Are souls the same for everyone?

[Blaze]

I just got thinking while watching s3 of Angel, and how Darla shares a soul with the baby, but still acts like human Darla. Are souls the same for everyone. Are they literally just a piece of consciousness, not associated with specific people, but more so to every human ( and a few vamps) in general.

Or does each entity have its own soul, like Angel shares Liam's soul, or maybe got a brand new soul when he was cursed. And Spike got his own soul too.

The more I think about it, since soul doesn't affect personality, it almost seems as the soul is the same for everyone. It would explain why Darla was the same when she was human and when she was affected by Connor's soul.

 

[bespangeled]

When Darla was human, as I recall, she was cursing god and dying - and then she was turned. Darla with a soul reminded me an awful lot of Buffy - almost a full circle thing. Same need to tell the truth, to see things straight, to accept reality, to love, and to sacrifice.

I'm not sure what a soul contains but it doesn't seem to hold personality - Connor was not that person - not the person Darla was when souled.. Yes, he was raised in a hell dimension, but Darla was a hell dimension. If that was the same soul and souls carried personality I would expect Connor to be very different after he had been in LA with his father. Maybe the soul just connects personality and memories to the light like the demon is attached to the dark.
This would create a fully connected person, rather than a person submissive to the demon.

I can't imagine a demon regretting crimes - Angelus doesn't. I can't see a soul preventing crimes - murders and atrocities everywhere. So if we made it a equilateral triangle...person(ality) would be the apex and dark/demon and light/soul would be base corners. Acute and obtuse could actually explain a lot.

 

[Silverspike]

Imo the whole soul idea in the verse was never thought through all that well. The more time I try and wrap my head around it the more confusing it becomes.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

"The more time I try and wrap my head around it the more confusing it becomes."

It's really not that confusing. Anyone can do good or evil. Those without a soul are more instinctually drawn to evil. Those with a soul are more instinctually drawn to good.

 

[Silverspike]

But Spike did good without a soul just as Warren and many others have done terrible things with the damn plot device. 😀

 

[Skanky Vamp]

But Spike did good without a soul just as Warren and many others have done terrible things with the damn plot device. 😀

Thats the whole point of anyone can do good or evil. It really is a fairly straightforward thing to understand.

 

[Silverspike]

Yes but there's more to it then that in the verse, like where does the soul go when a demon takes over? and other odd little stuf like that.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

Yes but there's more to it then that in the verse, like where does the soul go when a demon takes over? and other odd little stuf like that.

It doesn't 'go' anywhere. Just like your conscience doesnt disappear when under the influence of mind altering substances which could cause you to act in a manner against your conscience.

Then when outside stimuli (uppers, downers, coffee...a spell) neutralizes the affect, your conscience 'returns' and you are left fretting over what you told your boss at the christmas dinner.

If the soul is nothing but the conscience (Joss' words), and even soul-free (Joss' words) vampires still have a conscience (Joss' words) then it stands to reason that 'losing a soul' and being 're-ensouled' is simply nothing more allegorical statements. It's not lost and given back, it's either listened to or ignored. Soul-free is the equivalent to conscience-free, or parlance of the time, care-free.

That is why souled and unsouled they can still remember everything they did. If your 'true soul' vanished from your body, and then it was suddenly returned, it would be as it was when it left your body. But the vamps that have been 're-ensouled' through whatever purpose still retain memories, feelings, thoughts that they previously had.. ergo the soul was there the entire time. It was just not 'active' and being listened to.

Which again goes back to the previous comments that Joss made: everyone can do good or evil. Those that are soul-free instinctively are drawn to evil. While those with a soul are instinctively are drawn to good. Replace soul with conscience and it fits perfectly.

 

[NightLady]

I just got thinking while watching s3 of Angel, and how Darla shares a soul with the baby, but still acts like human Darla. Are souls the same for everyone. Are they literally just a piece of consciousness, not associated with specific people, but more so to every human ( and a few vamps) in general.

Or does each entity have its own soul, like Angel shares Liam's soul, or maybe got a brand new soul when he was cursed. And Spike got his own soul too.

The more I think about it, since soul doesn't affect personality, it almost seems as the soul is the same for everyone. It would explain why Darla was the same when she was human and when she was affected by Connor's soul.

I'm not so sure I understood the question, anyway seeing that having a soul doesn't necessarily mean being 'good', I'd say that or souls are not the same for everyone - so there is the 'good' soul and the 'bad' one, or they ARE the same but they are affected by the different personalities.

 

[thetopher]

It doesn't 'go' anywhere. Just like your conscience doesnt disappear when under the influence of mind altering substances which could cause you to act in a manner against your conscience.

But this is clearly not the case from what is seen on the show. The soul of Angel is seen being returned to him on no less than three occassions; by gypsies and then by Willow in 'Becoming'/'Orpheus'.
Also Angel's soul is kept in a sacred jar for a good chunk of S4, it's physically apart from him, floating in the aether or whatever.
Plus Spike's soul is returned to him by a demon in 'Graves', it shoves it in his chest before the end credits.

I see the soul as more being given the choice to do good or evil. Some people, like Warren or Amy, choose the evil path despite having a soul. Some, like chipped unsoulled Spike, were forced to stop committing evil acts and had to adapt to survive. The chip acted in some ways like a soul, but not in others.

I think that's why demons in general aren't really shown to have souls. Even 'good' demons, like Lorne or Clem seem just naturally inclined towards being good more than 'struggling' with the choice of being good, if that makes any sense.

I also agree that not all souls are equal. If a soul represents conscience/humanity in that regard.

 

[AndrewCrossett]

Souls are not sentient on their own... when a vampire gets his soul back, he has no memories of what the soul was doing during the time it was lost. It was just sort of "out there somewhere."

I do kind of like the idea that a soul is really just a kind of battery or power source, and any soul will work in any body. Since we know a person's mind and consciousness and personality are tied to his or her physical body and not soul (until after death), there shouldn't be any problem with that. In Brian Lynch's "Spike" comic series at IDW, we see Spike giving his soul to Drusilla. (That's not really canon, though.)

I think souls are exclusively a human thing. The only demons who have souls are those who were originally human (like vengeance demons). Regular demons find their moral compass in other ways, for better or worse.

 

[Silverspike]

It doesn't 'go' anywhere. Just like your conscience doesnt disappear when under the influence of mind altering substances which could cause you to act in a manner against your conscience.

Then when outside stimuli (uppers, downers, coffee...a spell) neutralizes the affect, your conscience 'returns' and you are left fretting over what you told your boss at the christmas dinner.

If the soul is nothing but the conscience (Joss' words), and even soul-free (Joss' words) vampires still have a conscience (Joss' words) then it stands to reason that 'losing a soul' and being 're-ensouled' is simply nothing more allegorical statements. It's not lost and given back, it's either listened to or ignored. Soul-free is the equivalent to conscience-free, or parlance of the time, care-free.

That is why souled and unsouled they can still remember everything they did. If your 'true soul' vanished from your body, and then it was suddenly returned, it would be as it was when it left your body. But the vamps that have been 're-ensouled' through whatever purpose still retain memories, feelings, thoughts that they previously had.. ergo the soul was there the entire time. It was just not 'active' and being listened to.

Which again goes back to the previous comments that Joss made: everyone can do good or evil. Those that are soul-free instinctively are drawn to evil. While those with a soul are instinctively are drawn to good. Replace soul with conscience and it fits perfectly.

If thats the case then what did Jennys spell do? What did that orb contain?

 

[Skanky Vamp]

If thats the case then what did Jennys spell do?

Did the spell to enable him to hear his soul/conscience again

What did that orb contain?

The vampire equivalent to coffee or your 'sober up' drug of choice 

But this is clearly not the case from what is seen on the show. The soul of Angel is seen being returned to him on no less than three occassions; by gypsies and then by Willow in 'Becoming'/'Orpheus'.
Also Angel's soul is kept in a sacred jar for a good chunk of S4, it's physically apart from him, floating in the aether or whatever.
Plus Spike's soul is returned to him by a demon in 'Graves', it shoves it in his chest before the end credits.

But again, in sticking with the narrative as Angel was originally envisioned to be an alcoholic and his soul is him getting sober, losing the soul would be the equivalent to falling off the wagon. Same as I said to Silverspike, what you see as the soul is just the equivalent of coffee. It is not the soul per se, but that which enables one to listen to the soul. The soul is just the allegorical term used for it. No different than many of the allegorical comments as referenced in the Bible.

It's more poetic to say 'we gave him back his soul' than to say, 'we plied him with coffee good and proper and he finally started seeing the sense of it all'

 

[Silverspike]

"Did the spell to enable him to hear his soul/conscience again"

I took it that the soul was contained within that orbe. It was flagged up as some kind of container.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

"Did the spell to enable him to hear his soul/conscience again"

I took it that the soul was contained within that orbe. It was flagged up as some kind of container.

Yeah... again.. its more poetic. But it doesnt explain humans, and how 'soul-free' humans can still function. My answer does. It wasnt the soul in the jar. That's why 'a moment of perfect happiness' would cause Angel to lose his soul and a 'moment of perfect despair or misery or whatever it was' Darla gave him would snap him out of the funk. Darla was his AA meeting. He was wanting to drink again then remembered the consequences.

The soul, as per the show's definition, is always there. That explains the Spike anomaly, and to a lesser degree Harmony.

 

[thetopher]

The Orb of Thessela and the Mor Ping are both specifically described as sacred containers for a soul.
You might want to explain it away as flowery language for 'magic coffee' but really magic in the Buffyverse is fairly clear; you have you're ingredients, you ask for something in a foreign language and then you channel magic of whatever. There's no 'metaphor' in magic, it's prosaic, it does what it says.

Plus, and this is a seperate issue, you're saying that if somebody dies from a vampire bite, then their soul stays in their rotting corpse but is just...overridden by the demon? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, what is it about a vampire bite that prevents the soul from leaving a body?

 

[Silverspike]

"The soul, as per the show's definition, is always there. That explains the Spike anomaly, and to a lesser degree Harmony."

So the whole "I will return your soul" to Spike in season 6 meant nothing then?

 

[Skanky Vamp]

So the whole "I will return your soul" to Spike in season 6 meant nothing then?

I did not say that. It was the same as Angel's curse. The returning of the 'soul' is the same as an intoxicated person getting sober through external influences.

The demon (or whatever you want to call him) put in Spike the ability to listen to his soul and the propensity towards doing the 'good' thing. For the most part, by that time Spike had already been listening to his soul (soul as defined by the show) in protecting Dawn, fighting the good fight, etc. What the demon did was to make it a permanent thing. So he was permanently drawn to the 'good'.

The phrase 'return your soul' is just semantics. It's poetic license. It's like when people say "I will die without you" or "heartbroken" in my eyes it's the same thing.

But I am in no way saying there was not a magical element to the re-souling. Or that it was only a placebo.

 

[The Bronze]

So which bit of Buffy was in heaven if souls stay with the body?

 

[Skanky Vamp]

So which bit of Buffy was in heaven if souls stay with the body?

The spirit. As it is the spirit and not the soul that animates us. The spirit is what gives us life, the soul is the cumulative effect of our memories, emotions, responses, etc. Her spirit was called back from what she perceived as heaven and reanimated her body. That is why there were no memories of the event and only emotions, and why she could only "think" she was in heaven.