[etni] fw: origin of term - soulmates

"Dr. Natan Ophir" - natan21@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: origin of term - soulmates
 
To fellow ETNIERs,

Soulmates - where is the term first mentioned?
Any one out there who can help?

I am writing an article on "Soulmates" for the soon to be 
published Encyclopedia of Love in World Religions" edited 
by Dr. Yudit Kornberg Greenberg and trying to trace the 
first use of the term "soulmate" in English. On the Web 
a number of sites repeat the claim that Soulmate was
first use by Samuel Coleridge in 1822 - however I have 
been unable to locate any poem of his from 1822 that 
uses "soulmate". In fact, I can't even find Coleridge 
using "soulmate". The closest I could come was 
Percy B. Shelley's Epipsychidion (Greek meaning 
literally "about a soul") - Shelley describes romantically 
a "soul within a soul". This was published in London 1821 
and Shelley had just completed translating Plato's 
Symposium, thus he was enshrining a kind of Platonist 
bridal hymn for his soulmate - "Whither twas fled, this soul 
out of my soul; And murmured names and spells which 
have control Over the sightless tyrants of our fate".
But "soulmate" I have yet to discover who invented the term. 
And no, it was not Aristophanes in the Symposium.

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