The Alchemy of JK Rowling

Chapter 9 - Harry 5

The Seven Trials (1)

The seven trials in Part 1 sum up what the person who has a nascent Immortal Soul has to go through to be able to perform his first liberating act – detachment from the physical plane. First he encounters Cerberus (Fluffy), the three-headed dog. Cerberus personifies the forces of the past which tie us to the universe of time and space. The river Styx symbolises the border between the fallen universe and the original pure Universe of God. To cross the border, we first have to pass Cerberus. He is the mirror of the past; in actual fact: delusion.

Why is he three-headed? It reminds us of the three temptations of Jesus in the wilderness. He too was at that moment ready to cross the border between earth and Heaven, i.e. the Seventh and the Sixth Cosmic Plane - Nirvana.

One of the great forces tying us to this universe is fear. The person who wants to be liberated from fear has to have the right motivation. Harry was motivated by a great purity. He wanted to save the world from Voldemort. Unselfishness is the only way to overcome fear. It cannot be overcome by courage alone. Armed with only courage, Harry would have been devoured by Fluffy. Harry was able to make ‘fear’ go to sleep by playing the flute. The music played by Harry symbolises the vibrations of his purity, his pure motives.

Another force tying us to this universe is dogma. ‘Give up learning, and put an end to your troubles,’ says Lao Tzu (Tao Teh Ching 20). Yes, to live in this world, we have to study. We need a certain amount of learning to live a meaningful life. And so we think we can ‘learn’ our way into Nirvana. Bad mistake! Lao Tzu adds: ‘Other men are sharp and clever, but I alone am dull and stupid.’ But!! ‘I am different. I am nourished by the Great Mother.’ Who is the Great Mother? Why, Lily, of course.

No learning, no study, no knowledge contained within the brain can prepare us for the overwhelming beauty of the Kingdom of Heaven. It lies in another universe, in another plane, in a dimension where time and space do not exist. There is nothing in our universe that we can compare with that. No words can describe it; no pictures can give us even the vaguest idea. Not even the most heavenly music can give us a slight hint of what it’s like.

But we DO have a little piece of Heaven inside us. That’s the Great Mother, the Lily inside the heart. We must give up dogma and turn to the voice of Tao within.

When Harry turned eleven he received a letter ofinvitation to attend Hogwarts. In Chapter 6 I explained that the candidate for liberation has a letter in his heart. The alchemist has all the instructions in his heart to turn lead into gold. They have been there for millions of years but we’ve been too busy to read them. Then James marries Lily and Harry is born. We can now read the letter in the heart and carry out the alchemical processes with great joy. We can throw away dogma. We live from the instructions in the heart given to us by the Great Mother.

The third head is false idols. This is a very big, dangerous head, because in our past lie many idols we have worshipped through hundreds of incarnations. When we go the path of liberation we’ll be confronted by this aspect of the past, and we’ll discover that some of those idols are a long way from being dead.

We are all surrounded by thought forms we have accumulated in the past. These are our personal idols and must be given up, one by one. How? By turning to the Great Mother. She will give us Harry, the new soul, and our heart will be so filled with love for him that all the accumulated idols in our aura will fade away and die.

The big word for defeating Cerberus is: self-surrender. If we surrender to the Inner Christ He will drive out fear, attachment to dogma and false idols. He will give us the magic flute of purity and put ol’ Cerberus to sleep. It’s a cinch!

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