Alex Reiner
Entry 9 - 3/9
I am an anthropology minor and am currently taking a Fear
and Magic class. For the class we were
assigned a reading based on the concept of souls and what happens to souls
after the body dies. While reading I was
made aware that different societies in different times have different beliefs
on the number of souls a person has and what happens to the soul upon physical
death. Ancient Egyptian societies
believed that an individual had two souls and that one of them, upon death, left
the body and resided in a ka statue. Other groups, like those in Ecuador believe
that a person has 3 souls - the mekas, arutam, and musiak. The mekas gives life to the body, the arutam
can only be captured and accessed through a drug-induced experience at a sacred
waterfall, and the musiak is only accessible by a dying warrior and this soul
tries to avenge the warrior's death.
Coming from a predominately Judeo-Christian structured and dominated
society it was interesting to think about the concept of multiple souls. Our society tells you that once you die your
soul goes to heaven or hell, but never addresses the possibility of multiple
souls in your living life. This concept
is incredibly interesting to me because the three souls determined in older
Ecuadorian societies wouldn't make much sense in our society today because the
idea of a "dying warrior" is much more foreign to us than it would be
to those older Ecuadorian societies.
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