Soul in the Folk Imagination. Concepts – metamorphosis – relations
Soul in the Folk Imagination. Concepts – metamorphosis – relations

Summary/Abstract: The perception of the surrounding world, held by inhabitants of rural societies, encloses the syncretic idea of the created soul that functions in the human world. It contains a compilation of pagan elements that indicate traces of animistic understanding of nature and beliefs in the souls of dead men. These combine with the theological concept of soul’s divine origin as well as with variants of ancient, philosophic rule of life, which that immaterial being was thought to be. The contents of the abovementioned view were incorporated into demonological beliefs complex, creating a peculiar manifestation of a parallel world, co-existing with the human world. According to folk beliefs, human soul is able to show up during one’s life as well as after one’s death. Christian beliefs make that an expiating soul; a folk point of view makes it a demonic being trapped in time between life and death, hung in space between human world and the beyond. The alleged soul’s presence was seen as a kind of extrasensory communication aiming to fix all the wrongs and secure the eternal peace for the soul. The metamorphosis of the soul and its demonic shape (amorphous, anthropomorphic, zoomorphic), understood in the categories of man’s guilt and punishment for his wrong deeds, was therefore an evocation of a materialized image of a sin. The diversity of these images was determined by: 1) kind of misdemeanor; 2) belief that a man’s got two souls; 3) kind of death (suicide, homicide); 4) time of death (les rites de passage). Folk beliefs in transcendental world, in which human soul existed in, may be considered for, apart from its translating function, a specific kind of relations between this world and the beyond as well as the way man wants to preserve a non-material part of himself.

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