Psyché

The Greek word 'psyché', which translates as soul or mind, also originally meant air or breath. Shares this (double) meaning with the 'ruach', 'pneuma' and 'néfesch' we've seen. The Greek verb 'psychein', meant to blow. From this verb is the noun form 'psyché', which refers to blow, halite or breath or respiration, that exhales definitely dying man. When the 'psyché' finally escapes dead body, survives and leads a completely independent existence of body: the Greeks imagined it as a winged anthropomorphic figure, a double or 'eidolon' of the deceased, which usually would go to Hades, which still survives so grim and ghostly. As has often said Homer, the 'psyché' flies out of the mouth of one who dies like a butterfly (butterfly in Greek is also called 'psyché'). The 'psyché', then, is the air or breath, and has at the same time, of course, the sense of soul or mind that has remained until today and has given the words psychism, psychiatry, psychology...