Based on what we know so far, Hellfire has much better combat applications while Soulfire has unknown abilities and a seemingly harsher penalty.Though I guess I'll pick Soulfire for the fun it shall provide.

 

Soulfire has no penalty unless misused by using it in abundance. It's like having mana but instead, a soul. You use a little bit, and it replenishes, only difference is if you use all your soul, it doesn't replenish.

With hellfire, using it just once changes you and your personality, and how you handle things.

 

But when Harry used it, he couldn't use one of his hands. Believe me, that's a bitch of a disadvantage in a fight. And just think about what would happen if your legs stopped working. Or your eyes.

If your in a fight, you'd die.

While using Hellfire could change you (I, personally, thought that was Lash's doing), I'd rather be angry then dead.

 

Harry lost the use of his hand because he took most of the sould from it to form the Soulfire!Hand. If he had just used bits of sould from all over his body I believe the problem could be averted. Not to mention Harry got some use of his hand back when he used magic.

In aspects of personality changes I always thought of Hellfire basically being Black Magic.

 

With Hellfire you eventually give up your soul forever to the devil- Harry would have soon enough had Lash not been destroyed/mostly destroyed.

Soulfire uses up the soul, but as long as you don't use all of it, you can replenish yourself.

I think that dying because you use soulfire too much and going up to heaven for eternity is better than not dying for a bit longer and then going to hell- or be taken control of by a fallen angel- for all eternity.

 

The way I understood it is that it was the choices you made that sent your soul downwards, not the hellfire itself. Like choosing to use hellfire was one step on the path, using Lash's memory to read the Word of Kemmler was another.

It wasn't the hellfire tainting your soul with every use, it was just your choice to use it that did the damage, cause it let the Fallen further in. That fits more with how the Fallen work I imagine, since they have to have your permission to send your soul south.

Aekiel

 

From what I heard, it wasn't the fact that he used soulfire that caused the loss of use of his hand, but rather the fact that the Archangel invested his power into Harry at that moment. Thats why when he meets him in the hospital chapel his hand goes all tingely when the angel says he 'lent him a hand'.

 

Re-read the talk with bob at the end. The part about using his soul, and the part around his hand.

 

Well, unless Lash is somehow still lurking around in his mind, which I doubt, because Anduriel tried to get her to subdue Dresden on the boat and it didn't work (either because she didn't want to or because she wasn't there), he can't use Hellfire anymore. It's gifted to the Hosts by the Fallen. If she isn't there...no more Hellfire. By the way, it is so far infinitely cooler.

On the other hand, not much is so far known about the Soulfire except that if you use to much, you kill yourself, which seems to be somethign of a liability. It's also used for creation, which could be useful, but I'm wondering about it's usefulness in a fight, which has been pointed out before. Another thought, though, is that it may very well be used to negate the power of Hellfire, and vice versa, reducing the Denarians to kickboxing. At the same time though, Dresden picked Namshiel up with the Soul!Hand, and threw him about, and Namshiel didn't seem to be doing anything about it, either because Dresden caught him distracted/weak/both or because his Hellfire doesn't actually negate the Soulfire-enhanced spell.

Soulfire seems to me to be something to be used only to enhance a spell you would otherwise be creating, because they are in essence creation magic. Hellfire, be contrast, is of destruction, and enhances spells steeped towards the act of destruction.

Basically, I think the Jury's still in debate on this one...but as of right now, I think I would go with Hellfire, because I think it's more suited to Dresden's current situation and needs in terms of magics. In the long run, though, I think Soulfire is more in keeping with his goals and personality traits.

On the other hand, maybe there's some compromise to be hand, and he could use both. Go figure. Just look out for th enext book to shed some light on the issue....

 

Why should we assume that soulfire can only be fuelled by the part of Harry's soul that is around a body part? Why couldn't he use the part of his soul that holds his desire to use black magic? Better yet, assume Lasciel returns, why couldn't Harry essentually summon her shadow?

 

On the topic of his hand going numb, couldn't it have been from sleeping gas that was getting released? It says on page 271 thatthe end of his nose had gone numb, it could be possible that it affected his hand also. The odds are that it was the soul fire but it could be the gas. Also I would pick soul fire because of it is versatile.

 

No, the gas hadn't been released at that point. He'd interrupted Thorned Namshiel setting up the canister and circle so it couldn't be that.

 

Why can't he have both hell's fury and heaven's wrath. Sounds good to me

 

It seems to me that that would be like wielding matter and anti-matter in close proximity. Put simply, good plus bad equals large explosion.

 

You people don't seem to understand that Hell is a fucking BAD place. Harry uses soulfire in the name of God, he goes to Heaven. Harry uses Hellfire in the name of himself, he goes to Hell. It is, really, as simple as that. Both kick ass in different ways, and Soulfire has the least amount of consequences- Who cares if he dies if he uses too much? At least he ain't in hell for eternity...

 

And if he uses hellfire to protect an orphanage full of children? Oh wait, silly me. It's not what you do with the power, it's just using it that makes you a bad person. How could I have been so naive? It's not like we have free will or anything, so we can't actively choose to use ambiguously evil powers for good. Not at all.

It's not like soulfire could kill people. I mean, we've only seen it create a hand big enough to crush someone. No way you could twist that to evil means.

Now that I'm done being sarcastic I can say that it's the choices you make that send you down the road to hell. It's pretty much the biggest message of the New Testament, and I assume Butcher is going for the Big Friendly God rather than the Big Wrathful God of the Old Testament, given he employed Michael. Using the power doesn't mean you're going to hell. It's primarily the intentions behind your actions that blacken your soul enough to send you Down.

Aekiel

 

QFT

Also, Hell doesn't exist. The Bible is a book of fiction written by men in the dark ages when superstition and supernaturalism ruled the world, before the advent of science and enlightenment.

Suggested reading: David Hume, Spinoza, Hobbes, Sagan, Dennett, Dawkins, and Hitchens, just to name a few.

 

Well, nice to know that you have an overwhelming urge to put your atheistic views forward, but that's not at all what we are talking about.

It is fairly reasonable to assume that using hellfire will corrupt you. I reason that the purpose for lash giving hellfire to Dresden is for that very reason. With that in mind, i will say that soulfire has its costs and benefits. It is fueled by your soul which is, according to the series, a finite, recharging resource. Hellfire, on the other hand, is fulled by hell itself. The way i read it, when Dresden would use it, he would use none of his own power. It's the metaphorical power outlet as compared to a battery.

Without knowing anything else about the special abilities of soulfire, we really can't compare them any further.

PS. The bible wasn't written in the dark ages. The old testament was written at least a thousand years previous, and the new testament was canonized at least 200 years before the dark ages began (i seem to recall the beginning of the dark ages to be ~800 AD, but i might be mistaken.)

 

You're welcome.

Fine. The OT was written in the bronze age or whatever. The NT a lot later. It doesn't change the fact it was still written by men who knew absolutely nothing about the world they lived in. The Bible is a relic of the pre-enlightenment age, and thus should not be taken seriously. Some of the morality tales and stories are decent, but Genesis is wack, and some of the shit in the OT is pure evil. Commited in the name of God of course. See the book of Joshua, Judges, Deuteronomy, etc.

 

It's nice to know that you're taking your personal views on life and end-life and applying them to a book much more complicated than you would like it to be.