The same premise has been with us for as long as there are records of what people told each other after dark. A witch trades an old woman’s spirit into a young bride. A god steps down into a mortal’s skin and walks around in it, or takes the form of an animal. A dying grandfather’s spirit lifts off through the mouth and is gone; a newborn arrives carrying a temper and a birthmark the family recognizes from a man three generations back. The changeling is somebody else wearing the baby. The possessed man is himself plus a passenger. Reincarnation, transmigration, spirit journeys, the ghost that is a person with the body subtracted -- every culture has produced some version, and the versions do not need translating.
A listener from anywhere can hold the idea of a self coming loose from its body and going somewhere, because the idea was already in them before the story started.
I’m Allen Schyf, and this is Polite Disputes.
Music: Truth Be Told by Maarten Schelleken
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