The Ancient Self

Archaic conceptions of a plural soul

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

Possession

We often conceptualize the heart as an abstraction—an indwelling seat of emotional intelligence rather than a muscular pump for the circulation of blood. To say of someone, “He has a good heart,” is not to compliment him on his cardiovascular health but on his character. It is not the only organ freighted with emotional baggage. One might speak of “spleen,” or foul temper, as arising from that organ, although few today actually attribute their anger to their entrails.

However, ancient people, without the benefit of modern scientific instruments and techniques, looked to their internal mechanisms and physiological changes to explain the emotions, passions, and impulses that roiled their senses and confounded their reason. Like us, they struggled with the conflict between raw emotion and rational thought, physical limitations and conscious desire, involuntary arousal and the force of will. And the best explanation they could derive from the evidence before—and within—them was that they were neither simply biological entities endowed with consciousness, as we are inclined to think in the scientific era, nor fleshly vessels possessed by a single animating spirit, as we living in Judeo-Christian societies are conditioned to think. Instead, the ancient heathen was a bodily form in which various spiritual elements mingled, each with very different aspects and roles that might lead them into conflict. This, they determined, like proto-Freudians, was the source of the human being’s inner turmoil.

It is a surprisingly sophisticated and elegant solution to a complicated and vexing problem. Our emotions produce physiological responses throughout our bodies—in our heartbeat and pulse, our lungs and breathing patterns, and our endocrine system with the release of stuff like adrenaline and oxytocin, among other puzzling effects. Often, these sensations conflict with the conscious will, which desires confidence when chemicals signal fear, or incites arousal when the conscious mind wishes to display detachment. It manifests in the wondrous dreams experienced by individuals who, while asleep, visit strange places, encounter odd objects, converse with the dead, put on strange forms, or fly miraculously through the air. Of course, these must be conflicting souls, battling for control of the being in which they dwell. What else could cause such a system malfunction? It’s a fanciful intuition about the fraught nature of human psychology and behavior.

Or was it?

In a sense, we still retain traces of this compartmentalization of the self when we talk about people being able to “lose” their minds while the rest of the animating spirit or consciousness remains intact. We still speak of being “in-spired” when referring to some flash of creativity or genius, as if these impulses were breathed into us from some mysterious external source. We’ve seen individuals who, through some accident of nature, exist without intellect, yet whose bodies still have essential life functions. And we’ve discovered that, from a different accident of nature, some people lack the capacity for emotion or conscience yet can think and reason as well as, if not better than, others. So, the idea that these are separable components of our being is not alien to us; it has just evolved.¹

Ahead of Their Time

Did the ancients observe and try to explain something modern science is only just beginning to unravel? The notion of an at least partially embodied, multifarious self as opposed to an incarnate spirit inhabiting what is essentially an inert husk of flesh is intriguing, to say the least. That there might be multiple souls, spirits, or personal elements inhabiting or attending a single physical body was widespread across the ancient world. This seems to have been the consensus view for much of human history, and certainly most of early Western history. Whether it was simply an attempt to explain the disparate—sometimes conflicting—physical, emotional, and mental responses an individual may experience, often simultaneously, or whether it has a basis in biology is a subject I’ll have to leave to scientists. My question is: what did this system look like in the minds of ancient believers?

Some scholars have surmised that these spiritual elements fell into one of two categories: a body or internal soul that was responsible for animating the mortal elements of the individual and a free or external soul that was capable of exiting the body of its own will during dreams, illness, hallucinations, and the like—or in the case of skilled practitioners like shamans and sorcerers, of being sent forth deliberately during trances. Some Christian theologians also adhere to the body/free soul model in their assertion that the human is comprised of a body, spirit, and soul.

Where things become more complicated is when further divisions of these souls are encountered. Swedish Sanskritologist Ernst Arbman

distinguishes between body souls endowing the body with life and consciousness and the free soul, an unencumbered soul representing the individual personality. The free soul is active during unconsciousness, and passive during consciousness when the conscious individual replaces it. It is not exactly clear where the passive free soul resides in the body. The body souls are active during the waking life of the living individual. In contrast to the free soul, the body soul is often divided into several parts. Usually it falls into two categories: one is the life soul, frequently identified with the breath, the life principle; the other is the ego soul. The body soul, or several of its parts, represents the inner self of the individual. (The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, Jan E. Bremmer, 9)

The Several Souls of the Ancients

How do we know this is what ancient Indo-European (IE) peoples believed? Luckily, they wrote about it. We have evidence from several different early cultures that the concept of a manifold soul was at least present, if not ubiquitous. Arbman investigated Vedic soul belief in India as well as Christian Scandinavia, Classical Greece, and beyond, and his observations concur with those of other scholars. I started reading up about this subject because I also noticed this connection and wondered about it. I’m no academic, and I don’t intend this to be a scholarly paper by any stretch. This is more of a casual collection of observations. What follows is only a sampling of observations gathered during research for my historical fiction trilogy. I’m more interested in giving a general sense of the broader picture because it’s so radically different from what most of us in the West have been exposed to when thinking about the nature of the self that the contrast alone is worth exploring.

Some Intriguing Similarities and Contrasts Between Related Cultures

If inner peace is a product of spiritual harmony—literally the harmonious working of all one’s physical and spiritual components—then inner turmoil might be the product of disharmony or strife among these various components of the deeply complex self. When examining evidence from ancient literature across several cultures, the picture is complicated. The archaic soul was multifaceted, comprising several discrete elements, each with its own character and purpose, and sometimes at odds with the others.

Though few things correlate directly, some concepts appear to have occupied the minds of these ancient people and recur frequently across cultures and over time in various shapes and forms, making their parallels difficult to ignore. What, if anything, does this suggest about the ancient IE conception of the self?

Soul Pieces

I hope these brief examples help illustrate what some of these soul components were like and how they differed from the traditional concept of soul/body dualism.

Pure intellect:

Various of these parts were seen as free agents, able to come and go from the body at will. They could depart during sleep, during illness, and permanently at death, depriving the deceased in the afterlife of a recognizable personality. The Greeks characterized their departed souls as pure intellect with an element of memory, which could be called forth from the afterlife for purposes of necromancy, but which were largely unrecognizable as their former selves, having retained their knowledge but having lost whatever unique emotional content had characterized them in life. Essentially, the Greeks seemed to believe the personality, largely dependent on emotion, was sensually bound to the body and died with it. However, the intellect, including certain kinds of memory, existed in spiritual form to continue in the afterlife. One reason the Greek conception of the afterlife was so bleak is that the individual was imagined to continue in a form devoid of emotion. This could be seen as a relief if life is seen as a rollercoaster of passions, but it lacks the richness of living. Greeks claimed that even visitors to the underworld lost the capacity for laughter, as if some vital part of them had been sterilized or purged by the journey (Bremmer, 86).

Pure personality:

On the other end of the spectrum, the Norse apparently feared a species of undead known as a draugr, a kind of corporeal revenant that, rather than losing its personality, became an amplified form of its former owner in life. It was raw emotion unconstrained by the niceties of society, taken in death to its terrifying extremes. Such an undead creature, filled with untempered rage, greed, or lust, would indeed be a nightmare for any society. If the personality derives from or resides with the body but lacks the tempering force of the intellect, which has departed the flesh, its character attributes would be amplified to horrific proportions.

Both of these fragmented forms seem to be as much a commentary on the living as on the metaphysics of the afterlife. We’ve all encountered or heard stories of people who lacked some aspect of their being—who were “incomplete” in some way—human robots who live by intellect alone or raging tempests of emotion who seem to have no conscious self-control. Both results are upsetting in their own way.

Shape-changing:

Episodes in the Norse sagas involve an individual lying insensible in some out-of-the-way place while an element of his or her spirit departs the body and assumes or inhabits another form on that individual’s behalf to execute a task or engage in combat. Sometimes mutual combat between dueling spirits/shape-changers could take place. During this external journey, if someone were to speak the name of the entranced individual, he or she would die. This provides evidence for a belief in a multiple soul among the Norse, in which an external soul is capable of leaving the still-living body at will or at the command of its owner. In the Norse sagas, this is most often associated with witchcraft and sorcery and seems related to a kind of shamanic ecstasy.

Folklorist Hilda Roderick Ellis [Davidson] widens this reasoning further, to Odin’s all-seeing, drone-like ravens Huginn “thought” and Muninn “memory” which he would send to fly over the world in his stead, gathering intelligence for him, suggesting that

it seems evident that here we have a symbolic description of the sending out of the spirit through the universe. This example suggests the possibility of similar conceptions in Norse thought now lost because we no longer have the key which would open the symbolism to us. (The Road to Hel, Hilda Roderick Ellis, 127)

Photo by Doriana Popa on Unsplash

Four Key Parts of the Norse Self

If you’re familiar with the outstanding writings of Hilda Ellis Davidson, you’re aware of the religious complexities of the ancient Norse, particularly surrounding the “soul,” death, and afterlife. The Road to Hel is a short but excellent book that covers the essentials of Norse spiritual beliefs, particularly regarding death and the afterlife. Otherwise, a good summary of much of this work can be found here. In Old Norse thought, the idea of the self wasn’t just “body + soul” as in much of today’s Western thought. Instead, a person was made up of multiple semi-independent parts that together formed identity, agency, and destiny. These parts could sometimes act or exist separately from one another, and none exactly matches the later Christian idea of a single immortal soul. For the Norse, the self was defined by its social position and deeds rather than by a detached essence. Even the spiritual parts of the self were social and active entities. As much as the Norse stressed competitive individual success, that success (or failure) occurred within a particular social framework and was defined in social terms—fulfilling one’s social duty and earning glory or fame within those bounds.

Hamr: Shape/Form/Appearance

This literally means “shape” or “skin” and refers to how others perceive one’s physical appearance. This concept is not fixed, aligning with the Norse idea of shapeshifting (skipta hömum, “changing hamr”). The body was not just an inert container; it could be magically altered in certain contexts. The physical form is a significant part of the person. Burial practices suggest the body remains socially important even after death. In Grettis saga, the dead inhabit their burial mounds, guard treasure, and even fight the living. These beings are corporeal (draugr), not ghosts. More than that, they’re placed in the tombs as oracles upon which the living can call in times of need. The body remains socially and morally relevant after death. The corpse is not an empty shell—it’s still someone, and it still has power.

Hugr: Thought/Mind

Translating roughly to “thought” or “mind,” hugr encompasses personality, conscious thought, memory, and the inner self. It can act independently even during life, so unsurprisingly, it persists after death. The dead appear in dreams, give warnings, or advise descendants. Memory and reputation (domr), like the Greek kleos, are extensions of hugr into the social world. Though usually tied to the individual, the hugr could also have effects at a distance, such as influencing others through intention or thought, blurring the line between living and dead, and reinforcing the idea that death is not an absolute end.

Fylgja: Follower/Attendant Spirit

A spirit companion often appears as an animal to those with second sight, reflecting the owner’s personality. This fylgja may show itself before the person arrives or in dreams, and its life is closely tied to the owner’s. Being connected to fate, it often appears during death or major life changes, sometimes walking ahead of someone about to die. In Njáls saga, characters see animal figures leading enemies just before violent deaths, identified as fylgjur. Seeing one’s fylgja typically means that fate has left the person and is heading toward its conclusion. The fylgja is not a mere metaphor but an external manifestation of destiny. Some sources say seeing your own fylgja forewarns of death, but after death, it may remain with descendants or stay linked to the family. People are loath to use the term spirit animal, but . . . .

Hamingja: Luck/Fortune

Often translated as “luck,” in Norse belief it was viewed as part of the self—an inheritable, personal force. It symbolized success, prosperity, and the fortune linked to a lineage. The hamingja could separate, be lent to others, and was frequently passed down to descendants, especially those named after the original owner. It represented a kind of inherited luck and survival through lineage. It was explicitly transferable and could be passed on at death to a chosen heir, favored descendant, or protégé. This explains the importance of naming a child after an ancestor and why glory and success were viewed as accumulated and transmissible. An individual’s immortality was linked to the fortune they passed on, and someone could become its beneficiary and heir. For example, in the Vatnsdœla saga, on his deathbed, Ingimundr credits his life’s success to his hamingja and passes it to his son Þorsteinn. Consequently, Þorsteinn’s future achievements are seen as partially inherited rather than solely personal merit. Similarly, royal lines possessed a form of transmissible luck or charisma, akin to the Iranian xvarenah or kingly glory, serving as a means of continuity beyond death. An intriguing notion was that living men could temporarily lend their luck to others in need, which suggests that this force was separate from the body, mind, or “soul.” I wonder if this is connected to the practice of ritualized boasting and the general concern with glory and honor we see elsewhere in warrior cultures, as luck, glory, and fate seem inextricably intertwined . . . and spiritually transmissible.

The Norse Self in Context

Photo by Barnabas Davoti on Unsplash

The Norse didn’t see the self as a single, unchanging essence. Instead, the self was distributed among several semi-autonomous elements that could interact with the world in different ways. These parts were socially rooted—tied to reputation, family, and deeds—rather than isolated inner essences. Perhaps most interesting of all, and the most exciting clue into the ancient Western (i.e., Indo-European) mindset, is that these multiple conceptions of the self meant that death was neither complete nor final in Old Norse thought.

We’re accustomed to imagining that humans possess a single soul, destined for a single afterlife—perhaps one of a handful of possible outcomes, but a single destination in the end. A one-way ticket for a single passenger. We assume our ancient forebearers believed the same. But this doesn’t seem to have been the case with many ancient societies, including the Norse, whose vision of the afterlife contradicts this belief. Death does not send “the person” to one place in one piece. Instead, different parts of the self separate and follow different courses. Some go to Valhalla, some to Folkvangr, some to Hel, some stay in the mound, some continue to act in dreams or memory. Some stay in service of the living. And all of these can be true at the same time, because they concern different parts of the person.

Unlike our modern conceptions of Heaven and Hell, Valhalla, Hel, and other afterlives were not total destinations. Valhalla and Folkvangr involve only certain aspects of the self (especially martial identity and honor). More importantly, Hel is not punishment; it is a quiet, diminished continuation, much like Hades. But none of these locations claim the whole person absolutely. A warrior in Valhalla may still have a hamingja active among descendants, appear in dreams, and influence the land or household as an ancestor. And all of these roles are due to the dispersal of discrete elements of the person’s being upon death.

I quote this often, but it’s worth revisiting here, because the ancient conception of death, and particularly sacrifice, was that the departed rejoined the cosmos to reintegrate with its constituent parts. The Norse, as well as the Iranian texts contain some version of this cosmogony:

Out of Ymir’s flesh was fashioned the earth,
And the ocean out of his blood;
Of his bones the hills, of his hair the trees,
Of his skull the heavens high.
Mithgarth the gods from his eyebrows made,
And set for the sons of men;
And out of his brain the baleful clouds
They made to move on high.”
—Grímnismál (Poetic Edda, Wikipedia)

Unlike Christian soul/body dualism, this is a fundamentally anti-dualist worldview. There is no single immortal essence, no sharp break between life and death, and no final or moral judgement that resolves the self or gives life’s story catharsis. Instead, death becomes diffuse and diverse, and survival is social, familial, and reputational. In Norse belief, death is not the departure of a soul but the redistribution of a person across body, kin, memory, fate, and story. While the Norse evidence is pretty late (and probably a remarkable survival, all things considered), this belief was widespread in the IE world from an early date.

So, how does all that compare to Greek models of the self?

Photo by FotoFlo on Unsplash

Unsurprisingly, the Homeric model is closest to the Norse. In Homer, there is no unified soul, and the system appears very close to the Norse in its elements and the logic behind their final dispersal. According to Ian Bremmer (and others), the Homeric Greeks spoke of the following components in relation to a human’s inner and outer being:

Psyche: Breath, the animating life-force (Bremmer, 23), a soul bound by matter yet free. Like a condensation of human breath. At death, the psyche goes to Hades as a shade. The shades in Hades in the Odyssey are the psyches of the former living.

Thymos: Volition, emotion, and courage; the heart and core seat of emotions (Bremmer, 54) residing in the chest. It can be like a breath and can lapse or evaporate.

Nous: Reason, intellect, mind, act of mind, thought, purpose. Intellectual, yet also located in the chest. It cannot be struck, pierced, or put out. Aristotle connects reason/mind/nous with the order of nature present in all things, including animals (Bremmer, 40).

Menos: Martial force, divine inspiration; also located in the chest. Menos is loosened or unharnessed from the body like a team of tired horses, leaving the body to collapse. Related to the Indian manas and the Persian manah, both of which expanded into a secondary free soul. In the Iliad, this is described as fueling Achilles’s warrior fury and slaughter, much like lyssa, “wolf’s rage.” (Bremmer, 60)

Soma: Body, specifically the dead body (Bremmer, 84), the form and shape of the body itself as a representation of the person; compare with hamr. The remains retain ritual importance and are treated with respect, taboos, and in some cases, buried with the comforts of life. Sometimes, the burial site is regarded as a kind of shrine or temple where the living can call upon the deceased for aid.

Eidolon: Shadow, spiritual double, or ghost (Bremmer, 78-80)

Kleos: Fame, reputation (posthumous self; Bremmer doesn’t specifically talk about kleos, but Homer and others of this period do). Like elements of Norse hamingja, this is a posthumous self that lives on in fortune and memory. At death, the kleos remains among the living such that memory is not so much a mental act of the rememberer as a kind of positive haunting by the one remembered, as if the sheer force of glory or charisma allows them to keep some foothold among the living.

Classical conversion

Around the fifth century BCE, the psyche became the center of Greek consciousness, and the earlier Homeric understanding fell out of fashion. I’m sure the reasons for this have been studied, but I haven’t read anything about them. From what I’ve gleaned in the course of my reading, I suspect it’s because the Classical Greeks were enamored with Egypt and Babylon, and it became fashionable to emulate what they regarded as more advanced and sophisticated civilizations than their own. Plato (who I am by no means an expert on) was possibly influenced by these Near Eastern philosophies when he promoted ideas such as an eternal, unified soul, moral judgment, and an inner philosophical life, ideas popular in these cultures but not characteristic of IE cultures. This marked a significant departure from previous attitudes. Norse thought, however, unaffected by this Near Eastern philosophy until the Medieval era, seems to have retained a more original version of its foundational belief system.

How do these compare with Indo-Iranian concepts of the self?

Photo by Prasanta Kr Dutta on Unsplash

Some Indian Evidence

I have limited knowledge of Indian tradition, and I can’t possibly do justice to the vast mountains of literature on the Vedas and Upanishads, so I’m not going to fake it.² Based on the little I do know, the Vedas seem to distinguish between the eternal, non-physical life essence (or body soul) and the mind (or free soul). This distinction leaves open the possibility that personality, thought, consciousness, and the animation of the physical body derive from different sources, rather than from a unitary soul or mind. Later Hinduism tends to merge these separate essences into an indivisible whole, a shift not explicitly present in earlier texts. From the bit I’ve gathered during my research, I’ve found these interesting similarities with other traditions where such parallels might be expected. Examining key Vedic ideas from the Rigveda and early Upanishads, it’s evident that, like the Norse and Homeric Greek concept of self, the Vedic concept of the self is plural.

Some of the key elements from the texts:

Atman: (breath; essence; life force; vital principle; inner core that makes a being itself). This essence returns to cosmic circulation after death. Atman is a cosmic force, breath in the purely spiritual sense.

Prana: Similar to Atman yet distinct, Prana is also described as breath or life force, but it is more physiological, like the traditional “body soul” that animates, moves, and sustains the physical self. Prana is a mortal, physical force, listed among the winds. It’s a distinction that seems to appear later. Earlier texts focus on the atman, and we’ll see below, this is the force that initially returns to the winds.

Manas: (thought, intention). This can wander from the body but returns, like the free soul.

Pitrs: (fathers, ancestors). The dead join their ancestors but remain actively involved in human affairs.

Naman/Kirti: (name, fame/glory). Identity persists through ritual memory and lineage.

The lines from the Norse Poetic Edda are echoed in this funeral hymn from the Rigveda (10.16) (transliteration), where the dead person’s eye goes to the sun, breath to the wind, and thereafter to the earth, waters, or heavens, “members” or body to the earth and plants, while simultaneously residing among the ancestors. This is not a metaphor; it’s a ritual instruction:

Burn him not up, nor quite consume him, Agni: let not his body [śarīra] or his skin [tvác] be scattered.

O Jātavedas, when thou hast matured him, then send him on his way unto the Fathers [pitṛ].

When thou hast made him ready, Jātavedas, then do thou give him over to the Fathers.

When he attains unto the life that waits him, he shall become the Deities’ controller.

The Sun receive thine eye, the Wind thy spirit [ātman]; go, as thy merit is, to earth or heaven.

Go, if it be thy lot, unto the waters; go, make thine home in plants with all thy members [śarīra].

Thy portion is the goat: with heat consume him: let thy fierce flame, thy glowing splendour, burn him

With thine auspicious forms, o Jātavedas, bear this man to the region of the pious.

Again, O Agni, to the Fathers [pitṛ] send him who, offered in thee, goes with our oblations.

Wearing new life let him increase his offspring: let him rejoin a body [śarīra], Jātavedas.

Early on, the Vedic view of the self was complex and ritualistic. Its conception of the afterlife was cyclical rather than final, and it focused on reputation and kinship over personal immortality. Over time, much like the transition from Homeric to Classical Greece, the later Upanishads simplified the multitude of “souls” into one, while fracturing other aspects of the self, the cosmos, and human experience into almost infinite subdivisions. This was a philosophical intervention rather than a reflection of original practices. Early Vedic concepts are closer to Norse and Homeric Greece than to the development of later Hindu metaphysics. Though each culture takes a unique approach to its religious development, a general pattern emerges in how these beliefs evolved.

The Early Persian/Avestan Models

Photo by mostafa meraji on Unsplash

The emergence of Zoroastrianism complicates the picture of early belief here, yet it also uncovers some unexpected developments. Although the pre-Zoroastrian ideas in the Gathas contain elements like those previously mentioned, later Zoroastrian teachings not only retain these components but also expand their kind and variety.

A few key terms appear in early Avestan texts. In Yasht 13, ahu (life), daena (vision), baodah (awareness), urvan (soul), and fravashi (protective spirit) are listed together as distinct objects of veneration, but they don’t quite form a complete system. Some are clearly ancient and foundational, while others are only vaguely defined. The system in which these elements are eventually defined and interpreted is largely a later development based on genuinely ancient materials, found in Younger Avestan and Pahlavi texts. These elements include:

Urvan (soul)

This is one of the earliest and best-attested concepts, attested in the Gathas (the earliest layer of the Avesta). It refers to the individual soul, especially in postmortem judgment. There is already an ethical component.

Daena (vision/conscience/religion)

This term has very ancient origins, but its meaning and function have evolved significantly over time. Originally, Gathic daena signified “vision, insight, religious perception.” There is no clear evidence that this was a distinct soul part or that this capacity for vision or insight could leave the body or survive death. However, by the Younger Avesta, it clearly functions as a personal moral double, and later texts fully personify it, describing it as either a beautiful or an ugly maiden (depending on the circumstances) who greets the deceased at the Chinvat Bridge.

Fravashi (protective spirit/warrior/hero)

According to Avesta.org:

The Fravashi [Phl. Farohar] is the inner power in every being that maintains it and makes it grow and subsist. Originally the Fravashis were the same as the Pitris of the Hindus or the Manes of the Latins, that is to say, the everlasting and deified souls of the dead (see §§ 49-52); but in course of time they gained a wider domain, and not only men, but gods and even physical objects, like the sky and the earth, etc. (§§ 85-86), had each a Fravashi (see Ormazd et Ahriman, §§ 111-113).”

Although absent from the Gathas, these complex beings are mentioned early in the Younger Avesta and in Yasht 13 (Fravardin Yasht). They’re depicted as a cosmic martial force that serves as a protective spirit for each person and also as an ancestor spirit. Together, all fravashis form a warrior band, similar in some ways to the Vedic Maruts. They are part of a special cult of dead heroes, able to fight invisibly alongside the living. While not of the individual, a personal protective fravashi is closely linked to the person through a kinship-like bond. Fravashi remain active among one’s descendants.

Ahu (life/existence)

In the Gathas, ahu primarily means existence or life. It’s an early term, but it’s again unclear whether it originally signified a separate soul-part or essence. However, this ambiguity is clarified in later Zoroastrian texts, where ahu is explicitly read as an immanent life-principle within the human being.

Baodah (awareness/knowing)

This term appears early in the Gathas without a clear indication that it refers to a separate soul component. In early texts, it signifies awareness, perception, and insight, similar to daena. Later Avestan texts (such as Yasht 13) and Pahlavi writings clarify or broaden its meaning by attributing a distinct immaterial essence to it.

One of the more illustrative examples, in my admittedly limited experience, is this ode to fravashis from Yasht 13 (transliteration), the “Hymn to the Guardian Angels” in which the spirit, conscience, perception, soul, and guardian spirit of mankind are invoked separately:

149. We worship the spirit [ahûmca], conscience [daênãmca], perception [baodhasca], soul [urvânemca], and Fravashi [fravashîmca] of the men of the primitive law, of the first who listened to the teaching of Ahura [Ahura Mazda], holy men and holy women, who struggled for holiness;
we worship the spirit [ahûmca], conscience [daênãmca], perception [baodhasca], soul [urvânemca], and Fravashi [fravashîmca] of our next-of-kin, holy men and holy women, who struggled for holiness.

. . .

153. We worship this earth [zãm]; we worship those heavens [asmanem];
we worship those good things that stand between the earth and the heavens, and that are worthy of sacrifice and prayer [yazata], and are to be worshipped by the faithful man.

154. We worship the souls [urunô] of the wild beasts and of the tame;
we worship the souls [urunô] of the holy men and women, born at any time, whose consciences [daênå] struggle, or will struggle, or have struggled, for the good.

155. We worship the spirit [ahûmca], conscience [daênãmca], perception [baodhasca], soul [urvânemca], and Fravashi [fravashîmca] of the holy men and holy women who struggle, will struggle, or have struggled, and teach the Law (daena [daēnā]) and who have struggled for holiness.

Yenhe hatam: All those beings to whom Ahura Mazda is proper…

Yatha ahu vairyo: The will of the Lord is the law of holiness (daena [daēnā]).

156. The Fravashis of the faithful, awful and overpowering, awful and victorious;
the Fravashis of the men of the primitive law;
the Fravashis of the next-of-kin;
may these Fravashis come satisfied into this house, may they walk satisfied through this house!

The Zoroastrian context is interesting because, unlike the other belief systems, it did not originally describe a clearly defined set of distinct “selves” within or around the individual. Instead, the self was a vague composite of ambiguous components that were loosely defined and perhaps semi-autonomous, perhaps not. It’s all very unclear. Also, unlike the other systems, rather than consolidating these various selves over time as the religion became more philosophical, it did the opposite. Like the Platonic and Upanishad systems, it introduced a moral and ethical dimension to understanding the self, along with a psychology or philosophy of the soul absent in the Norse tradition. What sets it apart is that, despite being arguably the earliest form of dualist monotheism, it did not aim to merge these soul elements into a single spiritual entity. Instead, the divisions were expanded, clarified, and deepened under its philosophy, externalizing and personifying various elements of the self, like the conscience and the protective power of righteous fortune. Multiple spiritual selves (and co-selves) could coexist, a strong ancestor cult remained active, and ethical dualism was layered over an older, more ambiguous concept of a plural self. For anyone who believes thought evolves along a single, inevitable trajectory, I’m happy to see it does not.

Instinct and Thought

While by no means an exhaustive review or a scholarly examination of the subject, I wanted to explore some of the alternative notions about the inner self that have previously existed, as far as we can detect its representation in literature and myth, in characters full of contradictions that feel more human because they struggle with mysterious inner forces as we do. The problem of consciousness, personality, and selfhood has always occupied the ancient Western mind, and clues to a distinctive way of understanding the self are scattered throughout the few surviving myths and texts. Are these systems related at a deeper level; do they perhaps point to more ancient and widespread beliefs? And can they help us better understand ancient people, figures from folklore, ourselves?

The sometimes-warring factions of body, intellect, emotion, instinct, and more abstract notions like skill, fate, and luck were rationalized as deriving from individual sources with their own motives and agendas, which could be in conflict even within a single being. What else could have accounted for these conflicts, given the knowledge at hand? Modern psychology has probed this question and has scarcely done more to provide satisfactory answers to why we live with such conflict in our inner worlds. And neurologic studies have revealed that the brain’s anatomy is so layered and complex that its constituent parts, each with unique functions, often conflict with one another and the body.

The surprisingly sophisticated attempts by ancient people to understand and reveal the mysterious sources of these struggles, and to come to terms with them, are a poignant reminder of the wonder and the impotence we all sometimes feel in the face of our flawed and vexing humanity. And it is hopefully a reminder to us all that while we are impressive creatures, humans are still just products of an evolutionary process—of nature’s cruel trial and error—that has left us vulnerable to the whims of biology and psychology over which we have little say. At its core, being human is being painfully conscious of that dilemma.

Across this small sample of ancient cultures, it’s interesting that Old Norse, Homeric, Vedic, and Avestan models originally shared features like the lack of a single immortal soul and moral judgement of same. They envisioned the self as composite and death as a kind of dispersal of their various constituent elements. Survival beyond the grave occurred amid a mix of kin, reputation, lineage, and the good fortune that could be bestowed or inherited.

In this early Indo-European mode of thought, an individual does not have a soul. Each of us is merely a temporary—if utterly unique—convergence of forces; each individual exists by marshalling these forces toward the making and spreading of good fortune. When this life is over, these elements don’t die. They simply disperse and converge again to form and sustain something new—perhaps many things—and begin again. When considering what might have made these fearsome warrior cultures so bold and their people so fearless in the face of death, I imagine it was this. In their view, life could never truly end, and they would never fully die.

1. I’ve been intrigued by the popular reports of transplant recipients whose inexplicable personality, behavior, and memory changes have been attributed to their new organs. While it seems scientifically impossible that a donor’s organ could, in fact, transfer that individual’s memories, preferences, skills, or emotions, patients who now carry around the organs of others in their bodies often claim that’s precisely what happens. We’re not talking about Frankensteinesque brain transplants. These individuals receive hearts, lungs, and other vital organs that are traditionally not linked to thought and emotion, yet begin to think and feel in unfamiliar ways that are alien to their own nature, resembling those of their donors. These accounts have been backed by anecdotal evidence and by preliminary scientific studies in mice and planaria (a kind of flatworm), which concluded that memory and learned behavior could be retained outside the brain.

According to an article in Psychology Today:

Perhaps the best-known account is that of Claire Sylvia, a former professional dancer. Claire received a heart from an 18-year-old boy who died in a motorcycle accident. After the surgery, she started craving beer and KFC fried chicken, stuff she had never liked before. “My daughter said I even walked like a man.” Wanting to understand the changes she was experiencing, she sought out the family of her donor—a teenaged boy who died in a motorcycle accident—and learned that these foods were his favorites.

Apart from challenging our current conceptions of consciousness, the mind, the self, and the “soul,” this has all the makings of an awesome horror story if it hasn’t already. Imagine getting the heart of a Jeffrey Dahmer type and waking up from anesthesia with a very different craving than KFC . . . food for thought!

2. I’m reading Ernst Arbman’s magnum opus, Ecstasy or Religious Trance: In the Experience of the Ecstatics and from the Psychological Point of View, but it’s three volumes and it will take me a while to wade through it all. I’ll update this post or do a follow-up when I finish. Wish me luck!

---

Print References:

Bremmer, Jan E. 1983. The Early Greek Concept of the Soul. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Ellis, Hilda Roderick. 1943. The Road to Hel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Easwaran, Eknath, trans. 2007. The Upanishads. Tomales, CA: Nilgiri Press.

---