The Sorcerer's Companion: A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter (39 page)

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photo credit 41.1
)

Although the hippogriff likes to tease people who are trying to catch him, flying just out of reach the moment someone is about to grab his bridle, once mounted he proves a cooperative and loyal companion. In the hands of the knight Rogero, he flies over the Alps from Italy to England, where he astounds and delights a field of soldiers and noblemen by landing in their midst. Taking off again, Rogero and his mount head for Ireland, where they discover the fair maiden Angelina in the clutches of a terrible sea monster. Seeing the shadow of the hippogriff’s wings upon the water, the monster abandons his prey in favor of something larger and more tasty. As the hippogriff deftly jumps out of the way, Rogero disarms the monster with the blinding glare of a magic shield. Rogero and Angelina hop on the hippogriff’s back and—much like Harry and Hermione—sail off in search of new adventures.

Much as we may disapprove of the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures for putting poor Buckbeak on trial, we can’t hold them responsible for dreaming up this curious practice. In medieval and early modern Europe, domestic animals, as well as insects, rodents, and other common pests, were frequently charged with crimes (most often murder or destruction of property), arrested, imprisoned, tried, convicted, and sometimes executed. Carefully kept court records from as early as the ninth century and as late as the nineteenth reveal trials for caterpillars, flies, locusts, leeches, snails, slugs, worms, rats, mice, moles, doves, pigs, cows, roosters, dogs, mules, horses, and goats.

In the case of insects, the offense was usually destruction of crops. Since it was impossible to subpoena a swarm of locusts, one bug was captured, assigned a court-appointed attorney, and made to stand trial for the rest. If it was found guilty, all the locusts were ordered to leave town, which they usually did, eventually.

Animals that were large enough to imprison were confined in the same jails and received the same treatment as people. Like people, animals were even tortured to extort confessions. While no one expected an animal to confess to anything, such torture was part of the legal judicial process, and some judges believed they had an obligation to carry it out. This may actually have benefited some animals in the end, since accused criminals who did not confess their guilt under torture often got reduced sentences. Sentences might also be reduced or overturned as the result of an appeal made to a higher court. In one instance we know of, a pig and a donkey condemned to be hanged managed to get off with only a knock on the head after a new judge reviewed their case. Those animals whose appeals failed, however, had to hope that they, like Buckbeak, had a good friend to come to the rescue.

f all the practices of the
Dark Arts
, the creation of a Horcrux is considered the most evil. Through an act of wanton murder, the wizard rips apart his soul and encases a piece of it in a material object, which is hidden away and protected by powerful spells. “Even if one’s body is attacked or destroyed,” Professor Slughorn tells a fascinated Tom Riddle, “one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged.” As long as the Horcrux survives, so does the wizard.

Although the word
Horcrux
is unique to Harry’s wizarding world, the idea behind it—that the soul, or pieces of it, can be stored and protected in material objects—is part of folk tales, myths, and practices from around the world. In the Russian folktale
Koschei the Deathless
, for example, the sadistic wizard of the story’s title hides his soul in the eye of a needle, which is in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a hare, which is in an iron box, which is buried beneath an oak tree on an enchanted island. Feeling himself immortal, Koschei does as he pleases, tormenting women and brutalizing his enemies with an iron club. One day, he imprisons a princess who he finds especially appealing. Feigning love for her captor, the princess asks Koschei to prove
his
love in return, by revealing the location of his soul. Twice he lies—first claiming it’s in a worm, then in a broom—but finally he tells the truth. The princess informs her true beloved, who unearths the box, chases down the running hare, captures the flying duck, and crushes the egg, killing Koschei.

A similar plot appears in a tale from the
Arabian Nights
. This time, it’s a genie who has imprisoned a princess. The genie is powerful, but not too bright. Like Koschei, he reveals the key to his undoing. “When I was born,” he tells the princess, “astrologers saw that I would be killed by the son of a king. Therefore, I placed my soul in the throat of a sparrow, which I locked within seven nesting boxes, which I sealed within seven nesting chests, and the chests I encased in a marble coffer, which lies at the bottom of the sea.” The princess tells this story to Seyf-el-Mulook, a prince who is the very “son of a king” foreseen by the astrologers. With the aid of his magic ring he summons the chests, smashes them open, and kills the sparrow. The genie falls to the ground in a heap of black ashes.

Perhaps the closest counterpart to a Horcrux comes from the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. Known as a phylactery, it is a magical receptacle for storing the life force of a supremely evil spell-caster called a
lich
(Old English for “corpse”). A phylactery can be created from most any object—a ring, an amulet, a gemstone—but most often it is a sealed metal box containing strips of parchment on which are written magical phrases in the runic alphabet (see
Runes
). Upon transferring his soul to the phylactery, the lich may now spend years, or even centuries, slowly bringing his evil schemes to fruition. As with Horcruxes, the only way to foil these plans is to find and destroy the phylactery, then kill the lich.

The idea that a soul can be protected in an external container is not limited to fiction. In tribal societies from Siberia to South America, medicine men or shamans (see
Magician
) have traditionally treated the sick by symbolically transferring their souls to a medicine bag for safe keeping until the patients recover. In Minahassa in Indonesia, when a family moved into a new house, the shaman would collect their souls in a bag before they entered the house and return them afterward, since the moment of entering the new house was thought to be charged with supernatural danger.

In some cultures, it is believed that a piece of one’s soul can
accidentally
become trapped in an object. Navajo weavers put so much creative energy into the crafting of a rug that tradition holds there is a danger that a part of the weaver’s soul may become imprisoned within the fabric. To avoid this, weavers customarily create an escape route known as a “spirit line” or “weaver’s pathway.” It is a thread of contrasting color that leads from the interior of the rug to the border, where the spirit can exit and reunite with the weaver.

Far more frightening is a belief in Haitian voodoo that the priest, or
bokor
, can enslave a person by trapping his soul in a bottle, turning him into a kind of
zombie
. Such bottles—which can also be made for the purpose of warding off evil or bringing good luck—are typically wrapped in cloth or beads and may be adorned with a striking assortment of odd objects, such as pins, mirrors, scissors, buttons, and wire, which are there to remind the spirit within the bottle what is expected of it.

The use of “spirit bottles” is traceable to the African Congo, where brightly colored bottles and gourds were hung from the branches of trees to collect any malevolent spirits who happened to be floating by. The spirit would become fascinated by the way the sunlight reflected off of the bottle and would go inside and become trapped, perhaps for eternity. When African slaves were brought to America, the tradition continued in the rural south, and so called “spirit bottle trees” became a visible feature of the bayou country of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Traces of the custom still exist today, where it is regarded as a colorful folk tradition, with little connection to voodoo, magic, or Horcruxes.