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The soul ( Tamashī?) is an aspect believed to be the spiritual essence of a living being.

Principles[]

The soul is said to be an incorporeal part of a living being, holding their spiritual essence and consciousness.

In many cultures, after a person's death, their soul is believed to persist, leaving the body and passing into an afterlife realm, often dictated by their actions in life (such as with Heaven and Hell),[1][2] or move through the cycle of reincarnation to be reborn in a new body and start life anew.[3] In some stories, there are souls that are barred from the afterlife and left to wander the earth,[1] or linger as ghosts due to the nature of their death or unfinished business. There are often various rites intended to assist the soul in its passage,[4][5] and figures believed to act as guides.[6] There are also some means intended to communicate with the souls of the dead.[7]

There are also various stories of people who sold their own soul to a supernatural entity, such as the devil, in order to achieve a goal or attain power.[8]

The Imagine Breaker apparently doesn't work on souls, even if they are of supernatural origin.[9]

Magic[]

Despite the fact that modern magic revolves around refining life force into magic power, few magicians have a clear answer as to what the soul actually is. There are various theories, some more prominent than others, but there is little proof as to which is correct.[10][11][12]

Though the mechanisms of the soul are not fully understood, there are magical methods to duplicate it and magicians can create physical bodies to act as containers for the soul despite not properly understanding it.[13][11] The creation of magical life forms is one example of this.[11] There are also spells intended to affect a target's soul,[14] and means of tracing people through magical power based on the link to the soul.[15]

There are a number of fields of magic involving the souls of the dead, their passage and communication with them. One of these is necromancy, which includes rituals to communicate with the dead and to help them pass through the gates of heaven. In some of these rituals, necromancers can place a false soul (偽りの魄 Itsuwari no Tamashii?) into a corpse, in order to put the "residual memory" to rest and close its "spiritual circuit". These false souls can possess and operate corpses, being able to animate them to a certain extent and act autonomously.[5][16][17]

Magic Names are supposedly carved onto a magician's soul.[18]

Aleister Crowley devised a number of theories and concepts concerning the soul. One was that a soul enters a baby's body three months after conception, implying that there is no soul until the 90th day of pregnancy and that a soul could be guided into the body during that time. Magic was subsequently released based on this idea, involving guiding in a high-level soul into a fetus and granting a physical body to a superhuman entity.[19][20] Aleister also referred to the current or directionality of the force binding the soul as karma, stating that it could not be judged good or evil, high or low.[19] The Bridge Builders Cabal would make use of both of these ideas in their ceremony to produce their savior.[19][20]

Science[]

The soul is just as little or even less understood on the science side. In the past, there were a number of scientific theories made involving the soul, such as the soul weighing 21 grams resulting in a loss of mass from a corpse after death,[21][22] which have been disproved.

In modern times, on the Science Side, the soul is often seen as an occult concept and something of superstition. Despite this, there has been at least one experiment in Academy City which had observing the creation of a soul (魂の生成 Tamashī no Seisei?) as a secret secondary objective. The subject of the experiment, Kuriba Ryouko, had her body split in two and the two halves having the other half replaced with machines, forming two cyborgs. After living separately for a year, the two were recombined into one. The split supposedly had the effect of creating another soul from Ryouko's, one which came to reside in the mechanical components which were left over after Ryouko's human body was recombined, and assembled.[21][23][24][25][22][26]

According to Kuriba Ryouko's theory, unlike other souls, thought to be linked to the body and destroyed when it ceases to function, the doppelganger's soul is apparently merely stored inside the mechanical body and if the container was destroyed, it would be freed from its restraints and spread to its surroundings. She also theorized that the abnormal "free soul" (自由な魂 Jiyūna Tamashī?) would be able to possess anything or possibly, in the worst case scenario, engulf the city itself. While still intact, the doppelganger was capable of exerting an influence on objects within close proximity,[25][26] and after its body was breached, it appeared to exhibit the ability of soul possession (魂の憑依 Tamashī no Hyōi?) to a much greater degree, absorbing the materials around it to form a gigantic puppet body higher than a multi-storey building.[27][28][29][26][30] However this was later revealed to be due to the use of self-replicating artificial muscles, with the nature of the doppelganger's soul left in doubt.[31][32][33]

Following research into where esper abilities originate from through dissection, Hishigata came to the conclusion that it had something to do with the soul.[34]

External Links[]

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume 12 Between the Lines 4
  2. Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume 14 Epilogue
  3. Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume 13 Chapter 1 Part 8
  4. Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index SS Part 5
  5. 5.0 5.1 Toaru Kagaku no Accelerator Manga Chapter 003
  6. Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume SS2 Chapter 2
  7. Toaru Majutsu to Kagaku no Ensemble Magic Hidden Story
  8. Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume 15 Chapter 3 Part 3
  9. Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume 02 Chapter 4 Part 1
  10. Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume 02 Chapter 1 Part 8
  11. 11.0 11.1 11.2 Toaru Majutsu no Index: Kanzaki SS Chapter 4 Part 2
  12. Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume 21 Prologue
  13. Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume 02 Chapter 2 Part 2
  14. Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume 16 Epilogue
  15. Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume 02 Chapter 2 Part 9
  16. Toaru Kagaku no Accelerator Manga Chapter 004
  17. Toaru Kagaku no Accelerator Manga Chapter 022
  18. Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume 04 Chapter 2 Part 5
  19. 19.0 19.1 19.2 Souyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume 08 Chapter 3 Part 4
  20. 20.0 20.1 Souyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume 08 Epilogue
  21. 21.0 21.1 Toaru Kagaku no Railgun Manga Chapter 085
  22. 22.0 22.1 Toaru Kagaku no Railgun T Episode 21
  23. Toaru Kagaku no Railgun Manga Chapter 086
  24. Toaru Kagaku no Railgun Manga Chapter 087
  25. 25.0 25.1 Toaru Kagaku no Railgun Manga Chapter 088
  26. 26.0 26.1 26.2 Toaru Kagaku no Railgun T Episode 22
  27. Toaru Kagaku no Railgun Manga Chapter 089
  28. Toaru Kagaku no Railgun Manga Chapter 091
  29. Toaru Kagaku no Railgun Manga Chapter 092
  30. Toaru Kagaku no Railgun T Episode 23
  31. Toaru Kagaku no Railgun Manga Chapter 094
  32. Toaru Kagaku no Railgun Manga Chapter 095
  33. Toaru Kagaku no Railgun Manga Chapter 096
  34. Toaru Kagaku no Accelerator Manga Chapter 024
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