First off, the biggest question I’d like to ask by far is if souls can be completely corrupted (changed forcibly from what they were before) by an external force? Beyond that, in the same vein, can a soul be destroyed utterly? Can a soul be 100%-guaranteed imprisoned and held forever, no matter what?
I imagine that people who travel astrally will know the answers to these questions, but who knows!
Depends on your definition of “soul”. What does this word mean to you?
If your definition is “spirit” as in, emanation from some kind of Source, tao or god, then no, no and no.
If your definition is a spirit including one or more subtle bodies, those subtle bodies can receive damage. The only way to confine them is to trick them into thinking they are confined. They are not physical so using analogies from the physical world don’t really work.
What it takes to damage them gets complicated and varies depending on what subtle body receives damage. They also tend to heal, or change is not such a big a deal as it is for a physical body that must operate within specific parameters. They are also not alone and have methods for self protection.
Some, but not that much - the astral is basically the mental level so the astral body is still a relatively deep level of incarnation, it does not give that much greater access to higher levels, as it’s hard to see what you don’t already have the capacity to understand from a mental perspective. It’s very good for exploring the Earth and locally known areas. It gets all very dificult to interpret when you access new information for which you don’t already have mental constructs in which to place them in context.
An example of this are that batshit crazy sounding “angels” from the book of Enoch that to modern reading actually just look like UAP craft.
Sorry. Should have defined this. I guess I mean any spirit with some kind of intelligence, emotion, and self-awareness. For now though, let’s just keep things simple and say the spirits of regular human beings like you and me.
Would this change your answer? Also, what makes you so sure? How would you define “subtle bodies”?
So, I think we’re using the same definition pretty much.
The model I use is the one from taoism where a spirit, which is pure consciousness, incarnates down into layers of subtle bodies, which allow the spirit to access the abilities of those bodies and interact with other spirits also using those bodies at that level.
There are multiple models following this general concept, some use different numbers and names for the subtle bodies. You can search on the internet and you’ll find a few, like this one. https://www.mindisthemaster.com/subtle-bodies/ for example.
The mental and emotional bodies are examples of these. meaning, e.g., that someone has emotions because their spirit is using an emotional body which is the mechanism providing emotional energy. An emotional body is a type of subtle body.
To become physically incarnate, a spirit (which is a soul by virtue of having subtle bodies now) can take on an energy body, and then a physical body. Dying is the reverse process of leaving the physical and energy bodies. In the Tibetan Book of the dead it’s thought that the spirit leaves every layer in subtle body as well before reincarnating back down through all these as well. I think it’s possible for a soul to reincarnate without this being fully realised, and hence retain some information between incarnations.
There’s no such thing as a “human spirit” in my worldview. Being human is a thing a spirit can do, that is all, it’s an experience you are having.
This my personal philosophy. I’m not gong to say it’s Truth™ as I think every person has to operate on their own models, also call “worldview”, and find out what works for them through extensive reading and personal meditation. I call this my “working model” and it could change tomorrow, so don’t just believe anything I say, or anyone says, I’d suggest listening to as much as you can find and then make up your own mind.
I have developed my personal philosophy over 30 years of reading, qigong practice, shamanic journeying, various new age silliness and finally occult philosophy. There is no end to this learning, no final answer, anything you learn naturally is being filtered through this somewhat limited human gestalt being made of many bodies, each with it’s own purpose. For all we know there’s more understanding not available to us because we just don’t have the body/tools to do it. Like a blind man not being able to know what colors are, how would we understand it? We don’t usually know, in this life.
So, not really, as in order to have something to change, a spirit has to have taken on one or more subtle bodies, and it’s the bodies that change.
As for the change, the terminology you used implied human emotional judgement that the change should be somehow unwanted or “bad” by the spirit: “Corrupted”, destroyed", “imprisoned”.
However, in order to judge these changes “bad” implies that the spirit must be using an emotional body to have the tools to make that judgement, and that the changes make sense to the mental layer as being contrary to that gestalt being’s goals.
So lets say you are talking about an incarnate human, and by saying you want the “soul” to be “corrupted”, the condition must be met that the change affects subtle bodies in a way that both, a) lingers between incarnations, AND b) is unwanted by any of those possible incarnations - is that right?
I think you’d have to start by knowing that soul very very well to understand what it’s about, so you can get in it’s way strategically. You’d basically have to cause such significant trauma that the mental-emotional damage created enough of a lasting memory to bleedthrough into other lives.
Fair. Would you say then that there is significant disagreement in the occult community on this matter, or would you say that the majority would agree that spirits cannot be forcibly changed, destroyed, or trapped without their agreement for it to happen?
Yep, that’s correct.
Which, if the soul knows that it can’t be imprisoned and doesn’t desire such trauma, would be impossible, right?
Generally, those that believe in spirit as a thing generally feel that it’s something that is not particularly related to a personality at all.
Different religions use different models of reality, some don’t see that spirits even exist, some see all of reality as a manifestation of only your consciousness and that there are no other being sin the universe at all.
The sort of people who think you can trap a soul tend to a more Christian model, and some think they can “sell their souls to the devil” - if you can sell it it can definitely be trapped.
This model is usually disagreed with by occultists, at least in these parts. The way I put it, you can’t sell what you don’t own.
I should also clarify, it’s not that you can’t cause this level of change, but can you do it as a human to another human - magickally - given limited understanding of what you’re doing.
Yes you basically have to trick it. An example of this is the theory of “reincarnation traps”, that cause a newly dead person to “go to the light” thinking they’re going to family, heaven or what not, and they get mind-wiped and reincarnated on Earth. In a sense this model, also called “prison planet” is saying that being human IS the spirit trap.
Here’s an older thread where people discuss souls some more:
Edit to add: while you’re waiting for more opinions, the search feature here will get you lots more discussions. A god one to look up is discussion on the reality of Heaven and hell, which could also be considered soul traps - astral locations made by humans for humans that people put themselves in through belief.