Soul: A part of humans regarded as immaterial, immortal, separable from the body at death, capable of moral judgment, and susceptible to happiness or misery in the future state. The part of a human when disembodied after death.
Painting: There are many great classical and academic artworks that can be found, which surround the subject of the soul and salvation. Several notable paintings are centred specifically around the Christian belief of a place called purgatory; a temporary state in which the souls of those who have died in grace must expiate their sins, or known as a place or condition of suffering and remorse. This place, as often portrayed in paintings, is a manifested space shown in between heaven and hell. The souls are shown in great crowds, or bodies of people who are suffering or in pleading states. Just as humans are often represented in hell as having been stripped naked and brutally tortured by the demons and monsters of the fiery underworld, they are very similarly represented in purgatory, as wailing and in the nude. The ability of the artist to render the human form, and especially great numbers of them, is where the skills of the painter flourish. Some of the most ambitious paintings are devoted to the subject of the soul in the different halls of judgment. The soul as found in many Christian artworks, is not always presented as a ghost or an immaterial figure, the souls in purgatory, or the souls of the damned in hell, as they have been painted, look exactly like the fleshy counterparts of the living person to whom they belonged to. They otherwise resemble humans identically, even as rendered in the afterlife.
These are the paintings where viewers get to see the great uncoiling of figures. As the painting is divided into three sections, the heavens at the top, purgatory in the centre, and earth or hell at the bottom. Overlapped upon these three rendered sections, are the bodies of humans reaching, clawing, and trampling one another to get into heaven. The placement and flow of these figures is also what is so defining, as the forms are unfolded, and unfurled across the surface, the painter demonstrates their ability to render each figure in a complex position or posture, all while fitting into the stream of bodies that leads from heaven into purgatory or hell. A list of examples;
The oil painting, Pope Gregory the Great and Saint Vitalis Saving the Souls of Purgatory, was completed by Sebastiano Ricci. A very dramatic snaking of figures is shown leading up to the virgin mary that reclines at the top of the painting. The flow of figures follows the sweeping bend of smoky and hot-coloured clouds.
In the painting, The Virgin interceding for the Souls in Purgatory, by Luca Giordano, Christ is seen in the top left-hand corner of the painting, with a prominent crucifix in his hand, the Virgin, is seen below him to the right, where she points down to the bottom of the painting, where a sean of bodies with their hands clasped in prayers awaits judgment.
In the Collection of Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation, there exists a painting known as The Last Judgment from the South Americas by an unknown artist. The souls have been separated very starkly into various sections of the painting. Those forsaken are shown suffering and devoured in hell at the bottom of the painting. Those in the intermediary stage are shown en route to heaven, travelling along a very literal path that has been carved through the centre of the painting that leads from top to bottom. And finally, those souls which have been redeemed are shown, and they have been placed in various clumped groups at the top of the painting, on different rows of clouds.
Chinese Myth: James Frazer writes of the externalized soul in a Chinese tale;
"A modern Chinese story tells how a habitual criminal used to take
his soul out of his own body for the purpose of evading the righteous
punishment of his crimes. This bad man lived in Khien (Kwei-cheu), and
the sentences that had been passed on him formed a pile as high as a
hill.
The mandarins had flogged him to death with sticks and flung his
mangled corpse into the river, but three days afterwards the scoundrel
got his soul back again, and on the fifth day he resumed his career
of villainy as if nothing had happened. The thing occurred again and
again, till at last, it reached the ears of the Governor of the
province, who flew into a violent passion and proposed to the
Governor-General to have the rascal beheaded.
And beheaded he was; but
in three days the wretch was alive again with no trace of decapitation
about him except a slender red thread round his neck. And now, like a
giant refreshed, he began a fresh series of enormities. He even went so
far as to beat his own mother. This was more than she could bear, and
she brought the matter before the magistrate.
She produced in court a
vase and said, 'In this vase, my refractory son has hidden his soul.
Whenever he was conscious of having committed a serious crime, or a
misdeed of the most heinous kind, he remained at home, took his soul out
of his body, purified it, and put it in the vase. Then the authorities
only punished or executed his body of flesh and blood, and not his
soul.
With his soul, refined by a long process, he then cured his
freshly mutilated body, which thus became able in three days to
recommence in the old way. Now, however, his crimes have reached a
climax, for he has beaten me, an old woman, and I cannot bear it. I pray
you, smash this vase, and scatter his soul by fanning it away with a
windwheel; and if then you castigate his body anew, it is probable that
bad son of mine will really die.'
The mandarin took the hint. He had
the rogue cudgelled to death, and when they examined the corpse they
found that decay had set in within ten days."
Egyptian veneration of the Soul: In the work by Lewis Spence, Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends, the belief in the soul is written about by comparison to other cultures in the section of The Ba;
"The ba, as has been mentioned, did not remain with the body, but took wing after death. Among primitive peoples-the aborigines of America, for instance-the soul is frequently regarded as possessing the form and attributes of a bird. The ability of the bird to make passage for itself across the great ocean of air, the incomprehensibility of its gift of flight, the mystery of its song, its connexion with 'heaven,' render it a being at once strange and enviable. Such freedom, argues primitive man, must have the liberated soul, untrammelled by the hindering flesh. So, too, must gods and spirits be winged, and such, he hopes, will his own condition when he has shaken off the mortal coil and rises on pinions to the heavenly mansions. Thus the Bororos of Brazil believe that the soul possesses the form of a bird. The Bilquila Indians of British Columbia think that the soul dwells in an egg in the nape of the neck, and that upon death this egg is hatched and the enclosed bird takes flight. In Bohemian folklore, we learn that the soul is popularly conceived as a white bird. The Malays and the Battas of Sumatra also depict the immortal part of man in bird-shape, as do the Javanese and Borneans. Thus we see that the Egyptian concept is paralleled in many a distant land. But nowhere do we find the belief so strong or so persistent over a prolonged period of time as in the valley of the Nile."
"No race conferred so much importance and dignity upon the cult of the dead as the Egyptian. It is no exaggeration to say that the life of the Egyptian of the cultured class was one of prolonged preparation for death. It is probably, however, that he was, through force of custom and environment, unaware of the circumstance. It is dangerous to indulge in a universal assertion with reference to an entire nation. But if any people ever regarded life as mere academy of preparation for eternity, it was the mysterious and fascinating face whose vast remains litter the banks of the world's most ancient river, and frown upon the less majestic undertakings of a civilization which has usurped the theatre of their myriad wondrous deeds."
There are many sculptures of the Ba, which have survived antiquity into the present day. They are human-headed figures, sculptures or statues with the torso, wings and feet of a bird, combined with the face and headdress or hair garb of a human.
Celtic Mythology: In the work Celtic Myths and Legends by T.W. Rolleston, written about is the Doctrine of Transmigration among the Celts;
"Many ancient writers assert that the Celtic idea of immortality embodied the Oriental conception of the transmigration of souls, and to account for this the hypothesis was invented that they had learned the doctrine from Pythagoras, who represented it in classical antiquity. Thus Caesar: "The principal point of their (the Druids) teaching is that the soul does not perish, and that after death it passes from one body into another." And Diodorus: "Among them the doctrine of Pythagoras prevails, according to which the souls of men are immortal, and after a fixed term recommences to live, taking upon themselves a new body." Now traces of this doctrine certainly do appear in Irish legend. Thus the Irish chieftain, Mongan, who is a historical personage, and whose death is recorded about A.D. 626, is said to have made a wager as to the place of death of a king named Fothad, slain in a battle with the mythical hero Finn mac Cumhal in the third century. He proves his case by summoning to his aid a revenant from the Other-world, Keelta, who was the actual slayer of Fothad, and who describes correctly where his tomb is to be found and what were its contents.
He begins his tale by saying to Mongan, "We were with Finn, coming from Alba..." "Hush," says Mongan, "it is wrong of thee to reveal a secret." The secret is, of course, that Mongan was a reincarnation of Finn. But the evidence on the whole, shows that the Celts did not hold this doctrine at all in the same way as Pythagoras and the Orientals did. Transmigration was not, with them, part, of the order of things. It might happen, but in general, it did not; the new body assumed by the dead clothed them in another, not in this world, and so far as we can learn from any ancient authority, there does not appear to have been any idea of moral retribution connected with this form of the future life. It was not so much an article of faith as an idea which haunted the imagination, and which, as Mongan's caution indicates, ought not to be brought into clear light."
And additionally;
"However it may have been conceived, it is certain that the belief in immortality was the basis of Celtic Druidism. Ceasar affirms this distinctly and declares the doctrine to have been fostered by the Druids rather for the promotion of courage than for purely religious reasons. An intense Other-world faith, such as that held by the Celts, is certainly one of the mightiest of agencies in the hands of a priesthood who hold the keys of that world."
Myths of the Chinook: In the work by Lewis Spence, The Myths of North American Indians, he writes of the travels of the soul after death;
The Soul's Journey;
Most of the tribes appear to have believed that the soul had to undertake a long journey before it reached its destination. The belief of the Chinooks in this respect is perhaps a typical one. They imagine that after death the spirit of the deceased drinks at a large hole in the ground, after which it shrinks and passes to the country of the ghosts, where it is fed with spirit food and drink. After this act of communion with the spirit-world it may not return. They also believe that everyone is possessed of two spirits, a greater and a less. During illness, the lesser soul is spirited away by the denizens of Ghost-land. The Navahos possess a similar belief, and say that the soul has none of the vital force which animates the body, nor any of the faculties of the mind, but a kind of third quality, or personality, like the ka of the ancient Egyptians, which may leave its owner and become lost, much to his danger and discomfort. The Hurons and Iroquois believe that after death the soul must cross a deep and swift stream, by a bridge formed by a single slender tree, upon which it has to combat the attacks of a fierce dog. The Athapascans imagine that the soul must be ferried over a great water in a stone canoe, and the Algonquins and Dakotas believe that departed spirits must cross a stream bridged by an enormous snake.
Paradise and the Supernatural People
The Red Man appears to have possessed two wholly different conceptions of supernatural life. We find in Indian myth allusions both to a 'Country of the Ghosts' and to a 'Land of the Supernatural People.'The first appears to be the destination of human beings after death, but the second is apparently the dwelling place of a spiritual race some degrees higher than mankind. Both these regions are within the reach of mortals, and seem to be mere extensions of the terrestrial sphere. Their inhabitants eat, drink, hunt, and amuse themselves in the same manner as earthly folk, and are by no means invulnerable or immortal. The instinctive dread of the supernatural which primitive man possesses is well exemplified in the myths in which he is brought into contact with the denizens of Ghost-land or Spirit-world.
The Soul among the Forests: In the work by Alexander Porteous, The Forest in Folklore and Mythology, he provides numbered examples of souls that inhabit the woodlands and forests;
"The natives of the districts surrounding Geelvink Bay see in the mists which often hover on the tops of the high trees, a Spirit, or a God, which they call Narbrooi. The Spirit draws out the soul of those whom he loves and bears it away to the mist-enshrouded tree-tops. Therefore when a man falls ill one of his friends goes to those trees to endeavour to recover the soul. He makes a peculiar sound to attract the attention of the Spirit, and then sitting down, lights a cigar. As the smoke curls up from it, Narbrooi appears in the midst, young and elegant, and in answer to inquiries, says whether his soul is with him or not. If it is, upon receiving an offering, Narbrooi returns it. It is then conveyed in a straw bag back to the sufferer, and the bag emptied over him. Often, however, Narbrooi does not keep his word, but takes away the soul again, in which case the sufferer likely dies."
"The primitive races of mankind believed that trees possessed souls, and Captain Cook said that the natives of Tahiti believe that the souls of trees at death ascend to the divinity with whom they at first mix, and thereafter each one passes into the particular mansion allotted to it. The Ancient Greek philosophers also attributed intellect and sense to trees."
"Naturally, when a soul was given to a tree, it was likewise endowed with the power of speech. This speech is often in a mysterious, emblematical, or silent language, which, however, often makes itself heard, it may be in the creaking of the branches, or in the leaf rustling in the breeze. Many trees have even taken human speech, as in the Cornel tree, in which Polydorus spoke, or in the Jupiter tree mentioned by an author of the seventeenth century named Loccenius, which was indignant, and cried out when it was pulled up."
The Golden Bough: Frazer in his work The Golden Bough, writes of the many beliefs held by different cultures about the soul. The attempts made to prevent the soul from escaping the body during various stages in life, the soul in the form of a shadow, the soul reflected in looking glasses and pools of water, the soul stolen or trapped by modern devices, and many more. In the chapter of The Perils of the Soul, Frazer writes generously on the subject;
On the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, the soul is trapped through fishing hooks;
"The soul is commonly supposed to escape by the natural openings of the body, especially the mouth and the nostrils. Hence, in Celebes, they sometimes fasten fish-hooks to a sick man's nose, navel, and feet, so that if his soul should try to escape it may be hooked and held fast."
Bones are used as instruments to temporarily store the soul;
"One of the implements of a Haida medicine man is a hollow bone, in which he bottles up departing souls, and so restores them to their owners."
In Hinduism, if a soul were to escape by a yawn, they would respond accordingly;
"When anyone yawns in their presence the Hindoos always snap their thumbs, believing that this will hinder the soul from issuing through the open mouth."
In Bolivia, in the event of a death, the following is practised;
"The Itonamas of South America seal up the eyes, nose, and mouth of a dying person, in case his ghost should get out and carry off others."
Frazer writes of the great lengths people went to during childbirth, to ensure the soul did not escape;
"In Southern Celebes, to hinder the escape of a woman's soul in childbed, the nurse ties a band as tightly as possible round the body of the expectant mother. And lest the soul of a babe should escape and be lost as soon as it is born, the Alfoors of Celebes, when a birth is about to take place, are careful to close every opening in the house, even the keyhole; and they stop up every chink and cranny in the walls. Also, they tie up the mouths of all animals inside and outside the house, for fear one of them might swallow the child's soul. For a similar reason all persons present in the house, even the mother herself, are obliged to keep their mouths shut the whole time the birth is taking place. When the question was put, Why they did not hold their noses also, lest the child's soul should get into one of them? the answer was that breath being exhaled as well as inhaled through the nostrils, the soul would be expelled before it could have time to settle down."
Frazer writes of the dangers of wandering souls;
"The soul of a sleeper is supposed to wander away from his body and actually to visit the places, to see the persons, and to perform the acts of which he dreams. Now the absence of the soul in sleep has its dangers, for it from any cause the soul should be permanently detained away from the body, the person thus deprived of the vital principle must die."
There was the belief that the soul could disembody itself from the host while asleep;
"There is a German belief that the soul escape's from a sleeper's mouth in the form of a white mouse or a little bird, and that to prevent the return of the bird or animal would be fatal to the sleeper. It may meet the soul of a person just deceased and be carried off by it; hence in the Aru Islands, the inmates of a house will not sleep the night after a death has taken place in it, because the soul of the deceased is supposed to be still in the house and they fear to meet it in a dream. Again, the soul of the sleeper may be prevented by accident or by physical force from returning to his body."
Frazer writes of the soul that has departed the body in the form of a lizard;
"When a Dyak dreams of falling into the water, he supposes that this accident has really befallen his spirit, and he sends for a wizard, who fishes for the spirit with a hand-net in a basin of water till he catches it and restores it to its owner. The Santals tell how a man fell asleep, and growing very thirsty, his soul, in the form of a lizard, left his body and entered a pitcher of water to drink. Just then the owner of the pitcher happened to cover it; so the soul could not return to the body and the man died. While his friends were preparing, to burn the body some one uncovered the pitcher to get water. The lizard thus escaped and returned to the body, which immediately revived; so the man rose up and asked his friends why they were weeping. They told him they thought he was dead and were about to burn his body. He said he had been down a well to get water, but had found it hard to get out and had just returned. So they saw it all."
Written about was the belief to not disturb those in slumber;
"It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper, because his soul is always and might not have time to get back; so if the man wakened without his soul, he would fall sick. If it is absolutely necessary to rouse a sleeper, it must be done very gradually, to allow the soul time to return. A Fijian in Matuku, suddenly wakened from a nap by somebody treading on his foot, has been heard bawling after his soul and imploring it to return. He had just been dreaming that he was far away in Tonga, and great was his alarm on suddenly wakening to find his body in Matuku. Death stared him in the face unless his soul could be induced to speed at once across the sea and reanimate its deserted tenement. The man would probably have died of fright if a missionary had not been at hand to allay his terror. In Bombay, it is thought equivalent to murder to change the aspect of a sleeper, as by painting his face in fantastic colours or giving moustaches to a sleeping woman. For when the soul returns it will not know its own body, and the person will die."
Frazer writes of the use of a witch doctor to retrieve the soul;
"But in order that a man's soul should quit his body, it is not necessary that he should be asleep. It may quit him in his waking hours, and then sickness, insanity, or death will be the result. Thus a man of the Wurunjeri tribe in Australia lay at his last gasp because his spirit had departed from him. A medicine man went in pursuit and caught the spirit by the middle just as it was about to plunge into the sunset glow, which is the light cast by the souls of the dead as they pass in and out of the underworld, where the sun goes to rest. Having captured the vagrant spirit, the doctor brought it back under his opossum rug, laid himself down on the dying man, and put the soul back into him, so that after a time he revived."
When a soul escapes and wanders, another intermediary presence is called upon, a sorcerer is used to reconnect the soul to its owner;
"Some of the Congo tribes believe that when a man is ill, his soul has left his body and is wandering at large. The aid of the sorcerer is then called in to capture the vagrant spirit and restore it to the invalid. Generally, the physician declares that he has successfully chased the soul into the branch of a tree. The whole town thereupon turns out and accompanies the doctor to the tree, where the strongest men are deputed to break off the branch in which the soul of the sick man is supposed to be lodged. This they do and carry the branch back to the town, insinuating by their gestures that the burden is heavy and hard to bear. When the branch has been placed in an upright position by its side, and the sorcerer performs the enchantments by which the soul is believed to be restored to its owner."
Frazer writes of large rocks and stones that act as magnets for dangerous souls;
"In the Banks Islands, there are some stones of a remarkably long shape which go by the name of 'eating ghosts,' because certain powerful and dangerous ghosts are believed to lodge in them. If a man's shadow falls on one of these stones, the ghost will draw his soul out from him, so that he will die. Such stones, therefore, are set in a house to guard it; and a messenger sent to a house by the absent owner will call out the name of the sender, lest the watchful ghost in the stone should fancy that he came with evil intent and should do him a mischief."
Extra precautions are taken during funeral practices to ensure live souls are not buried along with the dead ones;
"At a funeral in China, when the lid is about to be placed on the coffin, most of the bystanders, with the exception of the nearest kin, retire a few steps or even retreat to another room, for a person's health is believed to be endangered by allowing his shadow to be enclosed in a coffin. And when the coffin is about to be lowered into the grave, most of the spectators recoil to a little distance left their shadows should fall into the grave harm should thus be done to their persons by tying a strip of cloth tightly round their waists."
The soul in the form of a shadow, and shown mirrored in different surfaces;
"As some peoples believe a man's soul to be in his shadow, so other (or the same) peoples believe it to be in his reflection in water or a mirror. Thus 'the Andamanese do not regard their shadows but their reflections (in any mirror) as their souls. When the Motumotu of the New Guinea first saw their likenesses in a looking-glass, they thought that their reflections were their souls."
The fear of the soul becoming trapped in mirrors is written about;
"Further, we can now explain the widespread custom of covering up mirrors or turning them to the water after a death has taken place in the house. It is feared that the soul, projected out of the person in the shape of his reflection in the mirror, may be carried off by the ghost of the departed, which is commonly supposed to linger about the house till burial. The custom is thus exactly parallel to the Aru custom of not sleeping in a house after a death, for fear that the soul, projected out of the body, in a dream, may meet the ghost and be carried off by it. The reason why sick people should not see themselves in a mirror, and why the mirror in a sick-room is therefore covered up, is also pain; in time of sickness, when the soul might take flight so easily, it is particularly dangerous to project it out of the body by means of the reflection in the mirror. The rule is therefore precisely parallel to the rule observed by some peoples of not allowing sick people to sleep; for in sleep the soul is projected out of the body, and there is always a risk that it may not return."
Frazer writes of evil spirits that were believed to be able to kidnap the soul;
"We can now understand why it was a maxim both in ancient India and Ancient Greece not to look at one's reflection in water, and why the Greeks regarded it as an omen of death if a man dreamed of seeing himself so reflected. They feared that the water-spirits would drag the person's reflection or soul under water, leaving him soulless to perish."
When first introduced to new technologies, fear spread amoung certain peoples that they would trap the soul;
"Once at a village on the lower Yukon River, an explorer had set up his camera to get a picture of the people as they were moving about among their houses. While he was focusing the instrument, the headman of the village came up and insisted on peeping under the cloth. Being allowed to do so, he gazed intently for a minute at the moving figures on the ground glass, then suddenly withdrew his head and bawled at the top of his voice to the people, 'He has all of your shades in this box.' A panic ensued among the group and in an instant they disappeared helter-skelter into their houses."
Another photographer who was believed to be a soul-snatcher;
"The Tepehuanes of Mexico stood in mortal terror of the camera, and five days' persuasion was necessary to induce them to pose for it. When at last they consented, they looked like criminals about to be executed. They believed that by photographing people the artist could carry off their souls and devour them at his leisure moments. They said that, when the pictures reached his country, they would die or some other evil would befall them."
And furthermore of the evil camera;
"Some villagers in Sikhim betrayed a lively horror and hid away whenever the lens of a camera, or 'the evil eye of the box' as they called it, was turned on them. They thought it took away their souls with their pictures, and so put it in the power of the owner of the pictures to cast spells on them, and they alleged that a photograph of the scenery blighted the landscape."
Frazer writes at length of different souls harboured away from the body in the chapter of The External Soul;
"In a Siamese or Cambodian story, probably derived from India, we are told that Thossokan or Ravana, the King of Ceylon, was able by magic art to take his soul out of his body, and leave it in a box at home, while he went to the wars. Thus he was invulnerable in battle. When he was about to give battle to Rama, he deposited his soul with a hermit called Fire-eye, who was to keep it safe for him. So in the fight Rama was astounded to see that his arrows struck the king without wounding him. But one of Rama's allies, knowing the secret of the king's invulnerability, transformed himself by magic into the likeness of the king, and going to the hermit asked back his soul. On receiving it he soared up into the air and flew to Rama, brandishing the box and squeezing it so hard that all the breath left the King of Ceylon's body and he died."
The external soul in Tartar poems and Mongolian stories;
"In a Mongolian story the hero Joro gets the better of his enemy the lama Tschridong in the following way. The lama, who is an enchanter, sends out his soul in the form of a wasp to sting Joro's eyes. But Joro catches the wasp in his hand and by alternately shutting and opening his hand he causes the lama alternately to lose and recover consciousness."
"In a Tartar poem, two youths cut open the body of an old witch and tear out her bowels, but all to no purpose, she still lives. On being asked where her soul is, she answers that it is in the middle of her shoe-sole in the form of a seven-headed speckled snake. So one of the youths slices her shoe-sole with his sword, takes out the speckled snake, and cuts off its seven heads. Then the witch dies."
Film: In the 2016 film Wandering Soul, based on the events of the Vietnam war, the character of a Vietcong soldier is seen mourning the death of a fallen comrade, his recently deceased friend whom he has buried, is not laid to rest and haunts him. The film was inspired by the 'Ghost Tapes' of the US Army Psychological Operations Strategy; Operation Wandering Soul. Tapes were pre-recorded and played during the war to scare the Vietnamese soldiers. The tapes were filled with distorted noises and the voices of women and men soldiers crying out with moans and wails of their torture. US soldiers installed in the treetops speakers which blared the noises endlessly with the aim of demoralizing the enemy. Accordingly; "So effective in their exploitation of the Vietnamese spiritual beliefs, the tapes were restricted from being played within earshot of the South Vietnam Allies."
It is believed in Vietnam that once a person has died, their burial must take place within the origin of the deceased person's country, otherwise, the soul would be doomed to wander aimlessly. "Wandering Souls" day is celebrated yearly in Vietnam.