Soul eater (folklore)

A soul eater is a folklore figure in the traditional belief systems of some groups, known for sucking or eating the souls of their victims.

Soul eaters can be related to witchcraft, zombies, and other similar phenomena. The soul eater is supposedly able^[who?] to consume an individual's spirit, causing a wasting disease that can be fatal.

Some traditional religions, including that of ancient Egypt and the Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Natchez of North America, contain figures whose names have been translated into English as "soul eater".

The concept of the soul eater also exists in Greek mythology,^[1] These types of mythological figures, however, are spiritual and not human beings, and so are distinctly different from the soul eater as conceptualized by the Hausa and some others.

The traditional belief in soul eaters has been adopted by a range of modern horror fiction and fantasy writers, contemporary songwriters, and anime and video game creators.

Examples

Maye

In Hausa belief, the desire and capacity for the practice, termed maita, is rooted in special stones kept in a person's stomach.^{[citation needed]} The soul eater can take the form of a dog or other animal in pursuit of his or her practice.^[2]

Jerome H. Barkow states "A Maye is a witch or soul-eater, a man who is believed to hunger for souls. He can at will bring up from his stomach colored pebbles or granules (Kankara).^[3]"Maye are typically a genetic trait that many Hausa believe you can be born with. Prospects can pay the Maye for Kankara and if they ingest the granules they then become a Maye. When a Maye eats a soul the body of the victim will slowly grow sick and die.

Another belief about soul eaters^[whose?] is that they are men who were cursed by witches and have to eat the souls of humans to live their lives.

Some elements of the Hausa form of belief in soul eaters survived into African-American folklore of the United States and that of the Caribbean region. Related beliefs can be found in other traditional African cultures, like the Fulbe^[4] and the Serer,^[5] as well as among the groups of the Mount Hagen area of Papua New Guinea.^[6] The hix or ix of the Maya and related peoples is a comparable figure; the Pipil term teyollocuani translates literally as "soul eater".

Ammit

Iain Bamforth discusses how Ammit resides in the underworld and consumes people/souls. Anubis would take the heart of people in the afterlife and weigh it on the scales of justice. If the heart doesn't weigh down the scales then they can carry on in the afterlife, but if the heart appears heavy and filled with burden then it is to be fed to Ammit therefore giving the heart a second death and no admittance into immortality with Osiris.^[7]

Jaques De Ville writes "she appears on top of and her feather on one side of the scale against which the heart of the deceased is weighed to establish whether he is to die a second death by being devoured by Ammit, or may proceed to the afterlife"^[8]

Cerberus

Hades' three headed dog, Cerberus, was a protector of the underworld. He guarded the doors to the underworld so ruthlessly that anyone other than Hades who tried to enter through them was eaten by the dog, and any soul that tried to leave the underworld was consumed or destroyed by the hound as well. ^[9]

References

^ Homer (1924). The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, Ph.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vol. I (book 6, lines 202-204). Retrieved 2020-06-11.
^ Schmoll, Pamela G. "Black Stomachs, Beautiful Stones: Soul-Eating among Hausa in Niger." In: Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa. Edited by Jean Comaroff. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993; pp. 193-220.
^ Barkow, Jerome H. (1974). "Evaluation of Character and Social Control among the Hausa". Ethos. 2 (1): 1–14. ISSN 0091-2131.
^ Regis, Helen A. Fulbe Voices: Marriage, Islam, and Medicine in Northern Cameroon. Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 2003; p. 120.
^ Galvan, Dennis Charles. The State Must Be Our Master of Fire: How Peasants Craft Culturally Sustainable Development in Senegal. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2004; p. 58.
^ Stewart and Strathern, p. 74.
^ Bamforth, Iain (2015). "The Embodied World". The Threepenny Review (140): 25–26. ISSN 0275-1410.
^ Ville, Jacques de (2011). "Mythology and the Images of Justice". Law and Literature. 23 (3): 324–364. doi:10.1525/lal.2011.23.3.324. ISSN 1535-685X.
^ Bloomfield, Maurice (1904). "Cerberus, the Dog of Hades". The Monist. 14 (4): 523–540. ISSN 0026-9662.

[1] Homer (1924). The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, Ph.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vol. I (book 6, lines 202-204). Retrieved 2020-06-11.

[2] Schmoll, Pamela G. "Black Stomachs, Beautiful Stones: Soul-Eating among Hausa in Niger." In: Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa. Edited by Jean Comaroff. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993; pp. 193-220.

[3] Barkow, Jerome H. (1974). "Evaluation of Character and Social Control among the Hausa". Ethos. 2 (1): 1–14. ISSN 0091-2131.

[4] Regis, Helen A. Fulbe Voices: Marriage, Islam, and Medicine in Northern Cameroon. Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 2003; p. 120.

[5] Galvan, Dennis Charles. The State Must Be Our Master of Fire: How Peasants Craft Culturally Sustainable Development in Senegal. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2004; p. 58.

[6] Stewart and Strathern, p. 74.

[7] Bamforth, Iain (2015). "The Embodied World". The Threepenny Review (140): 25–26. ISSN 0275-1410.

[8] Ville, Jacques de (2011). "Mythology and the Images of Justice". Law and Literature. 23 (3): 324–364. doi:10.1525/lal.2011.23.3.324. ISSN 1535-685X.

[9] Bloomfield, Maurice (1904). "Cerberus, the Dog of Hades". The Monist. 14 (4): 523–540. ISSN 0026-9662.

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