A soul eater is a

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

figure in the traditional belief systems of some groups, known for sucking or eating the souls of their victims. Soul eaters can be related to

witchcraft Witchcraft is the use of Magic (supernatural), magic by a person called a witch. Traditionally, "witchcraft" means the use of magic to inflict supernatural harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meanin ...

zombie A zombie (Haitian French: ; ; Kikongo: ''zumbi'') is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. In modern popular culture, zombies appear in horror genre works. The term comes from Haitian folkl ...

s, and other similar phenomena. One

Choctaw The Choctaw ( ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States, originally based in what is now Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choct ...

story about Nalusa Chito, also known as a Impa Shilup, features a soul eater with the ability to eat souls directly. Some traditional religions, including that of

ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

and the

Chickasaw The Chickasaw ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, United States. Their traditional territory was in northern Mississippi, northwestern and northern Alabama, western Tennessee and southwestern Kentucky. Their language is ...

, and Natchez of North America, contain figures whose names have been translated into English as "soul eater". The concept of the soul eater also exists in

Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

, These types of mythological figures, however, are spiritual and not human beings, and so are distinctly different from the soul eater as conceptualized by the Hausa and some others. The traditional belief in soul eaters has been adopted by a range of modern

horror fiction Horror is a genre of speculative fiction that is intended to disturb, frighten, or scare an audience. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon, in 1984, defin ...

and

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction that involves supernatural or Magic (supernatural), magical elements, often including Fictional universe, imaginary places and Legendary creature, creatures. The genre's roots lie in oral traditions, ...

writers, contemporary songwriters, and

anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Ja ...

and

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creators.

Examples

Maye

In Hausa belief, the desire and capacity for the practice of witchcraft, termed ''maita,'' is rooted in deep contention and superstition. Other Hausa beliefs include that of considering witches to be capable of seeing, catching, and eating souls. Witches were believed to be able to put human souls into animals, then slaughter said animals to kill the soul inside. It was said that the soul eater can take the form of a dog or other animal in pursuit of his or her practice. Jerome H. Barkow states "A Maye is a witch or soul-eater, a man who is believed to hunger for souls. He can at will bring up from his stomach colored pebbles or granules (Kankara)."Maye are typically a genetic trait that many Hausa believe you can be born with. Prospects can pay the Maye for Kankara and if they ingest the granules they then become a Maye. When a Maye eats a soul the body of the victim will slowly grow sick and die. Some elements of the Hausa form of belief in soul eaters survived into African-American folklore of the United States and that of the Caribbean region. Related beliefs can be found in other traditional African cultures, like the Fulbe and the Serer, as well as among the groups of the Mount Hagen area of

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

. The ''hix'' or ''ix'' of the

Maya Maya may refer to: Ethnic groups * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Mayan languages, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (East Africa), a p ...

and related peoples is a comparable figure; the Pipil term ''teyollocuani'' translates literally as "soul eater".

Ammit

Iain Bamforth discusses how Ammit resides in the underworld and consumes people/souls. Anubis would take the heart of people in the afterlife and weigh it on the scales of justice. If the heart doesn't weigh down the scales then they can carry on in the afterlife, but if the heart appears heavy and filled with burden then it is to be fed to Ammit therefore giving the heart a second death and no admittance into immortality with Osiris. Jaques De Ville writes "she appears on top of and her feather on one side of the scale against which the heart of the deceased is weighed to establish whether he is to die a second death by being devoured by Ammit, or may proceed to the afterlife"

Cerberus

Hades Hades (; , , later ), in the ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, is the god of the dead and the king of the Greek underworld, underworld, with which his name became synonymous. Hades was the eldest son of Cronus and Rhea ...

' three headed dog,

Cerberus In Greek mythology, Cerberus ( or ; ''Kérberos'' ), often referred to as the hound of Hades, is a polycephaly, multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the Greek underworld, underworld to prevent the dead from leaving. He was the offspring o ...

, was a protector of the underworld. He guarded the doors to the underworld so ruthlessly that anyone other than Hades who tried to enter through them was eaten by the dog, and any soul that tried to leave the underworld was consumed or destroyed by the hound as well.{{Cite journal , last=Bloomfield , first=Maurice , date=1904 , title=Cerberus, the Dog of Hades , url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27899506?seq=1 , journal=The Monist , volume=14 , issue=4 , pages=523–540 , issn=0026-9662

References

Legendary creatures