What is a spirit?

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Historically, a spirit was the sentient essence of a formerly-living person. The spirit world is the non-physical realm these spirits exist in. Those are about the only two universalities you can glean from a broad reading of historical culture.

Each culture has its own characterization of these spirits and their world. Artwork plays heavily into the conceptualization. This is an example of Mexican Dia de Muertos traditional altar:

You have a festival, and the spirits come out and join in the revelry. Great fun for all. Gifts of artwork and food are left, and it’s believed that the spirits eat the food first, so that by the time the humans get to it, there’s no nutrition left in it. (I wouldn’t get too hung up about that, ‘nutrition’ is not just believed to be the physical aspects of the food)

So as you can see this is a very cultural understanding of spirits. Obviously different cultures will have different understandings. Which understanding is ‘right’?

Well, when you get right down to it, does any one of them have to be right? Why can’t the spirit worlds be attached to cultures and people? After all, the spirits used to be people themselves.

My understanding of dead people is that it’s just easy to sleep for long long periods of time and they relish any opportunity to come hang out at their favorite places when they were living. So they’re happy to adapt to any local customs.