I don't think we actually disagree here, except over my imprecise use of the word "final". The Earthly Paradise and Purgatory are those 'intermediate spots' that you mention. This is following St Augustine's concepts of the boni non valde (the not completely good) and the mali non valde (the not completely evil). Those who die with unrepented sins end up in Purgatory, where they work off their penance until admitted into the Earthly Paradise, where they meet those who died with all their sins forgiven. There they will wait until Judgement Day, when the Gates of Heaven will be thrown open and they will be admitted into God's presence.
Heaven is still a possible destination as you mention yourself: for saints and other selected individuals. These are St Augustine's [i]boni /i, and there are also the damned (mali) who go straight to Hell.
I agree. I think that's exactly what is happening with Incantation of Summoning the Dead. The Ritual magic finds the spirit through the Arcane Connection and pulls a fragment back to earth, creating a ghost. This is possible even if the spirit has reunited with its soul. I would consider a Heaven-sent spirit to be immune to this spell, or perhaps it can choose to send a ghost if it wishes. Likewise, a Hellbound soul might be able to send back a demon in the form of an Infernal ghost.
The true advantage of Canaanite necromancy is that you don't need an Arcane Connection. Or rather, the necromancer is an Arcane Connection to all the dead. At least, that's how I remember it: I'm not with my books at present.
That book was my boon companion while organising my thoughts on this material for Locations.
I agree. These spells can remove impediments to clear thought by improving memory, the common sense, imagination, cognition, and estimation, which is going to cover most Intelligence rolls in my opinion!
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. Philosophers talk about the "intelligences" which guide the motion of the planets and govern the world. These would be spirits: disembodied minds.
Nothing with a Might score is human, and (I think) only humans have souls. There is certainly a false syllogism in this somewhere, but this implies that neither Magic or Faerie creatures have souls, ergo no reason or intellect either. I agree with this position with respect to faeries: the cognizant ones know (sort of) they are just stories given form through human intellect. Magic creatures might be a different case, and probably something that bothers all magi with a familiar. However, does it matter that there are in-game truths that cannot be explained with mechanics?
I'm not so sure that canon says this. CrAn can be used to create magical animals, but I would not expect these to have Intelligence rather than Cunning. After all, they are Magic Animals.
It does seem consistent to me. When writing A&A, I went through the Mentem rules in ArM5 to try to understand how the framework of the five wits might interact with those spells, and found no inconsistencies that couldn't be explained, except maybe for...
That's probably the most aberrant Mentem spell, except maybe for The Innermost Companion. You could use a lot of sophistry to explain how this doesn't affect a soul. For a start, what do we mean by 'affect a soul'? Rego Corpus can move a soul -- it goes along with the body. So why shouldn't ReMe?
My personal explanation is a bit neo-platonic. The soul is a Form, and thereby lacks categories / differentia. Location is a category, ergo souls have no location. They are everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. Rego spells can move the body or the mind/spirit, but this does not perturb the link to the soul.
Of course, considering the soul as a Form breaks down what I've already said about the 'final destination' after death. That's where the hand-wave comes into play
You are right. As others point out, Purgatory is beginning to be accepted as a doctrine in the thirteenth century, but existed as a concept since at least St Augustine's time. He saw it as a state which followed death; the change that is occurring is that it is now being seen more as a place or destination; thus the chapter in Locations. Judgement Day was the time that all souls were admitted into the presence of God. It is harder to fit this concept of waiting to other Divine religions, although there are some parallels.
Well, it depends on how much you stretch the concept of a creature with just a mind and no soul being able to "reason" somehow.
Note and disclaimer: Bear in mind that "intellect" and "intelligence" will not be used interchangeably from now on. The former will be used to mean "the ability to understand as provided by the soul", and the latter as "the ability to behave like a sentient being". Also bear in mind that everything in this post is just some personal thoughts, mental exercises and ramblings, with no intention to be taken as facts or statements of personal belief, either in-game or regarding the real world.
As far as I know, the actual thinking of the (somewhat later) time was that no, a mind without reason and intellect (soul) could not be intelligent, and that was what differentiated a person from an animal. But with ghosts we already have creatures with (a somewhat fragmented) intelligence, yet no soul. And with Faeries, for example, canon clearly states that they lack a soul, and have rules in its place.
So I think you could say that you can have a creature with no true reason nor intellect, but that can somewhat use its wits to "appear to have" intelligence. This would mean that this hypothetical creature would be able to be more intelligent than an animal, exercising the full power of its wits. It would be able to process and store the input of its senses, to exercise imagination and make decisions based on what it percieves, its memory of its history, and an instinctual drive that would allow it to have some sort of intuition. Like a very intelligent animal, that almost feels like a person, while only using the five wits that belong to the mind, not the powers of reason and intellect provided by a soul. Now bear in mind that animals have "a greatly diminished cognition and an abundance of estimation", and imagine that our hypothetical being has instead an abundance of cognition. It is now effectively more intelligent than any animal could be, yet still lacking a soul.
But we know that, while it might look like it's intelligent, it cannot achieve true reason or intellect, because it lacks a soul. Which seems to fit the canon description of ghosts and Faeries perfectly, as they are intelligent, but don't have the free will or creativity that a human does. The former because they are bound to their fragmented minds, fetters to live and obsessions; and the latter because "they have rules instead of a soul", they are bound to their roles, acting more like the aggressive mimicry of some predators, taking on attrative characteristics (taking up roles in stories) to lure their prey (humans) so they can feed on them (feed on their vitality).
So I do think we can actually fit the concept of a souless being looking like it's intelligent, as long as we a) are willing to stretch a bit the medieval concepts; and b) take into account those beings are still limited in other ways when compared with humans, lacking proper free will, creativity, etc.
Reading this reminds me of something I was told in catechesis, that Heaven, Hell and Purgatory were not really places, but states of the soul. As I was told back then, Heaven would be the state of Grace attained when the soul basks in the full unabridged Love of God, Hell would be the state of absolute suffering derived from the total absence of God, and Purgatory would be the state of suffering deriving from feeling fully how much your sins made God sad.
There's a whole other can of worms open with that interpretation (if God is omnipresent, how can Hell be the absence of God, for example), but the idea that they are not actual "places", but rather states of a location-less soul, seems to fit your explanation of how those spells can perform their effects through affecting the mind while not having an impact on its connection to the soul.
Which is all of course quite post-modern for the thirteenth century, but then again so are Faeries as portrayed in RoP:F, and yet they are a really wonderful concept for the game.
No, it doesn't. Reading my post again, I see it comes off as nit-picky, which was not the intent. I am though disturbed by what seems to be a contradiction between the concept of soul as the seat of rationality and the existence of beings in the AM universe that are considered to be soulless yet are always presented as rational and fully intelligent.
What, after all, does it mean for a spirit to be of pure mind if mind alone isn't enough for reason or intellect?
I'll go with that, although I'm not sure that's always the interpretation people use. Nonetheless, there are ways presented in several sources to awaken animals to Intelligence rather than Cunning. These may be non-hermetic, but I'm not comfortable with any magic actually creating a soul in a being, if that's what's required for Intelligence.
Ok, I can see things stretching that far.
It's a pretty odd and old spell and probably best just forgotten, I suppose. One actually gets the impression that one of the authors or editors simply didn't like the concept of switching bodies and wrote that in to muck it up.
