The English word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning breath. In Religion and Spirituality, the respiration of the human being has for obvious reasons been strongly linked with the very occurrence of life. A similar significance has been attributed to human Blood. Spirit has thus evolved to denote that which separates a living body from a corpse, but can be used metaphorically (she performed the piece with spirit or she put up a spirited defence) where it is a synonym for such words as 'vivacity'.
In its religious context it has attained a number of meanings:
In Western Theology, it is referred to as the Holy Spirit, referring to a Triune God (Trinity): "The result of God reaching to man by the Father as the source, the Son as the course ("The Way"), and through the Spirit as the transmission."
In more general spiritualistic terms, it refers to an ultimate, unified, non-dual awareness or Force of life combining or transcending all individual souls or individual units of consciousness.
The term spirit has been used in this sense by at least Anthroposophy, Aurobindo, A Course In Miracles, Hegel, and Ken Wilber. In this use, the term is conceptually identical to Plotinus's "One" and Friedrich Schelling's "Absolute." Similar to Greek pneuma and Sanskrit Akasha. See Soul for a more detailed description.
There is both divergence and differentiation in Western theology regarding the Trinity as a multi-aspect of God - particular and concepts of God that in may ways similar to Polytheism and Animism. In other words, there is a relation between animism and polytheism, and hence a direct correlation between the monotheism-polytheism rift: Non-Western cultures may view "The Spirit" as equal or identical to "God," as an infinite and non corporeal entity -any corporeal aspects of God are referred to as "deities." On the other hand, Western religions tend to view The Spirit as the vessel by which God is in connection with man, and God (or the Godhead) as the head of that unified spiritual body. The two approaches appear to differ only slightly, but the basis for their difference lies in the spiritual concept of "Body image," - that "man was made in God's image" and therefore God must be of a form resembling man, and further, that any image of God which are not similarly based on man's image is to be rejected.
Legend has it that God gave Joshua the word to use to make the walls of Jericho fall down.