But the popular creed, in spite of the most emphatic testimony of Scripture, is that the soul is in bondage so long as it is united to a body, a creed entirely in accordance with that of Buddism.
If the body be but the cage, as a poet[[1]] of our own has been pleased to call it, in which dwells the imprisoned soul, it is quite possible for the soul to change its cage. If the body be but a vesture clothing the soul, as the Buddist asserts, it is not improbable that it may occasionally change its vesture.
[1] VAUGHN, Sitex Scintillans.
This is self-evident, and thus have arisen the countless tales of transformation and transmigration which are found all over the world. That the same view of the body as a mere clothing of the soul was taken by our Teutonic and Scandinavian ancestors, is evident even from the etymology of the words leichnam, lîkhama, used to express the soulless body.
I have already spoken of the Norse word hamr, I wish now to make some further remarks upon it. Hamr is represented in Anglo-Saxon by hama, homa, in Saxon by hamo, in old High German by hamo, in old French by homa, hama, to which are related the Gothic gahamon, ufar-hamon, ana-hamon, {Greek e?ndúesðai}, {Greek e?pendúesðai}; and-hamon, af-hamon, {Greek a?pekdúein} {Greek e?kdúesðai?} thence also the old High German hemidi, and the modern Hemde, garment. In composition we find this word, as lîk-hagnr, in old Norse; in old High German lîk-hamo, Anglo-Saxon lîk-hama, and flæsc-hama, Old Saxon, lîk-hamo, modern German Leich-nam, a body, i. e. a garment of flesh, precisely as the bodies of birds are called in old Norse fjaðr-hamr, in Anglo-Saxon feðerhoma, in Old Saxon fetherhamo, or feather-dresses and the bodies of wolves are called in old Norse ûlfshamr, and seals’ bodies in Faroëse kôpahamr. The significance of the old verb að hamaz is now evident; it is to migrate from one body to another, and hama-skipti is a transmigration of the soul. The method of this transmigration consisted in simply investing the body with the skin of the animal into which the soul was to migrate. When Loki, the Northern god of evil, went in quest of the stolen Idunn, he borrowed of Freyja her falcon dress, and at once became, to all intents and purposes, a falcon. Thiassi pursued him as he left Thrymheimr, having first taken upon him an eagle’s dress, and thereby become an eagle.
In order to seek Thor’s lost hammer, Loki borrowed again of Freyja her feather dress, and as be flew away in it, the feathers sounded as they winnowed the breeze (fjaðrhamr dunði).
In like manner Cædmon speaks of an evil spirit flying away in feather-dress: “þät he mid feðerhomon fleôgan meahte, windan on wolkne” (Gen. ed. Gr. 417), and of an angel, “þuo þar suogan quam engil þes alowaldon obhana fun radure faran an feðerhamon” (Hêlj. 171, 23), the very expression made use of when speaking of a bird: “farad an feðarhamun” (Hêlj. 50,11).
The soul, in certain cases, is able to free itself from the body and to enter that of beast or man—in this form stood the myth in various theological systems.
Among the Finns and Lapps it is not uncommon for a magician to fall into a cataleptic condition, and during the period his soul is believed to travel very frequently in bodily form, having assumed that of any animal most suitable for its purpose. I have given instances in a former chapter. The same doctrine is evident in most cases of lycanthropy. The patient is in a state of trance, his body is watched, and it remains motionless, but his soul has migrated into the carcase of a wolf, which it vivifies, and in which it runs its course. A curious Basque story shows that among this strange Turanian people, cut off by such a flood of Aryan nations from any other members of its family, the same superstition remains. A huntsman was once engaged in the chase of it bear among the Pyreneean peaks, when Bruin turned suddenly on him and hugged him to death, but not before he had dealt the brute its mortal wound. As the huntsman expired, he breathed his soul into the body of the bear, and thenceforward ranged the mountains as a beast.
One of the tales of the Sanskrit book of fables, the Pantschatantra, affords such a remarkable testimony to the Indian belief in metempsychosis, that I am tempted to give it in abstract.