Re: Re: The Missionaries

From: Roderick and Ellen Robertson <rjremr_at_...>
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 23:41:13 -0800


> With damaged brains, hence the inability to learn stuff, yes. Whether the
> bit of brain that was damaged was intellect or soul or spiritual or
> perceptual or what, I never specified. Then we checked back, and found it
> was "spiritual or magical".

Err, who says that souls (or spirits, or essences) are part of the brain?

There were times and places in the Ral World where the heart, or the liver, or other body parts, were thought to be the center of intellect and consciousness. Think of the nine parts of an Ancient Egyptian (a quick web search yields:
http://www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/themestream/egypt_soul.html). The "Consciousness" and the "Soul/Spirit/Essence" need not be housed in the same organ of the human (or other species) body.

The Dara Happans recognize six "parts" of a person, the Lunars, seven. The popular Orlanthi pastime of collecting heads might not have any *magical* effect on some peoples... (purely practical effetcs, yes, such as not being able to resurrect the body, but there is no reason that a person's "Soul" might not be trapped in his heart instead of his head, or in the right hand, or left pinkie-toe, or... Praxian animals can have their spirits trapped in their tails (at least according to Plunder, with the balls of tails on page 29...) - this might be the "normal repository" of their spirits, or a perversion of the animal - I'll leave it to individual Narrators to decide...

RR
C'est par mon ordre et pour le bien de l'Etat que le porteur du pr�sent a fait ce qu'il a fait.
- Richelieu

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