Existential Considerations : Body, Soul and Spirit

Before I get into intricacies of the story, setting and magic system, a little more framework is in order. My own ideas about the planes of reality in this universe are, in all honesty, not entirely resolved. Perhaps this post will crystallise them into something less amorphous.

"Mythological Musings" mentioned the role of the three planes of reality briefly in the creation narrative, glossing over their characteristics. I would say the original inspiration for this system was asking the question : We can view matter as coiled up energy, locked in particles or strings or what-have-you, what if energy in turn could somehow be a coiled up version of another medium of reality?

I quickly tied this in with the idea that every individual is composed of a physical body, a mental soul, and an immaterial spirit. But this begged clarification; what exactly are they? A physical body is simple enough to define, your material extension into the world, the arrangement of atoms that enables you to click on a link and then receive optical information to read this. Just another bit of clarification, the adjectives I will use to refer to these planes are : etheric, energetic and physical. I know energetic is usually used to indicate a high level of energy or activity, but since I'm calling it the energy plane, "energetic" it is.

The soul and the spirit? Somehow my conception of the two was vaguely synonymous. Interestingly, at a worship workshop session for my youth band, the leaders, very informatively, stated that the soul was made of three things, our emotions, will and reason. So the soul could be likened to our mental experience of reality. Our souls are part of the reason why we sin, it is impure. It is why we may understand what God is calling us to do, yet sin by the excuses "I don't feel like it", "I don't want to" or "I don't think that would work."Alright then, so the soul would have to exist as the mental imprint of the characters in this universe.

Lastly, I am left with the spirit. The worship workshop didn't deal with this in much detail, only stating that our old unclean spirit is replaced by the Holy Spirit that prompts us to the will of God, when we let Him into our lives. That was sufficient for the workshop, but with respect to creating this fantasy universe : More data required for a meaningful answer. The concept of the spirit has numerous links to the animating factor for human life, the breath of God, not in the least by its etymology. With respect to the fall, man was cut off from the Spirit of God and bound to the spirit of the world instead.

So in keeping with these bits of information so far...

Plane of Matter

The individuals who exist primarily on the material plane, namely humanity, have three aspects, one on each of the planes; the body, soul and spirit. The body exists in the material plane. The since humanity is mainly aware of the physical plane, people cannot sense the energy or ether planes without training. This physical reality is governed by four fundamental forces, gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. The energy flowing through the human body and the human mind are part of the energy plane but tied intimately with a person's physical body. The spirit, made of ether, cannot be detected by conventional physical or energetic means.

Plane of Energy

Souls reside in the energy plane. Everything we think with our minds is accompanied by electrical impulses in the brain, and this leaves an energy fingerprint visible to beings attuned to the plane of energy. Since it is only the next plane above the material one, it is still rather comprehensible to humanity. Using matter, energy can be manipulated and so forth. Beings native to the energy plane have no physical body, but so still have energetic constructs that function as a body of sorts in the energy plane. It's almost as if the body and soul are one for these beings, the constructs also house the energy pathways required for their souls. Their spirits however, are still etheric, but they can sense it just as easily as how humanity can sense energy. Also note that since all living organisms, plants and animals, have an energy fingerprint, they do have an image in the energy plane.

Plane of Ether

The final plane of reality is that of the ether, which is all but undetectable to the human consciousness, trapped in the lower material plane. Folds in the ether are responsible for the spirit, which is linked to the body and provides a force that drives life; at least, intelligent, conscious life. Yes I understand this sounds an awful lot like the concept of vitalism. I'm worming my way out of this one by saying that ether is so de-condensed and undetectable that conventional methods involving energy and matter cannot pick up reasonable traces of it. Physical and energetic beings have a spirit that leaves a fold in this plane. The five Great Spirits, Eleyon, Ällora, Yevassë, Unavo and Oleris, exist primarily in this plane of ether. Just as how the energetic beings had a merged body and soul, the Spirits have an entirely unified existence, body, soul and spirit, all expressed in etheric fluctuations. The rules applying to beings of ether are very different to those applying to beings of lower planes.

Alright then, hopefully this is an explanation of the three planes system that will hold up for the time being. The concepts of death, the heavenly rebellion and magic tie in to the three planes, so now that this is established, I can elaborate on those other issues in future.

Anecdotally, the fact that the spirit and the soul seem to be used interchangeably in our modern understanding of our existence is rather unsettling. Granted not everyone believes we have anything apart from this physical life, but this is something that should be clarified by those who do believe in an experience after this material world. Researching into this has given me a better understanding of how my own existence plays out, between sinful human nature and divine redemption.