“Breath of Bones”: What Do Ghosts Want?

Nearly everyone, at some point, has had to face apparitions, ghosts, poltergeists, or other so-called “paranormal” phenomena. Mass culture, trading on the sense of the Stranger— born of ghosts and fraying the nerves — has multiplied these images and produced a romantic picture that is, unfortunately, remote from reality.

According to common notions, all apparitions without exception are, in fact, Elementers, “stuck” between incarnations, held in our world by powerful attachments and seeking release or “repayment of debts.”

Careful analysis shows this is true only for a negligible fraction of “ghosts.” The overwhelming majority has almost nothing to do with the personality of the deceased. It is merely “imprints” of his Power, of his life. Such “imprints” are traditionally called “Breath of Bones,” “Khuš ha-Guf.”

In fact, the Breath of Bones is a decaying etheric body, perceived through a concurrence of certain psychic and physical circumstances.

In other words, most ghosts are not “wandering souls,” but remnants of the body, scattered by “etheric” winds. Just as a piece of clothing snagged on branches and whipped by the wind can mimic a living being, the remnants of the Body of life create the same impression.

Yet it would not occur to anyone to “save” clothing hanging in a tree. Still, cases of “magical salvation” of “ghosts” (and other interactions with them) have lately become widespread.

This is exactly why this post was written: I want to protect honest but naive seekers from needless expenditure of strength and pseudomagical efforts. If you truly want to save someone, look for those who actually need it, rather than busying yourself with decaying remnants — a grim image, but a natural one. The romantic image ascribed to Elementers is also far from reality, since most of them are not “unhappy victims,” but “unhappy predators.”

To distinguish what this particular ghost is — an Elementer, bearing the core of personality, or Khuš ha-Guf, bearing only its imprint — you need only check the level of Power at which interaction with it occurs.

Whatever keeps an Elementer from further disincarnation, it is always a vampiric entity. Deprived of a physical body, it is also deprived of the ability to generate energy, and therefore has an acute need for inflows of Life Force, which only other living beings can provide. Any interaction with an Elementer creates tension in the Power of life, accompanied — or not — by its outflow from the living being, depending on the balance of strength between the living and the disincarnate.

Khuš ha-Guf, by contrast, may look frightening and unpleasant, but if they display vampiric properties, they do so only to the extent that the living being itself tries to “pour” life into them. Any loss of strength in this case has exclusively psychological causes and comes from the very one who is “losing” strength. This is the danger I am warning against: you do not need to pour the Power of life into every place where it is lacking.

An encounter with an Elementer is always a struggle. An encounter with the Breath of Bones is the same as encountering any corpse — unpleasant, ritually unclean, but in itself not dangerous— unless, of course, you make mistakes.

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