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GHOSTS
Etymology explains even more about the
characteristics attributed to ghosts through the centuries.
Ghost is created in part by way of spirit, and spirit by way
of breath.
The Book of Genesis and many other world mythologies tell
a similar story: God breathed into an inert form, and the
creature then stirred with life. There has also been a
widespread belief that each newborn becomes one of us in
drawing its first breath.
Each dying person leaves the world
by exhaling the last breath, sometimes depicted as a soul
bird. The breath is seen as life. Expelling the final breath
is "giving up the ghost." The spirit is on its way, the body
stays behind.
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So in traditional accounts, spirit was breath, but
more than breath: It became a subtle, immaterial essence that
departs from a person at death. This idea is at the core of
theological dualism, the belief that a person is composed of a
material, perishable body and an immaterial, imperishable essence.
Greek and Christian thought held that imagination, judgment,
appreciation of beauty, and moral sense are functions of the spirit
within humans. The spirit is an individual's higher self, something
of which survives bodily death in many religious accounts. In
Western societies, people tend to speak of this surviving element as
the soul.
Ghosts, however, do not necessarily emanate from the refined spirit
of divinity within. It is fairly common among world cultures to
believe in another spirit that accompanies them throughout life.
This is a shadowy sort of spirit that could be thought of as a
duplicate image of the physical body. The German term doppelganger
clearly conveys the idea of a second spirit that moves mysteriously
through one's life, sometimes serving as the ruthless Mr. Hyde to
the everyday cultivated Dr. Jekyll. This shadow spirit is apt to
leave the body from time to time and linger around a person's place
of death and burial. A ghost, then, might either be a blessed spirit
on a mission of mercy, or the tortured and malevolent image of a
body that suffered an anguished death.
'Who knocks?'
'I, who was beautiful
Beyond all dreams to restore,
I from the roots of the dark thorn am hither,
And knock on the door.'
'Who speaks?' 'I--once was my speech
Sweet as the bird's on the air,
When echo lurks by the waters to heed;
'Tis I speak thee fair.'
Walter de la Mare, The Ghost
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