History Main / AnatomyOfTheSoul

* An interesting variant in Brandon Sanderson's [[Literature/TheCosmere Cosmere]], where human souls have a literal anatomy that apparently looks something like a network of veins or nerves, and is hugely important to at least 4 books thus far (one of the three magic systems in ''Franchise/{{Mistborn}}'' involves killing someone, ripping off a part of their "spiritweb" and then stapling it onto someone else's spiritweb, which means you have to know which part to remove and where to attach it to get the desired results, while the system from ''Literature/{{Warbreaker}}'' involves (painlessly) detaching a bit from your spiritweb and handing it to another person (or using it to animate something) at the cost of a bit of mental and physical health, and all the color of your skin, hair and clothes).

* Sigmund Freud's theory of the consciousness is arguably a version of Plato's tripartiate soul, with the id being the appetites, ego being the passions and superego being reason.

* Plato actually did not divide the soul into the reason, the passions (courage and drive), and the appetites (the LowestCommonDenominator drives, the "four F's" if you will) - in his philosophy, soul is indivisible (hence, indestructible). Reason, passion and appetites are aspect of the soul. They may be in conflict - this is when we get internal struggle.

* Plato's philosophy claimed the opposite: that the soul isn't an object with parts, and that's why it can't be destroyed by decay or being disassembled in the way that the body can.

* Plato divided the soul into the Reason, the Passions (courage and the like), and the Appetites (the LowestCommonDenominator drives, the "four F's" if you will).
* Later elaborations of Aristotelian philosophy distinguished between Corpus (body/matter,) Animus (animal life energy) and Spiritus (consciousness/soul.)
* Sigmund Freud's theory of the consciousness is arguably a version of Plato's tripartiate soul, with the Id being the Appetites, Ego being the Passions and Superego being Reason.
* Timothy Leary divided the Mind into 8 "circuits". Later, he decided that this was inaccurate, and divided each of the 8 circuits in 3, for a total of 24 components of the mind. His occasional co-writer Robert Anton Wilson pointed out that this too was incomplete...

* In the ''Fanfic/PonyPOVSeries'', a being's soul is composed of two parts -- a Light of Existence (the heart) and a Shadow of Existence (the appearance), both containing parts of the being's personality. If erased from existence, the Shadow ends up in [[EldritchAbomination Entropy]]'s Realm (the Light, according to WordOfGod, returns to Fauna Luster from whom all souls spring, or in the case of some of the G3 ponies, entered the afterlife, or was reborn as a new individual). What's more, it's stated that there's not a "Law of Conservation of Mass" when it comes to souls, meaning [[spoiler: the same person can have ''multiple'' {{reincarnation}}s ([[BadFuture Dark World]]!Twilight being the reincarnation of G3 Minty's Light and Minty Pie being the reincarnation of her shadow, for example), but the soul will still exist independently of the reincarnation.]]

[[folder: Fan Works]]

* In Shintoism, the soul is concieved as having four spirits: ara-mitama (violent), nigi-mitama (harmonious), saki-mitama (prosperous), kushi-mitama (wondrous). When gods are enshrined, sometimes two or more shrines or subshrines are built for each of that gods spirits. On top of this, due to the influence Chinese philosophy has had on Shintoism, it's not unusual for the soul to ''also'' be regarded as having Kon and Paku parts.

* ''Literature/CraftSequence'': Human souls make up the basis of the economy. Specifically, a single human soul is made up of 2,000 units of soulstuff (it's not stated whether this is an arbitrary or empirical division), and soulstuff is used as the setting's cash. People don't think twice about paying their taxi fare with a bit of their soul. You can walk around with less than a full human soul without any problems, but the less you have the more you edge into TechnicallyLivingZombie territory until you stop living entirely. Conversely, you can also have ''more'' than a full human soul in you, but this is said to cause strange behavior. The 2,000 mark seems to be used mainly for accounting purposes.

* ''Literature/CraftSequence'': Human souls make up the basis of the economy. Specifically, a single human soul is made up of 2,000 units of soulstuff (it's not stated whether this is an arbitrary or empirical division), and soulstuff is used as the setting's cash. People don't think twice about paying their taxi fare with a bit of their soul. You can walk around with less than a full human soul without any problems, but the less you have the more you edge into TechnicallyLivingZombie territory until you stop living entirely. Conversely, you can also have ''more'' than a full human soul in you, but this is said to cause strange behavior.

* ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' has Soul, Heart, and Body. There might or might not be a Mind in there, it's unclear whether it's a fourth entity, or part of Soul or Heart.
** Nobodies and Heartless, are both somewhat misnomers. Heartless are Hearts that are consumed by Darkness, without the Body and Soul; Nobodies are Body and Soul leftover from said consumed Hearts. The Heartless are called like that because they lack empathy and emotion, a Heart to call their own; the Nobodies instead, name themselves like that because they don't "exist". [[spoiler: This gets cleared up later; as the heart functions as a concept of selfhood, losing your heart means you lose that, and stop fitting into the universe. It takes a strong mind to resist fading away. But if you do, you are immediately restored to normal when your heartless is destroyed. Nobodies aren't so lucky, but they can grow new hearts from experiences anyway. Or at least, nobodies strong enough to seem human can...]]
** Memory is also a key part of the soul's anatomy, or rather, the Heart's, and, somewhat uniquely to the series, Connections with People are also a key part [[spoiler: to the point that having connections with friends can regrow lost hearts and bestow new ones.]]

* Christianity (or at least many denominations of it) believes that the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripartite_(theology)?wprov=sfti1 Soul and the Spirit are different things,]] each composed of three distinct parts: The Soul is composed of the Mind (ability to think), Emotion (ability to feel), and Will (ability to act). The Spirit is composed of Conscience (to discern right from wrong), Fellowship (to contact God and to commune with God), and Intuition (a direct sense or feeling with no discernible logic behind it). Other religions have other interpretations or beliefs as well.

* In ''Literature/SwordArtOnline'', the ''Alicization'' arc defines what a soul is through the Soul Translator technology. Based on SAO's "Quantum Brain Dynamics" theory, there are light particles that act as a quantum unit of mind called "Evanescent Photons", which exist within the microtubules of a nerve cell. These light particles exist in a state of indeterminism and fluctuate according to the probability theory. A collection of these particles form a Quantum Field, which have been dubbed "Fluctuating Lights" (or "Fluctlight" for short) which is what makes up the human consciousness, or in other words, the human soul. The Soul Translator machine is able to record the spin and vector of each photon within the microtubles and translate this information into a readable form for computers. It diverges from standard VR in that it's not merely nerve signals being transmitted into the system, but the soul itself.

* In ''LightNovel/LogHorizon'', according to Ri Gan's Spirit Theory (which is based on the Chinese concept of hun and po, or kon and paku in Japanese), the soul is divided into psyche and animus; the psyche governing the person's personality and the animus the person's body. [[spoiler: Ri Gan surmised that memories are split between the psyche and animus and thus speculated that when Adventurers got resurrected upon death, due to the inevitable loss of data when reconstructing the animus, Adventurers not only lose a portion of their experience (as it happened when ''Elder Tales'' was still a game) but also some of their memories too.]]
* In ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'', the ''Alicization'' arc defines what a soul is through the Soul Translator technology. Based on SAO's "Quantum Brain Dynamics" theory, there are light particles that act as a quantum unit of mind called "Evanescent Photons", which exist within the microtubules of a nerve cell. These light particles exist in a state of indeterminism and fluctuate according to the probability theory. A collection of these particles form a Quantum Field, which have been dubbed "Fluctuating Lights" (or "Fluctlight" for short) which is what makes up the human consciousness, or in other words, the human soul. The Soul Translator machine is able to record the spin and vector of each photon within the microtubles and translate this information into a readable form for computers. It diverges from standard VR in that it's not merely nerve signals being transmitted into the system, but the soul itself.

* In the MagicalGirl CrisisCrossover ''Fanfic/ShatteredSkiesTheMorningLights'', [[ForScience Viluy]] has all manner of soul-analogues from across the multiverse in her lab, including [[Franchise/SailorMoon Pure Heart Crystals, Hostes, Dream Mirrors, Sailor Crystals, Star Seeds]], [[Anime/HeartcatchPrettyCure Heart Flowers]], and [[Franchise/LyricalNanoha Linker Cores]]... and she's performing horrific experiments on all of them. It's later revealed that Viluy discovered an embodiment of the soul that's deeper and more pure than all of the above, called Seeds. Described as an "essence" by [[BigBad Joker]], everything with a mind of its own is supposed to have either a good-aligned Cosmos Seed or an evil-aligned Chaos Seed. To Joker's astonishment, [[Manga/CardcaptorSakura Sakura's]] is [[TakeAThirdOption a perfect balance of both]].

* Christianity (or at least many denominations of it) believes that the Soul and the Spirit are different things, each composed of three distinct parts: The Soul is composed of the Mind (ability to think), Emotion (ability to feel), and Will (ability to act). The Spirit is composed of Conscience (to discern right from wrong), Fellowship (to contact God and to commune with God), and Intuition (a direct sense or feeling with no discernible logic behind it). Other religions have other interpretations or beliefs as well.

In addition, Christianity (or at least many denominations of it) believes that the Soul and the Spirit are different things, each composed of three distinct parts: The Soul is composed of the Mind (ability to think), Emotion (ability to feel), and Will (ability to act). The Spirit is composed of Conscience (to discern right from wrong), Fellowship (to contact God and to commune with God), and Intuition (a direct sense or feeling with no discernible logic behind it). Other religions have other interpretations or beliefs as well.

** A Pure Heart Crystal can indicate a generally [[FriendToAllLivingThings kind, sweet heart]], but in some instances the character's "pure heart" refers to their [[PureIsNotGood focused pursuit of one ambition or craft]].

** Nobodies and Heartless, are both somewhat misnomers. Heartless are Hearts that are consumed by Darkness, without the Body and Soul; Nobodies are Body and Soul leftover from said consumed Hearts. The Heartless are called like that because they lack empathy and emotion, a Heart to call their own; the Nobodies instead, name themselves like that because they don't "exist". [[spoiler: This gets cleared up later; as the heart functions a concept of selfhood, losing your heart means you lose that, and stop fitting into the universe. It takes a strong mind to resist fading away. But if you do, you are immediately restored to normal when your heartless is destroyed. Nobodies aren't so lucky, but they can grow new hearts from experiences anyway. Or at least, nobodies strong enough to seem human can...]]

* ''TabletopGame/InNomine'': Souls, whether those of humans, animals, angels, demons, or spirits of the Marches, consist of Forces bound together, which come in three kinds; most beings may have up to six of each kind, usually much fewer (humans average five Forces total, six in rare cases), but the great Archangels and Princes have many more. Corporeal Forces give their owners the ability to interact with the physical world, increasing strength and agility as they go up; Ethereal Forces embody intellect and the mind, giving their owners intellect and precision of action, and their loss often results in loss of memory and DeathOfPersonality; Celestial Forces are the essence of spirituality and morality, strengthening willpower and perception as more are gained, and are needed for spirits to manifest celestially or for mortals to work sorcery. The most common way for celestials to "reproduce" is for Superiors to bind stray Forces into a new angel or demon, and grafting a new Force onto an underling's soul is a common high-end reward.

* ''TabletopGame/MummyTheResurrection'' has the soul divided into Ka (roughly, Avatar), Ba (Mind), Sahu (Light), Khu (Dreams), and Khaibit (Shadow). They also threw in Ren (TrueName) and Sekhem (LifeEnergy). The reboot, ''TabletopGame/MummyTheCurse'', uses the traditional Egyptian anatomy for the inborn splat, the Decree, based around what aspect the mummy was most attuned to when they were first raised -- the Ab (heart), Ba (spirit), Ka (essence), Ren (name), or Sheut (shadow).
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' sourcebooks first divided the soul into anima and animus (similar to the ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'' example) and later declared that it comprises seven different parts (see the egyptian system below) as a means of classifying the varieties of TheUndead.

* ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'' has perhaps the most unusual variation in a tabletop game. A character's shadow is a metaphor for their soul. The shadow always appears as the real body, [[GlamourFailure rather than the Mask]]. To make a [[EvilTwin Fetch]], the Fae remove a small strip of the shadow and bind it into the creation ritual. This is a metaphor for taking a bit of the soul, but to the Fae, a metaphor is as good as the real thing. Whether or not they've actually torn off a bit of your soul is [[ShrugOfGod up to the individual storyteller.]]
* ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'': The importance of the soul means it gets a fair bit of attention. Besides describing what the soul is (the source of inspiration, will to live, curiosity, empathy for others, and sense of connection to the world) and the effects of its loss, the soul is also the basis of magic, and manipulation of the soul can be used to gain powers. The soul is also the basis for an individual's Mental World, which contains worlds which personify their personality, experiences, and dreams, and is inhabited by [[AnthropomorphicPersonification beings]] such as their daimon (personification of their desire for self-improvement, and personal criticism) and goetic demons (personifications of vices and flaws). Individual souls are also connected to the soul of humanity as a whole, and the earth itself.
* ''TabletopGame/VampireTheRequiem'' introduced the Egyptian flavor in the Mekhet clanbook with the option of "Hollow" Embraces, wherein a person is Embraced after they're already dead. Thing is, their Ka has already been wandering around for a while, and it gets ''pissed off'' when it finds out it's going to be shackled to this plane again. Hollow vampires can't appear in reflections or on tape, and their voice doesn't carry over the phone; the Ka gets all that, and if it's not properly sated, it will use those abilities to terrorize the vampire and turn people against it.