When thinking about this, remember first off, this is a religious ritual, and so it might just be a ritual phrase.
More generally, though, lets look at what happens in the Buffyverse when a person becomes a vampire. First of all, the person dies. His soul goes to heaven or whatever. Then, an incorporeal demon enters the corpse, taking the place of the dead guy’s soul. The new vampire has the person’s memories, and in a lot of cases, even their personalities, but they have a demon’s mindset, not a human’s, and a demon’s sense of morality (which is pretty much lacking).
So, a vampire’s “soul” is the demon inside him or her. The demon serves the same purpose in the vampiric body that the soul does in the human one.
Okay, okay, I can buy that the Master was just repeating some incantation mumbo jumbo from a religious ritual, except that this particular ritual seemed to be designed specifically for the Great Fanged Ones–which calls into question again why the reference to a vampirific soul?
Now, the idea that the “soul” he mentioned was a metaphor for the devastatingly devious demon donning the damned’s dermis does sound like a fair cop-out, but it’s never been mentioned (as far as I know) again in the series. Either series.
So, my thoughts are still that Whedon and company made a mistake waaaaaaaay back when. Or that they didn’t make a mistake in the beginning and just changed their minds for better story arcs later on.
Oh, and thank you Captain Amazing for coming up with the exact quote and episode for us. Seriously, I was really, really trying to avoid getting my butt out of this chair and over to the DVD player to check the 1st Season’s 1st disc. You are a better Buffy scholar than I shall ever be.
There is definitely a divide between human soul and soul in the Buffyverse. The human soul seems to be fairly much just something that draws individuals towards good. It has been said over and over again that the soul is what makes people inclined to good and that that is why human evil is worse than supernatural evil. Humans are betraying their fundemental nature and rejecting the gift that whatever has given them in the form of their soul. Supernatural beings without a human soul follow what ever other instincts, and may have spiritual components (thus a soul of a sort), and so their evil is expected and like that of a rapid dog.
There are two types of beings in the Buffyverse that really mess with the whole soul thing, no matter what explanation you hold to. Vengence demons and vampires with souls.
Vengence demons are a problem because they can, as we saw with Anya, have moral qualms. It is unclear what sort of soul they have. As they are former humans who maintain a single unified self throughout any switching around it makes sense that they would still have a human soul. This is supported by the fact that Hali and Anya seemd to think they were forces of justice not just blind vengence. Personally I favor the retained human soul of vengence demons because it seems fitting that D’Hoffrin and the Lower Beings would twist it towards evil. Some sort of vengence upon the Powers That Be perhaps, a sort of a “See? Your entire soul endeavor is worthless. Nothing will keep evil out of hearts and minds.”
The vampire with souls problem is pretty obvious. Angel/Angelus are two entirely different beings. There is no queston about that anymore. However Angel was the result of a curse, a private hell for Angelus. They don’t even share a mind but instead share perceptions. This set up gives Angelus an advantage when he gets free. He sees all of Angel’s levels of thought, to enhance the torment no doubt, but Angel doesn’t see any of Angelus’ thoughts. Only memories of those thoughts are available upon restoration of the soul. This case may well be atypical, whatever that means given the small number of cases, as it is a curse. Spike reclaimed his soul. He felt bad about something and decided to change himself. Clearly he already has some developed pattern of morality, and has deep spiritual signs of them (the Judge could have burnt Spike up). After getting his soul there shouldn’t be a caged demon. After all there is no curse. I’d say that Spike is the same being as he was before, but now with a shiny new moral compass. The new Spike still isn’t responsible for previous evil, after all he was essentially sick at the time, but he is more the same thing he was before than Angel is. There are no Superman III type split battle possible for him. I’d say that other vamps with a soul would be like that for the most part.
There is still the problem of how vampires retain humanity, if there is continuity of consciousness through the change (if there isn’t the demon certainly is deluded into thinking there is) and if the restored soul is actually the soul from before death or just a random soul. This last one is vaguely troubling if Skip wasn’t lying as it would imply that restoring a soul is on par with ressurection, just without the bodily restoration, as a soul has to be plucked from it. Neither Spike nor Angel have indicated that they have memories from an afterlife. This means that either the souls are incomplete, going to wherever without the rest of them until dusted (pretty creepy idea) or that any old soul will do.
That’s enough rambling for now. Oh and I am aware of the soul Jello theory. While it is a fairly good theory I don’t subscribe to it.
I guess my next question is: do they ever mention any soul other than the human kind? I mean, as far as I’ve understood it, there only references to “souls”, not to any division or sub-division of souls.
Isn’t a soul is a soul is a soul is a soul? (Oops. I should have just stuck with one “soul”. You know… a sole soul. ;))
The Master’s ritual words and D’Hoffrin says the life and soul of a vengence demon. Again both aren’t out and out distinctions between human souls and other souls. However spirits and spiritual components are mentioned for non-human beings and the phrase human soul is used on occasion but most likely as a convention of speach than as a metaphysical distinction. There has been no official word on whether the soul that does the good stuff is a unique human phemonenon until magic puts it in weird places or is the only kind of soul, and it just so happens that only humans have one, or what ever. Likewise all we know about souls in Buffy is that they are responsible for a specific kind of relationship with good.
The Judge makes another related distinction between humanity and having a soul. He can burn entities that supposidely don’t have human souls. This however doesn’t give any information on souls really. He does raise an interesting set of questions about what he is burning away and how it sticks to the being being burnt.
