Vanity - Blog Posts
VESPA IS ITALIAN FOR WASP???? HOW DID SHE KNOW THAT!?!?
Angel’s Treasures 🏹🕯️✨🤍
Gilderoy Lockhart
Another Ravenclaw embarrassment, Gilderoy Lockhart’s biggets lessons to us were more lessons to Hermione: that crushes aren’t real, and that it’s important to look past the surface of people and how they aren’t always what they seem; while very similar these two lessons are two important and different beast life stories to learn.
Attractive and intelligent were two qualities Lockhart had but like anyone who has ever had a crush, Hermione filled in the gaps she didn’t know about Lockart’s personality with qualities and explanations that could fit, and ones she also admired.
Hermione thinks: Lockhart wants to get some hands on experience (when he released and then left them to ‘round up’ the Cornish Pixies
She fills this in because she likes to be independent and smart. This happens to everyone, and unfortunately for some more than once. Crushes are different than true relationships with depth. This is also why we should evaluate all of our relationships as time goes by. This is because people can grow distant and people change and just because we connected with someone once or had the same values doesn’t mean we do now. These are relationships that without pain or malice we can let go.
Similarly, certain things about Lockhart just didn’t add up. Yes, he wrote autobiographies, but not one other person from his cases or towns that he saved ever came forward, joined him on tour, or admitted to have been save by him and was a fan. Given his charm and ‘wanting to help others”, this doesn’t fit even the part of his personality he promoted: where he would have wanted to seem more accessible and like the “every-man”, and therefore better than the everyman. No one confirming his stories or telling his historic and impressive saves as a victim are two crucial clues that show have allowed even the distant observer insight into the fraud he was.
So Dumbledore is correct, “there is plenty to be learned even from a bad teacher: what not to do, how not to be” and I cannot help but feel this was especially true of a lesson to give to Harry Potter, probably more than any other lesson. That no one, for talent, intelligence, beauty or charm, is better than anyone else
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Thinking About Sin
I'm a big fan of combining the Orthodox eight deadly thoughts with the Catholic seven deadly sins: splitting sloth back into despair (tristitia) and apathy (acedia) [though I like to call this one sloth still], keeping envy, but ditching vainglory.
SLOTH and DESPAIR
While the end result of laziness and despair are effectively the same from the sinner side (you don't do things), the means of temptation are the exact opposite.
Contemplate what a being, say a demon, would be that invites you into sloth: a maid, the latest techno-fad, an overly doting parent. Someone who says, "Let me take care of that," which eventually mutates into a nasty little brain-imp whispering, "Let someone else take care of it." This obviously overlaps with several of the other sins.
Contrast despair, who is here to F*** YOU UP. It is here to break you with a never-ending torrent of misfortune, a constant parade of life kicking you in the teeth. This could also have the exact opposite effect, spurring someone into wrath.
The overlapping area would be someone claiming to protect you from the big scary world, but sloth says "Just don't look," while despair grabs you with both hand and slams your face into the worst of it. "Look at it! Look at this s***!"
In short, despair is clear counterpart to wrath (and both lead toward violence), but apathy/laziness feels disconnected from it and has more in common with pride and envy.
ENVY the Serpent's Glare
The sin of envy sits at the intersection of pride, wrath, and greed. This position, I feel, warrants its inclusion as a designation of category of sin; it's so common, that it seems more than just the sum of its parts, but a natural point. It's like the color green: once viewed as merely shades of blue, but it seems so obvious now that it never should have been. Some even claim envy is the deadliest of the sins, beating out even pride.
PRIDE, VAINGLORY, and VANITY the Devil's Three Heads
Vainglory and vanity just seem like archaic ideas; subdivisions of a theme that were rightfully reorganized. Boasting and self-obsession hardly feel out of place being dubbed pride and the means of temptation would be the same: just someone who's adhered their lips to your rear.
Having them separate seems as absurd to me as splitting gluttony into different sins. Though, I'm not a religious person, so my thoughts here are more narrative (fantasy writing, that is to say) than moral.
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