Indestructible - Intermezzo

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Indestructible – Intermezzo

I have portions of a couple more bits of the series written out and ready to post, but in order for them to really make sense there’s other stuff that I think I need to lay out first. I’ve been thinking very hard about all of this and it’s ridiculously complex to put into words at moments, even leaving aside my latest revelation that, from a certain perspective, these books are all about Severus Snape and the alchemical process from start to finish – as seen through a glass darkly – through a Mirror – by someone who does not understand at all what she is writing, what Harry is seeing without comprehending.

But that’s a bit of a tangent from my original focus for this series, so I’ll leave that aside for the most part until I get through discussing my main topic, which is the nature of Severus Snape’s character and moral journey, particularly during the last years of the war.

But alchemy is a key symbolic language to remember here, to understand what I think it’s possible to read as happening in the deep background of these books, beyond Harry’s conscious awareness. Severus is an alchemist of some kind, whether figuratively or literally. And some of the images we got in that first book – the Philosopher’s Stone in the Mirror, the murdered unicorn giving half-life, Severus as the dark and confusing but demanding and knowledgeable teacher – are clues to remember.

And keep in mind that in every book we’re dealing with a return of echoes from the past in one form or another: in each book, Severus, like Harry, is confronting an echo of an earlier time, building on each other in waves. Particularly in regard to his relationship with Voldemort – the big piece of the puzzle we still have to explore to understand Sev’s journey here.

I’m also going to throw some other symbolic and metaphorical languages at you though (sorry, it’s just the way my brain works, figuring all of this out). In particular, I’m going to have to pull out a little geometry and a brief discussion of orbital mechanics. I’m finding pictures to illustrate – that’ll help make it clear, I think. I just find geometry and astrophysics to be very useful metaphors for talking about moral concepts and interactions, for some reason.

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Indestructible - Part V - The Wheels of Heaven

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This is a long one, so I've broken it up into sections. There's an introductory section, section V.1 on the principle of Ma'at, section V.2 on the gravity assist, and a postscript.

There a HUGE amount I could have included here but didn't, for the sake of length, but I'll get to it at some point if I can. I promise it all eventually has to do with dear Severus, metaphorically at the least.

*

Indestructible V – The Wheels of Heaven

Circles.

Circles are fundamental. When you start looking for them, you can find circles everywhere. Literally, metaphorically, conceptually…everything sooner or later can be related to a circle. I think the circle might be the closest thing there is to a base form for the universe, a single fundamental truth from which to derive all others.

From the tiniest particles to cells, to the planet we live on and the movements of that body and all others in the cosmos, orbiting together, in everything we can find circles, seen from different angles, in different dimensions.

A point: a circle shrunk down to no dimensionality. A sphere: a circle expanded to three dimensions. Expansion and contraction. A spiral, and other such curves: a circle seen in motion through time. Even its seeming opposite – the straight line – is really a circle in disguise. According to the laws of perspective geometry, a line is just a circle taken to infinity. Our finite perspective of something infinite. And so, even things appearing to be made out of straight lines, like triangles and so on, can be understood as just the finite bit we can see of infinite things intersecting.

Circles are also paradoxical. Including while excluding, a symbol of all while – by – selecting and containing a small portion of the whole. Having no beginning, and so being endless.

Circles and lines also describe time, or our perspective on it rather. We have linear, ordinary time – shooting ahead of us, extending behind us, on and on. And we mythic time, circular repetitive time in which everything old is new again, the same things happen over and over, or are always happening at the same moment even, the same situations and stories and figures encountered again and again. Put them together and we get the spiral, progression (or regression) by returning again and again to the same place but from a new angle, in a new form. Reincarnation, history repeating itself, psychological integration, evolution, the paths described by every orbiting body in a solar system or galaxy…there are a thousand places to see this pattern.

You get the idea.

We have repetition, and repetition with difference. Static and dynamic forms of the same fundamental pattern, lower and higher incarnations of the same essence. Stillness and motion. Everything is both always the same, and always changing. Perspective is key.

So to give us a slightly different perspective on matters, permit me a brief excursion to that place the Weasley family chose as their vacation destination before I get back to work on the wheels here. That is to say, let’s go to Egypt for a moment.

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