 
Potters were killed. All of it seems to be focused around who lived, not how 
he lived or the others who died. The WW is very, very shallow in this 
regard, isn't it?  A society which lives in denial cannot long survive 
without acceptance of the reality, and ultimately, the realization of the 
truth.

rebecca, who thinks this is all great fun to discuss this way and hopes 
others are interested in this as much as speculation about the individual 
characters