Harry Potter's Invitation to the World
by Vickie Ewell
Chapter 82 – The Dead Troll (HP Chapter 16)
As they moved along the passageway that led to the next room, Harry and Hermione took time to review the tests they had passed through so far, and reflect on the future. Although Harry’s summers had always been silent, Book 6 began by introducing us to the ideas of unity, contracts, and vows.
It was only after we saw Professor Snape and Draco’s mother, Narcissa, bind themselves together in a covenant that was stronger than death that we get a glimpse of this year’s unusual changes. Harry won’t be staying at the Dursleys for the entire summer, but before he left with Dumbledore, Harry saw Dudley’s beheaded condition – although he didn’t understand it. We were also introduced to how the Power of Speech operated as a conjunction between mental processes and bodily actions (“Kreacher, shut up!”).
When the kids reached the next door, Harry asked Hermione if she was ready. He did that before each new test, but this next phase often starts with an internal reluctance to move forward because it involves letting go of everything we have always believed to be true. In Tarot, this level is the Hanged Man. It is where we surrender everything we are: what we want, what we think we know, and what we care about. Our perspective totally changes.
This is also when Christ, the true King, stands at the door of our heart and begins knocking. If the world continues to capture our attention – if we simply cannot lay down the rest of our mortal lives and false personalities – the real King, our True Self, silently waits until we are ready to open the door. When scripture speaks of the Still, Small Voice whispering in our ear, this is the event it is referring to.
For most of us, Christ is a stranger. We don’t hear the knocking, and we don’t recognize His voice. We are too attached to the world of duality and our illusions of separateness, free will, and independence. We fear what will happen to us if we choose to give all of that up. We fear the injustice that others might bring upon us, and we are reluctant to remove from others what we believe is their responsibility for their behavior.
Basically, Level 6 requires us to stop trying to fix other people. It is the place where we give up all me-ism and personal perspective. It’s also where we finally stop judging. Until then, we cannot become an open channel for the One Power to perform its Great Work.
When Hermione told Harry to go on, he opened the door.
Instantly, a disgusting smell about knocked them over. Both of the kids reacted by pulling their robes up over their noses. This indicated that the process of losing ourselves begins with decomposing matter. Releasing our attachment to money, power, fame, glory, and material possessions requires all of the things in our life that are important to us to begin to rot and decay. Relationships, possessions, work – everything that is interfering with our relationship with Deity must dissolve.
Although this stage of the Initiation goes quickly for the kids, in reality, it is a very long and lengthy internal process. Jo cannot demonstrate what’s involved at this stage ritualistically because it will differ for each one of us, so she shows us the end result instead.
What we release at this level leaves us with no further excuses to condemn others to some supposed perdition or hell. This is why many believe that physical death must be experienced at Level 5. The trials and tribulations we pass through with the death of a loved one or ourselves makes it possible to remember what we’re doing here, so we can go on and finish what the Dark Night of the Soul started.
The polarity at this level is wealth versus poverty, but wealth isn’t just about physical possessions. Book 6 introduces us to the problems associated with power, political intrigue, and secrecy. The rulers of the Wizarding World want to keep their citizens in their separate, hidden condition, so they plot with the rulers of the Muggle World to keep people ignorant of reality.
On the other extreme, we also see the lengths to which a mother will go to protect her son when we witness Professor Snape and Narcissa Malfoy enter into an unbreakable vow. This wasn’t about Snape double-crossing Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix. This was about both Snape and Narcissa sacrificing everything they had or wanted in life to protect and save Draco – something Snape had already done with Dumbledore for Harry.
These conjunctions mirror the conjunction we will be called upon to perform ourselves when Spirit unites with Soul, and then Spirit/Soul unites with the Body.
With eyes watering, the kids eventually become able to see through the stench. There was an extra-large troll laying flat on the floor in front of them. He had a bloody lump on his head, so someone had taken care of the beast for them. Bleeding generally symbolizes the process of purification, the blood flow indicating that whatever the kids were clinging to was beginning to leak from the body. Eliminating the false aspects of ourselves is similar to bleeding because we have to find each false belief, each false personality, each opinion before we can eliminate it from our mind and hearts.
Although we’d like to believe that our impurities and toxic load reduce as we travel through the journey, the troll had appeared to grow. Sirius and Snape continued their childhood war and unforgiving natures. We saw the unloving way that Sirius treated Kreacher. In fact, Jo told us that the troll was larger than the troll the kids had faced at the beginning of the book. By the time we reach this point in the Path, we have hundreds if not thousands of additional lives, false personalities, personal beliefs, and earthly goods and gods we cling to.
What we think we’ve learned from everything we’ve gone through wasn’t real. It was only a distortion. We look at life’s lessons through our faulty, mental perspective, not with our hearts. We learn how unloving people can be and react accordingly in the future, building walls around our hearts and judging others when they don’t stand up to our expectations and ideals.
Christ is knocking on the door of our hearts but we can’t hear him because we’re too afraid to give our fellowman the freedom that we desire for ourselves. We fear that if we give up our illusion of “me” and “you,” and become “we,” that others will take advantage of us. That may, or may not happen, depending upon our perspective, but when we fear the vulnerability that is required to let go (and Let God), the only result is that we become stuck in the mud of “me” and “mine.”
At this point in Harry’s journey, Voldemort had awoken. He was now larger than life. He worked through others to create fear and heighten our insecurities. He did whatever he had to, to keep us trapped within the cycle of our karma, because that was how he kept his kingdom existing. Our greatest fear isn’t the darkness and ugliness we’re going through. Nor is it the darkness, ugliness, and irresponsibility we see in others. Our greatest fear is the darkness that we find inside ourselves.
Harry was relieved they didn’t have to fight this troll. What he didn’t realize was that the troll wasn’t his enemy. The troll simply represented all of the attachments we have to the material world, including our learning, and knowledge. It represented the false selves that govern our reactions and emotions. He was our tendency to look outward for salvation and all of our perceived separateness. What we believe to be true, is what we do. But its death wasn’t the end. Giving away everything we currently own merely paves the way for a much greater beast to arise