The provenance file on Anima
Provenance record 035 · Anima · one temple, fully accounted for.
Provenance
1. The attestation. ANIMA, from the tradition's own record. On record: Oxford Latin Dictionary, s.v. anima, Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, s.v. anima, Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes 1, Lucretius, De rerum natura 3.
2. The narrative record. The Breath of Life — In Classical Latin anima first names the air itself: the breeze in the trees, the breath in the lungs. Cicero uses the word for the vital spirit that ties soul to body (Tusculanae disputationes 1), but the word's great theorist is the materialist Lucretius. The Rational Soul — Early Latin Christianity adopted anima as the standard rendering of Greek psychē, and the word's career turned theological. Tertullian devoted a treatise to it (De anima); Augustine's De quantitate animae asks, in dialogue, what the soul's 'magnitude' can be; Boethius made the soul the hinge of the Consolation of Philosophy.
3. The physical record. A concept has no tombs, but it has manuscripts, and the material trail of anima is among the most dramatic in Latin literature. Lucretius' De rerum natura — the greatest ancient book of the soul's materiality — survives through a single early medieval lineage, crowned by the ninth-century codex Oblongus (Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Vossianus Latinus F 30); the poem's recovery in 1417, when Poggio Bracciolini's agents pulled a copy from a German monastery shelf, detonated the Renaissance debate over atom and soul. Augustine's De quantitate animae and the scholastic summae travelled in hundreds of copies across medieval Europe. Jung's twentieth-century revival rests on printed editions and the working library at Küsnacht — archaeology of a different kind.
4. The current holding. The temple at /anima/, classified Tier 2. The restoration keeps one feature the ASCII form drops. One is enough to matter, and the label says so plainly: Tier-2.
5. The documented resonances. Education, Research & Knowledge, Mythic Name Restoration, Writing, Publishing & Media — seats argued and weighted in the pattern atlas, read through the myths in this temple's Resonance File.
6. The primary sources. Theogony, Homeric Hymns, Works and Days — the library this file answers to, open at the Sacred Texts collection.
7. The continuing record. Anima is one of the most quietly influential words in Western languages. It underlies 'animal' (a being that has breath), 'animate' (to give life), 'animation' (the illusion of life in images), and 'animism' (the attribution of soul to natural objects).
At a Glance
- Restored name: Anima
- ASCII form: anima
- Meaning: "Breath, air, soul"
- Domain of influence: Soul, Breath, Life Force
- Pantheon: Greek
- Classification: Tier 2
- Original script: ANIMA
- Series: The Restoration Files, No. 35 of 548
The File Continues
Read the founding dispatch for the name's full story, the Resonance File for the archetype at work — or the whole archive in one sitting.
Continue the series — previous file: Angrboða (read it here) · next file: Animus (read it here).
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