Where Soul Meets Body

The Azande believe that humans are made up of two types of soul: the body-soul and the spirit-soul. After death, the body soul becomes a totem animal for one’s clan (father’s clan for men and mother’s clan for women) while the spirit soul becomes a shadowy ghost residing at the head of streams. (Witches’ souls are malevolent and non-witches are benevolent, often thought to be helpful to their future kin)

While in life the body-soul stays with you to keep you functioning as a human being, the spirit-soul can also separate from the body in order to do magic. When a witch is able to separate this, the Azande refer to it as mbisimo mangu, or the soul of witchcraft. This part of the soul can leave a witch’s body, often while their body is asleep, and transport to the body of the person they plan to bewitch so that they can devour parts of his body-soul. They even say (according to Evans-Pritchard) that one can see the lights of the spirit-souls of witches when they go out to bewitch people. (Evans-Pritchard even thinks he may have seen one once, otherwise he would not even fathom to believe it…)

I can see the sense in this idea. That there are two parts to people’s souls. It creates a poetic sort of dualism and makes sense in the sense that if the spirit-soul leaves to perform magic, then the body-soul is there to sustain one’s actual flesh. (otherwise, a witch would die whenever they tried to bewitch someone…) I myself have always thought that the body is separate from the soul, so you only have one soul. However, when looking at it this way, it makes sense to have a body-soul rather than just a lump of flesh run by electrical pulses and one’s consciousness.

Evans-Pritchard, E.E. Witchcraft Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Clarendon P: Oxford. Print.

Chase, Oscar G. "The Lesson of the Azande". Law, Culture, and Ritual: Disputing Systems in Cross-Cultural Context. NYU Press: New York. 2005. pp. 15-29.