Spirit (supernatural entity)
In folklore and ethnography, a spirit is an "immaterial being", "supernatural agent", the "soul of a person", an "invisible entity", or the "soul of a seriously suffering person". Often spirits have an intermediate status between gods and humans, sharing some properties with gods and some with humans.
Thus, a spirit would have a form of existing and thinking; it would exist without being generally visible; often popular traditions endow it with miraculous powers and more or less occult influences on the physical world.
Typology
Spirits can be classified according to the science in charge of their study: angels and demons belong to theology, ghosts and spirits to metapsychology, fairies and gnomes to folklore, the souls of the dead to the cult of the dead, spiritualism, magic, necromancy. However, there are frequent hesitations.Alternatively, a historical approach can be taken. Medieval texts are full of planetary spirits, angelic spirits, nature spirits, place spirits, etc.
Spirits are often classified by the worlds they inhabit: underworld, earth, atmospheric, or heaven.
They are also classified as good and bad, or as neutral: the word "devil" is pejorative, but the word "demon" changes the value.
In 17th century Europe, spirits included angels, demons, and disembodied souls. Dom Calmet, a specialist on the subject, explained that he was writing "on the apparitions of angels, demons and souls separated from the body". The Lalande dictionary follows suit: "God, angels, demons, disembodied souls of people after death are the spirits".
In some cultures, the "spirits of nature" refers to the elementals, spirits linked to the four classical elements: gnomes for earth, undines for water, sylphs for air, salamanders for fire).
History in the West
Ancient period
Greeks
In his Theogony, written in the 7th century B.C., Hesiod distinguishes five categories of powers: superior demons or gods, inferior demons, deceased from the Hades, heroes without posthumous promotion, and humans of the past.Pythagoras sees souls or spirits everywhere, as detached particles of the ether:
Pythagoras identifies four types of spiritual beings: gods, heroes, demons, and humans. While the gods are immortal souls, the humans are mortal souls. Gods inhabit the stars, glorious heroes inhabit the ether, and demons inhabit the earth. The heroes are the demigods.
A little bit similar to Hesiod, in Timaeus, Plato mentions gods, demons, inhabitants in the Hades, heroes and humans of the past.
Romans
The Romans admitted gods, goddesses, manes, lares, genies, lemures, etc.Theologians began thinking of angels in the 3rd century, with Origen and the Cappadocians.
The Neoplatonist Porphyry of Tyre carefully asks how to distinguish high-ranking divine beings from mere souls, not to mention malignant spirits :
Pagan angels and archangels have Persian origin.
Saint Augustine equates angels with uncreated light, born of the Word; he believes that demons have celestial bodies; he considers fauns to be monstrous children between women and devils.
In the 5th century, Martianus Capella described a world inhabited by spirits, satyrs, etc:
In his Commentary on Timaeus, Proclus admits nine levels of reality: One, being, life, mind, reason, animals, plants, animate beings, and prime matter. According to Pierre Hadot, Proclus posits a hierarchy of gods in nine degrees:
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite,, influenced by Proclos and Saint Paul, classified the heavenly spirits into three triads, thus forming the nine heavenly choirs : Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Lordships, Powers, Dominions, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels.
Middle Age
Michel Psellos, a great Byzantine scholar of the 12th century, lists six categories of demons in a famous treatise used by Ronsard: Treated by energy dialogue or devil's operation. His categories are: igneous spirits, aerial spirits, terrestrial spirits, aquatic spirits, subterranean spirits, and tenebrous spirits.Honorius Augustodunensis, in his Elucidarium, admits the existence of spirits such as angels, demons, and disembodied souls. He argues that "angels have bodies of ether, demons of air, humans of earth".
In his prose novel Merlin, Robert de Boron introduces his heroes as children of a virgin and a devil, who is therefore an incubus, a sexual demon.
The novel Huon de Bordeaux mixes two categories of spirits: the spirits spoken of by theologians, and the spirits spoken of by storytellers.
In 1398, 1241, 1270 and 1277, the Paris Faculty of Theology condemned the thesis that other eternal entities existed in addition to God.
Renaissance
Paracelsus counts seven races of soulless creatures: the human-shaped but soulless and spiritless genii of the Elements, the giants and dwarfs, and the dwarfs on Earth.He believes in the genies of the four Elements. Earth, by spontaneous generation, produces dwarves guarding the treasures beneath the mountain; water produces undines; fire, salamanders; air, elves. Then there are the giants and dwarves who come from the air but live on the earth. The book is called A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits.
The Germans developed an "astonishing proliferation of supernatural creatures:" primordial giants, dwarves, elves, trölls, landvaettir, disir, fylgja, hamr, hamingja, hugr.
Johann Weyer is a witchcraft specialist, with his De praestigiis daemonorum ac incantationibus. He classifies demons by their elemental nature, and by their habitat.
17th and subsequent centuries
In his novel The Count of Gabalis, or Interviews on the Secret Sciences, Abbé Henri de Montfaucon de Villars correlates demons and elements, simplifying Psellus and continuing Paracelsus. Sylphs are of air; undines, water; gnomes, earth; salamanders, fire.Rationalist Descartes uses the physiological term "animal spirits" to refer to corpuscles composed of the "most vivid and subtle" parts of the blood, which move the body as they circulate from brain to muscle . These are not entities, then; they are nerve impulses.
In the spiritualism codified by Allan Kardec, the word "spirits" denotes the souls of the deceased with whom a medium can communicate. Kardec's first book is entitled: The Spirits Book, which contain the principles of Spiritist doctrine on the immortality of the soul, the nature of spirits and their relationship with mankind; moral laws, the present life, the future life and the future of mankind. According to the teachings given by the Higher Spirits through various mediums collected and organized by Allan Kardec , he affirms:
Edward Tylor, one of the founders of anthropology, introduced the concept of animism in 1871 to provide, according to him, "a rudimentary definition of religion," and he posits "the minimal definition of religion as the belief in spiritual beings, within the framework of evolutionism:"
Outside the West
Sub-Saharan Africa
According to Pierre Alexandre, in Sub-Saharan Africa:For Ernst Dammann, in addition to nature spirits, which consist of "a large number of protective spirits of houses, settlements, professions, and social classes", there are "animal spirits", "auxiliary spirits", and certain civilizing heroes.
North America
Haiti
In Haiti :Native Americans
Concerning the Amerindians, according to A. Métraux:In principle, the same representations are found in North America, although they do not dominate religion there to the same degree as in the tropical jungles of South America. Belief in a personal tutelary genie, which can be inherited or acquired through a vision, and which in some cases can be bought or sold, exists in both Americas.
In Mesoamerica, the nahual, both human and animal, is a tutelar deity.
Among the Lakota, the practice of vision questing enables them to communicate with the spirits.
History in Asia
Japan
In Japan: kami:Mesopotamia
In Mesopotamia, the Assyro-Babylonians admitted gods, planetary genies, ancestral gods, personal gods, spirits of the dead, and numerous demons.Mongolia
In Mongolia : Specialists in Mongolian shamanism have proposed "a classification of the various entities inhabiting the supernature of the Mongols."The Mongolian Buryats admit: tenger, ancestors, zajaan, and spirits from the souls of the dead. In addition, shamans know: auxiliaries, udxa, troublemakers, wandering souls of the recently dead, mythical founders and legendary ancestors, local master-spirits.
Siberia
In Siberia, in the context of shamanism and even "before the establishment of shamanism", "master spirits are the 'masters' of certain animal species, of territories where game roosts, of natural phenomena such as fire, lightning, wind, etc."The Tungus address various spirits, without the intermediary of the shaman: fire master-spirits, forest master-spirits, water master-spirits, clan territories master-spirits, sites master-spirits, and mythical territories master-spirits. The Tungus shaman, on the other hand, addresses shamanic spirits: shamanic ancestors, zoomorphic spirits serving the shaman, spirits likely to be mastered by the shaman.
In religion
Buddhism
In Theravada Buddhism, there are up to 31 planes of existence with, from the lowest to the highest: beings of the underworld, hungry spirits, demigods, deities, including Brahmâ. In addition, there are minor earthly deities such as genies, snakes, spirits associated with nature, or spirits of ancestors or Indian gods, local gods, and mythological or historical heroes.Tibetan Buddhism classifies "nature spirits into eight types of being: minor gods, lords of death, harmful demons, wrathful mothers, rock demons, king-spirits, spirits of natural wealth and water spirits."