Yuda baka yuxin
Cashinahua · numen · Cashinahua traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
The yuda baka yuxin, the body-shadow soul, is the soul tied to the flesh, the shadow or reflected image of the living body. Where the eye-soul rises to the Inka's sky, this soul stays behind, clinging to the corpse and to the places the dead person knew. It is a source of danger to the living, for it becomes one of the yuxin that walk in human shape at night and in the forest twilight; the funeral practices and avoidances of the Cashinahua are largely concerned with persuading it to let go and depart. Its divergent fate, downward and outward into the haunted forest rather than upward to the sky, completes the Cashinahua understanding of a person as an assembly of several souls whose paths part at death.
Domains
- death
- forest haunting
Powers
- clings to the flesh after death
- turns into a wandering forest spirit
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: Nama 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 yuda baka yuxin, or body-shadow soul, remains with the corpse and its haunts after death and becomes a wandering forest yuxin appearing in human form at night, in contrast to the eye-soul that ascends to the sky.: Kensinger, Kenneth M. 1995. How Real People Ought to Live. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. (secondary); Lagrou, Els. 2007. A fluidez da forma. Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks. (secondary)