Horcruxes and the Invisibility Cloak as an Image of Fluidity and Fabric

Pauli and JKR2 were having a really interesting discussion in the comments on the post where I said that I think there is evidence in Chamber of Secrets that the scar is a Horcrux. I was just going to continue in the comments - but our recents posts have been sparse and I also thought this warranted an actual post. They were comparing 2 images of the soul and how they fit Rowling's development of the soul in the Horcrux image/thought - the 2 images were fluid and fabric. JKR2 was asking if the image of fluid being poured into different containers seemed an adequate one for the Horcrux thing and Pauli was saying that it is more like fabric being torn. My take is that (in the Potterverse ... and in my own world) fluid is the image for the soul as it should be when it is whole: alive and moving and fluid - but when you begin to try to split the soul you move into the image of the violence of fabric being torn. Interestingly this harkens back to other discussions we have had on Horcruxes, particularly in regards to Potions as a form of magic. Potions is a "cruxing magic" - a magic of combining certain elements, and my thought of one of the hints that Sectum Sempra may be connected to Horcruxing (as Pauli originally brilliantly lighted upon as a theory) is that potions is such a possibly dangerous form of magic but that it seems that the Sectum Sempra spell would work very well in it when you want certain ingredients to be together in a potion but remain separate (maybe they need to remain separate because you want them to continually play off each other but never combine). I contrasted the exacting "scientific mathematical" thought of potions making (much like precision in cutting fabric) with the fluidity of charms, noting the importance of graceful movement in things like the "swish and flick" and in the charms used for Transfiguration. I think that in these two images of fluid and fabric Pauli and Jo have lit on a set of qualities that are at the wonderfully mysterious core of what Rowling is developing as the concept of "magic" (as maybe a defining quality of the human soul) in the series as a whole. Invisibility and Sacramentality The thing that struck me in reading Pauli and Jo's comments was that we have an oft overlooked but very perennially pervasive image in the series that combines fluid and fabric - the invisibility cloak. Harry receives this in his first year and (as I have begun now re-listening to book 6 on CD) it is used in key scenes and mentioned all the way up into HBP .... as they leave Privet Drive Dumbledore tells Harry to keep the cloak with him at all times even at Hogwarts. In that very first book when Harry gets the cloak on Christmas morn and in a number of places where the cloak is re-introduced (if memory serves me rightly) Rowling's description is pretty clear that the fabric appears to have a quality like water/fluid. I think this is such an important image because of the meaning of invisibility. Here we have an image that incorporates both of these aspects of the soul, fluidity (think of "graceful movement") and fabric (to split it involves violent tearing) and combines them in the concept of "invisibility." Something that is invisible is not any less substantial (at least in the Potterverse - contra an image like, say, the ringwraiths in Lord of the Rings) and one of the things that has struck me since the very first reading of book 1 is how much the images resemble "sacramental" thought. The Leaky Cauldron was the first place I saw it - it is virtually "invisible" to Muggles because it is so unassuming, but it's back alley has a doorway to the most wonderful world - Diagon Alley. "Magic" is, I believe, (for Rowling) ... the ability to see that which is thus invisible ... in short, magic is the imagination (to borrow from Granger, the ability to see DiagonAlly). It is the ability to perceive those inner and higher realities that are clothed in mundane details, like a human spirit that is clothed in and wed to a human body. We see something of this in the image of Moody's "magical eye" - it can see through invisibility cloaks. Trelawney's "inner eye" is spurious at best, but Moody's eye that can pear through such cloaks and view the hidden realities of the fact that there is a unique human person in there ... this is magic at its core. The Invisibility cloak is not "deception" though. It is the mystical fact that higher are hidden within mundane realities of human life (the pinnacle and defining instance of this truth is the Incarnation of Christ), and it yield a mysteriously integrated (not meant to be torn) fabric that flows like water (mysteriously both a symbol of the chaotic in the ancient world, and also the element of Baptism in the Christian world). I would say that in the series as a whole the Invisibility Cloak almost functions directly opposite the practice of Horcruxing as an image of how the soul really should be viewed and treated. PostScript I just wanted to add that, in the end, I don't think either image is completely "right." Both are analogies and analogies ultimately break down. But this is not a bad thing because it is quite simply a witness to the fact that the human soul is wonderfully mysterious, in short - mystical. What is bad is usually what Tolkien criticized as "allegory" - which usually does not break down because it is a simple mechanical device of arbitrary one to one correlation where the authors simply controls the physical action in the plot.