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Do you think your doll has a soul?

Aug 1, 2011

    1. I pretty much agree with Inklet in that I don't personally think anything has a soul. I think that most of the qualities we ascribe to them reside in your brain, so a doll cannot have that.
      However I do think of my dolls as having feelings and personalities and get very emotionally invested in them. Like people, everything has a story of some kind and I think that is wonderful and fascinating.
       
    2. If you ask my younger self this, who knows what I said? Looks like those have been deleted. Thank heavens. I often cringe at words of past. Those lovely threads are dead, aren't they, mods?

      Objects with history tend to reflect the history within them. As for souls, they have none.

      I will say however that I've had a few frightening experiences with objects brought from different parts of the world. I've also had extremely positive/normal encounters as well. I think people tend to be fearful of this concept due to the highly humanized shape these objects/dolls take. So, one naturally may anthropomorphize these figures with concepts they wrestle with or find true about themselves, reflecting beliefs of a soul.
       
    3. This topic is very interesting. I believe that a doll can have a soul, but it might not be good for it to have one.
       
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    4. I remain unconvinced that people have souls. Are other people real? Or just figments of my imagination? I have no conclusive proof that they are real but I'm willing to assume that they are without some evidence to the contrary. As for dolls? No.
       
    5. Nah, i dont think dolls have souls, and i kinda side-eye people that do.
      Y'know, since inanimate objects.
       
    6. I don't think dolls have souls in a literal sense, but I think like most inanimate objects they can have personalities of their own, either related or not related to their character with dolls. Kind of like how cars can have "personalities" in a way, I think. c:
       
    7. I don't think mine has a soul, but definitely an aura or energy. I think if you love something enough, a bit of you floats off into it, therefore giving in something, but not a complete soul ^^
       
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    8. No I don't think dolls have souls. I think we plant energy by how we react with the doll. Face ups give emotion. Clothes give a voice. Eyes give a personality. Things like that. Maybe a slip on eyebrows during a face up application made them bushier. We think it makes them look thoughtful. Then we say they are always questioning things and say they are curious. It builds from the moment we start them.
       
    9. Dolls can be vessels for deceased human spirits and non human entities such as fairies.djinn,vampires,Demons,khodam, angels etc. While none of my bjds are vessels for these spirits and entities many of my porcelain and vinyl, and composition dolls are. i have dolls possessed by ghosts, vampires, fairies, djinn and my favourite, Demons!!! I am surprised that we don't hear more about bjds being possessed or haunted by spirits and entities. Spirits and entities love dolls because they resemble humans. Considering how life like bjds I would think spirits would like to inhabit bjds for their realism and their ability to pose unlike regular dolls.
       
    10. I do not think dolls have souls, but I like to pretend they do most of the time. One thing that I feel they definitely do have is a sort of presence and an effect on the energy of the space they are taking up.
       
    11. I don't believe in souls as such, but I do think dolls have a personality. Not so much the resin doll itself -- that's mostly an avatar -- but the characters that inhabit them are like all good stories, they come alive and have, to a certain extent, a mind of their own. The romantic in me would call that a soul, the realist in me calls it inspiration.
       
    12. hmmmm.....dolls having souls has a whole different meaning for me (in a negative way), so I HOPE they don't. They have character, that they definitely have, but hopefully...they DON'T have souls.
       
    13. Maybe they don't have a soul but what they have must be rather akin to that. I believe that we deposit creative energy in our dolls merely by owning them, dressing them up, doing their faceups, choosing their wigs and eyes, photographing them, writing stories about them, even just holding or playing with them... Their 'soul' is what we make them to be... it encompasses their character as well as this inexplicable bond that just sounds ridiculous to non-doll people, I suppose.
       
    14. That's how I feel. I really don't like the idea that "someone" is trapped in an inanimate body. But I do like the idea that dolls represent imagined characters moving around in an imagined world much like our own.
       
    15. As faceless dolls straight from the factory, no. As personalities brought to life with care, painted by someone, with clothes etc, possibly. I'm of a mind that the more effort and love I put into an artistic project the more the project is brought to life. In the old greek myth of Pygmalion his statue of the imaginary woman he called Galatea eventually was given a life and a soul by Aphrodite because he put so much effort into his creation that he fell in love with her and he pleaded to the goddess for her to be real. She was touched by his devotion and granted his wish. Now I'm not saying that my dolls actually become flesh, of course not, but the more I put into them the more real they become to me. This is why I actually have a hard time selling dolls that I've worked on in this way. It's one thing to sell off a few untouched Barbies or something when I get too many, but it's another entirely to sell off a doll that I've done the OOAK thing with. The more hours I put into a doll the more it's MINE and I just cannot part so easily with it after a certain point. It's a part of me and in that sense it's not just a soulless object to me anymore...
       
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    16. I love that myth.
       
    17. I most definitely believe mine have souls. They tend to glare at me if I've offended them, and they can make others who originally didn't believe me think the same way, like when one of my friends stepped on Ashtie's kimono sleeve. The icy glare that came from her was able to be felt by the ENTIRE group. It was... creepy.
       
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    18. I like to think I don't, but I háve watched the Toy Story movies too many times, ugh.
       
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    19. There is no such thing as a soul. That's just something they make up to scare kids, like the Boogeyman or Michael Jackson!

      -Bart Simpson
       
    20. I honestly don't believe that they do, as nice as I think it'd be. Unless they're the unhinged type and the last thing I see one night is a pair of doll eyes- but seriously no I don't believe they do. I'm still fuzzy on humans having souls, let alone inanimate objects.