The other day I came across a nice mythological parallel to our discussion of the “data body” that electronic phantasm, the doppleganger that each of us has which is made up of our “permanent record”, our work, education, legal and consumer history (among other things). In the Golden Bough, James Frazer talks about a type of folktale found the world over. He calls it the external soul.

He sums it up as:

[…] There may be circumstances in which, if the life or soul remains in the man, it stands a greater chance of sustaining injury than if it were stowed away in some safe and secret place. Accordingly, in such circumstances, primitive man takes his soul out of his body and deposits it for security in some snug spot, intending to replace it in his body when the danger is past. Or if he should discover some place of absolute security, he may be content to leave his soul there permanently. The advantage of this is that, so long as the soul remains unharmed in the place where he has deposited it, the man himself is immortal; nothing can kill his body, since his life is not in it.

Frazer explains the typical formula of these stories:

A warlock, giant, or other fairyland being is invulnerable and immortal because he keeps his soul hidden far away in some secret place; but a fair princess, whom he holds enthralled in his enchanted castle, wiles his secret from him and reveals it to the hero, who seeks out the warlock’s soul, heart, life, or death (as it is variously called), and by destroying it, simultaneously kills the warlock.

It’s weird that in all these stories, it’s a magical figure of some kind who is depositing their soul outside of themself. It’s never a regular person or a hero. In fact, the hero of the story usually ends up locating the external soul, and then cruelly destroying it. But the external soul is never easy to find (despite the fact the bad guy almost always gives away the secret). It’s always well-hidden and carefully guarded. Consider this example from a Russian tale:

“My death,” said he, “is far from here and hard to find, on the wide ocean. In that sea is an island, and on the island there grows a green oak, and beneath the oak is an iron chest, and in the chest is a small basket, and in the basket is a hare, and in the hare is a duck, and in the duck is an egg; and he who finds the egg and breaks it, kills me at the same time.”

The message, to my ears, seems to be that storing your soul externally is not a smart move. It may help you in the short term by rendering you invulnerable, but eventually your secret will be uncovered and you’ll be ruined by it.

Bringing this back to the data body, we can draw some interesting possible ideas out of this mythology. First is that by depositing our soul or identity into an external set of records, each of us is acting as a magician. We both gain strength from it and become increasingly vulnerable. Anybody who can track down the secret location of our soul can tamper with it and thereby destroy us - maybe not physically, but at least socially.

Actually, the myths seem to tell us that the proper course of action is invariably to destroy the external soul - the falsely projected image of the self. It seems to be closely tied with greed and power, as the magicians who use this technique also possess elaborate castles and hold feminine figures hostage. In fact, it is the feminine force who tricks the monster into revealing where his soul is kept. If we read the imprisoned princess as the Jungian anima, this makes some sense. The magician/ogre/monster seems to be the psyche run amok. Through inflation it has gained immense power, but has simultaneously become vulnerable and distorted as a result. The anima acts as a mediator, trying to restore balance to the psyche. She introduces another force, the hero, who slays the inflated magician. But it’s important to recognize that he doesn’t slay the magician directly. What he does is locates the projected essence of the magician, and then slays the projection. You could maybe interpret this as the magician’s power is based on illusion. When his illusion is crumbled, he withers to nothing.

I’ve been toying with an idea for a while. Zipping back to the modern world, would it be possible to commit identity theft against yourself? The idea would be something similar to the hero going out to find and slay the projected external soul of the warlock. Or we see how kids have gotten a legal “divorce” from their parents. I guess the technical term is emancipation. But I wonder if it’s possible (conceptually if nor legally) to get an emancipation from your data body? I don’t necessarily know how this would work. Maybe it would be like you were in the witness relocation program. Would you have to assume a new identity (ie, “grow” a new data body), or is it possible to exist without one at all?