In the Harry Potter series Voldemort attempts to attain immortality by creating horcruxes. He splits off a fragment of his soul and stores it in an object or person. The idea is that he can be reconstituted from a horcrux in the event of his death.
In the real world, I think we’re often tempted to create horcruxes of our own. We take our ideas, desires and qualities, and invest them in things. Houses, cars, relationships, ideas. We don’t notice that by investing in them, we sort of split off a part of ourselves and give it to an object.
I think one of the biggest horcruxes I ever made was a Mercedes Roadster. This was at a time when I was earning big bucks in advertising and I was especially prone to believing in marketing mythology. I imagined if I bought this hot car, I’d be driving to the French riviera every weekend. When I bought the car, what actually happened was I slept very badly for three months, worrying if someone was going to jealousy-scratch it outside my flat.
We can make horcruxes out of anything. Facilitators easily make them out of their favoured processes. We need to watch out for what we lose when we do this.
