Some thoughts on the Horcruxes
In the 23rd chapter of Half-Blood Prince, we learn about it from Slughorn (in Dumbledore’s pensieve):
“A Horcrux is the word used for an object in which a person has concealed part of their soul.” (…) “Well, you split your soul, you see, and hide part of it in an object outside the body. Then, even if one’s body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged. But of course, existence in such a form… few would want it, Tom, very few. Death would be preferable.” (…) “Well, ou must understand that the soul is supposed to remain intact and whole. Splitting it is an act of violation, it is against nature.” “[You can do it by] an act of evil — the supreme act of evil. By committing murder. Killing rips the soul apart…”[1]
Rowling has manufactured the word “horcrux”[2] herself, but the concept is old. The concept of the “split soul” is a well known cliché (which is a good thing, just read my thoughts on “Stock responses” i this comment). One can find it in many folk tales, and in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. But the point is not that it is a cliché, but how Rowling uses it. Let’s take a look at the name.
John Granger points out that the word is
an interesting combination of Latin and French derivations. Hor-crux from the Latin would be “frightening or horrible” (horreo) and “cross” (crux); rather than finding the way to immortality in the lifesaving sacrifice of Christ, the Horcrux accomplishes the task through murder.[3]
It could also — as “Merlin” at the Muggle Matters blog points out[4] — point to the horror in combining (cruxing/crossing) to things which does not belong together; the soul and a material thing outside the body. As Merlin points out, “his soul was meant to be with his body.”
I believe that it points to both of these, bit I find John Granger’s interpretation most interesting as a Christian. The use of Horcruxes is a “frightening or horrible cross” a distorted cross, a way to not achieve everlasting life, but everlasting death. You see this clearly in the pronunciation of “Horecrux,” it sounds like “whore crux.” It is a distortion of the Cross, as a whore distorts sexuality. John Granger writes:
Rowling’s brilliant spin in this literary cliché… is to say the soul is “rent” by sin and “split” by the greatest of sins against love for others (their murder, physically or spiritually). Lord Voldemort, the arch villain, pursues immortality apart from God and the Cross by pouring his soul into physical objects apart from his body. In this, Voldemort is simultaneously a materialist and a dualist—an no longer human, as Dumbledore says, because he fails to understand the power of a human being who is whole, an integer of body and soul, and pure, which is to say, “not rent or split.”[5]
Christ, who sacrificed Himself for us, calls us to “deny [ourself], and take up [our] cross and follow [Him]” (Matt 16:24, NKJV). The Horcrux magic is about sacrificing others and exalting yourself — which in the long run lead to death. Christ said that “whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matt 16:25-26, NKJV)
This magic is very dark. It requires the use of a a Unforgivable Curse, murder. And it is, as Slughorn pointed out, an action that goes against our very nature. odd Sverre Hove pointed this out in a interview with Vårt Land, a norwegian Christian newpaper. The interview is called (translated from norwegian) “Potter — a school in ethics.” There Hove points out that “[t]o live as a whole human being, is a good Christian ambition. [Rowing] indirectly getts out a warning by showing that the one who splits up his soul, becomes himself a tool for evil.”[6]
As John Granger points out,
Voldemort, fearing death, pursues personal immortality through his horrible Horcruxes. He creates reservoirs in material objects for the splinters of his soul that have separated from the whole in the act of murder. The Dark Lord is merely a cartoon of fallen man; he asserts and seeks his advantage before others (a shadow of murder) and invests himself in temporal things and ideas (modern idolatry and materialism) to flee death and imagine himself immortal. Such a self-focused, unloving existenceironically separates him from the love of others and ultimately from Love himself, who is our life and hope of genuine immortality. Fleeing a human death, Voldemort becomes its nonliving, inhuman incarnation.[7]
Dumbledore warns Harry of this, andv points out to the very thing that will conquer it; love. And this leads to self sacrifice, because “[g]reater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13, NKJV)
Notes & references:
1. Rowling, J.K., Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, adult edition (Bloomsbury, 2005), pp. 463-465
2. In the norwegian translation of Half-Blood Prince, “horcrux” is translated “malacrux.” I don’t really know why it was translated, it dosn’t make more sense for kids either way, but I find it interesting. “Mala” can be derived from lat. malitia, from malus, “bad.” Malitia is also the root word for the english word “malice”; “desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on another, either because of a hostile impulse or out of deep-seated meanness.”
3. Granger, John, Looking for God in Harry Potter, updated second edition (Tyndale/Saltriver, 2006), pp. 187
4. Merlin, “X-Men 3, Harry Potter and the Imago Dei” (Muggle Matters, May 27th 2006.) (June 19th 2007)
5. Granger, John, Looking for God in Harry Potter, pp. 188.70
6. Rogstad, Britt, “Potter — en skole i etikk” (Vårt Land, November 18th 2005) (June 19th 2007) Translated from norwegian
When I read of the horcruxes they reminded me of the Chronicles of Prydain written by Lloyd Alexander. In one of the five books (I forgot which) an evil enchanter of sorts had placed his soul in the bone of his little finger (which he’d cut off) and hid it in a tree. The hero of the story, Taran, had only just found this shard of bone a previous day and figured out what it was during his confrontation with the evil man.
I had always wondered if Rowling had ever read that series. Then again, it appears that the idea of a horcrux isn’t all that new, although the word certainly is.
Lovely article, as usual.