"Isn't this where we came in?"
An excerpt from an early, unpublished draft of The Hallows of Death by JK Rowling, 1995(?)
Late in the day, when school ended, Harry Potter decided to try the Hermetic transform once again, so that he would know the world around him.
First he speeded up his internal biological clock so that his
thoughts raced faster and faster. He felt himself rushing down the
tunnel of linear time until his rate of movement along the axis was
enormous. First, therefore, he saw vague floating colors and then he
suddenly encountered the Watcher, which is to say the Boggart, who
barred the way between the Lower and the Upper Realms. The Boggart
presented itself to him as a nude female torso that he could reach out
and touch, so close was it. Beyond this point he began to travel at the
rate of the Upper Realm so that the Lower Realm ceased to be something
but became, instead, a process; it evolved in accretional layers at a
rate of 31.5 million to one in terms of the Upper Realm's time scale.
Thereupon he saw the Lower Realm-not as a place-but as transparent
pictures permutating at immense velocity. These pictures were the Forms
outside of space being fed into the Lower Realm to become reality. He
was one step away, now, from the Hermetic transform.
The final picture froze and time ceased for him. With his eyes shut
he could still see the room around him; the flight had ended; he had
eluded that which pursued him. That meant that his neural firing was
perfect, and his pineal body registered the presence of light carried up
its branch of the optic conduit.
He sat for a little while, although "little while" no longer
signified anything. Then, by degrees, the transform took place. He saw
outside him the pattern, the print, of his own brain; he was within a
world made up of his brain, with living information carried here and
there like little rivers of shining red that were alive. He could reach
out, therefore, and touch his own thoughts. The room was filled with
their fire, and immense spaces stretched out, the volume of his own
brain external to him.
Meanwhile he introjected the outer world so that he contained it
within him. He now had the universe inside him and his own brain
outside everywhere. His brain extended into the vast spaces, far larger
than the universe had been. Therefore he knew the extent of all things
that were himself, and, because he had incorporated the world, he knew
it and controlled it.
He soothed himself and relaxed, and then could see the outlines of
the room, the coffee table, a chair, walls, pictures on the walls: the
ghost of the external universe lingering outside him. Presently he
picked up a book from the table and opened it. Inside the book he
found, written there, his own thoughts, now in a printed form. The
printed thoughts lay arranged along then time axis which had become
spacial and the only axis along which motion was possible. He could
see, as in a hologram, the different ages of his thoughts, the most
recent ones being closest to the surface, the older ones lower and
deeper in many successive layers.
He regarded the world outside him which now had become reduced to
spare geometric shapes, squares mostly, and the Golden Rectangle as a
doorway. Nothing moved except the scene beyond the doorway, where his
mother rushed happily among tangled old rosebushes and a farmland she
had known as a child; she was smiling and her eyes were bright with joy.
Now, Harry thought, I will change the universe that I have taken
inside of me. He regarded the geometric shapes and allowed them to fill
up a little with matter. Across from him the ratty blue couch that Ron
Weasley prized began to warp away from plumb; its lines changed. He
had taken away the causality that guided it and it stopped being a ratty
blue couch with Butter Beer stains on it and became instead a
Hepplewhite cabinet, with fine bone china plates and cups and saucers
behind its doors.
He restored a certain measure of time--and saw Ron come and go about
the room, enter and leave; he saw accretional layers laminated together
in sequence along the linear time axis. The Hepplewhite cupboard
remained for a short series of layers; it held its passive or off or
rest mode, and then it was whisked over into its active or on or motion
mode and joined the permanent world of the phylogons, participating now
in all those of its class that had come before. In his projected world
brain the Hepplewhite cabinet, and its bone china pieces, became
incorporated into true reality forever. It would now undergo no more
changes, and no one would see it but he. It was, to everyone else, in
the past.
He completed the transform with the formulary of Hermes Trismegistus:
Verum est . . . quod superius est sicut quod inferius et quod inferius est sicut quod superius, ad
perpetrando miracula rei unius.
That is:
The truth is that what is above is like what is below and what is below is like what is above, to
accomplish the miracles of the one thing.
This was the Emerald Tablet, presented to Maria Prophetissa, the
sister of Moses, by Tehuti himself, who gave names to all created things
in the beginning, before he was expelled from the Palm Tree Garden.
That which was below, his own brain, the microcosm, had become the
macrocosm, and inside him as microcosm now, he contained the macrocosm,
which is to say, what is above.
I now occupy the entire universe, Harry realized; I am now
everywhere equally. Therefore I have become Adam Kadmon, the First Man.
Motion along the three spacial axes was impossible for him because he
was already wherever he wished to go. The only motion possible for him
or for changing reality lay along the temporal axis; he sat
contemplating the world of the phylogons, billions of them in the
process, continually growing and completing themselves, driven by the
dialectic that underlay all transformation. It pleased him; the sight
of the interconnected network of phylogons was beautiful to behold.
This was the kosmos of Pythagoras, the harmonious fitting together of
all things, each in its right way and each imperishable.
I
see now what Voldemort saw, he realized. But more than that, I have
rejoined the sundered realms within me; I have restored the Shekhina to
En Sof. But only for a little while and only locally. Only in
microform. It would return to what it had been as soon as he released
it.
"Just thinking," he said aloud.
Hermione came into the room, saying as she came, "What are you doing, Harry?"
Causality had been reversed; he had done what Voldemort could do:
make time run backward. He laughed in delight. And heard the sound of
bells.
"I saw Chinvat," Harry said. "The narrow bridge. I could have crossed it."
'You must not do that," Hermione said.
Harry said,"What do the bells mean? Bells ringing far off."
"When you hear the distant bells it means that the Saoshyant is present."
"The Chosen One," Harry said. "Who is the Chosen One, Hermione?"
"It must be yourself," Hermione said.
"Sometimes I despair of remembering."
He could still hear the bells, very far off, ringing slowly, blown,
he knew, by the desert wind. It was the desert itself speaking to him.
The desert, by means of the bells, was trying to remind him. To
Hermione he said, "Who am I?"
"I can't say," Hermione said.
"But you know."
Hermione nodded.
"You could make everything very simple," Harry said, "by saying."
"You must say it yourself," Hermione said. "When the time comes you will know and you will say it."
"I am--" the Wizard said hesitantly.
Hermione smiled.
I never fully understood Harry's relationship to Voldemort, or why Voldemort was threatened by a child until I read this. It wasn't Harry's ability to resist the Dark Arts that threatened Voldemort; he would have been perfectly fine if Harry had ignored the Dark Arts altogether. What most threatened Voldemort was Harry's ability to control the Dark Arts.
The above story is obviously? fake. The "early, unpublished draft of The Hallows of Death" is actually Philip K. Dick's The Divine Invasion with Harry Potter characters. Other than some of the names, J.K. Rowling had nothing to do with it.
Finished in 2008, the Large Hadron Collider is a high-energy particle collider designed to test out and prove different theories about particle physics. It mashes and smashes like a beast. The most famous function of this nine-billion dollar machine was to find observable proof of that elusive particle known as the Higgs-Boson, which for decades existed only as a mathematical theory. Amazingly, only five years after the completion of the LHC, those incredibly smart people working at CERN provided observable proof of it's existence, which means apparently one of two things. Either millions now living will never die OR everyone living right now is already dead. That's some pretty deep shit.
I wonder what Marshall McLuhan would think about all of this? I think he would laugh at first and then calmly explain to the perplexed that the Large Hadron Collider is also a fake, a ridiculous, expensive fake. The real technology, the largest high-energy particle collider ever made, is that great gray lump in your head, and every second of everyday it is busy mashing and smashing every conceivable component of reality. And this is just when we are awake! When we go to sleep, or when we ingest certain plants, we really let the fucker rip.
So why build the LHC? Why the fake? And what does this have to do with Roger Waters?
I never fully understood Harry's relationship to Voldemort, or why Voldemort was threatened by a child until I read this. It wasn't Harry's ability to resist the Dark Arts that threatened Voldemort; he would have been perfectly fine if Harry had ignored the Dark Arts altogether. What most threatened Voldemort was Harry's ability to control the Dark Arts.
This Is Your Drugs on Brain
The above story is obviously? fake. The "early, unpublished draft of The Hallows of Death" is actually Philip K. Dick's The Divine Invasion with Harry Potter characters. Other than some of the names, J.K. Rowling had nothing to do with it.
Finished in 2008, the Large Hadron Collider is a high-energy particle collider designed to test out and prove different theories about particle physics. It mashes and smashes like a beast. The most famous function of this nine-billion dollar machine was to find observable proof of that elusive particle known as the Higgs-Boson, which for decades existed only as a mathematical theory. Amazingly, only five years after the completion of the LHC, those incredibly smart people working at CERN provided observable proof of it's existence, which means apparently one of two things. Either millions now living will never die OR everyone living right now is already dead. That's some pretty deep shit.
I wonder what Marshall McLuhan would think about all of this? I think he would laugh at first and then calmly explain to the perplexed that the Large Hadron Collider is also a fake, a ridiculous, expensive fake. The real technology, the largest high-energy particle collider ever made, is that great gray lump in your head, and every second of everyday it is busy mashing and smashing every conceivable component of reality. And this is just when we are awake! When we go to sleep, or when we ingest certain plants, we really let the fucker rip.
So why build the LHC? Why the fake? And what does this have to do with Roger Waters?
"So ya, thought ya, might like to go the show….."
R.W.
