multiple souls

multiple souls, widely distributed notion, especially in central and northern Asia and Indonesia, that an individual’s life and personality are made up of a complex set of psychic interrelations. In some traditions the various souls are identified with the separate organs of the body; in others they are related to character traits. Each of the different souls making up a single individual has a different destiny after death. Among many northern Asian peoples, for example, one soul remains with the corpse, one soul descends to the underworld, and one soul ascends to the heavens.

The most famous example of multiple souls is the belief of the Apapocuva Guaraní of Brazil that a gentle vegetable soul comes, fully formed, from the dwelling place of the gods and joins with the infant at the moment of birth. To this is joined, shortly after birth, a vigorous animal soul. The type of animal decisively influences the recipient’s personality: a gentle person has received a butterfly’s soul; a cruel and violent man, the soul of a jaguar. Upon death, the vegetable soul enters paradise, and the animal soul becomes a fierce ghost that plagues the tribe.