Soul in BVS

[scarfman]

from a discussion in alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer.creative

:> You can also wonder about the source (or if she has one) of Dawn's
:> soul.
:
: Possibly it came with being turned into a human. The Monks wouldn't
: have wanted her to be someone sane people would want to destroy.

Still, the question remains and it's a good one. Where do souls come from in the first place? Are they spontaneously generated attached to a human body at its birth? (Is there reincarnation, and if so where did the existing set originally come from, and are new ones still being turned out sometimes or not?) In this case, did the creation of Dawn's body by the monks constitute a birth? Did it perhaps constitute a birth only because the spell included the grandfather clause that made everyone think she'd always been there, and mightn't that have been the main reason they did it that way? If a demon is a soulless being separate from any souled being e.g. Liam and Angelus, then what about cases like Anya where someone human freely becomes a demon (and then switches back) (several times)?

Comments

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

If having a soul means something of you will survive after the death of your body, I would think of not having a soul as analogous to having a terminal illness. If you're in a 'souled' state, then you're looking forward to an afterlife, whereas if you're 'soulless', you're facing oblivion.

The consciousness of a demon would be intrinsically doomed, unless something happened to 'give him a soul'. The living essence of a human would be guaranteed an afterlife by default, unless something happened to take her soul away (e.g. becoming a demon). (On that note -- were Liam and Angelus not human before they were vampires?)

With regards to Dawn, I was having the same thoughts about Data back when I was a Trekkie and a Christian at the same time. ^^;; I think the solution I found the most comfortable was that any being with 'consciousness' just automatically gets a soul from somewhere. If God sees a consciousness-ready body being made, He sends a soul to inhabit it. Dr. Soong may have built Data's body, but the soul didn't come from him -- just like Dr. Soong's human parents 'made' their son's physical body (through natural processes, presumably) but nobody knows where the soul came from.

[scarfman]

On that note -- were Liam and Angelus not human before they were vampires?

I think I've confused you, having transplanted the paragraph wholesale from a forum where everyone'd know all this: Liam was Angel's birth name. The demon who took over his body when he was made a vampire goes by Angelus, and when Liam's soul was reinstated by the gypsy curse he adopted the name Angel. (Or maybe he didn't adopt Angel till he became Buffy's guardian.) Liam/Angel is a human soul; Angelus is a demon.

(I think you're confused because Spike - the other resoled resouled vampire in BVS - had the birthname William.)

Dr. Soong may have built Data's body, but the soul didn't come from him -- just like Dr. Soong's human parents 'made' their son's physical body (through natural processes, presumably) but nobody knows where the soul came from.

"Natural processes"? I wouldn't presume any such thing about those Soongs.

I know no more about the origin of souls in Star Trek than I do about BVS, but the point when I decided Data has one was at the end of In Theory. That's the one when he experiments with being in a relationship with a crewmate. At the end when she breaks up with him, he reacts by erasing all his memory banks on his experiment. That is not the action of a machine that named itself after its quest to be a conduit for as many facts as it possibly could, that is the reaction of a jilted human being.

[blinovitch.livejournal.com]

That is not the action of a machine that named itself after its quest to be a conduit for as many facts as it possibly could, that is the reaction of a jilted human being.

That never occurred to me, probably because I was a preteen the last time I saw that episode. Thanks for the insight.

With regards to souls in the Buffyverse, I think the most satisfactory theory for me is a soul isn't an entity per se, but a portion of the divine spark, sort of like how in Hinduism people are beings split off the Brahman world soul and eventually return to it.

So there's never a problem of where souls come from, because the Brahman is everywhere and everything. It's just a question of getting the divine spark to combine with a creature, which in the Buffyverse seems to be somewhat tricky, but do-able.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was thinking Liam was Spike and Angelus was Angel. Gotcha.

Okay, maybe the Soongs are a bad example, but I mean that whether people build their child out of circuitry or grow him the natural way, they aren't necessarily responsible for the soul being in there. ^^;

[ifoxg5.livejournal.com]

Souls in fiction will allways be a hard thing to work out. Largely because we as a race have clue what they are. I would say in the case of Dawn her soul came from the common veiw from those around her that she should have one. Per Buhdism we create our own univerese and thus Buffy and crew created dawns soul.

As for Data, I will allways take the view that Data was far more human then he or anyone (perhaps other then Troy) would give him credit for. I would say that Data and Dawns souls originate from as much the people around them believing them to be more as it dose that both of them Desire to be human,