Every illuminated body casts a shadow. It is so everyday a fact that we rarely stop to think about it. Yet for a great many cultures the shadow has not been a mere optical effect: it has been considered a part of the person, sometimes their soul, sometimes their double. Beliefs and tales about the shadow reveal a profound intuition: what silently accompanies us may say something essential about us.
The shadow in ancient Egypt
The ancient Egyptians conceived of the person as made up of several elements: the body, the ka, the ba, the name and also the shadow, called shut or shuyt. The shadow was considered a real component of the individual, capable of surviving death. In funerary images it sometimes appears as a black silhouette leaving the tomb together with the ba, depicted as a human-headed bird.
The shadow, then, was not an absence but a presence: a form of being that accompanied the deceased into the afterlife.
Plato's cave
In Book VII of the Republic Plato offers one of the most famous images in philosophy. Some men have been chained in a cave since birth, facing a wall. Behind them a fire burns, and between the fire and the prisoners objects pass whose shadows are cast on the wall. The prisoners believe those shadows are reality.
Only one who frees himself, turns round and climbs laboriously towards the exit discovers the world lit by the sun. Here the shadow is the symbol of appearance, of imperfect knowledge. But the myth also says that the shadow is a sign: it points to something real that produces it.
Folk beliefs
In European folklore and that of other cultures the shadow is the object of many beliefs and precautions. Among the most widespread:
- The idea that one should not step on a person's shadow, as if it meant touching their intimacy.
- The belief that whoever casts no shadow is a non-human creature, a dead person or a being from the otherworld.
- The fear that the shadow could be captured, wounded or lost, with consequences for its owner.
- The tale, found in various traditions, that the devil would demand the shadow as payment in a pact.
These beliefs express the same idea: the shadow is intimately bound to the person, and losing it means losing something of oneself.
Peter Schlemihl, the man who sold his shadow
In 1814 the writer Adelbert von Chamisso published Peter Schlemihl's Miraculous Story. The protagonist meets a mysterious man in grey who offers him an inexhaustible purse of gold coins in exchange for his shadow. Peter accepts, but soon discovers that without a shadow he cannot live among people: everyone looks at him with suspicion and horror, love is denied him, society rejects him.
When the man in grey offers to return his shadow in exchange for his soul, Peter refuses and throws the purse away. The tale has become a classic, read as an allegory of the loss of identity, of exclusion and of the price of compromise.
Andersen and the shadow that becomes master
Hans Christian Andersen wrote a fairy tale simply entitled The Shadow. A scholar loses his shadow, which years later returns transformed into a rich and powerful man. Little by little the roles are reversed: the shadow becomes the master and the man becomes his shadow. It is a disturbing tale, showing how what we neglect can acquire an autonomous power.
In James Barrie's Peter Pan too the protagonist loses his shadow, which Wendy sews back onto his feet. A fairy-tale detail that preserves the ancient idea of the shadow as an inseparable part of the person.
A symbolic reading
| Source | What the shadow is |
|---|---|
| Egypt | a component of being that survives |
| Plato | appearance pointing to the real |
| Folklore | an intimate, vulnerable part of the person |
| Chamisso | social identity, bond with others |
| Andersen | a neglected part that takes power |
The shadow is black, but it is not empty. It is the sign that a body exists and that there is a light shining on it. Without light there would be no shadow, but without a body neither. In this sense the shadow is a testimony: it says that we are present, concrete, situated in the world. Traditions invite us not to despise it and not to sell it, but to recognise it as a companion.
In short
- For the Egyptians the shadow, shut, was a real component of the person.
- In Plato's cave shadows symbolise appearance that points to the real.
- Folklore considers the shadow an intimate and vulnerable part of oneself.
- Chamisso's Peter Schlemihl loses his shadow and with it his place among people.
- Andersen and Barrie tell of the shadow as an autonomous yet inseparable double.
