Spirit
Spirits were a broad category of supernatural beings, notable for their intangibility. While sometimes treated as a synonym of ghosts, (TV: Army of Ghosts [+]Loading...["Army of Ghosts (TV story)"], PROSE: "Loa" [+]Part of The Book of the War, Loading...{"namedep":"Loa","1":"The Book of the War (novel)"}) the term "spirit" in its fullest definition was broader, as it included other kinds of beings than the shades of the dead. (PROSE: "Loa" [+]Part of The Book of the War, Loading...{"namedep":"Loa","1":"The Book of the War (novel)"})
Types
In the voodoo religion, much was made of the loa, a term which loosely translated as "spirit". As explained by The Book of the War:
A loa isn’t a ghost, as such, nor is it a god. It’s a presence which walks on a plane alongside humankind rather than above it, which can be invoked, called upon or even invited to occupy the body of the summoner. Voodoo practitioners use the loa almost as spiritual tools, summoning the higher presences to “ride” them and thereby invest them with that loa's own abilities.
Faction Paradox borrowed the term loa to refer to similarly-defined entities existing within the structure of history, structures complex enough to have achieved sentience and be better understood as occupants and guardians of Time itself than as mere equations. (PROSE: "Loa" [+]Part of The Book of the War, Loading...{"namedep":"Loa","1":"The Book of the War (novel)"}) These beings were otherwise referred to as simply "the spirits" or "the Spirits". (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire [+]Loading...["The Eleven Day Empire (audio story)"]) Some within the Faction believed that other kinds of non-physical entities who could affect the physical world despite not being conventionally "real", such as popular cultural figures, could also be considered "minor loa". (PROSE: "Loa" [+]Part of The Book of the War, Loading...{"namedep":"Loa","1":"The Book of the War (novel)"})
The Book of the War drew comparisons between either kind of loa and the Native North Americans' dakina, a term it translated as "spirit-gods" (PROSE: "A'daltem Ano'nde" [+]Part of The Book of the War, Loading...{"namedep":"A'daltem Ano'nde","1":"The Book of the War (novel)"}) and also rendered as the pleonastic "spirit dakina". (PROSE: "Catch-the-Bear's War Bonnet" [+]Part of The Book of the War, Loading...{"namedep":"Catch-the-Bear's War Bonnet","1":"The Book of the War (novel)"})
