Analysing the Peverell Brothers: The Paradox of Longevity
Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness to Christ. Photo by: Annibale Carracci - Wikimedia. (John 3:30 - He must increase, I must decrease).
The Tale of the Three Brothers is a short story appearing in the compilation of fairy tales penned by Beedle the Bard in the wizarding world of Harry Potter. In canon, the story serves as a significant plot point to introduce the Deathly Hallows to the audience — three powerful magical artefacts said to grant the wielder mastery over death when possessed simultaneously.
The short story revolves around three wizard brothers travelling at twilight. They come across a deep river with choppy currents, and so they conjured a bridge to proceed safely. However, midway across the bridge, the brothers encounter the Grim Reaper, who seemed impressed at their evasion of him and offers each of them a prize.
The first brother, designated Antioch in the books, asks for a wand of immeasurable power that empowers him to win every battle. Thus, the Grim Reaper fashions for him the Elder Wand. The second brother Cadmus, desiring to further humiliate the Grim Reaper by despoiling him of the souls he claimed back to the world, is gifted the Resurrection Stone.
The third brother Ignotus, suspicious of the Grim Reaper, requests the ability to depart from his presence without being stalked. The Grim Reaper reluctantly hands him a fragment of his robe, named the Invisibility Cloak. The brothers go their separate ways.
Receiving the Deathly Hallows. Oil painting by Christopher Clark.
Antioch sets out to kill a wizard he held a grudge against with the Elder Wand and boasted of his perceived invincibility to other wizards and witches. This led to an envious wizard stealing the wand and killing him when his guard was dropped to secure its ownership.
Cadmus uses the Resurrection Stone to revive his deceased fiancée. However, she was unable to be restored to full corporeal form and departed again sad. In immense grief, the second brother un-alives himself to join her.
Thus, the Grim Reaper successfully claimed the souls of Antioch and Cadmus after failing to do so at the treacherous river, but he could not locate Ignotus for many years. Eventually, at an advanced age, Ignotus sheds the Invisibility Cloak and passes it to his son. The Grim Reaper finally catches up with Ignotus and he departs with him to the afterlife as a friend, an equal.
Upon revisiting this tale, it became apparent that the respective hallows the brothers chose are evocative of the priorities real-world people set for themselves based on their idea of what a good, meaningful, happy life is like. The overarching moral is the way we approach mortality, dictates our creed, our life decisions, the quality of our lifespan and relationships.
The inverse proportion between power pursuits and security
The topic of death is one most avoided in conversations, suppressed in thought and treated as a taboo subject. Thus, many people live as though their time is unlimited, misusing it on frivolous pursuits and competitions. Some may keep their awareness of mortality, but believe a life well lived and worth remembering involves the acquisition of dominance, pleasure or material wealth as a measure of their worth.
This was no better exemplified in Antioch, who in the tale was described as a combative and prideful wizard. His trigger-happy usage of the Elder Wand and his subsequent boasts about his might while intoxicated call to mind certain people we have met at some point, read about in the history books, or behaviours we have exhibited ourselves looking in the mirror.
Antioch Peverell at the height of his hubris. Still from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1).
Think of the classmate who strives to always top his class and shows off his exam results to his peers to prove his superior intellect. Think of the colleague who brags about his lofty promotions and titles. Think of the neighbour next door who accumulates possessions, sophisticated technology and money, using these as bargaining chips to win the approval of others, command their respect and to make himself or herself feel secure. Think of the ladies who post on social media to acquire a higher like count than others to feel beautiful and desirable. Think of the men who indulge in affairs believing that would keep them perpetually satiated and valued.
In these cases, we notice a common pattern, an inordinate attachment to power and prestige which gives one a sense of strength and satiation with their lives, as well as companionship and respect from others. However, just as material objects are subject to entropy, the thrill of security deteriorates over time. It is one thing to be at the top of your game, but another to maintain your game, to sustain your persona of invulnerability and to prevent yourself from being outmatched.
It is for this reason that tyrannical dictators create propaganda and conduct purges within their own ranks to secure their authority, due to their inner gnawing fear of being overthrown by the people. The more you take and gain, the more you have to (possibly) lose.
Hence, it goes without saying those who seek to be first end up alone and lonely, because they cannot trust anyone — unable to differentiate those who value their company genuinely or are only in for the perks. Having fallen for an idea of companionship, they continue their pursuit of wealth and status to either enhance or maintain people’s “good” opinions of them. After all, the manifestation of weakness leads to disrespect. Disrespect to acrimony, abandonment, and potentially death.
David Foster Wallace in his commencement speech in 2005 to Kenyon College, describes this succinctly
“… in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.
And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship … is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth.
Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear.
Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.”
That said, Antioch who lived a creed of conquest and violence, met a fitting poetic end tasting his own medicine, and being eaten alive by his priorities. The wand he used to attempt extending his life and to give it purpose, ironically became his rapid undoing when it was stolen by a resentful wizard whose feathers he ruffled through his bragging.
“That very night, another wizard crept upon the oldest brother as he lay wine-sodden upon his bed. The thief took the wand, and, for good measure, slit the oldest brother's throat. And so, Death took the first brother for his own.”
Living in the past or the imaginings of an idyllic life
In the tale, the Resurrection Stone is able to summon the deceased from the afterlife for the wielder to communicate with. However, the significant limitation is that while the dead can be restored to their appearance while they lived, they cannot be restored bodily. Because they remain intangible, they cannot interact with the world freely as they had.
“Meanwhile, the second brother journeyed to his own home, where he lived alone. Here, he took out the stone which had the power to recall the dead, and turned it thrice in his hand. To his amazement and delight, the figure of the girl he had once hoped to marry, before her untimely death, appeared at once before him. Yet she was sad and cold, separated from him as though by a veil. Though she had returned to the mortal world, she did not truly belong there, and suffered.”
No doubt that Cadmus should have known better, had he a modicum of meekness, that the Grim Reaper is not one to voluntarily relinquish the souls he has collected since time immemorial, which would have been a betrayal of his nature and his job. But I digress.
It’s often said that magic is science we do not understand yet. In the context of the Resurrection Stone especially, the powers of this Deathly Hallow in reanimating the dead is an example of fiction (eerily) becoming reality, as observed in the latest technological developments and the evolving applications of artificial intelligence (AI). It’s as though the demarcation between sorcery and science isn’t as clear as we once thought (all the more reason to exercise cardinal virtues of prudence and temperance to guide human endeavours and mitigate risks of abuse).
Analogous to the Resurrection Stone, AI tools have been used to recreate deceased loved ones and replicate their mannerisms, through the uploading of photos, video clips and voice recordings combined with algorithms to generate avatars of these individuals for the living to communicate with.
In other words (or in just two words): Digital Necromancy.
However, just like the Stone, current AI tools have their significant limitations — the most obvious being that the dead cannot be physically restored (at best as holograms probably), and the avatar of the deceased loved one coming across as behaviourally robotic to the communicant. A “carbon copy” without the unique psychic signature of the person while they lived.
Moreover, it is argued that a net detriment to the bereaved in the long haul is far from unlikely, such as a loss of grip on reality, the high possibility of abuse and the development of maladaptive coping behaviours, including an emotional dependence on the virtual avatar.
In any case, it leads to a person possibly missing out on the life ahead of them and forging new relationships, being stuck in the past, an echo chamber reinforcing an idea of what a good life ought to be.
Such is Cadmus’ fatal flaw. His use of the Stone and his subsequent despair unto death call to our attention the people stuck in cycles of regret, who cognitively project the past or fantasies of an idyllic life to the present.
The thrill of carrying out imagined “do-overs” of the past is immediately cut short by the blaring horn of the incoming train of reality riding in fast.
Unable to deal with their issues (again), as well as the indignation towards reality for failing to cater to their whims, they reinforce their projected fantasy to the extent the present moment becomes another accumulated occasion of regret in a cyclic fashion.
As a consequence, several throw in the towel by un-aliving themselves, sometimes literally, other times by adopting a pitiful state of laxity and indifference, or by engaging in reckless activities teetering towards the edge of mortality.
“Finally, the second brother, driven mad by hopeless longing, killed himself, so as to truly join her. And so, Death took the second brother for his own.”
The paradox of fulfilment and satiation with life
In contrast with his two brothers, Ignotus was described in the tale as a “humble man”.
"Finally, Death turned to the third brother. A humble man, he asked for something that would enable him to go forth from that place without being followed by Death. And so it was that Death reluctantly handed over his own Cloak of Invisibility.”
Humility is a slippery virtue. Often taken to be synonymous with self-hatred and obsequiousness. Ergo, people either depreciate themselves or act overly nice to secure approval, sympathy and companionship.
Others go so far as to deny themselves the pleasures of life, pathologize their desires and engage in strict disciplinary routines to keep score of their apparent blamelessness or modesty. The equivalent would be wearing burnout like a badge of honour, an indication of real diligence over laziness.
The irony is that the same vice remains, under a different manifestation. As soon as you believe you have humility mastered, the opposite could not be further from the truth.
After all, Pride is an obstinate interior assumption — Whatever I think, say and do, is without peccability. I Am Right.
If arrogance means having an exaggerated view of yourself, self-contempt serves as the other face of the same coin.
This begs the question: What is humility? How does that look like concretely?
It is an ongoing state of cultivating an ordered, honest recognition of your strengths and weaknesses.
In other words, you do not think contemptuously of yourself (i.e., low self-esteem), but about acknowledging daily that the world does not revolve around you (low self-preoccupation). The world is far bigger than your own personal whims and preferences.
Thus, humility endows a person four empowering qualities
A profound sense of gratitude for his good fortune in the present.
A disposition towards the wise, ordered use of his gifts, abilities, resources and skills, instead of mere personal indulgence.
A deep insight into the behaviours and motivations of others around him, and in himself without contempt.
A broadened perspective that sees long term and focuses on the proper, responsible ordering of priorities.
For these reasons, Ignotus was able to see through the Grim Reaper’s ruse. Wisely, he recognises that by offering to reward them, the Grim Reaper sought to exploit their desires and weaknesses in order to successfully claim them afterwards.
His shrewd request for the Invisibility Cloak reveals a realistic man aware of his place in the universe. He does not pretend to be someone he is not, unlike Antioch and Cadmus who thought they could outwit and dominate the Grim Reaper with their worldly priorities and magical augmentations seemingly without cost.
His eventual gifting of the Cloak to his son after a long life keeping himself hidden from the Grim Reaper, suggests that he led a quiet, serene, contented and productive life of service in charity (in this case, raising a family).
Like Ignotus, there are people around us who choose the Invisibility Cloak over the Elder Wand and the Resurrection Stone. They are often hard to notice; being outside the spotlight. Nevertheless, they leave a pleasant impression in those they cross paths with.
Think of the mild-mannered janitor who takes joy in his simple job keeping workspaces spick and span. Think of the food vendors and cashiers who serve their customers daily with amicability. Think of the healthcare workers who work tirelessly to nurse their patients back to health. All in spite of negligible appreciation.
Think of the relative who despite his wealth, refuses to be flashy about it, focusing primarily on raising his children with the right values.
Think of the skilled classmate or colleague who does not draw attention to his accomplishments, but is content with keeping a low profile and a small circle of trusted mates. When asked about his achievements, he speaks about them factually and dispassionately, graciously accepting spontaneous compliments despite not soliciting them.
Think of the friend who focuses on personal growth and gratitude despite setbacks, who lives in the present moment forging good relationships and magnanimously gives back in service to his local community.
“This greatest male Saint who ever lived was not a deacon, not a priest, not a bishop, not a pope, not a hermit, not a monk… he was a husband, father, and a worker.” - St Josemaria Escriva. The Holy Family by WoolAndInkCreations.
Therein lies the paradox of satiation with life and longevity (alluded earlier in David Foster Wallace’s speech) — those who seek to gain their lives will lose them, and those who choose to lose their lives will gain them.
In the three brothers, as well as ordinary day-to-day situations, we see this paradox play out conspicuously.
When fame and power are sought after for a long, satiated, secure life, said life dissipates as soon as it is gained, either through premature death, a loss of confidence and/or a gradual isolation towards loneliness through the breeding of acrimony with others.
When we detach from living out projections of an “ideal life”, instead reorienting our desires and priorities towards thanksgiving for our limited time and selfless service to others, we lengthen our lives and value-add to it. We may also be remembered fondly long after we depart, by the people touched by our presence.
This was the reason Ignotus could greet the Grim Reaper as an old friend and depart with him from the mortal world as an equal.
Understanding well that he can’t hide from the Grim Reaper forever, he treated his extended life (bestowed by the Invisibility Cloak) as a precious gift, refusing to draw unwarranted attention to himself, and focusing on raising an upright family in love; thus freeing himself from the (deadly) burdens that come with the pursuits prioritised by Antioch and Cadmus.
As Mark Manson eloquently words it in his book:
“Without acknowledging the ever-present gaze of death, the superficial will appear important, and the important will appear superficial. Death is the only thing we can know with any certainty. And as such, it must be the compass by which we orient all of our other values and decisions. It is the correct answer to all of the questions we should ask but never do.
The only way to be comfortable with death is to understand and see yourself as something bigger than yourself; to choose values that stretch beyond serving yourself, that are simple and immediate and controllable and tolerant of chaotic world around you. This is the basic root of all happiness.”
― Mark Manson, The Subtle Art (2016)
Perhaps this is what it means to be a true Master of Death — to embrace our inevitable mortality as instructive in making our time count, in wisely ordering our priorities. Each day is a gift, not a given right, and there are indeed far worse things than dying.
May we all learn from Ignotus Peverell and follow his example.
"But though Death searched for the third brother for many years, he was never able to find him. It was only when he had attained a great age that the youngest brother finally took off the Cloak of Invisibility, and gave it to his son. And then, he greeted Death as an old friend, went with him gladly, and, as equals, they departed this life."
(Originally posted on Medium)
