Concept
Soul flight
Overview
Soul flight is a technique of ecstasy used by shamans with the aim of entering into a state of trance. During such ecstatic trance it is believed that the shaman's soul has left the body and the corporeal world (compare out-of-body experience) which allows him or her to enter a spiritual world and interact with its denizens. Believing themselves to be travelling into other realms, shamans either descend into an underworld (cf. katabasis or nekyia) or ascend unto an upper world (cf. anabasis) - usually by means of an axis mundi (sometimes actually depicted in concrete form in the accompanying ritual) - and indeed they can, in a sense, be said to be flying through such divine or infernal realms.
By means of such trance states, shamans profess to provide services for their fellow tribespeople and one of the techniques they employ in order to achieve such ASCs is soul flight. They alter their consciousness to connect with the spirit world, which is considered to be the source of their knowledge and power. Among the many services that practitioners believe may be rendered by means of soul flight are: healing, divination, protection, clairvoyance, dream interpretation, mediation between the human and the divine, communicating with spirits of the dead (séance), and escorting deceased souls to the afterlife (psychopomp).
Soul flight, also known as shamanic journeying or magical flight, has been exercised from paleolithic times to the present day. With the passing of time this shamanic practice has evolved into a way for the individual to transcend themselves.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
That this happens to be true according to the letter is evident. Not less true is that which it means spiritually, that in the Soul's liberation from Sin (or in the exodus of the Soul from Sin) it is made holy and free in its powers. But in demonstrating these, the Literal must always go first, as that in whose sense the others are included, and without which it would be impossible and irrational to understand the…
Dante Alighieri, The Banquet
States what Soul flight is; the author is tied to Soul flight in the knowledge graph.
2. It is to this (universal) Soul especially that may be applied these words of Plato:[317] "The general Soul cares for all that is inanimate." The other (individual) souls are in different conditions. "The Soul (adds Plato), circulates around the heavens successively assuming divers forms"; that is, the forms of thought, sense or growth. The part which dominates in the soul fulfills its proper individual function…
Plotinus, Plotinos
States what Soul flight is; the author is tied to Soul flight in the knowledge graph.
Can we not also easily believe that souls, being made perfectly blessed, should be endowed with the power of moving their earthy but incorruptible bodies as they please, with almost spontaneous movement, and of placing them where they please with the readiest action? If the angels transport whatever terrestrial creatures they please from any place they please, and convey them whither they please, is it to be…
of Hippo Augustine, The City of God, Volume I
The author is tied to Soul flight in the knowledge graph.
Related ideas
- Ritual
- Faith
- French Revolution
- Adam and Eve
- Francis of Assisi
- Passion (emotion)
- Western philosophy
- Heaven
- Anno Domini
- Orphism
- Mircea Eliade
- Vocation
- Mass communication
- John Milton
- Spirit (animating force)
- Ancient Greek philosophy
- Literacy
- Middle Ages
- Angel
- New religious movement
- Augustine of Hippo
- Metaphor
- Meister Eckhart
- Odyssey
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Shamanism.