Souls

[PrincessZombie]

Okay, I just bought season one on DVD, and I was rewatching the second episode and noticed something strange. When Giles is explaining the origins of vampires, he says, "The books tell the last demon to leave this reality fed off a human, mixed their blood. He was a human form possessed, infected by the
demon's soul." So he's saying that the demons had souls? And then, when the Master is making Luke his instrument for the Harvest, he says to him, "My blood is your blood. My soul is your soul."

So are they just figuratively speaking? Because I thought that demons, or vampires at least, were souless, with the exception of Angel, and later Spike.

Or maybe it was just wrong wording, since it was at the very beginning of the first season, just a fluke. But I'd like to see what everyone else thinks.

 

[Black Eye Guy]

What I think that means is that The last vampire fed on a human and gave it part of its demon soul (soul prob was also the wrong word to use), because the demon would have had to come from somewhere. But the soul that Angel and Spike have are their Human Soul. The Vampire Angelus gets cursed with Liams soul, and the Vampire Spike goes and gets Williams soul back. And as we see in season 4 of Angel in "Orpheus" both souls are inside Liams body, cuz they fight, with Liam/Angel winning the fight.

 

[Winifred]

The line "...infected by the demon's soul" to me was probably figureatively(sp?) speaking and could've been explained better, as I was led to believe that no demon's had soul's. And like Black Eye Guy said, Angel and Spike had "human" souls, so I think the wording was just a little wrong.

 

[Faldor]

its a mistake on behalf of...

its a mistake on behalf of the writer of the original text 😉

 

[The Arcane]

I'd tend to agree with what others have said, in that the use of the word "soul" when talking about the essence of a demon is misleading. Certainly, whatever a demon has that passes for it's soul cannot be considered the same thing as the human soul. I'd imagine they simply used the word for want of a better description.

 

[StuckinTraffic]

I think at the beginning, they really hadn't thought out the whole mythos of the Buffy 'verse yet.....probably the word they should have used would be 'essence'? That would have made more sense, but they chose to use 'soul' instead.....not being farsighted there! Later, it became necessary to explain Angel, and they ended up having to use soul again....in his case, I think that was the right choice. Angel said himself that when you become a vampire, your soul is gone, all that remains is the demon.

 

[Mesektet Ra]

I think what they mean when they say a demon doesn't have a soul is a demon not having a conscience - a soul in the Buffyverse is a conscience, a driving force for a person to do right instead of going wrong. There is evidence to the contrary, of course [Faith, Spike], but for the most part, this is what the Buffyverse constitues as a soul.

I think demons have an essence [see 'Get it Done'; how else could the Slayers have been created?], but no moral 'soul', as humans do. So when the Master or Giles says something to the effect, they're referring to a demons essence.

This also gives reason for the existance of the vampire - a dead human shell inhabited by a demon essence, or 'soul'. It makes sense.