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  • Can the soul die?

    Hello everybody. I am new here. I would like to ask a question. I happened to stumble over this website Joy of Satan which seemed rather strange. Among other things, they claim that the soul can actually wither away and die, in the afterlife, if it has not been "fed" during life by lots of meditation, breathing exercises and the like. They say that the soul can run out of energy and dissipate. This actually scared me. I have never heard anyone say before that the soul can die. They say all ancient cultures accepted that this was a fact. This seems very strange to me and I am now acutally in a kind of spiritual crisis. Is this something you have heard? Do you believe this? I really need some help here. Thanks in advance.

  • #2
    Re: Can the soul die?

    Hi catfromouterspace. Welcome to the forum. I have read that in Ancient Egypt that if the family members did not give offerings to their dead loved ones then their spirits would start to die. The spirit depended on the family a lot. This included food and many other things in the next life. So in Ancient Egypt, they did believe it was possible.
    Anubisa

    Dedicated and devoted to Lord Anubis and Lady Bast. A follower of the path of Egyptian Wicca.

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    • #3
      Re: Can the soul die?

      Originally posted by anubisa View Post
      Hi catfromouterspace. Welcome to the forum. I have read that in Ancient Egypt that if the family members did not give offerings to their dead loved ones then their spirits would start to die. The spirit depended on the family a lot. This included food and many other things in the next life. So in Ancient Egypt, they did believe it was possible.
      Hi. Thank you for your reply. Do you think this it how it is? in that case, most souls would die since not many family members today provide the departed soul with food and stuff. Didn't the ancient Egyptians also believe the physical body had to be preserved in order for the soul to survive? Not many souls that would survive there today either. I value your opinion. Thanks in advance.

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      • #4
        Re: Can the soul die?

        Go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancien...on_of_the_soul. There are different parts to that had to be considered. The physical part was one. You also had to consider the spirit and other parts as well. If these weren't paid attention to by the family or an attendant then the soul could wither away.
        Anubisa

        Dedicated and devoted to Lord Anubis and Lady Bast. A follower of the path of Egyptian Wicca.

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        • #5
          Re: Can the soul die?

          But the question perhaps should be is does death equal the Destruction of the Soul?

          Yes, even the Egyptians said a soul could experience a second death in the underworld but they didn't say the soul was destroyed. The Hellene's (Greeks) knew when a spirit went into the underworld they drank from the river of forgetfulness. Thereby removing all knowledge of their previous lives, in essences killing that life. The Roman's (Latin's) had something similar to the Hellene's regarding their afterlife. Not sure what the average Norseman had since only a select few got into one of the major halls of Valhalla. So the rest went into Hel's domain but I don't recall soul's being destroyed.

          When you start looking into different theologies you start seeing the idea of destruction and dying when a soul isn't "saved". Orphism arises in the Greek world and you see the idea of souls being reborn or by passing the river of forgetfulness. Because of that the idea of a soul fading away changes as it gets to retain it's old life memories because it's learnt the mysteries. It remember's its own name, and its name gives it an identity. Then you have things such as the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries which touch upon life and death and changes to the soul. Granted we don't know a whole lot about the greater and lessor Eleusinian Mysteries as to exactly what they entailed.

          The idea of memory, souls and longevity probably is more common in the middle east than in Europe if one looks to the historical record of how we took care of our dead. What they call deep memory via burial is more visible there are graves and burial grounds last longer. Yet in places like England for instance you had old burial grounds around churches where generations were buried in the same church yards. No caskets, no tombstones, just dig up the ground and toss in a new body. The more well to do often buried inside of the church itself, under the floor. Often depending upon your standing determined which section of the ground you got buried in as N, S, E & W really did matter. Large cities had catacombs often stretching for miles, many with giants vaults as part of the structures. The idea of the modern cemetery, detached from the church didn't arise until the late 1800's, early 1900's.

          Personally I'd have to see exactly what they are saying and their references. Otherwise it seem's they are using modern definitions of death and dying.
          I'm Only Responsible For What I Say Not For What Or How You Understand!

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          • #6
            Re: Can the soul die?

            Do you think about your soul or/and someone in particular?

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            • #7
              Re: Can the soul die?

              Originally posted by Gabriel9 View Post
              Do you think about your soul or/and someone in particular?
              I am thinking about all souls.

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              • #8
                Re: Can the soul die?

                I am a Theistic Satanist and I consider my specific belief system to align a fair bit with polytheistic paganism in general, but do take this with a pinch of salt, I am not an average pagan.

                Discussing the possibility of a second death, the souls' death, inevitably brings us to the discussion of an afterlife. Whatever happens to the soul the moment our body dies also has a big say on the way we perceive the afterlife too. And for that matter, is the soul even alive?

                I'll talk about my personal beliefs on the matter of the soul's path after death.
                Three things can happen, in my belief system, when our vessel dies; whichever happens depends on the strength of the will of the person, for all that lets a soul keep its shape is sheer willpower: Weak souls have the quickest fate. I won't go in-depth about people who have weak souls, but I think it only concerns very few people with very specific circumstances. Anyway, weak souls have a tendency to just dissolve into what I call the world-essence, an inert energy that connects a fills everything that exists, across all planes of existence. A soul, for me, is energy bound by will. When it's encased in a body, it is easier to keep it constrained. Our will and consciousness materialized and supported by our brain makes it easy to keep our soul energy contained. Once the body and brain dies there is nothing physical to keep our soul from being in contact with the world-essence, and just as drop of rain becomes one with the ocean once it comes in contact with it, our soul dissolves and becomes part of this world-essence. It's a dust to dust, ashes to ashes, sort of thing. This, could be considered as the soul's second death. If a soul goes through this process, it makes necromancy (divination through the dead, talking to the spirit, not the fantasy-type that will raise zombies) almost impossible, though it is still possible to access echoes of the person's soul, but that's not the topic.
                The second thing that could happen, and the most common, is wandering souls and reincarnation. Those with a will strong enough to not dissolve into the world-essence once their body dies will be able to maintain their "shape" in this world. They become spirits, ghosts, free to travel around or bound to a specific place. Spirits like these have the choice of reincarnating into another body if the opportunity presents itself. Though eventually, if a wandering soul wanders for very long, and forgets who they are and loose their willpower, they will meet the same fate as the previous category.
                Finally, exceptionally strong souls can permeate this plane of existence with the next one, "ascending" into the astral plane. Conserving your shape in this plane is significantly easier, but the person is still susceptible of losing their willpower over time. This is the plane of existence where deities live. Some of my deities were humans at some point, who rose up into that plane and empowered their soul through strength of will. However, souls that ascend to this plane also can choose to come back and reincarnate as well.

                Check out my blog! The Daily Satanist

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                • #9
                  Re: Can the soul die?

                  All the above is top notch. You really die here in this world 100%, but let me ask you, you do not care when you sleep, you do not care not to exist before being born, you are only conscious on some occasions and on different levels, and mostly to depend upon the earth as a mortal creature, so why would you care for the 'afterlife', accept the rules of this world.

                  I would not call a deity a human soul... however true some soul(s?) escape from astral planes like 'hell' or 'heaven' and reach that 'god' level, I unfortunately have only extreme experiences and some astral dreams of hells which look like in Norse mythology, however I feel this will be destroyed at one point and remaining gods/powerful souls will at one point merge back to the main spirit which is 'love' but not how we understand it, more destructive and extreme, I could be mistaken.

                  I do not know in which reincarnation a Mayan type of light Spirit (god-like) was accepted by my soul as a carrier and a pact which convinced my soul that the benefits outweighed the inconvenient.

                  So there is the 'human' part of me which doesn't understand anything and this Spirit which does things on its own. As a light spirit I am connected to the Love spirit which is somehow Yahweh/Christian God, it is very powerful and you feel wholesome when you see some part of it, if it doesn't kill you. Even with my soul being carried over and remembering past and future reincarnations, it still bothers me to die physically and there is no escape to this unless something very powerful happen and you merge with an afterlife spirit such as 'god' but I do not recommend this.

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                  • #10
                    Re: Can the soul die?

                    Originally posted by catfromouterspace View Post
                    They say that the soul can run out of energy and dissipate. This actually scared me. I have never heard anyone say before that the soul can die. They say all ancient cultures accepted that this was a fact. This seems very strange to me and I am now acutally in a kind of spiritual crisis. Is this something you have heard? Do you believe this? I really need some help here. Thanks in advance.
                    In my tradition the feeding of ancestors is certainly crucial. In the carpathians, they believed that ceasing to feed the spirits on the island of Rachman would eventually result in the end of the world. In theory, this could mean that they will perish with this world. Or just before it. Some traditions also hold that annihilation can be a punishment in the afterlife.

                    Of course, some schools of thought think of “soul death” as a loss of individuality. In other words, your soul merges back with the source of all things, and loses its distinctiveness. But the raw essence is not destroyed. I believe some Greek philosophy had ideas like this.
                    Last edited by Yazichestvo; 23 May 2020, 10:33. Reason: Grammar
                    If you want to be thought intelligent, just agree with everyone.

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                    • #11
                      Re: Can the soul die?

                      The idea of feeding souls, or of sustaining souls..particularly the souls of family, is ubiquitous to human culture and belief. Not just in the past, but in the present as well. That's what people are doing in Mexico city on the 31st of october, for example. A soul unremembered is a soul un-awakened..or worse...

                      Have I heard of it, yes. Do I believe it? No. Whatever soul I have will die when I die. I only need to die once to be dead. I think that the idea of impermanence is difficult for us to accept because our entire identity and experience is built around the notion of personal permanence. We can't even imagine what it's like to be nonexistent...even though the person trying to imagine it in a given moment will almost certainly cease to exist long before they die.

                      On a biological level, on a psychological level. I suppose that's the grand irony of our fear and hopes for the hereafter, as I see it. The thing we worry about is happening to us every minute of every day, and has happened to us many times over, and we just don't notice it.

                      Maybe we don't notice it because that person is no longer around to remind us that it's happened?

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                      • #12
                        Re: Can the soul die?

                        The ego, the physical self dies but in some religion it still exists.

                        If you could re-incarnate it makes no sense because you would remember, but this is not possible.

                        IMO if you want to re-incarnate you have to have a special spirit or be possessed by a type of spirit or have access to some knowledge from beyond the physical world to know in which body or from which astral creature your spirit comes from.

                        There is unfortunately no work around death because you die every second, you evolve, grow, and slowly go back to the void. I just cannot tell if your spirit or if your particular spirit die or when it dies.

                        I do hope everyone would be immortal and 'awakens' with memory in the spirit world, i seriously wish it for all humanity even with the stupidity of it all, we do what we can with what has been given to us by the master magician, the powerful creating self sacrificing love, Ra, Isis, Apophis, Osiris. The Father, the Son, Mary, and the most important the Spirit.

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