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I need help to find the creature or character or tale or whatever linked to the following description:

Have a connection:

  • With dreams, like maybe as a bridge.

  • With secrets or maybe contracts? Or the notion of using words with intentions.

  • With music or rhythm or singing.

  • With energies or spirits or souls, like being able to feel energies, move it within someone by touching (like getting rid of heavy energies to help), or seeing someone's .. huh soul... place?

There is also a connection to water and clairvoyance and it might be something or someone with a mention of something on their back.

And something to do with keys as well, opening doors (but that might just be the bridge thing mentioned earlier).

As to location, I'd say maybe from Africa or India? Or around the Indian Ocean. Any clue from anywhere would be amazing to be honest.

I don't know all details so there might be details missing.

Edit from comment - I did some intense search before finally finding Mythology and Folklore and read about Hekate and also Seiðr, and despite both being really close (especially Seiðr), I feel like there is something missing to it but couldn't cross reference any of those with other existing myths and legends, I thought "maybe some kind of shapeshifter".

Tom Sol
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user7715
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2 Answers2

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Your question reminded me of a concept in Zoroastrian mythology. Although I have the feeling this is not what you are looking for, it does have connections with a bridge, music, the human soul, and, to some extent, shapeshifting and opening doors. It is the Daēnā (Dēn), which in his book Comparative Mythology, Jaan Puhvel describes as a

heavenly double of the human soul, which is molded for beauty or ugliness by man's earthly demeanor and confronts him for good or ill at judgment.

In his article The Ferryman of the Dead, Bruce Lincoln gives more details:

Most often, the guide across the perilous Cinvat Bridge is a maiden who is the personification of one's own religion (daēnā-), being beautiful, fragrant, stately, and virtuous if one's religion is all it should be, and repulsive, putrid, knock-kneed, and whorish if it is not. Needless to say, it is only the beautiful Daēnā-maiden who assists one over the bridge into heaven, while her hideous counterparts drags the soul down into torment.

The connection to music comes from the very name of heaven in Zoroastrian tradition: Garōdmān, literally "House of Song". In her paper The Allegory of Dēn in Persian Art, Guitty Azarpay interprets the female instrumentalists appearing on a Sassanian bowl as representations of the Daēnā and writes:

Indeed, music had a prescribed role in Zoroastrian religious ritual where Avestan hymns were sung and recited to the accompaniment of stringed instruments. But as the ultimate goal of the righteous soul's journey in the next world, the resplendent garōdmān was regarded as the "House of Song" and a source of sweet music (niwāg ī xwaś) whence the soul derived joy and delight (huniyāgīh ud rāmiśn). Thus the felicitous implications of music, expressed in graphic terms by the instruments represented on the Foroughi bowl, would seem to fulfill the joyful quality claimed as an attribute by the personified dēn of the pious soul in the Zoroastrian texts.

Gullintanni
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This sounds like a "Liminal diety". I basically googled a mythological being that can see your soul and access doors and this immediately popped up. There seems to be many of this kind of diety and tons of examples. My source that I'm listing is from wikipedia but a simple google search will get you many other deep dives into other sources if you desire since it is a broad term.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminal_deity

Sky
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