Anima Sola

In my early life and especially through my adult travels in Mexico, the image of the Animas Sola appeared regularly. This piece was a fun take on the ubiquitous image in the Catholic domination in the world and brought into the contemporary world as a three-dimensional oil painting on wood, that viewers could physically sit and place their face in the hole to be photographed and feel their own potential demise.

The Anima Sola is taken to represent a soul suffering in purgatory. While in many cases chromolithographs depict a female soul, many other figures such as popes and other men are commonly depicted in chromolithographs, sculptures and paintings. In the most commonly known image of the Anima Sola, a woman is depicted as breaking free from her chains in a dungeon setting surrounded by flames, representing purgatory. She appears penitent and reverent, and her chains have been broken, an indication that, after her temporary suffering, she is destined for heaven.

Praying to the Anima Sola is a tradition in many ways unlike that of the more widespread cult of saints. In lieu of praying to a saint who then appeals to God, the Anima Sola represents souls in purgatory who require the assistance both of the living and the divine to ameliorate their sufferings in the afterlife.[2]

The Anima Sola is common throughout much of the Catholic world, though is perhaps strongest in Naples, where it is referred to as "the cult of the souls in Purgatory." In Latin America, one source reports, the Anima Sola is "a belief still deeply rooted in the mass of the campesinos. The devotion dates from the first colonizers, who probably brought the image in which the soul is represented as a woman suffering torments in purgatory with chains binding her hands.