[Opinion] Summon the person's spirit instead of an entity insted?

[shadowstalker]

Hello, I have a curious question right here which sounds clever. If we are able to communicate Aerial spirits from Goetia, Faeries from Oberon, or any entity from other realm. Why can't we just conjure the spirit of the dead? Who doesn’t want to commune with the spirits of the occultists!?

I’ve been pondering this, and I’ve come up with a theory. So, when we die, we never truly leave our physical body in the way we imagine. Our soul might transition to a spiritual realm, whether you call it heaven, hell, or something else entirely. But our consciousness may stay to the Earth. Could this mean that our spirits are somehow "distributed" across different planes of existence? This might explain why summoning the dead feels so elusive compared to invoking entities from other realms.

Qareen is often described as a companion spirit and it is assigned to every individual, it mirrors the person throughout their life and influence them subtly or amplifying their inclination, both the good and the bad. So if I’ll relate this to the topic, the Qareen does not perish when the human their mimicking dies. It remains behind, wandering or continuing to influence the physical world. This could then support the existence of the Ghost we see. Sometimes, the ghost lives in specific locations, called residential djinns. So, if we will consider this, the Qareen might serve as a "shadow" consciousness, a residual energy or reflection of the individual's personality that stays and bound to the physical realm. Some traditions might suggest that the soul has multiple components—one part ascending to a higher plane, another lingering in the material world, and perhaps a third dissolving altogether. It’s possible that once a person passes away, their spirit undergoes a fragmentation. Like in Kabbalistic tradition, the soul is composed of three parts (Nefesh, Ruach, and Neshamah). Nefesh is the lowest one and I guess that it lingers near the body after death which makes sense as it’s connected to mourning rituals, grave visits, or a sense of the deceased's presence. Ruach might be associated with the idea of the ghost or spirits that we see that physically manifested.

Unlike entities that might be bound to specific rituals or compacts (like Aerial spirits from the Goetia, and Faeries from Oberon), the spirit of the dead may retain a higher degree of free will and they might choose not to respond to summoning attempts, preferring to stay in their current state or realm. What we think of as the dead might be the reflection of their energy or memories of this physical reality. So when people claim to encounter the dead, it may not be the individual’s spirit itself but rather a reflection or projection of their essence. Perhaps, people might encounter some events from the past that is also related to the spirit.

To be honest I haven’t yet read anything related to life after death, so these ideas are purely speculative.Even so, I do find this topic fascinating and would love to hear your thoughts!

 

[Xenophon]

"...a Twelfth Song I know when tree doth hold a corpse in halter hanged/ I know to cut and color a rune so that the dead will walk with me, yea the dead will talk with me." ---Wotan's Rune Song.

Unfortunalely (maybe), I don't know the rune or the song. It seems like the logical step for you with your interests would be to try contacting the dead. Of course, then you run into thr problem with verification. How do you know the babe that picked up the phone, as it were, really is Aunt Millicent? Folks that dabble in such doings say a low-grade spirit can pick up on your expectations and memories and do a pretty good job of faking. Even so, if you're really interested, field work not library work seems the only way to go.

 

[Faria]

I don't believe in spirits of the dead, Heaven or Hell, or other similar afterlife concepts. That said, there was a study conducted by Princeton in the early 2000s comparing diviners of various types, and the necromancers were by far the most accurate compared to other forms of divination.

I think that part of why you can get better answers from (nonexistent) spirits of dead people is that we are hard-wired to see and communicate with other humans. It's a huge part of what we are built to do. We all have comparable experiences, so if you want anything other than a solid fact like "Where did Grandpa bury the silver?" your brain can work out most of the details. Everyone has built-in Chat GPT when it comes to anything relating to humans, and I think that is the faculty at work in necromancy.

I don't find that particularly exciting or even magical. It's kinda disappointing and definitely not reassuring about hope of an afterlife. When you call up Vincent Van Gogh and he speaks Dutch and you don't, I might revise this idea, but I have not seen any reason to do so at present. To me it looks like the dead are just dead and what we get from them is our own opinions about them.

If you call up a dead friend though a familiar spirit or some underworld deity, I'd be more inclined to credit that spirit or deity than the deceased person. And again, if there's nothing unknowable and verifiable revealed, there's no reason to think a dead person or a demon was involved at all.