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I was trying understand the explanation on cloning in the 40K Universe and thought about Horus Luprical being cloned by Fabius Bile and the Emperor's Children. Through several of people's post stating that clones don't have souls, how can Abaddon the Despoiler have a soul? Horus' soul was obliterated by the Emperor shortly after the powers of Chaos withdrew from him. Is it possible to have one soul in two bodies at the same time?

Abaddon is only a rumoured clone.

Even being one of the most fearsome and ginormous progenoid gland style spacemarine specimens he could barely stand up to a real/fresh clone of Horus (ie a primarch version of a spacemarine that was underequiped, inexperienced and naiive).

The Talon of Horus is the most compelling evidence that Abaddon indeed is not a clone of Horus, just an already formidable human which the progenoid gland system worked particularly well on.

Have a read of Clonelord (the second Bile novel.) All of your answers are in there.

The clone retains the memories up to the point of when the genetic material was taken. They are, in essence the same individual and presumably a portion of the soul would have taken too as Fulgrim is still "him" but he has little to no recollection of certain events as he is a clone even though he "remembers" the events, but he, as an individual knows he was not there as he is a clone.

Bile has clearly perfected body transfer and the book gives you a good first person look of what is presumably Bile's own soul floating around in the aether as his consciousness is being transferred into a new body.

The Dark eldar codex does specifically talk about him studying with haemonculus covens, who do exactly that.

locarno24 wrote:
The Dark eldar codex does specifically talk about him studying with haemonculus covens, who do exactly that.

Which I'm sure Josh Reynolds will go into much detail in in the next book. The second book ends with Bile being invited to Comorragh.

A clone would probably possess its own 'soul' or aetheric imprint resulting from bio-electrical activity.

In the first BL book the clone of Horus sees the talon Abaddon is wearing and says "that is mine", yet he has never seen it before as far as we know. So, as also mentioned there is an element of genetic memory thrown into the mix.

It is not an easy question to answer as many have pondered the nature of the human soul for some time.

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
A clone would probably possess its own 'soul' or aetheric imprint resulting from bio-electrical activity.

In the first BL book the clone of Horus sees the talon Abaddon is wearing and says "that is mine", yet he has never seen it before as far as we know. So, as also mentioned there is an element of genetic memory thrown into the mix.

It is not an easy question to answer as many have pondered the nature of the human soul for some time.

This post makes me feel the clone soul might be more like an echo, shadow or recast than a true soul as possessed by an 'original' (if you can even call primarchs that).

From Deathwatch: Shadowbreaker (and relating to an Exorcists marine rather than a Primarch. but still relevant) -

I seem to remember Fulgrim trying to have Ferrus Manus cloned, but had to have his hands covered, because he wouldn't understand why they weren't covered in living metal. Since Ferrus Manus was summoned at the the Seige of Terra in a 'ghost' form, is it possible to attach a soul back to a body?

No.

 jeff white wrote:
No.

ADB disagrees with you in Betrayer when Erebus resurrects the Blessed Lady by pulling her soul from the warp and binding it to the remains of her corpse.

And the resurrection of Mehlindi in the Inquisition War trilogy.

locarno24 wrote:
And the resurrection of Mehlindi in the Inquisition War trilogy.

Careful, you'll summon K_K and all sorts of sphincter talk too!

The Death Korps of Krieg are also mass-produced clones, and I like to think it's their original souls being stretched so thin across so many clones that makes them want to die for the Emperor so enthusiastically.

Interestingly Horus' soul was reputedly annihilated by the Emperor, so it's interesting that Bile was able to reproduce it somehow.

40K theories made an interesting video on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaVg3hcDF1I

beast_gts wrote:
From Deathwatch: Shadowbreaker (and relating to an Exorcists marine rather than a Primarch. but still relevant) -

Spoiler:

Every Exorcist had to summon a daemon and risk the bargain. It was the first part of the final test. Reneging on the deal and exorcising the monstrosity back into the warp was the latter part. Most of the aspirants who failed their tests in other Chapters simply died. Those that failed the tests of the Exorcists lost their souls to an eternity of torture and madness in the warp. And most didn’t make it. Eight in ten became possessed with no hope of recovery and had to be destroyed. But not Rauth. He had tricked Hepaxammon. The daemon had tried to take its due early, to trick the trickster, but Rauth’s soul had already been hidden away, out of the daemon’s reach. It resided inside an infant, a clone of Rauth himself kept permanently in cryosleep. While the clone slept, the soul was hidden. Hepaxammon would never find it. And without his soul inhabiting his conscious body, Rauth had become impossible to track.

This begs the question how the Exorcists chapter lasted any length of time. 80% failure rate of SM creation with only 2 glands per marine is unsustainable.

Nurglitch wrote:
The Death Korps of Krieg are also mass-produced clones, and I like to think it's their original souls being stretched so thin across so many clones that makes them want to die for the Emperor so enthusiastically.

Interestingly Horus' soul was reputedly annihilated by the Emperor, so it's interesting that Bile was able to reproduce it somehow.

It is interesting how clone Horus retained knowledge of it’s predecessor. Remember though that space marines are able to ‘digest’ memories of those they consume (and surprisingly this doesn’t seem to be done psychically using flesh as a spiritual vector, it is a physical/biological process) and some space marines believe that geneseed retains subliminal knowledge from their predecessors. As such the clone retaining knowledge of original Horus may be due to a mix of those two reasons rather than from having inherited any soul from the original.

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
No.

ADB disagrees with you in Betrayer when Erebus resurrects the Blessed Lady by pulling her soul from the warp and binding it to the remains of her corpse.

What may or may not be the Emperor speaking to Curze also says none of his sons can truely die but that could be Curzes insanity speaking and not the emperor at all.

Sure. They'd just very likely have their own soul, not the soul of the original primarch.

 John Prins wrote:

beast_gts wrote:
From Deathwatch: Shadowbreaker (and relating to an Exorcists marine rather than a Primarch. but still relevant) -

Spoiler:

Every Exorcist had to summon a daemon and risk the bargain. It was the first part of the final test. Reneging on the deal and exorcising the monstrosity back into the warp was the latter part. Most of the aspirants who failed their tests in other Chapters simply died. Those that failed the tests of the Exorcists lost their souls to an eternity of torture and madness in the warp. And most didn’t make it. Eight in ten became possessed with no hope of recovery and had to be destroyed. But not Rauth. He had tricked Hepaxammon. The daemon had tried to take its due early, to trick the trickster, but Rauth’s soul had already been hidden away, out of the daemon’s reach. It resided inside an infant, a clone of Rauth himself kept permanently in cryosleep. While the clone slept, the soul was hidden. Hepaxammon would never find it. And without his soul inhabiting his conscious body, Rauth had become impossible to track.

This begs the question how the Exorcists chapter lasted any length of time. 80% failure rate of SM creation with only 2 glands per marine is unsustainable.

Math is for chumps.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Have a read of Clonelord (the second Bile novel.) All of your answers are in there.

The clone retains the memories up to the point of when the genetic material was taken. They are, in essence the same individual and presumably a portion of the soul would have taken too as Fulgrim is still "him" but he has little to no recollection of certain events as he is a clone even though he "remembers" the events, but he, as an individual knows he was not there as he is a clone.

Bile has clearly perfected body transfer and the book gives you a good first person look of what is presumably Bile's own soul floating around in the aether as his consciousness is being transferred into a new body.

Well, not really. Remember the Clone Fulgrim from the novel is from Bile's initial work on cloning on Harmony (thousands of years in the past)- Bile recovers him over the course of the novel and is baffled that the clone is even still alive- it has none of the more recent enhancements [and rather begs the question of how Bile managed to make all those primarch clones. If its that easy, so early in his career, the idea that it hasn't been done multiple times by traitor and imperial alike is rather silly]. He described the growth of Fulgrim's memories as a byproduct of being a primarch, not his own mind transfer tech.

Bile's mind transfer stuff is very recent, built on the wraithbone samples he acquired in Primogenitor, a mere few centuries prior to Clonelord. And even then he admits to Trazyn that its ONLY a memory transfer, he has no expectation or belief that a soul is involved. The novel talks around the subject until that point, but its clear Bile is aware that he is not the original 'Fabius Bile,' and doesn't actually care, as its irrelevant to his work.

More interestingly the other interested parties don't care either. Whether a soul is 'real' or copy or an extension never seems to come up (at least not in Bile novels). The role that the chaos gods want for Bile doesn't seem to rely on anything as immaterial as his soul.

---
On the speculative side of things, I don't see any reason why a clone wouldn't have its own soul, or why it would matter.

You have to go back to basics to figure out the answer.

What is the metaphysics of 40k?

We know that:

Souls are warp presences (ie coherent warp energy) attached to things in realspace made of matter. They form as an organism does.

human souls degrade very soon after death. Eldar souls retain coherence and used to be able to reincarnate in new bodies.

Twins have very close relationships (and eldar twins especially), but apart from Alpharius and his mirror, none have been described as sharing souls (just being intertwined).

As an identical twin is a natural clone, the answer should be there.

the dark eldar clone new bodies and then put their own souls back in them, which means they either consume the new soul forming in the body, destroy it, or have figured out a way to
grow them without souls.


Given that souls 'form' as an organism forms, there is no reason that a soul wouldn't also form when a clone gestates.

It would not be identical to the original, unless 40k metaphysics says that a genome creates an identical soul.