Nama yuxin
Cashinahua · numen · Cashinahua traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
The nama yuxin, the dream-soul, is the soul that stirs while the body sleeps. Loosed from the sleeper, it walks abroad and meets other yuxin, and what it sees on these wanderings is what the person dreams. Because its journeys carry real risk, a dream-soul that strays too far or is seized by a hostile spirit and fails to return leaves its owner ill or dying. It is counted among the several souls that co-inhabit one Cashinahua person, distinct from the eye-soul that ascends to the Inka and from the body-shadow soul that lingers with the corpse. In its nightly departures it makes ordinary sleep a version of the shamanic voyage, a small nightly rehearsal of the soul's separability from the body.
Domains
- dreams
Powers
- roams the world in dreams
Relations
- companion: Bedu yuxinA co-soul of the same living person.Kensinger, Kenneth M. 1995. How Real People Ought to Live. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. (secondary)
- companion: Yuda baka yuxinA co-soul of the same living person.Kensinger, Kenneth M. 1995. How Real People Ought to Live. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. (secondary)
Sources
- The nama yuxin, or dream-soul, leaves the sleeping body to wander and encounter other yuxin; the images it meets are the sleeper's dreams, and its loss causes illness.: Kensinger, Kenneth M. 1995. How Real People Ought to Live. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. (secondary)