Overthinking The Horcrux
I wonder what she’s reading
I came across a video about why no other wizard in the story of Harry Potter ever made a Horcrux which for some reason lead to me thinking way to much about the nature of a Horcrux and the person wanting to make one and how exactly they’d go about doing it.
…a movie fan with some book knowledge
A Horcrux in Harry Potter is like the Philosopher’s Stone in FMA (Full Metal Alchemist), there’s only one real ingredient and its method is the same, life via death. In both stories one has to kill to make these things. The laws of equivalent exchange are the same in both narratives. To preserve life you have to give yours or take another. The Horcrux and Philosopher’s Stone both preserve the life of the user at the cost of others. Contrast this against the usual trope in fiction or even your favorite religious or text, often to save another person’s life you have to put your own life on the line or give it up. A Horcrux in every way is mockery of this idea. It’s self serving in the worst way.
In many ways only a person from the line Voldemort descended from could figure out how to successfully create a Horcrux. It fits their serpent-like nature, a venomous sort that imbues others with their essence taking it over, destroying it. Voldermort is a snake and his very soul is his venom. He can infect anything around him with it under the right circumstances.
Making a Horcrux it is similar to casting the Killing Curse; having to truly want to kill that person. For a Horcrux you have to truly want to live. Being so close to death, having murder someone, the soul of the person feels an overwhelming urge to live. It’s like killing a person summons death and its presence cause your own soul to shudder and a piece chips off. The spell must make the caster so aware of death they shudder before it. It’s the only explanation I can logically make because other than Dumbledor and later Harry, who or what else is Voldemort afraid of if not death itself?
To me Voldemort isn’t just trying to live forever, it’s not about preserving his power or influence. Another way to say what he’s after is that he simply doesn’t want to die because he’s afraid of death. That changes the perspective of everything about him. He uses fear as a weapon because he’s full of it. He uses death as a tool because he knows it. He’s so ready to “give it to other people” like he’s trying to be rid of it. Voldermort is afraid of death and dying which is unlike every other character who stood up to him.
…but how does being afraid of death cause one to create a Horcrux?
To properly create a Horcrux you must be deathly afraid of death. Not dying but the entity itself in the story. It’s the only motivation that would lead someone powerful enough to make one. With that fear a wizard at the same time literally has to face their fear and die a little inside. In the end Harry welcomed death and lived. Voldemort rejected it and a piece of him died every time until there was literally nothing left. Harry’s had to face it through the loss of others. To create a Horcrux you have to face death through others… in “another way.” Harry’s faced death through loss, people giving their lives him. Voldemort’s life had gone on through taking lives, a lot. What happens when you overcome loss, what happens when you don’t overcome fear? Life or destruction happens.
Creation of a Horcrux is a desecration to Enlightenment. The spell in the story must make the caster aware of their soul, able to perceive it and spiritual things in a more direct manner. Only then can they rip it apart. The spell brings the caster’s awareness to a closer proximity to death in a spiritual way; a desecrated spiritual experience. Although a wizard may have killed before, this is killing in a whole different way. It is sharing in the experience with the one they killed. The victim died physically while the murderer dies spiritually because in sharing in the experience they feel what they have done. They feel the soul being ripped from the person they’ve just killed. With that, I think it’s also important to note that to create a Horcrux one MUST use the Killing Curse as it’s designed to rip the soul from the victim. The pain they feel isn’t physical. The spell for the Horcrux is a curse that leaves a mark on the caster. In Harry Potter if killing itself damages the soul, then the spell for a Horcrux must involve some sort of intense spiritual violence. Which by its description is what the Killing Curse is all about.
This would explain why Voldemort was so skilled at Avada Kedavra, he used it more than anyone because it was the key to his Horcrux ritual. He wasn’t just using it as a weapon; it was a fundamental part of his dark magic, a tool that allowed him to anchor himself in life by severing others from it. In a sense he’s summoning the entity which he fears the most and using it as weapon against his enemies or a punishment on those who crossed him somehow. He’s aware in a deeper way of what murder is and why it’s an act against nature.
Ironically, every time he used the Killing Curse for his purposes, it brought him closer to death not just because it fractured his soul, but because it forced him to experience the severing process over and over again. His fear of death made him repeat the very thing that dragged him closer to it spiritually. That’s the whole point of story that Oogway said out loud in King Fu Panda, “one often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoiding it.” Such is the story within the story of the Peverell brothers, each sought from Death a means to evade it but ultimately wound up in its embrace willingly or otherwise. The creation of a Horcrux is much the same, seeking death in order to escape it. Living a life where it is constantly taken from others around you. The spell for a Horcrux in many ways keeps death around the one who cast it. Death, that of others, is always happening around them or because of them. That would be the tell tale sign that there’s something extremely evil about a wizard in that world, because what wouldn’t certain individuals do to save their own life?
