Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: Magic cannot do anything. As much as that’s antithetical to the common view of what magic is, at least to us, within the universe of the game there are set limitations to magic that either cannot be crossed, or at the very least humanity is nowhere near to crossing. In this excerpt, we see someone’s take on the issue of resurrection, and how difficult the process must be, assuming mages even understand what that would even entail.
The mythology of our world often features instances of the dead brought back to life. As we are a species innately fearful of death, it is not hard to see why such a narrative appeals to us and why we’d attribute it to great wise men and divinities. But the reality is not so simple.
Death is not the destruction of the flesh; it’s the dissolution of the mind and soul. So perhaps to really understand what true resurrection would entail, we’d need first to understand the physical fabric of the mind and the metaphysical fabric of our presence within the dreaming realm. But we do not, and such is the nature of things that perhaps we never will.
The mind does not know itself, and the soul is uncritical of its existence. To restore both would call not only for a tremendous introspective understanding of our own human nature but also to then apply it to someone else.
Such an act, if possible, must be paramount thaumaturgy, a great work on par with theogony. To pierce the veil by which an irreducible complexity becomes a single word. My child, my mother, my father, my love. The ontological nucleus of our understanding of another person, which in itself is but a shadow of the self-unknown whole.
It is to take, by force, that which lies beyond that veil and in meticulous detail render it upon the canvas of waking and dreaming reality once more.
Surely, true resurrection cannot be anything less. And if we understand that, we should not be surprised that many claim for the fabric of the mind to itself be the flesh of an Elder God.
But does that mean there are forms of false resurrection? Yes, of course. They often arise from an attempt to bring back the soul without a mind to sustain it or reanimate the body without a soul to accompany it.
While such efforts may pass for a resurrection for a time, they invariably lead to despair, doom, and even death. The former may turn out to be beings from the depths of the dreaming realm masquerading for the dead or at the very least potent nightmares. The latter often bring us to question what foreign will was lured forth to mantle control of the body.
Records of many such events survive from even ancient times, and new ones still are added from time to time. The beings they create bear many names, and in past ages, knowledge of them fell under the purview of Necromancy. The belief they were human souls somehow detached from the physical body and the physical mind was so common that today we even see the idea commonly propagate among the mundane folk in their mundane stories and religions.
But now, I would hope, magekind knows better than to believe that ghosts are anything other than shadows of the living, imprinted on the collective unconsciousness. Nothing more than our memories.
Esoteric Musings... 