Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The weighing of souls: an ancient belief that during a combat the souls of the combatants were weighed against one another, and that he whose soul was overbalanced was slain.
Etymologies
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Examples
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He saw nothing but the ordinary characters of psychostasia, -- Osiris the judge seated on his throne in the regulation attitude, holding the crook in the one hand, the whip in the other, and the goddesses of Justice and Truth leading the spirit of the dead to the tribunal of Amenti.
The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt Th��ophile Gautier 1841
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The scarab was a symbol of the re-birth, resurrection and the eternal life of the soul, pronounced pure at the psychostasia; and we know from the Book of the Dead, that at the moment of resurrection, in analogy to the beginning of terrestrial life, it was the heart that was asserted to be given to the dead so as to receive the first vitality of the second birth, it was through the heart that the mummy would revive, thence the inscribed scarab was placed in the mummy in the place formerly occupied by its heart when in terrestrial life.
Scarabs The History, Manufacture and Symbolism of the Scarabæus in Ancient Egypt, Phoenicia, Sardinia, Etruria, etc. Isaac Myer 1869
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