Spirit and soul as two abstract terms are actually a basic framework of the entire spiritual thread which spans through the human race since its beginning. In Bosnian mythological beliefs it is an extremely dominant idea of similar, almost identical, representation of a few supernatural aspects of man himself. Namely, when we analyse some segments of traditional representations about the human spirit and soul, which are often not differentiated in folk tales which causes confusion, wild nature is clearly evident which according to mythological notion represents the essence of every man. While in classic European mythology the spirit, but also the soul, is represented by a see-through white silhouette, which in a human form hover through the air or suddenly appear and disappear, in Bosnian representation the spirit mostly resembles an energy ball whose shape has an astonishing similarity with a mouse. Certain mythological tradition describe the appearance of the soul as "fruit of the apple tree" i.e. such a description actually associates us with a light ball which exits a hole (mouth) and moves with fast steps towards the surface, emitting sounds similar to a mouse squeak. With such a comparison one receives an impression that the energy is restless and nervous, i.e. unrestrained, which it proves by exiting the human body.
A mouse was not chosen accidentally for the totem animal since it is used for the description of other supernatural events, closely tied to humans themselves. Some of the examples are as follows:
- Mouse in the folk tale about Noah's ark is an extremely negative character who wanted to let water in by trying to create a hole in the ark, and destroy the entire world. He would probably succeed if he wasn't prevented by the snake. Actually, the mouse is the incarnation of evil, a demon which wants to destroy mankind.
- snijet, which in mythology in Bosnia and Herzegovina is considered to be a dragon seed after intercourse with a woman, it is described as a small hairy creature, which resembles a mole or mouse, which runs and squeaks, even climbing walls in fear of a human hand touching it, or even worse, getting killed by a broom from one of the present women.
- in exotic séances of Bosnian dervishes and Imam's, in the ritual known as "skupljanje daire", the final sign of a successful performance, usually curing a mentally ill person, is the hanged or dead mouse on a nearby bridge. This is a signal that the Jinn use to show that the Jinn attacker has been punished by the severest punishment.
