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last post I made was about spirit documentation, but I’ve been doing some more thinking about how we categorize spirits so I made an essay(? I don’t really know what to call it) on a category I call “liminal spirits” and I wanted to see what everyone’s thoughts are, particularly if you have had experience that are in line with my theories as or if you have any ideas to expand apon them.
Introduction:
I won’t claim to know how the universe works in exact detail, I am not that deep in my path and I only know pieces, fragments of gnosis, as is the case for most of us.
One of these truths, which is obvious to all is that there is our material world and an unseen world. Though I don’t know exactly “where” this world exists relative to ours it is clearly there, and close. When we practice any sort of mysticism or magick we are connecting the physical and spiritual world.
To do this it requires us to focus our will. It’s not easy but anyone can hypothetically learn to do it, some people are better at it. Some people are born with stronger “psychic” potential(I won’t here speculate how psychic abilities are different from other forms of will power control such as witchcraft or ceremonial magick particularly seeing as they are closely connected)
All of this rambling, I promise I’m getting to a point here. There are living things in both worlds, animals and plants here, spirits on the other side. As I said before, for a being from one world to effect or reach the other requires some degree of skill or talent. But there are exceptions it seems.
These exceptions are what I call liminal spirits. Although some of them may not be “spirits” exactly but I’ll touch more on that theory later in my section on ghosts. These liminal spirits are beings which live between worlds. Ghosts, cryptids, fairies, yokai, all of the sort of thing. Now I’m am going to say I’m explicitly excluding demons and angels as I see them as explicitly spiritual beings which also have to make a deliberate effort to cross the veil in much the same way we do, by that criteria all gods and animist spirits are excluded. But most creatures of folk lore are liminal spirits.
If I had to put a clear taxonomy on what is a liminal spirit I’d say it should be tangible in our world by someone with no magical experience or psychic talent. This doesn’t have to be explicitly visible but if it can activate your physical senses even if you were a staunch atheist with no experience with the supernatural. It also needs to be in their nature to be naturally interacting with the physical world(see my above point about angels and demons). A good example of this would be like a lost/trapped soul who is causing noises, cold spots, objects moving without being aware of the fact that they are bridging the barrier, it’s simply what they do.
Also I’d like to say this is all based on speculation and personal experience so I’m interested to hear where people agree(or disagree) with my ideas here.
Chapter 1: Ghosts
I’ll probably spend limited time on this chapter because there’s already so much writing and media on ghosts. But they are the most popular form of liminal spirits so I will still cover them.
I’m sure you know what a ghost is but to define the term it’s the spirit(or energy) from a decease humans or sometimes animals. They usually remain attached to places or people, although not all human souls are liminal and I imagine many are free to do what they wish but choose to watch over loved ones.
I’ll start with the energy, some part of the universe acts like a magnetic tape, emotions and energy from living beings can leave marks on physical objects and places. I believe these to be the most common kind of “ghost” and the source of a lot of hauntings. As well as the explanation for some ghostly stereotypes such as violent deaths creating ghosts. Violent deaths will spark a lot of emotions and leave a big mark on that carbon copy paper of reality. Being a mere fragment of a persons energy I’d say these may be some of the weakest spirits to be on this side of the veil.
Now getting on to “true” ghosts. I know very little on these because I feel that true ghosts are uncommon to be trapped in one spot, like I said earlier most true ghosts are likely just visiting places and people they are connected with. They’re simply choosing to not reincarnate yet. Perhaps there are some spirits which due to some form of curse, “karma”, or just being a spiteful individual. But I don’t know how to differentiate them from a false ghost.
To conclude this chapter I’ll talk about the metaphysics of ghosts. The metaphysics is one of my most interesting part of liminal spirits to me due to their unique standing between the worlds. However for true ghosts I feel like the explanation is fairly obvious. They come from the material world, so in death they stay close to the material world. Same with false ghosts, they are directly tied to some aspect of the material world. So of course they are manifest between worlds. Perhaps the veil itself is the recording medium for them.
Chapter 2: Cryptids
Now this is a massive grab bag category, and I could get anal about the categories and go deep into spirit taxonomy but to prevent this from becoming a novel(for now) I’ll keep it too these two categories. But if I expand apon my ideas of spirit taxonomy I will expand my categories
Cryptids in this case refer to liminal spirits who are not human. This is a very diverse grouping of spirits. As I said in the intro this includes almost every creature from folk lore and urban legends. The nature of these are deeply varied. As someone born in the United States most of the cryptids I’m familiar with are thoese know originally discovered and documented by the native Americans. Although there are some which are many which are less known about due to the genocide of the natives along with the fact much of their documentation was oral there are likely thousands of liminal spirits which are no longer known about except in the local legends of town folk who have encountered these cryptids.
A small note to keep in mind is that cryptids among folk lore and cryptozoology might not necessarily be spirits, they may simply be unrecognized material beings famously the platypus was considered a cryptid for a short period of time after discovery because it was so elusive and un believe-able. In the 21st century these are far less common due to advance technology and large scale urbanization but there are still millions of acres of wilderness in North America, as well as the hundreds of miles of caves so there’s still room for material cryptids to evade researchers.
Unlike ghosts the reason for liminality among cryptids is less clear, as previously mentioned they are such a broad group of spirits, but even if we investigate individual spirits it would still likely be hard to tell in some cases. These beings have never been incarnate so they don’t have that kind of life attachment, but they still may be connected to the lands that they reside in. Some liminal spirits may be nature spirits connected to their land. Some may be natural protectors, that would explain why some have aggressive tendencies. There are likely many other potential causes for liminal spirits but I can only really speculate, perhaps some are ritually created by humans such as the Jersey devil, spirits evoked (deliberately or not) who end up becoming liminal. Perhaps some are simply just liminal by happenstance, some sort of area that’s on a lay line which creates a portal where certain spirits exist liminally.
Conclusion:
This is simply an overview of my understanding of a very unique kind of spirits. All of this is based on my personal experience and theories based in centuries of folk lore. I hope for this to be the first of many works I make in spirit taxonomy.
One of the most unique parts of liminal spirits is that both those who practice mysticism/occult/magic and those who don’t are interested in these spirits so it can bring together communities.
One last note I’d like to add is that spirits exist in an ecosystem, if you go seek out any kind of spirit treat it with respect and caution. There may be a time and a place for a banishing, in the same way you’d want to drive predators away from livestock but if you’re harassing and harming spirits wantonly you will harm the ecosystem like when grey wolves were driven out of Yellowstone.
Introduction:
I won’t claim to know how the universe works in exact detail, I am not that deep in my path and I only know pieces, fragments of gnosis, as is the case for most of us.
One of these truths, which is obvious to all is that there is our material world and an unseen world. Though I don’t know exactly “where” this world exists relative to ours it is clearly there, and close. When we practice any sort of mysticism or magick we are connecting the physical and spiritual world.
To do this it requires us to focus our will. It’s not easy but anyone can hypothetically learn to do it, some people are better at it. Some people are born with stronger “psychic” potential(I won’t here speculate how psychic abilities are different from other forms of will power control such as witchcraft or ceremonial magick particularly seeing as they are closely connected)
All of this rambling, I promise I’m getting to a point here. There are living things in both worlds, animals and plants here, spirits on the other side. As I said before, for a being from one world to effect or reach the other requires some degree of skill or talent. But there are exceptions it seems.
These exceptions are what I call liminal spirits. Although some of them may not be “spirits” exactly but I’ll touch more on that theory later in my section on ghosts. These liminal spirits are beings which live between worlds. Ghosts, cryptids, fairies, yokai, all of the sort of thing. Now I’m am going to say I’m explicitly excluding demons and angels as I see them as explicitly spiritual beings which also have to make a deliberate effort to cross the veil in much the same way we do, by that criteria all gods and animist spirits are excluded. But most creatures of folk lore are liminal spirits.
If I had to put a clear taxonomy on what is a liminal spirit I’d say it should be tangible in our world by someone with no magical experience or psychic talent. This doesn’t have to be explicitly visible but if it can activate your physical senses even if you were a staunch atheist with no experience with the supernatural. It also needs to be in their nature to be naturally interacting with the physical world(see my above point about angels and demons). A good example of this would be like a lost/trapped soul who is causing noises, cold spots, objects moving without being aware of the fact that they are bridging the barrier, it’s simply what they do.
Also I’d like to say this is all based on speculation and personal experience so I’m interested to hear where people agree(or disagree) with my ideas here.
Chapter 1: Ghosts
I’ll probably spend limited time on this chapter because there’s already so much writing and media on ghosts. But they are the most popular form of liminal spirits so I will still cover them.
I’m sure you know what a ghost is but to define the term it’s the spirit(or energy) from a decease humans or sometimes animals. They usually remain attached to places or people, although not all human souls are liminal and I imagine many are free to do what they wish but choose to watch over loved ones.
I’ll start with the energy, some part of the universe acts like a magnetic tape, emotions and energy from living beings can leave marks on physical objects and places. I believe these to be the most common kind of “ghost” and the source of a lot of hauntings. As well as the explanation for some ghostly stereotypes such as violent deaths creating ghosts. Violent deaths will spark a lot of emotions and leave a big mark on that carbon copy paper of reality. Being a mere fragment of a persons energy I’d say these may be some of the weakest spirits to be on this side of the veil.
Now getting on to “true” ghosts. I know very little on these because I feel that true ghosts are uncommon to be trapped in one spot, like I said earlier most true ghosts are likely just visiting places and people they are connected with. They’re simply choosing to not reincarnate yet. Perhaps there are some spirits which due to some form of curse, “karma”, or just being a spiteful individual. But I don’t know how to differentiate them from a false ghost.
To conclude this chapter I’ll talk about the metaphysics of ghosts. The metaphysics is one of my most interesting part of liminal spirits to me due to their unique standing between the worlds. However for true ghosts I feel like the explanation is fairly obvious. They come from the material world, so in death they stay close to the material world. Same with false ghosts, they are directly tied to some aspect of the material world. So of course they are manifest between worlds. Perhaps the veil itself is the recording medium for them.
Chapter 2: Cryptids
Now this is a massive grab bag category, and I could get anal about the categories and go deep into spirit taxonomy but to prevent this from becoming a novel(for now) I’ll keep it too these two categories. But if I expand apon my ideas of spirit taxonomy I will expand my categories
Cryptids in this case refer to liminal spirits who are not human. This is a very diverse grouping of spirits. As I said in the intro this includes almost every creature from folk lore and urban legends. The nature of these are deeply varied. As someone born in the United States most of the cryptids I’m familiar with are thoese know originally discovered and documented by the native Americans. Although there are some which are many which are less known about due to the genocide of the natives along with the fact much of their documentation was oral there are likely thousands of liminal spirits which are no longer known about except in the local legends of town folk who have encountered these cryptids.
A small note to keep in mind is that cryptids among folk lore and cryptozoology might not necessarily be spirits, they may simply be unrecognized material beings famously the platypus was considered a cryptid for a short period of time after discovery because it was so elusive and un believe-able. In the 21st century these are far less common due to advance technology and large scale urbanization but there are still millions of acres of wilderness in North America, as well as the hundreds of miles of caves so there’s still room for material cryptids to evade researchers.
Unlike ghosts the reason for liminality among cryptids is less clear, as previously mentioned they are such a broad group of spirits, but even if we investigate individual spirits it would still likely be hard to tell in some cases. These beings have never been incarnate so they don’t have that kind of life attachment, but they still may be connected to the lands that they reside in. Some liminal spirits may be nature spirits connected to their land. Some may be natural protectors, that would explain why some have aggressive tendencies. There are likely many other potential causes for liminal spirits but I can only really speculate, perhaps some are ritually created by humans such as the Jersey devil, spirits evoked (deliberately or not) who end up becoming liminal. Perhaps some are simply just liminal by happenstance, some sort of area that’s on a lay line which creates a portal where certain spirits exist liminally.
Conclusion:
This is simply an overview of my understanding of a very unique kind of spirits. All of this is based on my personal experience and theories based in centuries of folk lore. I hope for this to be the first of many works I make in spirit taxonomy.
One of the most unique parts of liminal spirits is that both those who practice mysticism/occult/magic and those who don’t are interested in these spirits so it can bring together communities.
One last note I’d like to add is that spirits exist in an ecosystem, if you go seek out any kind of spirit treat it with respect and caution. There may be a time and a place for a banishing, in the same way you’d want to drive predators away from livestock but if you’re harassing and harming spirits wantonly you will harm the ecosystem like when grey wolves were driven out of Yellowstone.
