What exactly the shades are? Are they spirits of the dead, but concious ones?
I mean, when you die, do you transform into a shade? Can you still really exist with your memories, wills, etc?
I see in evoking magick that people summons the shades of the dead for their objetives. Are those shades the real people? Or just something they left?
You know…it will suck if you die and cant continue your stuff. And there is reencarnation also. So this shade history is confusing at the moment for me.
Shades are kinda like the echo of the person who has died. A specific pattern that continues to ripple outward. It’s not however the afterlife for the deceased, but a former aspect of them that continues.
As far as I recall from all my readings of E.A.'s work, there’s never a mention of what happens with the dead after they die ~ and I don’t mean the shade.
BTW, taoist magic has a simmilar theory: the soul of a human being is composed of ten parts, three parts are of heaven and seven are of earth. What keeps them together is energy, when that dissolves, the seven go back to earth (the shade?) and the three back to the sky (the immortal self).
Taoist magic alchemy is supposed to grant longevity by strenghtening the energy that binds them together, and transforming the earthly souls into heaven souls via alchemy, so that when you die you take everything with you in the afterlife. The reason the average joe comes back is because the three souls that are up there and the seven souls that are down here yearn for each other to be complete.
Anyway, that’s ‘orthodox’ daoism, I wonder how LHP daoism would sound like, for sure they have that also…
Basically all you need to know is you don’t wander around the earth after you die as a shade, though the shade definitely does exist. Your actual consciousness can either go to a permanent afterlife, possess another, force your reincarnation, etc…
Right, there is a ritual where you go to any graveyard and get some earth of a tumb, and the name on the tumb. Then you evoke a spirit to bind that guy and then have him helping you with your objetives.
I think it will probably be the shade of the dead, but is this in any way valid? Im up to try it, but it will require some materials and i dont know if the source from where i got this ritual is valid.
