Spirit Plane
Geoff Gunner here, folks ...
re. G. Fried:
... reminds that animism holds that inanimate objects/places have spirits ...
Good thinking, Crimson-batman ! But isn't animism saying that a spirit is
choosing to reside in that rock / glade / grotto ? (Hags, Nymphs, Oceanids,
etc surely are spirits of a non-living thing associated with a living thing)
But how do they appear on the spirit plane ? And for that matter, how do
people appear on the spirit plane ? I mean, we all have spirits/souls, but
they only appear on the SP once dead/discorporated/dreaming.
This is a nasty point. Now, I've always seen people`s spirits as existing on
the spirit plane at the same time, which I think's the implicit assumption
of RQ. I've tried to explain some of the sticky points that arise from this
as:
- A spirit is either on the spirit plane (discorporate) and sees only the SP,
or is 'attached' to the material plane (living, etc) and now can only see
the MP.
- The appearence of an entity on the SP is a feedback process - it needs to
be able to perceive itself in order to maintain its appearence. Thus if it's
`attached' this process stops, and there is no longer an appearance on the SP.
This means that roving SP spirits can't attack the 'attached' spirit. A spirit
has to use 'visibility' to 'attach' itself to the Material Plane.
- Life *IS* spirit. A creature is not living without a spirit. Thus, a rock
with an associated guardian spirit can be said to be 'alive' - destroy the rock and it's 'dead', and returns to the SP. Hence your 'genius loci', the spirit
of a place; the Hag, Nymph, etc.
- And then there are the 'undead', which fall into three categories:
Haunts; 'attached' spirits without a body - the archetypal ghost
Possessors; 'attached' to a once-dead body - ghouls and zombies.
'Soul-less'; once dead bodies without a spirit - the Vampire !
(I've always been really uneasy about the V.; doesn't INT need a spirit?
SO I would say that Vampires *do* have a spirit, but it's being
contantly drained into the void (see CoT), hence their need to drain
MP else annihalation occurs. No resting in coffins for centuries for
*MY* vampires - it's a tough world out there for them !)
And Greg's point that the Spirit and Hero planes being the same - YES ! But
more that a god has a 'domain' in the spirit plane, full of it's own dead
worshippers, avatars, etc. This ties in nicely with a *LOT* of mythology -
look at Nordic stuff, for instance.
And another point - what determines size on the spirit plane ? Can POW be
correlated with SIZ ? Else you could get an entire multiverse on the head of
a (spiritual) pin!
Sayanara, Folks !
Geoff.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7
: Fri 10 Oct 2003 - 01:31:47 EEST