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I've recently fallen into a bit of obsession with Pathfinder's take on Shamans and their potential to return as a 2e class, and obviously one can't properly exist without the spirits they're defined by associating with! Pinning down what, precisely, that means, however, has proven remarkably elusive.
Spirits are ephemeral creatures defined by their spiritual self and often lacking a physical form.
Spirits are often intangible, which makes good sense - that's how hauntings and the like usually are. It takes a little digging into the magical Essences to understand the former part:
Also called soul, ethereal essence, or spiritual essence, spirit is an otherworldly building block that makes up a being's immaterial and immortal self. The spirit travels through the Ethereal Plane and into the Great Beyond after the death of the physical body. The spirit is most easily affected by divine and occult spells. Spirit spells are usually of the divination or necromancy schools.
So it would seem that Spirits are essentially incarnate soul-stuff/Spirit Essence, rather than being tethered to an organic body, which likewise makes good sense. From there, "Spirit" is a pretty big tent, covering an awful lot of things!
Intangible undead (like ghosts!) are probably the most well-known of the bunch - but certain folks have made clear dealing with them might feel strange for certain Shamans, an opinion I'd love further thoughts on. Hantu are interesting in that they're Occult nature spirits, distinct from the Primal ones we see as Spirit Guides. Phantoms are mortal souls gone strange, denied their final judgment but distinctly *not* undead. Gliminals are natives of their Positive Energy Plane. Kami, interestingly, are some of the only non-undead Divine spirits we've seen in 2e, bonded protectors of chosen items and natural sites. 2e Oracles make fascinating mention of 'ancestor spirits beyond the cycle of reincarnation,' a juicy lead worth following.
That breadth gets even wider when you get into older canon: the Rivethun dwarves and certain Amurrun consider the gods to 'merely' be great spirits, while Old Sarkoris (most famous for Spirit Guides' honored place in their society) likewise entreated with all sorts of fey, elementals, and other planar creatures as 'spirits.'
Does the term "Spirit" have all that much inherent meaning in Pathfinder? Should a Golarion Shaman have all of these within their theoretical wheelhouse? I'd welcome whatever thoughts you have to spare :>
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I think it would be difficult to define 'spirit' in a coherent way. To some extent I expect 'spirit' in-universe is something of a catchall for things, especially magical things, which the average person doesn't understand and/or lives out beyond the bounds of society. Fey are spirits of nature, ghosts and phantoms are spirits of the dead, celestials and fiends are spirits of the beyond, etc.
Secrets of Magic certainly shows that scholars have made attempts to restrict the definition of 'spirit' to intangible creatures of spiritual essence, but even in the coining of the term 'vitae' for the intangible entities of Life, you get the sense that spirit is too useful of a term for the layperson. Almost like the category of 'fish' in a way.
I remember back to 3.5e D&D which interested me with the introduction of a Spirit Shaman class which contained a sidebar which defined what 'spirits' were according to a Spirit Shaman's worldview.
WHAT IS A SPIRIT?
Several of the spirit shaman's abilities affect spirits. For purposes of the spirit shaman's ability, a "spirit" includes any of the following creatures:
* All incorporeal undead;
* All fey;
* All elementals;
* Creatures in astral form or with astral bodies (but not a creature physically present on the Astral Plane);
* All creatures of the spirit subtype (see Oriental Adventures);
* Spirit folk and telthors (see Unapproachable East);
* Spirit creatures created by spells such as dream sight or wood wose.In the spirit shaman's worldview, elementals and fey are simply spirits of nature, and incorporeal undead are the spirits of the dead.
As you can well see, this was hardly an exclusive category for the class, with the notable exception of Outsiders (former Celestial/Monitor/Fiend supergroup). I don't have any prescriptive ideas about where the lines for spirits (either in general or specific to Shaman) should be drawn, and certainly the worldbuilding that has been done on the nature of essences puts Pathfinder in a different place than the Greyhawk cosmology was when this class was published, but I don't think I would mind Shaman operating with such a broad definition, at least so long as their repertoire of powers were concrete.
On a related train of thought, the question of what kind of entities can be considered 'spirits' in the broad sense recalls the Living Vessel archetype. It strikes me that creatures which traditionally have tangible physical bodies, such as demons, fae, and maybe even some aberrations might nevertheless be capable of existing in a less tangible way for a variety of reasons, including joining with a Living Vessel. If this is the case, perhaps these same un-incarnated entities might join the vital 'spirits' as the unseen hosts which the Shaman deals with.
(perhaps not all of them at once, I would think that it would be difficult enough assigning a single tradition of magic as it is, but certainly having the ability to recognise when there are spirits at work in the world from any of the myriad families, even if their knowledge and power base comes from a subset they can call upon for aid)
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I had a thought a while ago about the Roman genius loci and lares, the normally unnamed minor divinities of the households, the crossroads, the fields, and general everyday things, and how you could make a working-class cleric for them in contrast to the formal clergy who tend the greater gods, who swapped out their domains based on which spirit they're appealing to or which would be dominant in the area they're in, and it's only just occurred to me that's what a Shaman does. So thank you for that. :P
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The APG has the following in the Consult the Spirits Skill feat:
Nature allows you to contact the spirits of nature that form leshies, who are born of pure life essence rather than spiritual energy and can answer questions about natural features like the location of nearby water or plant life. Religion reveals the presence of angelic, demonic, or other spirits in service to divine beings, who provide information about sources of powerful positive or negative energy, sacred or profane influences, or the presence of undead. Occultism allows you to contact lingering spirits, psychic echoes of the departed dead, and spirits from beyond reality, who tell you about things like strange auras, effects, or the presence of unnatural occult beings.
No Arcane spirits defined. Nature seems to be in the kami/leshy space. Religion seems to imply there are divine servitors around that you can contact. Occult seems to own the space we would conventionally think of a ghost-like things/hauntings and maybe Old Gods.
Doesn't do much to make a list so much as gives some descriptive context.
The APG has the following in the Consult the Spirits Skill feat:
Nature allows you to contact the spirits of nature that form leshies, who are born of pure life essence rather than spiritual energy and can answer questions about natural features like the location of nearby water or plant life. Religion reveals the presence of angelic, demonic, or other spirits in service to divine beings, who provide information about sources of powerful positive or negative energy, sacred or profane influences, or the presence of undead. Occultism allows you to contact lingering spirits, psychic echoes of the departed dead, and spirits from beyond reality, who tell you about things like strange auras, effects, or the presence of unnatural occult beings.No Arcane spirits defined. Nature seems to be in the kami/leshy space. Religion seems to imply there are divine servitors around that you can contact. Occult seems to own the space we would conventionally think of a ghost-like things/hauntings and maybe Old Gods.
Doesn't do much to make a list so much as gives some descriptive context.
The absence of Arcane spirits here seems intentional and fascinating - and makes good sense! Spirit Essence touches the Divine and Occult traditions, while this establishes that leshies are animated by pure Life Essence "spirits" - leaving Arcane, master of Mind and Matter, not touching any of that.
Where things get a little muddy is Elementals. Many of them are Arcane casters themselves. Both Arcana and Nature can be rolled for lore on them and their home planes. When a Rivethun Dwarf is entreating with spirits of the earth for their kin, are they dealing with a Primal "nature" spirit, or something related to an Earth Elemental?
I'd *love* if someone else had clarity on that.
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You know, I was under the vague impression that in the Elemental Planes there was a rough split between the 'elemental' elementals (for want of a better term) i.e. those who are basically a creature made out of fire or rock or dirt or clouds, and genies who are a lot more like traditional Outsiders with the bearing of an organic humanoid but whose 'essence' rather than being good or evil was fire or air. I don't know where I got the idea but I imagined that the former group were the "Primal" parts of the elemental plane while the latter were the "Arcane".
In general I get the sense that there are a host of 'spirits' which don't have stat blocks, much like how a normal shrub is a plant but not a plant creature. This was before I understood leshies and saw them upgraded to the status of spokesflora for the disembodied spirits of nature, but I understood that lingering around the world were things like the spirit of a wolf you could conjure with Summon Nature's Ally who would embody a wolf to fight at your side, and that spells like Speak with Plants allowed you to contact these spirits to commune with. Since this was 1st edition, I explained Druids as being divine casters who beseeched the vast host of these spirits as the source of their magic.
Because of that Spirit Shaman definition above, I tended to think of elementals and fey also as at least some kind of relatives of these spirits. I never exactly parsed out what I imagined that relationship to be exactly, whether say, the spirit of a rock is effectively the same kind of spirit that could become an Earth Elemental in different circumstances, or whether the spirits of animals were what became of them after death, 'between lives' so to speak.
Mind you, many of these thoughts are explicitly not accurate to Lost Omens canon since many of them were formed before I knew (or in some cases before there was) the official published lore.
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Separate addendum: If I were to imagine what kind of 'spirit' (in the broad sense) might be relevant to the Arcane tradition, I would start with what kinds of creatures can grant Arcane spells through their bloodline or link. For example, when it comes to Summoners, eidolons can be drawn from 'astral thoughtforms' described as sapient entities of mental essence given form by the Summoner and which grant Arcane spells.
If such beings exist of pure mental essence, without either spirit or matter, akin to the inverse of a 'vitae'/leshy spirit, then I would not seem it any stranger to count them as Arcane's answer to relating to spirit the way the other non-Spirit tradition relies on pure life essence.
(To some degree I would like to retcon such entities into the Consult the Spirits feat if they did indeed exist, but if I had to explain their absence from that feat, perhaps these astral entities only exist in disembodied form across the currents of the astral plane, and so cannot be encountered by someone attempting to consult local spirits as they only deal with cerebral and abstract matters)
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Actually, on that note, I suddenly remember to ask--in 1st edition it was (at least to me) clear that Outsiders like genies from the elemental planes were beings of quintessence just like angels and daemons, but with elemental essence as their driving principle rather than the pure essence of good or evil. Now that the category of Outsider has been broken down into subcategories, I suppose we can no longer take for granted what the physical body of a genie or ennosite like a shulsaga is made out of...
This question feels like it needs a revival of CorvusMask's thread on figuring out the essences of extraplanar beings.
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Seriously please stop giving spells that used to belong to wizards over to bards. It makes the lore inconsistent, and makes it so the classes are even more lopsided than they already are.
Without addressing this perceived imbalance against the favour of Arcane, honestly I felt like having a broad spell list with the ability to draw upon diverse magics by reverse engineering other traditions within your school should have been the Wizard-thing, rather than giving all Arcane casters the overly broad list that's supposed to be the product of years of intensive spell research. Would have juiced up the impact of choosing your arcane school based on what kinds of spells you wanted to be able to borrow. Alas, it would have been difficult to future proof the possibility of blanket access and creating preset option lists in the Core Rulebook would not have been an attractive choice either.