I have a soul. It is strange to think about and not something I spend much time dwelling on in my busy everyday life. Nevertheless, I like every other human on the planet has a soul. One definition of soul is “a person’s moral or emotional nature or sense of identity”. Another from a website titled Science of Souls says “The Science of the Soul…leads to the conclusion that each human being has a supernatural soul.” In the Philip Pullman book Northern Lights, all humans have an animal called a daemon that represents their soul. As a child their daemon changes animal form to reflect the mood or temperament of the child’s soul in different situations, but when the child starts to become an adult the form of their daemon becomes fixed to one particular animal and this is supposed to represent who they truly are as a person – their inner moral compass.
I wonder what animal would represent my soul. Would it be something lovely like a beautiful brown burmeese cat, wandering around in the world totally self sufficient and oozing confidence? I think not, but it’s a nice thought. Could it be a caterpillar that spends life munching away trying to get as much nourishment as it can so that it can undergo a transformation into a magnificent butterfly? That raises an interesting point: can your soul change like it does for the children in Pullman’s book? Or is it an immutable part of yourself that stays the same all through your your life, but just gets buried deeper at times and lies closer to the surface and more exposed at others which in itself could seem like a change?
Maybe my soul could be like a swallow that appears to glide above it all, constantly flitting here and there catching all the tasty morsels on offer. Could an industrious, selfless ant represent my soul perhaps? Would it be too exposing of my egocentricity to want my soul to be represented by a lion, strong and majestic and confident in its role in life. Maybe it is more like what my boyfriend suggests, a turtle that just floats around looking for food or possibly a wilder beast, which I have been assured is a highly successful species. This idea what animal epitomizes different people’s souls has been a topic of many dinner conversations without much resolve for those individuals involved. It has been pointed out on more than one occasion that no one ever even considers that a slug or a slippery eel might possibly be a reflection of their soul. It is terribly difficult to decide what would reflect your own soul as in addition to being so alienated from our true selves, we are highly wedded to protecting our ego, which makes it virtually impossible to chose an accurate representation the forms of our moral nature. Maybe after a bit more probing and endless hours of contemplation at the dinner table we might get there., or maybe science will come up with the answer?