Making Golems: Voldemort as a "god" (Lumos 2006 material)

I was just starting to write this in a comment in response to Edmund's identification of the golem in a comment, and then I decided there was enough here to make a post out of and not make eveyone dig through the comments boxes to find it :) I was just thinking about this in the context of connections between Harry and Snape. Voldy is really portrayed as as a "demigogue" type character, trying to be a god. In a sense he makes a golem out of everyone who follows him by putting his death-eater mark on them. Harry is, by the scar mark, a sort of unintentional golem. In another sense, the horcruxes are golems (whether Voldy means these as golems specifically or whether he just conceives of them as part of his "power" ... they are golems because that it was the golem was about to begin with - power). Yves Congar (a French Dominican priest who was very influential at the Second Vatican Council as a peritus, a theological consultant ... Congar actually penned substantial portions of some drafts that were voted by the bishops into the Church's official teaching) wrote a book called The Mystery of the Temple (which I think is not in print, I had to find it at a Catholic used bookstore in Pittsburgh, but I found it through Abe Books or some online site like that so I'm sure it's not too hard to locate a copy), in which he went through a number of special symbols for the "presence of God" in the Old Testament, dwelling on the primary one, the Temple. But among the others were the Shekinah (the presence of God that rested on the Ark) and the name of God. All of these are connected with the presence. In a sense, Voldemort's dark mark is about presence, since when he touches one the others burn (he is present to them) and they are called to apparate immediately into his presence. The dark mark seems to carry a "homing beacon" capability (for lack of a better term), probably functioning through the "desire" part of apparition - ("Fix your mind firmly upon the desired destination" [HBP 384]) - "I want to be where the dark mark beacon is" ... but what if you don't know where it is, as it would seem none of the death eaters would necessarily have known. And it would seem that apparition does not allow for doing this indiscriminately. Harry does not try to go just beyond the gates of the school and set his destination for "wherever Snape and Malfoy went," but we can reasonably suspect that had he done so it would have had the same effect as "I need to see where Draco Malfoy goes" (and however many variations of that Harry tried) had with the Room of requirement. Somehow it would seem that Voldy pressing some of his "presence" into an original mark provides a guide to death eaters where to present themselves(remember "Dumbledore" saying "I'm merely guiding you" [HBP 554] ... Harry has no clue where the "desired destination" is and he is being led solely by "Dumbledore's" presence) The dangerous thing about the golem is its capability to become self aware, and I think that everyone Dumbledore has "marked" runs precisely that risk for him, including Snape. I think that maybe more happened in Book 4 than we suspect - if the mark had been growing in strength for months and Snape told DD about it ... DD may have had more plans going in the background in GOF than have been revealed. The Horcruxes also fit into this golem role because we have already had the issue of "self-awareness" raised by DD with regards to the possibility of Naginni as a Horcrux. Whether or not DD is right or, as many suspect, Rowling has put that in there as a decoy, the fact remains the same that it has provided a vehicle for raising this concern of Horcruxes in relation to "self awareness," the ability to think and move for itself (this could also be the case if the scar is a Horcrux, which, as Pauli noted in a comment somewhere along the line, would make a neat chiastic tie between books 1 and 7 with Quirrel with Voldy on the back of his head and Harry with him on the front, "facing Voldy" squarely as a man, so to speak). Gods and Resurrection This brings me to another consideration that Pauli and I were discussing on the night I returned from Lumos. It is a point from another talk but it fits really well here under this consideration of Voldy as trying to become a "god." In the panel discussion comparing HP and Lord of the Rings, they got onto this discussion of resurrection characters - asking the question if DD will be resurrected and if Harry might die and be resurrected. One of the panelists said they thought of the portrait as a sort of resurrection. Another brought up the "resurrection" of Gandalf and Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. The thing is ... the Christian concept of the "Resurrection" has never been one of mere resuscitation. It has always involved the idea of transformation. Therefore Obi Wan does not fit the role, whereas Gandalf does. The thing is, Gandalf was a Maia and was sent back by the Valar - and such classed do not exist in the Potterverse ... it is primarily only humans (with other magical races present to represent various aspects of magic in a special way). My take is that there are only 2 possibilities (on the physical realm ... obviously, as John Granger points out, Harry figuratively reusrrects in every book): DD died and stays dead or he did not die at all and it was a ruse. He even said in the end of GOF ... nobody comes back from the dead (I personally think it may be possible that Sirius will come back, but if he does it will be that he never died because his body and soul never separated ... both went through the veil together ... but that's very speculative). Here's the thing about Voldy: he never wanted resurrection - the transformation of resurrection necessarily involves undergoing death. But he does seek "immortality" (rather than "eternal life") which is kind of a continual resuscitation, a continual perseverence but in the same untransformed state. And he was so determined for this that he undertook such drastic measures that he did undergo a very dark transformation. Whether it was his "fully consciously intentional" path, it was how he set himself up as a god ... and in the end he will pay the price of false gods.