Soul shapes, somewhat for fandom purposes
Dec. 30th, 2009 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootSo I was reading around lately about Egyptian concepts of the soul, and it made a few things make, possibly, more sense.
First the cosmology and speculation.
Of the five elements that Egyptian traditions we know of considered the soul, the one you will most often see referred to in the West is ka. This is actually a total misconception in most cases, because ka is not at all similar to the Judeo-Christian notion of soul. Rather, it has far more in common with the idea of chi, life force, animating force. The trick is that it was represented as a double of the physical body, which suggests that ka is not amorphous--it is specific and directly linked to the individual.
So then there's the ba, which is the personality, the individual characteristics of a person. That seems fairly direct, from a Western mindset, but it really isn't. A monument might be known as ba of the person it marks/commemorates. Individuals could, by taking on the individual characteristics of another, become that other; you see this in both the stories of gods and the various records that refer to, eg, kings and priests constructing temples with their own hands.1 So ba is both specific and individual, and also transferable.
We also have the name, which seems to me to be the thing that anchors a soul in the realm of the created and ordered--without that anchor, off into chaos it goes. There is the shadow, and given that a statue might be referred to as a shadow, that strikes me as similar to the name--a reflection and an anchor in the perceptions of others.
Then there's the ib, the heart, the seat of will, mind and emotion, the part which is judged, upon entry into the afterlife and therefore the part which is held accountable for a person's acts. My own interpretation is that it's the ib which is, so to speak, decorated by the ba, which enters into that individuality and acts in accordance with it.
Incidentally, I highly recommend Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, by Dimitri Meeks and Christine Favard-Meeks, for an interesting account of the wildly varied records we have from Egyptian history. Their approach helps you wrap your brain around the interconnections.
And now we get to the fandom applications of this.
The cosmology of Egypt did not go in for reincarnation.2 Literary adoptions, eg Yuugi-ou, tend to ignore this. But consider the concept of ka and ib and ba in comparison with the Buddhist concept of five skandha, aspects or modes of existence, which, translating loosely here, make up a particular instance of being which is neither divorced from nor identical to the previous instance. Using the former to shed light on the latter, we may have a helpful way to think about how reincarnation or rebirth are sometimes presented in anime and manga.
One of the most recent and notable examples isn't, strictly speaking, anime at all, but Avatar: The Last Airbender takes a lot of sources from Asian cosmology as well as art, and can be folded in. So consider the way different incarnations of the Avatar are presented. They do not form a single existence--each life/individuality is distinct from the next, to the point that different incarnations can meet and talk as individuals. If we discard the unitary notion of soul/self and instead look at this through the lens of multiple soul-parts, such as ib and ba, this actually makes plenty of sense.3 The "incarnations" are, as it were, ba, and remain after death/dissolution as something remarkably similar to akh (the re-unification of ba and ka after death).
I have, as yet, found no references in Buddhist (or Taoist, or Shinto) cosmology to such lingering instances; in fact, what I have found would appear rather to militate against such a thing. But clearly the idea is entrenched in popular consciousness.
Some other examples of this basic premise: Pandora hearts, Card Captor Sakura, Fullmetal Alchemist depending on how you interpret the homunculi, Inu Yasha.
1. That is to say, it was builders "really" doing the building, but they acted in the role of the king/priests, took on that iru or ba, and therefore were considered to be the king/priests for that time. This is, necessarily, speculative, but personally I agree that it makes all kinds of sense, considering the mythology.
2. No, really, they didn't. Please don't link me to crystalinks or theosophy et al. If you read reputable sources, you will find that reincarnation was attributed to Egyptians by Greek thinkers who didn't quite get the whole deal with the divergent aspects and evolution of the soul.
3. Note that I am not suggesting Egyptian and Buddhist cosmology are identical, or even that they have a direct philosophical connection. I would not be surprised if this were the case, but I do not, personally, know of any evidence of this. I'm just saying the basic notion of the soul is similar and obviously pops up in a lot of places.
First the cosmology and speculation.
Of the five elements that Egyptian traditions we know of considered the soul, the one you will most often see referred to in the West is ka. This is actually a total misconception in most cases, because ka is not at all similar to the Judeo-Christian notion of soul. Rather, it has far more in common with the idea of chi, life force, animating force. The trick is that it was represented as a double of the physical body, which suggests that ka is not amorphous--it is specific and directly linked to the individual.
So then there's the ba, which is the personality, the individual characteristics of a person. That seems fairly direct, from a Western mindset, but it really isn't. A monument might be known as ba of the person it marks/commemorates. Individuals could, by taking on the individual characteristics of another, become that other; you see this in both the stories of gods and the various records that refer to, eg, kings and priests constructing temples with their own hands.1 So ba is both specific and individual, and also transferable.
We also have the name, which seems to me to be the thing that anchors a soul in the realm of the created and ordered--without that anchor, off into chaos it goes. There is the shadow, and given that a statue might be referred to as a shadow, that strikes me as similar to the name--a reflection and an anchor in the perceptions of others.
Then there's the ib, the heart, the seat of will, mind and emotion, the part which is judged, upon entry into the afterlife and therefore the part which is held accountable for a person's acts. My own interpretation is that it's the ib which is, so to speak, decorated by the ba, which enters into that individuality and acts in accordance with it.
Incidentally, I highly recommend Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, by Dimitri Meeks and Christine Favard-Meeks, for an interesting account of the wildly varied records we have from Egyptian history. Their approach helps you wrap your brain around the interconnections.
And now we get to the fandom applications of this.
The cosmology of Egypt did not go in for reincarnation.2 Literary adoptions, eg Yuugi-ou, tend to ignore this. But consider the concept of ka and ib and ba in comparison with the Buddhist concept of five skandha, aspects or modes of existence, which, translating loosely here, make up a particular instance of being which is neither divorced from nor identical to the previous instance. Using the former to shed light on the latter, we may have a helpful way to think about how reincarnation or rebirth are sometimes presented in anime and manga.
One of the most recent and notable examples isn't, strictly speaking, anime at all, but Avatar: The Last Airbender takes a lot of sources from Asian cosmology as well as art, and can be folded in. So consider the way different incarnations of the Avatar are presented. They do not form a single existence--each life/individuality is distinct from the next, to the point that different incarnations can meet and talk as individuals. If we discard the unitary notion of soul/self and instead look at this through the lens of multiple soul-parts, such as ib and ba, this actually makes plenty of sense.3 The "incarnations" are, as it were, ba, and remain after death/dissolution as something remarkably similar to akh (the re-unification of ba and ka after death).
I have, as yet, found no references in Buddhist (or Taoist, or Shinto) cosmology to such lingering instances; in fact, what I have found would appear rather to militate against such a thing. But clearly the idea is entrenched in popular consciousness.
Some other examples of this basic premise: Pandora hearts, Card Captor Sakura, Fullmetal Alchemist depending on how you interpret the homunculi, Inu Yasha.
1. That is to say, it was builders "really" doing the building, but they acted in the role of the king/priests, took on that iru or ba, and therefore were considered to be the king/priests for that time. This is, necessarily, speculative, but personally I agree that it makes all kinds of sense, considering the mythology.
2. No, really, they didn't. Please don't link me to crystalinks or theosophy et al. If you read reputable sources, you will find that reincarnation was attributed to Egyptians by Greek thinkers who didn't quite get the whole deal with the divergent aspects and evolution of the soul.
3. Note that I am not suggesting Egyptian and Buddhist cosmology are identical, or even that they have a direct philosophical connection. I would not be surprised if this were the case, but I do not, personally, know of any evidence of this. I'm just saying the basic notion of the soul is similar and obviously pops up in a lot of places.
