More Metaphysical, Buffyversical Questions

[goldenboy]

This is kind of a tired, tired old repeat, heh. Just wanted to revisit this again and see if I'm missing anything.

It's an old argument around here about whether or not Angel/Angelus was two beings or one. I've had this discussion with myself several times, lol. I'm still not convinced it's a settled matter. You guys can tell me where I'm driving off the rails into nonsensical oblivion...

The shows' characters react to Angel as having an evil demon inside him. But that might seem to be just an emotional reaction, a metaphorical description. Angelus is a vampire. He is in fact a demon in a human body. A "new", unadulterated Buffyverse soul doesn't seem to be a person, in and of itself. So, merely adding a soul wouldn't seem to be literally adding a second being to the mix. The Buffyverse soul doesn't transform Angelus into a human being. It apparently just gives this vampire "moral radar", or a conscience. Or is something else happening?

What is a person, in the 'verse? A human body and mind, that has a soul and has experiences and "grows". Somehow the Buffyverse soul is personalized, it's married to a body and mind and the three act together to create a unique, irreplaceable person. Is that what's happening? Is a personalized Buffyverse soul in fact a "being", a person? Like Buffy after The Gift"”she died, yet she seemed to retain something of her personhood in death. Willow had to retrieve a specific soul to revive her, right? Or, is a personalized soul something less than a person? Did Buffy in fact cease being precisely Buffy when she died? Do Buffyverse humans cease being "beings" when they die?

If a personalized soul is a person or "being", could it be that there are in fact two beings in Liam's old body? The demon Angelus, and also this newer soul that has been personalized by Liam's body and memories and Angelus's memories as a vamp...calling itself Angel. Just don't know. Maybe I don't know what persons or beings are, lol.

If this second scenario is true, is ensouled Spike in fact two beings in one body as well, just like Angel/Angelus? If ensouled vamps are two beings, this seems odd somehow. Spike the vamp would have willingly sort of handed over control of his body to a newly ensouled, newly developing, separate "person", right?

Seems like the soul is either merely interacting with a vampire, altering its nature...or the soul (newly married to a mind, memories) actually becomes a new being"”apart from the demon. Which idea feels more satisfying? Is one of these scenarios clearly false? Am I not using terms correctly? Hmm...

 

[Jules]

My opinion on this would be that there is one person and one demon in Angel's body. And the same goes for Spike.

Not being knowledgeable on this or anything, but I always assumed that a soul was a person's entity (for better word). And that a person's soul was only released when they died. Following that line of thinking, it would be almost impossible to create a new soul. Each soul (in whatever dimension it ended up after a death) would already been trained with a persons personality and human traits.

For example, Liam's soul left his body and in it's place a demon took up residents. Then he was cursed and the gypsies called forth his spirit to re-enter his body. But there was no way to release the demon. So both now reside in him.

If that makes any sence 🙂

 

[goldenboy]

Well, that was my assumption before coming to the B Boards, but I've read arguments around here that the Gypsies cursed Angel with a sort of generic, "new" soul, and that Buffyverse souls are impersonal"”at first.

Now, when that demon ensouled Spike:

VOICE: You have endured the required trials.

SPIKE: (weakly) Bloody right I have. So, you give me what I want. Make me what I was... so Buffy can get what she deserves.

VOICE: Very well. We will return your soul.

It didn't say, "We will give you a soul". The demon seems to be implying the return of a specific soul, presumably William's. But do we know for a fact this is the correct interpretation?

I dunno. If there are two beings, Spike, the soulless demon we've known throughout the series would appear to have lost control of William's body in a sense, right? He's sort of out of the picture now, like Angel would appear to control Angelus.

 

[The Arcane]

I think we have seen far too much on both Buffy and Angel to ever assume that the vampire and the human are different entities. The vampire is simply the human it was "reborn" with demonic abilities and a "demon" inside in place of it's human soul.

The best way to describe said "demon" would be an essence, rather than a being. Whatever it is it certainly has no sentient thought of it's own.

Remember the beast that Angel turned into in Pylea. According to Wesley that was the full form of the vampire demon that existed inside Angel. However this was not an intelligent being, merely a savage beast reacting on instinct. Hardly what you would call Angelus. If Angelus was actually the vampire demon inside then wouldn't the vampire show some kind of intelligence? Or at least be able to speak?

We probably got the best descriptions of what happens when a human becomes a vampire from Spike on a couple of occasions ...

From Fool For Love:

Becoming a vampire is a profound and powerful experience. I could feel this new strength coursing through me. Getting killed made me feel alive for the very first time. I was through living by society's rules. Decided to make a few of my own.

And from Crush:

DAWN
I'm not a child. I'm not even human. Not originally.
SPIKE
Yeah, well, originally I was. I got over it. Doesn't seem to me it matters very much how you start out.

So certainly from the individual vampire's point of view they consider themselves to be the same person they were when they were human, just with different demonic moral values.

So the way i see it is that when a human is bitten and becomes a vampire he or she is infected by the essence of a demon, a being of evil but no sentient will, just instinct. This entity infests the corpse of the human and brings it back in vampire form, but without it's original human soul. Same being, same body, same mind, different rules.

 

[goldenboy]

I tend to agree Watcher, all things said and done. It seems to me like my opposing, 2 beings theory depends on knowing the true nature of the Buffyverse soul. Even then, it's just more speculation.

So, an ensouled vamp is a single, sentient entity. And a Buffyverse soul is not a being, in and of itself. Nor is a pure vampire demon, it seems (not a sentient one anyway). In this conception, a demon and a soul are (for practical purposes) just two essence types. The essence acts as a sort of morality compass for a being with a body and mind.

So, do particular souls (essences) become unique, irreplaceable, personalized? It wouldn't seem like Angelus would need to be cursed with Liam's retrieved soul. Any old soul/essence would still "infect" Angelus, tweaking his moral compass, interact with the memories in that particular brain again.

Did Willow really need to retrieve the particular soul that had been in Angel when Angelus appeared again in Angel season 4?

Did Buffy cease to be an individual when she died? Maybe she did. She gave a fairly vague description her memories about "heaven"...but she actually had something like sentience, a little bit of self awareness it seems. Something would seem to have tagged along with the soul, or tweaked the soul...

 

[Angel's vision]

Buffy said back in season one or two i can't remember that when a demon enters your body ie vampire, it takes over and retains that persons memories and aspects of the original hoasts personality.So ineffect the Demon takes what memories there are from the host and goes from there.
I can't see that Gypies or willow can in effect conjure up a soul(create one).The soul is unique and it is safe to say that the Gypies cursed Angelus with the soul of Liam.
The case of Illryria is an example, not a perfect one but in her case she said that she had Fred's memories, she wasn't Fred, but she was aware of that fact.For a Vampire it isn't.It thinks it is the human it once was, but evil, therefore no soul.I think the Vampire demon inside mimics the original host, because it has the original hosts memories.

 

[Tucker's Cousin]

LOL! I could spend my whole time on this board following around after The Watcher and saying, "Yeah, what he said." This time I'm going to add my own little piece. Apologies if it's tainted by my Christian beliefs.

A human being is made up of three interconnecting parts, body, mind and soul. The soul is that part of us that is "created in God's image". That is, it is intensely moral and probably at birth has no personal traits of the person it is born into. Through life it interacts with our bodies through the filter of our minds to create a unique personality. Our souls influence our minds morally and the choices we make with our minds train our souls. In this way, our personalities are created in both our minds and souls. When we die the soul is the part of us that departs into the afterlife, whatever that my be. Our souls at this point are our essence, our personality. It may just go on to float in the ether somewhere or it may go to a heaven or hell depending on what you believe. The body and mind are dead.

In the case of vampires, this soul has left the dead body and mind and gone on to whatever afterlife it has in store for it, but an anti-soul is injected into the body. Just as the soul is created in God's image and wants to do right, this new element is created of evil and wants to do evil. As I stated above, our personalities are developed in both our minds and our souls, so this new being continues to have the same personality as the human it was. Only now it has an evil entity interacting with the body and mind.

With Angel and Spike, their souls were drawn back from wherever they went to on death and reinserted into their bodies. We know from the episode The Dark Age that the evil anti-soul, or demon, still resides in them, but somehow the "goodness" of the soul must override the need to do evil that this gives rise to. I say this because Spike and Angel mostly tend to act like they no longer have an evil essence at the steering wheel. From a Christian perspective this makes sense because our souls were created in God's image, He who is all powerful. Whereas the anti-soul is created of Satan or similar such lesser being. As Christians, we believe that even we have power over Satan. Satan's only power comes from getting us to give into temptation through tricks and lies.

Sorry, that last part turned into a bit of a sermon, but I was just trying to illustrate why Spike and Angel rarely displayed any sign that they had a demon living inside them as well as a soul.

 

[The Arcane]

Ooooh, three really great posts, each that raises fantastic issues! Loving this thread! 😀

Okay, first up, Goldenboy. It is my belief that each individual human being has a specific soul. The one that they were born with originally and the one they lose upon becoming a vampire. In both cases of a vampire having their soul restored it was referred to as being "their" soul and not simply "a" soul. My impression is that in both cases the specific souls of Liam and William were retrieved from the ether and replaced into their bodies.

The rest of what you posted i will get to in answering Tucker's Cousin.

Angel's Vision, what you mentioned is probably one of the two quotes that has always confused the issue of what a vampire is in the Buffyverse and the reason why Goldenboy is asking this question in the first place.

The two quotes are as follows. The first made by Giles in The Harvest:

GILES
You listen to me! Jesse is dead. You have to remember that when you see him, you're not looking at your friend. You're looking at the thing that killed him.

The second you brought up yourself, as said by Buffy in Lie To Me:

BUFFY
Well, I've got a news flash for you, brain trust: that's not how it works. You die and a demon sets up shop in your old house and it walks and it talks and it remembers your life, but it's not you.

In both those quotes in is strongly suggested that the vampire is an entirely seperate being who just happens to retain the memories of the person they stole their physical body from. However everything else we know, from the evidence i already put forward concerning Angel and Spike to what happened with Darla when she was resurrected as a human, suggests one individual being, not two.

It's my opinion that Giles honestly believed what he said that night about Jesse. Until they found out about Angel not even the Watchers Council would have really understood the process of becoming a vampire. It's not like they had ever had the chance to really learn anything about it. I think they honestly believed what they said, it was just inaccurate. Not to mention easier on the slayer who they had to train to kill these creatures. Making a distinct line between human and demon would make the act of slaying them all that much easier.

As for what Buffy told Ford, well she wasn't entirely accurate but not far from the truth either. When you die a demon does enter your body and then you are reborn a new entity, different to the person you were as a human. She maybe said what she said to scare Ford out of what he was planning or maybe she still didn't really get the details of the process herself at that point.

However you look at it there is much more evidence to back the single entity theory than there is to suggest that two sentient beings make up the vampire psyche.

Now, Tucker's Cousin. Firstly i should point out to you that i'm not a Christian myself but i have absolute respect for your beliefs. If i'm honest i would have to say that i don't really have a faith anymore, certainly not one that i follow strictly, but the only faith i have followed before is a wiccan belief system. I quote from my beliefs all the time so don't ever apologise for letting yours influence your posts here. 🙂

The majority of what you said i agree with 100%. I tend to look at the human being as being mind, body and soul as well, although with less of the God connection.

Now, i tend to believe that the mind is the personality, the memory, and so on whilst the soul is your morality, your sense of what is right and wrong and the part of you that feels the guilt or pride of your actions.

When you become a vampire the body and mind remain but the soul is lost. The demonic entity that now exists within you takes the place of your soul and effects you both physically (giving you the teeth and the bumpies 🙂) and mentally, altering the way your mind works and removing all sense of human conscience and morality.

Going back to the second part of what Goldenboy asked, when Buffy died she died a normal human death (relatively speaking anyway) and so her mind and soul were never seperated. They left her body together as is the natural way of things and she moved on to the afterlife, whatever you may view that as. So yes, she remained herself in mind, the mind simply was no longer in her physical body.

 

[goldenboy]

Alright, this is getting interesting. Thanks you guys! I feel like my brain's just barely holding on here, but I'll soldier on...

TC"”despite your terminology, a demon"”an anti-soul"”must be virtually nothing, metaphysically speaking. It's not on par with a soul, like you've said.

Cos otherwise, couldn't an anti-soul theoretically grow and evolve with the mind and body as well, to become an individualized mind/anti-soul combination? Apparently not in any significant, permanent way...not like a soul can. After the vamp's destruction, the demon (anti-soul) presumably will revert to insentient impersonality. Whereas the soul apparently can live on, attached to a mind after death.

Minds and souls can migrate intact to heaven or a hell dimension or the ether (a "personalized" soul).

So, we apparently don't know who creates Buffyverse souls, where they come from exactly. They appear within humans at birth and can be retrieved at times. The monks created Dawn from an essence called the key. Did the key act in place of a soul? Was it in fact a soul?

If they literally created a new human being with a soul, the monks seem like the most powerful beings in the 'verse. Unless they were merely invoking a Power, The Power, whoever, to do its will...

 

[The Arcane]

Alright, this is getting interesting. Thanks you guys! I feel like my brain's just barely holding on here, but I'll soldier on...

TC"”despite your terminology, a demon"”an anti-soul"”must be virtually nothing, metaphysically speaking. It's not on par with a soul, like you've said.

Cos otherwise, couldn't an anti-soul theoretically grow and evolve with the mind and body as well, to become an individualized mind/anti-soul combination? Apparently not in any significant, permanent way...not like a soul can. After the vamp's destruction, the demon (anti-soul) presumably will revert to insentient impersonality. Whereas the soul apparently can live on, attached to a mind after death.

I think referring to the "demon" as a anti-soul might confuse the issue a little. The entity no doubt performs a similar function and causes the soul to exit the body unnaturally but beyond that the differences outway the similarities.

I would say that referring to the demon as a type of evil infection might be more accurate, or perhaps a drug. A thing that infests your body and causes you to act differently to what you might normally do. That is still not an entirely accurate analogy but it works a little better than trying to apply it's form as a type of "soul".

Minds and souls can migrate intact to heaven or a hell dimension or the ether (a "personalized" soul).

So, we apparently don't know who creates Buffyverse souls, where they come from exactly. They appear within humans at birth and can be retrieved at times. The monks created Dawn from an essence called the key. Did the key act in place of a soul? Was it in fact a soul?

If they literally created a new human being with a soul, the monks seem like the most powerful beings in the 'verse. Unless they were merely invoking a Power, The Power, whoever, to do its will...

This is applying a little of my personal beliefs here but i tend to think that nobody creates your soul outside of the biological actions of your parents when they concieve you. It is simply a part of your being. Therefore when the monks created Dawn as a human she automatically had all the thing that make up a human being, soul inclusive. No higher power involved.

 

[Angel's vision]

I agree with Tucker's Cousin, being christian myself i hold to the veiw he typed also, The Watcher, Those were the quotes i was refering that you typed.
I also agree with what Giles said in The Harvest.It sums it up well.

 

[Tucker's Cousin]

Alright, this is getting interesting. Thanks you guys! I feel like my brain's just barely holding on here, but I'll soldier on...

TC"”despite your terminology, a demon"”an anti-soul"”must be virtually nothing, metaphysically speaking. It's not on par with a soul, like you've said.

Cos otherwise, couldn't an anti-soul theoretically grow and evolve with the mind and body as well, to become an individualized mind/anti-soul combination? Apparently not in any significant, permanent way...not like a soul can. After the vamp's destruction, the demon (anti-soul) presumably will revert to insentient impersonality. Whereas the soul apparently can live on, attached to a mind after death.

Minds and souls can migrate intact to heaven or a hell dimension or the ether (a "personalized" soul).

So, we apparently don't know who creates Buffyverse souls, where they come from exactly. They appear within humans at birth and can be retrieved at times. The monks created Dawn from an essence called the key. Did the key act in place of a soul? Was it in fact a soul?

If they literally created a new human being with a soul, the monks seem like the most powerful beings in the 'verse. Unless they were merely invoking a Power, The Power, whoever, to do its will...

Firstly, I'm afraid I can't analyse this topic without colouring it with my own beliefs. Hence, I agree with you on the demon/anti-soul being smoething less than a soul. The human soul is something gifted to us by God, or similar higher power if you don't believe in the Christian concept of God. The demon/anti-soul is something created of evil merely for the purpose of doing evil on earth. The creators of such an entity would have no care for the host being's personality or anything, so it's entirely feasible that it would revert to insentient impersonality.

I hadn't really thought about Dawn's soul. The fact that they were monks and "created" her in a seemingly spiritual ritual rather than by magic, might suggest that they called on a higher power to "bless" their creation as if it was His own.

 

[goldenboy]

Firstly, I'm afraid I can't analyse this topic without colouring it with my own beliefs. Hence, I agree with you on the demon/anti-soul being smoething less than a soul. The human soul is something gifted to us by God, or similar higher power if you don't believe in the Christian concept of God. The demon/anti-soul is something created of evil merely for the purpose of doing evil on earth. The creators of such an entity would have no care for the host being's personality or anything, so it's entirely feasible that it would revert to insentient impersonality.

I hadn't really thought about Dawn's soul. The fact that they were monks and "created" her in a seemingly spiritual ritual rather than by magic, might suggest that they called on a higher power to "bless" their creation as if it was His own.

It was my Christian background that probably created my cognitive dissonance with the Buffyverse in the first place. That's why I thought your interpretation was a clever one. The Buffyverse soul seems to be panning out, behaving like you'd expect in Christian cosmology or whatever you'd want to call it. It's apparently personalized, married to a particular mind, consciousness.

It's the nature of Buffyverse demons that conflicts with my understanding of the Christian conception. I'd think of demons as fallen angels, or at least pre-human spiritual beings granted sentience and free will who abandoned, rejected God. All products of God, not Satan. They're subject to God's punishment and will, but still presumably can think for themselves, are granted permission to tempt, torment humans...

In Christian terms, the Buffyverse demon seems more like a metaphor for human weakness, or Satan whispering in your ear or whatever. Or, an anti-soul"”a sort of evil, infectious virus created by Satan. Neat.

Seems to me that one could interpret the existence of Dawn as being some of the best evidence for a Highest Power in the 'verse.

 

[goldenboy]

Alright. More ponderous speculation about metaphysical minutiae. Just following the train of thought that's been established. Again, just tell me if I'm missing something. Has it ever been clearly stated on the shows what, if anything, happens to a vampire victim's soul after the vamp is dusted? If it has, the rest of this post is completely pointless, lol.

I have a theory. That ritual at the end of Angel season 1 revived Darla as a living human. Retrieving Darla's soul seems like a piece of cake. It's just out there in the ether somewhere, right? How exactly did WR&H recreate Darla's body and mind? (more evidence of a Highest Power? Or just a Higher Power?) Did Darla's mind still exist somewhere? Maybe it did...

Darla seemed to appear to Connor as a ghost after she staked herself, right? Is she the ghost of a human or the ghost of a vampire? How can there be such a thing as a ghost of a vampire if the vampire "anti-soul" reverts to insentience after death? There would be no proper "vessel" for the mind"”like a soul. This would seem to suggest that a vampire victim's mind is somehow actually reunited with their soul after the vamp is dusted. So, Darla's just a regular ghost now. But how can a mind exist independently of a body and a soul"”even for a nanosecond? Maybe it's an instantaneous reunification"”like the victim's soul just swoops in, filling the vacuum left by the dusted body...

Therefore, WR&H could theoretically have had access to Darla's "human" ghost when she was dusted the first time, by Angel. The only tricky part is her body...