Cultural views of the soul

Different cultures developed different views of the soul. Paracelsus posited an "elementary body", "sidereal body" or spirit and "eternal spirit" or immortal soul. Both the Chinese and the Egyptians believed that human beings had multiple souls and that these were tied to different parts of the body. This led to the Egyptian's practice of storing mummified organs within canopic jars and to traditional Chinese medicine's preoccupation with organ systems

The ancient Egyptians believed that every person had a soul composed of multiple parts and that these needed to be maintained in order for the deceased to maintain a happy afterlife. Hence the elaborate mummification and funerary rites and the continued practice of making offerings to tombs. The exact schema is unknown because all our knowledge was painstakingly reconstructed from Egyptian texts and thus the greater context was lost.

At its most basic the Egyptian soul was divided into "a body (khat), a spirit (ka), a mind (ba), a shadow (sheut), a heart (ib), and a name (ren)." These parts would be transformed, split and merged through mummification and judgment in the afterlife. There were other parts, like "akh", but the nature of these is not clear and may have changed over time.

Taoism devised a scheme where every person had two sets of souls, the hún and pò. The hún is the ethereal soul, sometimes translated as animus. The pò is the corporeal soul, sometimes translated as anima.

The hún was divided into three parts, the pò seven. The precise symbolism varies between orthodox Taoism, folk religion, yoga, Buddhism and traditional medicine. These souls can be mapped onto any trinity or hebdomad with enough effort.

The hún souls variously correspond to Feng Shui's cosmic trinity of heaven, earth, and man, Aristotle's hierarchy of plant, animal and human, Taoism's three virtues of compassion, frugality, and humility, traditional Chinese medicine's three treasures of essence, breath and spirit, etc. The pò souls variously correspond to the seven orifices in the head, the seven basic emotions, the seven chakras, etc.