The notion of a soul is as old as human civilization. Its ubiquity across different cultures suggests a powerful desire in the human mind to express the mysteries of life and death and a yearning to find a basis for immortality.
Beliefs about the soul and immortality reflect the cultures and preoccupations of the societies in which they emerged. Like many posterities, they have evolved to maintain their relevance in a changing world. Few scientists today accept the idea of the soul as a separate entity. However, for many people, it remains a valuable concept and a cornerstone of religious belief. Even for those who are not religious, the soul provides a metaphor for our conscious and unconscious selves, representing that part of us in which our personality, emotions, and free will reside.
Ideas about the soul exist in all the major religions. In Australian Aboriginal and Native American cultures, it was believed that an individual possessed many souls, each of which had its attributes. For example, the ‘living soul’ animated the body and departed on death, while the ‘free soul’ could leave the body during dreams or trances, assuming the form of an animal. If this animal failed to return to the soul ‘s ‘owner, ‘the person would die. Similar stories are found in European folklore, where souls are depicted as mice that slip from the mouths of the dead (a red mouse if they have lived a good life, black if not).
The soul in earlier cultures
Many ancient societies believed in an afterlife in which the soul is judged. Such beliefs were held by the Zoroastrians of Persia around 2500 years ago but were most elaborately developed in ancient Egypt, culminating in their Book of the Dead.
The idea of the soul taking on animal form appears in many cultures, reinforcing a common belief in a unitary life force that animates humans and other creatures. Thus, the soul of a Siberian shaman (holy man) could ride to the spirit world on the back of a reindeer, while in medieval Christian thought, the eagle symbolized a spirit rising to heaven. For the ancient Greeks, the soul left the body on death in the form of a butterfly, which was equated with the breath of life, while in central Asia, bodies were fed to dogs to speed their passage to the afterlife.
Chinese myth from the 5th century BC also recognized multiple souls. The hun was the spirit of man’s vital force, expressed in intelligence and power of breathing, whereas so was the spirit of man’s physical nature expressed in daily movements. If properly nurtured, these twin souls could attain immortality. On death, rituals were carried out to call the hun back into the body so that it did not roam but could be nurtured by funerary offerings. Christian beliefs – in which the soul is a spiritual, immortal entity trapped within a ‘lower’ physical body – owe much to ancient Egyptian and Greek ideas, especially those of the Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 BC). Plato believed that all higher thought, learning, and properties, such as virtue, belonged to the immortal soul. In death, the soul leaves the body and enters another person or animal before finally reaching the pure state where it could go on to a higher existence. Platonic ideas of the soul were married with the teachings of the Old Testament and became part of Christian orthodoxy, fiercely protected by a powerful church. It was many centuries before the Christian view of soul and body, as the philosophers and scientists of the modern age questioned separate entities.
The Egyptian Cult Of The Dead
The ancient Egyptians held that on death, the soul left the body and entered the underworld – the land of the dead. Here, the soul embarked on a perilous journey in search of the god Osiris, who sat in the Hall of Judgement with his entourage of 42 judges. The soul was brought before the judges, and the heart of the deceased was weighed on a scale against the feather of Ma’at, the goddess of justice. If the heart and feather were in perfect balance, the soul of the deceased merged with Osiris, attaining divine status while retaining an individual human personality. Egyptians believed that the soul was able to return to the world of the living in the form of the ba, a human-headed falcon endowed with the individuality of the deceased.
