The Branding of the Soul
Boats on the Neva River (1947), by Nadezhda Pavlovna Shteinmiller (1915–1991) Your body bears a very distinctive mark or brand that exemplifies your purpose, your reason for existing, your fate. What the English language refers to as “character” is an attempt to capture this reality in word form. The word, character, has the following etymological origin: mid-14c., carecter, “symbol marked or branded on the body;” mid-15c., “symbol or drawing used in sorcery,” from Old French caratere “feature, character” (13c., Modern…