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The Soul as a Post-Mortal Bird: the Southern/Slavic Folklore Notion of the Bird-Soul and/or the Soul-Bird

As the introduction, we will be considering the Proto-Slavic symbolism of the soul of the dead in the form of a bird. Namely, in Natko Nodilo's Stara vjera Srba i Hrvata [The Old Faith of Serbs and Croats] (1885–1890), the first attempt at reconstruction of the mythology of the Southern Slavs, in keeping with Jacob Grimm’s notation in Teutonic Mythology (1835), he wrote, for example, that it was a matter among the Polish people of a dove-soul ; while among the Czech people, during the period when the practice was to burn the body of the deceased (incineration), a bird-soul was believed to fly out of the dead person's mouth into a tree “in which it walked around in agitation until the dead body was consumed by the flames” (Nodilo 1981:508). And while the soul figures as a bird among the Slavs, as Natko Nodilo states, in ancient Greek religion the soul was depicted as a butterfly (Gk. psychē – soul, butterfly). Also taking Jacob Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology as his starting-point, Nodilo claimed that the origins of the butterfly-soul could be sought even further back in time than the Hellenic, and that in Lithuanian beliefs, the soul was conceived both as a bird and as a butterfly/moth: “When a moth enters a house, the Lithuanian women say that someone has died and that his/her soul is moving around (J. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, p. 692” (Nodilo 1981:509). Commencing from the belief of the post-mortal departure of the soul from the body, Nodilo indicates that the conception of the butterfly-soul belongs to the spiritual commonality of the European branch of the Indo-Europeans. He also refers to Preller’s interpretation (Griechische Mythologie, 1854), who “still considers that all that about the Greek notion of the butterfly-soul is quite new. Far back in their time, the Greeks painted the soul as a certain small personage with wings, and only later as a real depiction of a butterfly, or as a gentle lass with butterfly wings” (Nodilo 1981:509). Further in the paper we shall also look at the Southern Slavic conception of the bird-soul and the soul-bird. And while the concept of the bird-soul denotes the post-mortal soul in the form of a bird (cf. “Bird-Soul” 1949:143), in the concept of the soul-animal and/or the soul-bird, we are speaking of an animal (a bird) that figures as a double of the human being, meaning that their lives are mutually connected (cf. “Soul-Animal or Soul-Bird” 1950:1051). Thus Thomas – within the framework of tanato-semiology, the semiology of death – provides certain African examples in which an animal can (symbolically) represent an integral part of a human being, by which the killing of an animal has the same worth as the killing of a particular person ; consequently, that person will die due to the death of his/her animal soul (Thomas 1980, I:15).

soul; post-mortal bird; Southern Slavic folklore beliefs

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