Shaman, spirits, and fetishes

>temporarily seperate my opponent's soul from the rest of the spirit realm
>this experience is about as painful spiritually as being burned alive is physically
Seems like a good way to disable people.

...

>dealing with spirits

Mistake.
Spirits are nasty, vengeful creatures.
The only way to "deal" with them is to enter their realm and wrestle them into submission, beat them into compliance.

Unless it's that hag who owns the sea, she is scary so brush her hair and whisper sweet nothings and hope she calms down.

Depends. No two spirits are alike.

Maybe living human bodies are capable of absorbing and directing natural energies in ways spirits can not (Mortal Magics, soul energy, prayers and worship). Spirits might trade some of their Spirit Magic for some of a mortal's magic (especially if the mortal doesn't know how to properly use their own magics. Why study for decades and become a wizard if the local totemic spirits will make you a shaman and share their powers with you in exchange for a resource you can't even make proper use of?). Of course, this begs the question of 'What is the appropriate exchange rate?' and 'Are the spirits ripping me off?'

Or maybe the spirits are so heavily connected to the land and environment that changes to it result in changes to them. Most spirits belong to heirarchies of some kind, with rules that prevent them from altering the physical world without invitation by a shaman. So a shaman might offer services in exchange for power. Cleanse a grove of trees of a fungal blight or rid them of adangerous parasites, and the Dryads might grant you a sliver of natural magics. Run with a Wolf Spirit and help it bring down a meal for a starving pack, and the Wolf Spirit might bless you with the ability to commune with wolves. Dark spirits of pestilence might ask you to poison a well in exchange for immunity to their plagues. A powerful fae could demand all the pleasant dreams you will ever have for the rest of your life in exchange for a place in his court.

Some spirits might offer deferred payments. The most famous of these is the classical demonic 'I get your soul after you die in exchange for a tiny modicum of power until then', which requires a bit of investment on the spirit's part, but is often a very safe investment, since all mortals die, and most mortals (when given power) get foolish and careless, and most mortals are ignorant to the true limits of a demon's power.

>implying spirits can be physically wrestled
You have to wrestle them with your MIND you have to understand the spirit and trick it into helping you.

Man, you reminded me of some weird Elvish shamans I used to know.

You know how they'd deal with spirits? Litterally wressle with them. I once saw a guy catch a stormcloud in a net and force it into a glass jar so that he and his raider buddies would have cloud-cover for their upcoming raid.

>implying spirits can't be physically wresled
They can, but only on astral space. It feels pretty physical, though.

Probably depends on how the shaman is trained, some of them don't experience any physical sensation, its purely mental, this can be more difficult but not limited by any physical notions of form or distance.

>hey, these guys are so nice, they did holidays for me and all, left food for me, sung songs in my honor
>I'm looking forward to returning this favor

There seems to be a tendency in fantasy to have shamans tied to nature, is that really necessary though?

The spirits don't always decide to live in trees, one kind find spirits in lamposts, roads, houses and other human artifices. No reason that druids have to be anti-civilization savages.

Are 40k tech priests shamans? They are always talking about machine spirits...

Perhaps, they believe spirits reside in machines and that by honoring the machines they work better

Bump

I've always preffered the idea of druids as nature-civilisation mediums rather than anti-civilization.

So, each blade of grass has its own spirit, but the field itself has its own spirit that is different from all the blades of grass that make it up, right?
How does that work? Is it kinda like humans and gods, I.E. the field-spirit is the 'god' of the grass-spirits of that particular field?

That's how I'm playing mine. He's essentially an ecologist and thinks that humans, elves, and so on also have a place in the natural world. And while he thinks cities tip the surrounding environment too far, he still understands that cities themselves are their own ecological system too. Systems within systems.

A man has three spirits: mind, body and an ancestral guardian
A blade of grass has one spirit, animating its body
A field spirit has no body, so its spirit will be more akin to a mind but not exactly

No.

What's if individual cells and processes in the body have spirits and humans

Then they're probably a lot like cells: they're there, they're alive, but they're controlled by the collective and not really worth interacting with individually.