Blessed Night, Loves 😊

I Pray All Is Well With Everyone… And Your Hearts And Minds Are Full Of Love, Joy, And Compassion… For All Your Brothers And Sisters In Spirit. And Loving In Spirit, From The Spirit, Or… Spirit-to-Spirit… Is To Love As The Living God Dwelling Within Us – Our Very Own “Mighty I AM Presence”! And That Loving Spirit Is Never Depthless Or Temporal As In Human Perceptions… But Infinite And Eternal – Everlasting Loving Energy – Enveloping All That Is; Filling Every Living Vessel Inhabiting This Earth; And Forever Linking Individuals… Thru Our Connection With The One Almighty Spirit… Of The Living God! Amen…  

Give Thanks And Praises For Love And Life…  

And Y’all Be Love…   

“How early man came to realize that this part which is designated by breath or puff of air is his real self is impossible to say. But what is significant is that in many languages the word meaning spirit, life, or breath has also the connotation “self,” as has, e.g., the Hebrew nephesh. And how natural such a signification is can be illustrated by the concrete fact that Laura Bridgman, the blind-deaf-mute, is said to have expressed the thought of death in a dream by the statement that “God took away my breath to heaven.”

Among the Ekoi of Nigeria, ghost and soul and breath are connected as phases of the same thing or as equivalents. One must not forget that the phenomenon of death which is most obvious is the expiring sigh or last breath, after the departure of which life ceases to exist. What more natural than that the breath thus finally exhaled, should be associated with the soul or spirit, or, as in some cases, be thought to carry the soul with it? Since in dreams a person deceased has been seen and addressed while the body was known to have dissolved, the way is direct and the step short to the conclusion that the self, the real person, is that same breath or soul.

But did primitive peoples endow the soul with form? The testimony to this is abundant and cogent. The most natural and perhaps most common idea of the soul’s shape is that it is a: miniature of the possessor’s form. Among those who have held this belief are American Indians such as the Hurons, the natives of British Columbia, Alaska, and the Esquimaux of the districts adjacent to Behring Straits, islanders such as the Niassians near Sumatra and the Fijians, and continental dwellers such as the Malays and West Africans. To give a single example, Nigerian Etoi believe that “when a man’s body decays, a new form comes out of it, in every way like the man himself when he was above ground.

For the Egyptians abundant testimony is available as to the belief in the double, existing indeed from birth. There is a picture in the Roman catacombs portraying the death of a Christian, in which the soul is represented as leaving the mouth of the dying in a cloud-like shape that takes his own form. What is practically a replica of this is found on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa; and in the east transept of Salisbury Cathedral on the sculptured monument over the tomb of Bishop Giles de Bridgeport, the soul appears as a naked figure carried by an angel.

The usual notion is that the soul is invisible. But as in other respects, shamans or medicine men are credited with extraordinary powers, so they are supposed to be able to discern the spirits or souls moving about or endeavoring to escape from the body. Sometimes the organ of detection is the ear, which can note the motion of the soul’s wings. Or, the soul being of human shape, it leaves faint footmarks as indications of its presence, and light ashes strewn on the ground may betray its presence to the keen-sighted medicine man.

Mention has been made of the return of the soul of one deceased to the haunts of the body as evidenced by dreams. The form appearing in the dream was recognized as that of a friend, again testifying to the assumed fact that the soul has the shape of the body. Further testimony to this belief is found in the faith that the soul is held to suffer in some degree the fate of the body. Brazilian Indians, for example, believe that the soul arrives in the other world hacked and torn, or uninjured, exactly as was the condition of the body at death. Australians tie together the toes and bind together the thumbs behind the back, or mutilate the body and fill it with stones, or, again, they lop off the thumb of a slain enemy, that the ghost may not hurl a shadowy spear or pull the bowstring in the land of spirits.

… A notion closely akin to the foregoing, is that which connects the soul with the shadow. While many curious ideas which gather around the latter – such as the Brahman belief that the shadow of a pariah falling on food defiles it – do not involve the identity of the two; in many cases, there can be little doubt that soul and shadow are not only closely related, but are regarded as identical. Some believe that an assault upon the shadow may be fatal to its possessor, or at least extremely harmful.

The Indians of the lower Frazer River hold that man has four souls, of which one is the shadow. The Euahlayi of Australia believe that man has a dream spirit, a shadow spirit, perhaps an animal spirit, and one that leaves only at death.

… The equivalence of the shadow to the man himself is proved by its use (or that of its-dimensions, in a later stage of culture) in the same manner as the body in foundation sacrifice, to give stability to the structure. After an exactly similar manner of thought the reflection of a body in water or a mirror is regarded as the soul. Injury to reflection or shadow may result in injury to the corresponding member of the body. Among the Congo people, shadow or picture or reflection is the equivalent of soul. This whole manner of thought explains why in so many regions the natives do not willingly submit to being photographed or represented on canvas.

… As to the constitution of this part of man’s duality there is a wide consensus along the lines already indicated. Primitive peoples throughout the world describe it as a vapor, a shadowy, filmy substance, related to the body as the perfume to the flower. It is pale and yielding to the touch, without flesh and bone, thin, impalpable, discerned as the figure in the human eye. Its movements may be as swift as the wind, and so it is sometimes regarded as winged.

… It is not to be supposed that life, soul, spirit, possessing emotional, volitional, and factual potency, was limited in savage man’s conception to the tangible and visible. If the soul of man was itself invisible, and if soul were a possession of plants, animals, and other natural objects, yet perceived only by its operations, why should there not be other souls “loose in the universe,” unseen and unfelt, except as they revealed themselves by their activities or manifestations to the world of sense? So man seems to have reasoned, and this belief abides today in the minds of the mass of mankind, even in Christendom.

Spirits, unfixed so to speak, having form and substance, indeed, but not body, roamed free and unfettered in air, on land, in the waters. They lurked in nook and cranny, behind bush and tree and rock; they came in storm and wind; they inhabited the woods, floated in the atmosphere, swam in the sea and in lake and stream, parched in the desert, bid in cave or roamed on mountain top. Wherever mystery is possible, there man imagines non-human spirits to exist.

… Examples at almost any length might be cited from modern works of contemporaries. Only a few instances will be given here simply to illustrate the principle. Central Australians believe in the existence of Wullunqua, a dread spirit which inhabits a deep water hole. And other tribes of that continent have similar traditions, such as the Narrinyeri, who know of a like spirit, the Mulgewauke. By the inhabitants of New Guinea spirits, non-human are supposed to inhabit any place with unusual physical characteristics – waterfall, pool, queer-shaped rock, or the like. Of the Guiana native Im Thum says:

“His whole world swarms with beings. He is surrounded by a host of them, possibly harmful. It is therefore not wonderful that the Indian fears to be without his fellow, fears even to move beyond the light of his camp-fire, and when obliged to do so, carries a fire-brand with him, that he may have a chance of seeing the beings among whom he moves.”

Truly the angelology and demonology of advanced faiths have a long ancestry. As already suggested, the groundwork for such a faith was already laid in the observations and deductions regarding man’s soul. If in sleep his spirit could go forth unseen by companions who were near, in order that it might perform the deeds of the dream state so real to the savage; if it were true that a faint were caused by the temporary desertion of its home by the soul; if at death it could depart without detection by those intent in their watch over the ailing, and reveal its invisibility by going forth unseen to a disembodied existence, why should there not be numerous other spirits – either temporarily or permanently and by nature, bodiless – abroad in the universe? This would be normal reasoning, and was actual. The belief is so well known, evidences of it are so easily accessible, that direct demonstration here is hardly obligatory.

… In a recent paragraph the words “angelology” and “demonology” were employed, and in their use there is implicit a fundamental philosophy which has swayed the conceptions, awakened the hopes and aroused the fears, helped to form the cults, and controlled the actions of men in all ages and climes for which direct testimony is adducible. The dualism of substance, body and spirit, inherent in the notions of animism is paralleled by a coincident dualism of character. There were good spirits and bad, white spirits and black. And this character was determined by their supposed favor or disfavor toward man. There were also good spirits which by reason of their emotional natures were capable of showing inimical traits, while the bad might be pacified, rendered innocuous or even friendly, by the appropriate treatment.

This is, of course, but the reflection of men’s interpretation of their own nature and experiences, the result of their reasoning about that nature and those experiences. Sometimes enterprises went awry without any cause to them discoverable; again, good fortune attended their ventures, and this in spite of what seemed to them legitimate fears and untoward beginnings. But on the hypothesis of hosts of invisible beings all about them, good or ill fortune was fully accounted for by the direction or interference of these spirits in man’s favor or against him. To any event or happening otherwise unaccountable, a cause was assigned in the action of spirits which worked when, where, and how they pleased.

And as the human being was amenable to gift or praise or request, so would the spirits yield to similar courses of treatment. As he was vexed or angered by opposition to his will or by actual harm, so he reasoned, the spirits could be enraged by human doings contrary to their desires. Once more, just as he might when angered, be placated by use of the proper means, so would the spirits be soothed and rendered benign, were they properly approached.”

Thought Currents Of Primitive Peoples, By George William Gilmore, Boston Marshall Jones Company, 1919

Pure Magic – Chris Haugen