Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
I view the soul as comprising different levels, ranging from infinite transcendent to a particular animalistic body.
The infinite aspects are cosmic and selfless, beyond a sense of an individual self.
But there is a kind of higher self, an ideal best version of oneself, who is inherently altruistic and ethical, and can engage and adapt any situation. This relates to the eternal identity, being beyond spacetime but still cognitively conceivable. Mystical experiences of various sacred traditions involve it.
Between the higher self and the animal body is the level of personal identities. This is the psychological sense of self that can learn learn grow, explore, and evolve. It can tale on more responsibilities, in a sense becoming larger. Sometimes it is called the spirit of a person. It has influence and relates to the soul of an artist. Sometimes this psychological selfidentity identifies moreso as the altruistic higher self, sometimes moreso the selfpreservation animal body.
For D&D, the "soul" of a Humanoid comprises different parts to being a microcosm of the macrocosmic multiverse. There are roughly three levels of the soul: the Material aura of the animal body, the Ethereal influence of the spirit of a person, and an Astral ideal self at the threshold of spacetime. Each of these levels involve different aspects. It is as if a Humanoid has a different soul existing in each multiversal plane, and the person is a unity of all of them.
The bodily aura is the animal soul of the Material Plane. This Material soul is the ki, the lifeforce of a body. It is the foundation for an individual sense of self, a unique person of desires and selfpreservation, who is distinct from the rest of existence. This aura includes aspects of Shadow, Fey, and Elemental. The Shadow soul is clear relating to necromancy, the Fey soul relates to nature and the fates and related to druidry, and the Elemental soul to the magic of the Elemental Sorcerer.
One can talk about a "Shadow soul", an aspect of the bodily aura that relates to dying and death, but lingers on with the corpse after death, and hopefully rests in peace in the Shadowfell. Necromancy manipulates this Shadow soul while the other souls of the same person continue to do their activities elsewhere across other planes. A Celestial soul is aware if a Necromancer disturbs its Shadow soul, but the Celestial soul itself remains unharmed.
The Fey soul also relates to the underworld but is a more positive state, involving the healthy and healing aspects of the body, communion with all living lifeforms, as well as the magical capacity of shapeshifing. The Fey aspect tends to be thoughtless but ultimately fair. There is a sense of karma at work, the "fates", sometimes in a frightening way.
The Elemental soul is alchemically "scientific" but includes magical affinities with the matter and the personalities of the four elements.
The Astral soul is "angelic" and engages the realms of archetypes, symbols, cultural ideals, values, ethics, alignments. These conceptual structures allow the person to make decisions beyond the immediacy of reactions to the bodily senses. There is a timeless quality involving synchronicity. The reason a person can engage in this level of the soul is because of the capacity of speech.
The Astral level includes the Celestial soul of altruistism that achieves great ambition by ways that also benfit others. It makes sense to say every Humanoid also has a Fiend soul, being the consequences of dark side decisions and actions. This is the aspect that "passes thru fire" to enter the Celestial Planes whole. The main difference between Celestial and Fiend relates to the Material soul. This bodily aura has infinite desire: when one desire gains fulfillment, the aura desires something more. The Celestial soul uses the infinite desires of others as opportunities to do Good. When someone is hungry, one becomes able to offer food, teach how to prepare food, and encourage others to do Good feeding yet others. By contrast, the Fiend soul only fulfills ones own infinite desires, at the expense of others.
The Ethereal soul is the spirit of a person. It bridges the Astral soul and the Material bodily aura. A person is whatever the Ethereal soul pays attention to. It is the identity and actions of a person.
These Ethereal selfidentities can learn, adapt, and evolve. Ideally the person selfidentitifies with the Celestial soul while remaining in touch with the individualistic desires of the bodily soul. Loving ones bodily self is Good, while also loving the bodily selves of others. The Fey aspect is this benign animalistic self.
The Ethereal soul exerts influence, relating to the presence of works of art and the magical telepathic magic of the Bard and other shamanic figures.
The phrase mind over matter relates to the Ethereal soul of an individual person. This level is made out of ether, the fifth element also called quintessence. The ether is force, being physical but immaterial. Gravity is also a form of ether. The Border Ethereal is all of these Ethereal forces that are part of and inseparable from the Material Plane.
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