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Another example is that the full actualization of a human being would be living a fully functional human life in accordance with reason (which he considered to be a faculty unique to humanity). [126] For Aristotle, the soul is the organization of the form and matter of a natural being which allows it to strive for its full actualization.
In philosophy and religion, spirit is the vital principle or animating essence within humans or, in some views, all living things.Although views of spirit vary between different belief systems, when spirit is contrasted with the soul, the former is often seen as a basic natural force, principle or substance, whereas the latter is used to describe the organized structure of an individual being ...
Among the different species of corporeal beings, God has chosen the human species for the incarnation of spirits arrived at a certain degree of development; it is which gives it a moral and intellectual superiority to all the others. The soul is an incarnated spirit, whose body is only its envelope. There are in man three things: 1.
A familiar spirit – (alter ego, doppelgänger, personal demon, personal totem, spirit companion) is the double, the alter ego, of an individual. It does not look like the individual concerned. Even though it may have an independent life of its own, it remains closely linked to the individual. The familiar spirit can be an animal (animal ...
Wendigo –(Algonquian) A human possessed by evil spirit to cannibalize humans and is never sated. Werecoyote – A canine therianthropic creature. Yacuruna – Hairy beings with deformed feet and their heads turned backwards. Zombie – An undead human which preys on the living, originating in Haitian folklore.
The concepts of a person's spirit and soul, often also overlap, as both are either contrasted with or given ontological priority over the body and both are believed to survive bodily death in some religions, [95] and "spirit" can also have the sense of "ghost", i.e. a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person.
According to Mircea Eliade, shamanism encompasses the premise that shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the human world and the spirit worlds. Shamans are said to treat ailments and illnesses by mending the soul. Alleviating traumas affecting the soul or spirit restores the physical body of the individual to balance and wholeness.
He believed the human prize for the virtuous or the punishment for the guilty were not placed in different parts of the underworld but directly on Earth. After death, a guilty soul would be re-embodied first in a woman (in accordance with Plato's belief that women occupied a lower level of the natural scale), and then in an animal species ...