'deceased souls' is a perfectly acceptable phrase in written English.
It can be used to refer to people who have passed away. For example: "The town held a memorial service to honor the deceased souls who had given their lives in service to their country."
Egyptian funerary texts associate deceased souls with Ra in his nightly travels through the Duat, the realm of the dead, and with his rebirth at dawn.
From this perspective, "gods" included the king, who was called a god after his coronation rites, and deceased souls, who entered the divine realm through funeral ceremonies.
Both in Chukotka and Alaska, the aurora borealis is believed to be a special world inhabited by those who died by violence, the changing rays representing deceased souls playing ball with a walrus head.
Relatives and loved ones often cross over from the realm of the living to bring food, candles, and objects that the deceased soul valued.
However, the Jutsu can only function if the deceased soul is within the realm of Pure Land and not elsewhere in the afterlife like in the stomach of the Reaper.
It is a food eaten in remembrance of the dead and as a gesture of blessing the soul of the deceased person.
During these rituals, the soul of a dying or deceased individual is given safe passage into the next life.
However, removing every instance of the hieroglyphs representing a deceased person's name would deprive his or her soul of the ability to read the funerary texts and condemn that soul to an inanimate existence.
The offerings were meant to soothe the deceased's soul and provide the living with "an active and benevolent ancestor," the art historian Elizabeth Childs-Johnson and the archaeologist Gu Fang write in the catalog for an exhibition, "Shang and Western Zhou Jades," at Throckmorton Fine Art (145 East 57th Street in Manhattan) through April 24.
A century after Heinrici, James Downey examined the funerary practices of Christian Corinthians in historical context and argued that they intended vicarious baptism to protect the deceased's soul against interference on the journey to the afterlife.
In Latin, Charon's obol sometimes is called a viaticum, or "sustenance for the journey"; the placement of the coin on the mouth has been explained also as a seal to protect the deceased's soul or to prevent it from returning.
