(mystical music)
- [Narrator] "The most powerful force on Earth
is the untamed fire of the human soul."
You probably saw this coming,
since the soul is such a huge topic
with so many different avenues and interpretations,
we obviously couldn't fit it all into one video.
So here comes the promised sequel.
(upbeat music)
Previously,
we looked at the history of western thought
on the matter of the soul,
including the Egyptian and Greek conceptions
as well as the general eastern ideas in Buddhism and Daoism.
So today,
let's continue our story
looking at some less common traditions
from around the world,
specifically,
some of the shamanic and indigenous views of the soul.
Before we get started,
the very concept of shamanism
requires a bit of explaining and myth busting
as the phrase shamanism is used quite often today,
but in a rather obscure way.
We all probably have some picture in our minds
when we hear the word
like some kind of medicine man or woman
who gives you a magic potion
to guide you through the spirit world,
and engage in ritual dances.
But the thing is,
it's more of a category or type of practice
rather than a religion or a belief.
See,
the word shaman probably comes
from the Tungusic-Siberian word shaman,
meaning one who knows.
But ironically,
for a phrase about knowing,
this is pretty contested.
While the dictionary defines a shaman
as someone who has access
to the world of benevolent and malevolent spirits
who typically enters into a trance state during a ritual,
and practices divination and healing,
this is a pretty huge oversimplification.
In fact,
the word shamanism,
originally only applied to the ancient religious practices,
of the Turks, Mongols and Tungusic peoples.
But when early western anthropologists started seeing
similar beliefs or context around the world
in other indigenous societies,
they just transferred the term over
without truly understanding it.
It was used to describe
unrelated magical religious practices
found within the indigenous religions
of other parts of Asia, Africa, Australasia,
and even completely unrelated parts of the Americas,
as they believed the practices to be the same.
(narrator sighing)
Classic scientists.
Ultimately,
we should remember that each people and tribe
have their own ways of life,
and use terms in the own languages
to conceptualize both their own spiritualty and their soul.
Our differences are to be celebrated,
not generalized and run away from.
For the most part though,
the one general idea most people can agree on
is that shamans act as intermediaries or messengers
between the human world and the spirit world,
and offer some kind of guidance.
With that little tangent out of the way,
lets return to souls.
One of the most common beliefs among shamanistic practices,
is this idea of soul dualism.
This is the idea that someone has two
or occasionally more souls within them.
Usually,
you'll have one bodily soul
which takes care of the boring stuff like breathing,
and physical life, and all that stuff,
and a free or wandering soul
that can leave the body
and go into some kind of other world.
Among Australian, Aboriginal, and Polynesian traditions,
we see the concept of the nawa and dusa.
The nawa is the material soul,
and is also one of the words for breath.
Funny how consciousness
is always associated with breathing.
The nawa is supposedly located
in either the abdomen, heart, or liver,
and is associated with daily functions in life.
The dusa though
is more in line with the free soul,
and is located in the head.
Dusa actually means twin or double
in the Proto-Austronesian languages,
so it seems to be kind of similar to the sut
from the Egyptian mythology.
In the nearby Filipino tradition,
a virtuous or holy figure
is said to be someone
whose two souls are in harmony or balance,
while suffering or evil
is said to be a result
of the souls being in conflict with themselves,
or sometimes,
one not being there at all.
This is strikingly similar
to the wisdom of the ayahuasqueros
that we've been connected with a rythmia,
who've shared that all disease, depression,
illness, and stress,
comes from a disconnection with our soul,
and that by doing the inner work,
merging with our souls and healing our hearts,
we can become whole unified beings,
and that these issues melt away
when that healing takes place.
In a lot of shamanic healing practices,
especially among the Austronesian traditions,
a disease or illness of some kind
is often seen as a result of losing an aspect of your souls,
since the free soul can often leave the body
during trance, stress, sleep, or confusion.
It seems like to some indigenous traditions then,
the soul is seen
as an aspect of ourselves that controls,
or maybe even is our inner being.
While we might liken it to the unconscious mind,
I think the sense here
is that logic, reason, and the mind itself,
arguably results from the two souls
coming together in the body,
allowing us to live both physical and spiritual lives.
One of the main ways healing takes place
in the Austronesian tradition
is for a shaman to return the lost parts
of the human soul from wherever it's gone,
and in doing so,
brings us back into balance.
Something that I think is beautiful
is that in the medicine traditions
of the Dagara people of West Africa,
the famous healer Malidoma Some,
argues that mental illness results from a similar situation.
In fact, to him,
mental illnesses are almost soul emergencies
and need to be regarded as such,
as it signals the beginning of a journey
for a potential healer.
According to Some,
when energies or entities from the spiritual world
emerge in or influence a western psyche,
most people are completely unequipped
to integrate them or even recognize what is happening,
which ultimately leads to issues
like depression and disassociation.
Among the Dagara however,
the community helps the person reconcile
the energies and souls of both worlds
by separating them out,
so that they can be observed and communicated with,
helping the person transmit messages between the two,
and act as a healer for the tribe themselves.
Now,
moving on on our soulful world tour,
let's go a bit further north
to the Inuit peoples of Alaska and Canada.
Like before,
we should remember that the Inuit
are a huge diverse group of people,
and grouping them all together
in one single Eskimo religion is a big no-no move.
That said,
similar beliefs
are shared among regions close to each other,
albeit under different names.
One of the more well-known soul beliefs,
comes from the Inuktitut speaking people of Eastern Canada,
where the soul is known as anirniq,
which you can probably guess by this point,
is also their word for breath.
Either everyone just knows we need oxygen to live,
or we're all secretly onto something here.
Now,
similar to our buddy Aristotle,
many Inuit believe
that all things have a soul just like humans.
Among the Tikigaq people,
humans were made up of three main parts,
two main souls known as the inuusiq and ilitqusiq,
life force and personal spirit,
and a name soul known as atiq.
After death,
the inuusiq is said to leave the body for the east,
but the other souls could be reborn.
The soul of both animals and humans can exist after death
after it's been liberated from the body.
Interestingly though,
due to the harsh winter,
and constant fear of death and hypothermia and stuff,
the Inuit worldview is kind of bleak,
and their view of spirits is generally one of fear.
The Kenai vegetarians in the audience though,
might've already noticed something.
If all animals have souls,
and the majority of the Intuit diet
is stuff like seals, and fish,
we're gonna have one big angry, ghost seal on our hands,
and you'd be totally right.
A common Inuit saying is that,
"The greatest peril of our existence,
lies in the fact that our diet consists entirely of souls."
Since all souls are equal,
if you kill an animal in some Inuit cultures,
it is akin to killing a human,
and that animal could potentially come back and haunt you.
Hey, you don't want to have to deal with a ghost seal
as well as a harsh winter, right?
But it's not like you can grow an avocado tree,
or order in a meat substitute
in the middle of a frozen tundra,
so what are you gonna do?
This is where the angakkuq or shaman comes in.
See,
the soul of the dead can only be calmed down,
and implored not to seek vengeance by obedience to custom,
avoiding taboos, and performing the right rituals.
If you just go seal hunting, willy nilly,
you risk offending their soul,
and on top of the unpredictable climate,
doing such a thing is basically asking for extinction.
Now,
the other big deal in Intuit folklore
with regards to the soul,
is this concept of the sila inue.
Sila is a bit confusing to us.
On the one hand,
he is a spirit of the sky, the wind, and the weather,
although he's never actually depicted in art
since he's seen us formless or pure energy,
but in most of the myths about him,
he isn't really treated as a character.
Instead,
he's an impersonal force of creation.
He, probably isn't even the right word to describe it,
and for me personally,
the concept seems more kind of like the force
than a God.
That said,
sila does also have a malevolent human aspect
being known in some traditions
to lure children away from their play,
often to the tundra,
never to be seen again.
Just in case you weren't already confused,
the word itself has found a lot
in the Inuit languages in different forms,
and generally means something like space, intellect, or sky.
It's seen as a force or component
that makes up and connects all life.
Kinda similar to the ether in our understanding of it.
Everything that occurs is said to occur within sila,
and all souls are understood to be a part of it,
simply borrowed temporarily
until they returned to the infinite hole after death.
Although each soul is an individual,
sila is also the essence or thing
that makes up the soul itself,
the material it is made of,
so we are all connected through it.
Since the word can also mean breath or spirit,
there's a sense that sila is also the breath of life,
and the method through which things progress and move.
Among the Copper Inuit,
shamans were believed to obtain their power from sila,
which they called the wind in dweller,
so even their helping spirits were termed as sila inue.
As outsiders,
it's impossible for us to understand
the true meaning in nature of this breath of life,
but since the belief
is so widespread among Inuit populations,
anthropologists believe it's incredibly old.
In fact,
sila may have been one of the oldest conceptions
of the divine among the Inuit
before being supplanted by more popular figures,
like Sedna the seal mother,
and the caribou mother.
Since all souls are connected through sila,
the shaman who interacted with it
are believed to be able to borrow their powers
or characteristics of other souls within it
by taking the atiq or name of them.
Similarly,
a keeper or someone connected to a certain type of beings,
like seals or whales,
can also invoke that species soul,
and then it can act
as a spirit guide or helper to the shaman
to aid in his efforts
of communication with the spiritual worlds.
So where does all this leave us
with what a soul actually is in shamanism?
Well,
while the conventional definition from last time
still kind of applies,
that the soul
is our incorporeal or nonphysical essence or being,
it almost appears like the physical body is secondary,
or at least resultant from it.
The soul is the primary core teaching of shamanism
in its therapeutic sense.
Everything is understood from the soul's perspective,
be that illness, death, birth, depression, madness,
relationships, conflict, or whatever else.
In some traditions,
infertility in women is supposed to be cured
by the shaman venturing out into the spirit worlds
to find and bring home the soul of the future child.
Wrapped up in this then,
is a knowing via experience
that the soul journeys through multi-dimensional landscapes
seemingly not limited by time or space.
This is where the conception differs
from something like Buddhism,
like we talked about earlier,
where energy is simply conveyed throughout our lifetimes.
In many indigenous communities,
our soul is imbued with our personality, memories,
and vital essence,
all of which can occasionally be incarnated
into different bodies.
The key distinctive part of the picture
that shamanism fills in though,
is that a soul loss can occur
when parts of it venture off and stay gone
until we come looking for them.
This ultimately brings a multi-part philosophy to our soul.
Our energy isn't just one single essence,
but rather a combination of different parts or aspects
that come together to make a unified whole.
Occasionally,
one of those aspects may get damaged or lost
as we go through our daily lives,
which requires us to retreat inwards
either with plant medicine, meditation, breath work,
or other practices to heal our connection,
and bring ourselves back into balance.
There's still one more aspect
of the conversation to cover though,
the modern approaches.
So in the next episode,
we'll look at the more new age approaches
of how we got there,
culminating into where exactly the soul fits
into modern science and consciousness.
It's an interesting idea
that our soul has multiple parts or dimensions,
and where exactly awareness or consciousness fits in,
there's a huge discussion.
Especially,
since there does appear to be a space or gap
between our emotions
that allows us to perceive them.
The one thing that does seem certain though,
is that the shamanistic approach
is very ancient and natural,
putting strong emphasis on the interconnectivity
between ourselves and the world around us.
Until next time,
remember to balance all aspects of your soul,
not just your energetic or emotional centers.
Doodles.
(mystical music)