The Taste of Innistrad’s Spirits
Another entry in my small series covering some of the color alignment based flavor of the major tribes on the plane of Innistrad, and how these color alignments are used to weave subtle stories or narratives into the tribes’.
In the last entry of this series I took a small detour and talked about angels(which you can read here-https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/663299115099308033/the-taste-of-innistrads-angels) but this time I will finally talk about spirits as promised.
Firstly, lets go over their color identity. Similar to humans, spirits or, as they are more commonly referred to as on Innistrad, geists appear in all colors but they still have two main colors in which a majority of the ones we see on Innistrad are aligned with. In the case of humans those colors are Green and White and in the case of geists they are White and Blue.
As always we must look at why the spirits on Innistrad tend to lean towards White and Blue. Well, we know that on this plane White-aligned spirits tend to be more likely to be a sort of guardian spirits and Blue-aligned spirits tend to be more likely to be more of the spooky variety of ghosts.Â
White is a color that has gotten a lot of spirits over the years. The first most obvious connection between spirits and White is through religion. White is a color that’s very likely to turn towards religion and religious institutions and there tends to be a lot of religions that believe in some sort of afterlife or that we have some sort of soul. The existence of something like a soul can also tie in with themes of objective morality that White often has and the idea that if you do something bad it may not effect you physically, but instead it may affect your soul or moral compass. Also, while spirits can often be associated with dead things they can be associated with things such as life. I mean not every spirit people talk about necessarily comes from dead things and heck some spirits are even worshipped. Although, on Innistrad as far as I’m aware geists come from people or things that have died.Â
When looking at Innistrad’s geists the white aligned ones tend to be spirits that remain to protect or help people.
This sort of ties in with unfinished business type stuff a lot of geists on Innistrad seem to have. White is all about the greater good and protecting people and to that end it would make sense that someone, or something, that died but is bound by their duty to protect or help people, rather than moving on to the Blessed Sleep, would probably be of the White-alignment. We are also told in places like “A Planeswalker’s Guide to Innistrad” that White aligned geists tend to haunt the living out of a sense of duty, responsibility, love etc. Well at least the benevolent ones do, the malevolent ones haunt the living out of guilt, feelings of failure or unrighted wrongs. These all tie into White’s strong themes of a moral right and wrong. I mean if there is a moral right or wrong that means you can also do something wrong or fail in your duty and that might make you feel guilty or like a failure. It also means that you can be wronged by other people and be upset by it. The geists also have a color overlap with humans which could possibly reference the fact that a lot of the geists we see come from humans, and if a human does not achieve Blessed Sleep when they die they are likely to come back as a spirit. However, that’s not to say that all the geists we see came from humans or anything, some of them come from things such as Hippogriff’s and the like.
One of the weaknesses of White is that it can end up being very inflexible and unwilling to change which could be interpreted as some ghosts not resting until their job is done, refusing to quite, continuously trying to carry out ther duty, or something of that nature.
When it comes to color philosophy Blue has always had some sort of connection to spirits. The reason being that Blue tends to think beyond just the body and its emotion and towards things like the mind and spirit. The mind, and potentially spirit, is the place where knowledge tends to reside and that’s not to mention that ghosts can be pretty hard to interact with, due to their generally incorporeal nature, plus they are also capable of all sorts of weird and spooky tricks, such as flying through walls and stuff. Both of these things, I would argue, can be pretty Blue. Blue is definitely one of the colors most likely to have trickster type characters(along with Black and Red), Sakashima is a good example of a Blue trickster, and it’s a color that often likes using things such as illusions, manipulation and trickery to get what it wants. Heck, if you really wanted to take it a step further you could argue the pop-culture ability of ghosts being able to possess things could be seen as akin to something like a Blue spell or enchantment that allows you to take control of a creature, not to mention that the ability to remain intangible could mimic an ability like Hexproof, ward or can’t be blocked that Blue creatures can have and just by default ghosts float through the air, and we know Blue is a color that has a lot of fliers. It’s also worth mentioning that White has a decent number of flyers too and there a White-Blue cards that encourage or reward you for playing flying creatures in magic.
Now as far as Innistrad is concerned, as mentioned earlier the Blue-aligned geists on Innistrad tend to be more of the standard spooky ghost. The first thing I notice when looking over their cards, especially the ones in Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, is a theme of unfinished business when it comes to spirits. In White this unfinished business is usually protecting people but in Blue it tends to be other things.
I think the theme of an “unfinished business” can actually be very Blue from a flavor perspective. While Blue is a color of knowledge and reason it is also the color of perfection. To be more specific Blue as a color philosophy doesn’t inherently believe it is possible to be literally perfect. Rather it believes that you should be striving to be the best you one can be, which in Magic is often summarized as perfection because you are essentially striving to get as close to it as possible even if you can’t reach perfection itself. Where am I going with this? Well let’s look at our friend above Baithook Angler. Who, as we can see, is someone who died trying to get a big bite on his hook while fishing. Well as a ghost he is still trying to get that bite, even if he has long forgotten why he is doing it. He is essentially trying to get the “perfect” or “best” catch he can possibly get. If you want another example let’s look at Overwhelmed Archivist.
Our poor friend here is being overworked, and he presumably dies before he can finish his archiving job. However, he comes back as a ghost that seems to be intent on continuing his life’s work. This once again ties in with the themes of perfection as we can see a Blue-aligned character trying to finish their goal and by extension try to do the best job they can. In “A Planeswalker’s Guide to Innistrad” one of the things we are told is that Blue-aligned geists are projections of the animating principles of the mind and they tend to be very obsessive ghosts, repeating the same tasks over and over. If you ask me, that once again points to a theme of a sort of perfection or trying to reach some sort of goal they failed to meet in life. This brings me to another connection that Blue and spirits have, that I should probably should have mentioned earlier, which is a theme that can be described as something like “transcendence” or “improvement.” As mentioned earlier Blue thinks beyond just the physical body(not to say that all Blue-aligned characters don’t care about their body) and emotions so becoming a spirit could potentially allow freedom from that. I mean think about it, depending on the specifics, becoming a spirit would mean you are no longer bound to a limited mortal body that can feel things like pain and possibly even strong emotions that could cloud your judgement or cause you suffering.
Furthermore, being a spirit would also give you more time to do the things you want and gather knowledge, and we all know Blue is all in on improvement, thinking, and the mind. So, in the end, I would say that it makes a lot of sense that for some Blue-aligned peoples or entities that being no longer bound by a physical mortal body, while also getting a non-physical one that can do things like fly through walls while still being able to interact with the world around them, would be something that they would jump at the opportunity to take advantage of. We also know that the geists on Innistrad are capable of possession and Blue geists are the ones most drawn to forms of water, such as storms, frost, mist and even the moister from one’s breath. The possession ties into something I mentioned earlier about Blue often taking control of things through manipulation or mind control. The attraction to water is based on Blue’s association with water and ice, which is something I went over when i covered angels, but basically it leans into some of Blue’s possibly cold and calculating nature along with some associations that air and water have to the mind and spirit.
When it comes to how they overlap in White and Blue as philosophies manifests within the geists on Innistrad… well it’s kind of hard for me to pinpoint. A lot of the time when you have White-Blue aligned person or faction they tend to lean towards laws, government, education, structure or something of that nature. I mean mechanically they both love using fliers, which a decent number of spirits on Innistrad have. They also both have a decent number of spirits too. There is also the fact that White and Blue both have a decent number spirits.
I guess the philosophical color overlap for the geists stems from them both wanting to improve the world or things around them. Which is something they have more time to do if they linger as geists and could tie into the idea of unfinished business or a goal that ties one to the mortal world for a long period of time. I guess they are also trying to right wrongs or incompletions that happened in their life(That’s kind of like trying to make the world a better place right? Even if you become a warped reflection of your former self in some cases).
Now the Disturb mechanic is flavorfully really strong but simple. It is a keyword that allows you to pay mana in order to cast the keyworded creature from the graveyard in their transformed state. Which bluntly tells that in order to become a spirit on Innistrad you have do either die or already be dead. So you end up with a card that comes back as a geist/ghost from beyond the grave. Of course when a spirit with this keyword dies it is exiled because it’s like straight up beyond dead now, like super dead. I mean its very soul was destroyed, sent to rest or what have you. There are geists that fall under all the other colors on Innistrad too, and because I’m feeling up to it I’ll quickly cover them too, starting with Black.
I feel like Black’s connection with spirits is fairly easy to understand especially given its association with the death and the undead. Black is not above desecrating things like zombies and spirits for its own ends nor is it above becoming some sort of undead lich, evil spirit, vampire or other horrid abomination in order to gain more power. Black’s power hungry philosophy can also cause a vengeful, grudge filled or just plain power hungry spirit to manifest. We are told that Black-aligned geists “eternally hunger for life, power, or the settling of a wicked grudge” and “These are spirits that must be appeased by offerings of food, goods, and even blood. If not appeased, these geists can be responsible for disease, accidents and death” which ties into Black’s themes of power and control, since having to to give it resources or offerings would mean that it’s the one calling the shots(also these quotes are from https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/savor-flavor/planeswalkers-guide-innistrad-nephalia-and-undead-2011-10-19). Ultimately, Black wants to be the one in charge and in control. It is also stated that “Whereas geists associated with other colors of mana might be benevolent or neutral, black-aligned geists are almost always dangerous and malevolent,” which ties into Black’s themes of selfishness and looking out for yourself first and foremost, even at the expense of others, and how Black will do whatever it takes to get what it wants/needs or keep its power. There is also the fact that mechanically speaking Black is a color that really cares about the graveyard in multiple ways, and it probably tends to care about it the most out of all the colors in Magic.
Red’s connection to ghosts comes from the emphasis on emotions. It is a very common idea that ghosts linger around because of some sort of strong emotion or grudge, and we all know how strongly Red is all about following your emotions. So it makes sense that Red-aligned geists are described as being spirits that “have attached themselves to rampant emotions, unfulfilled desires, and thirsts for revenge that were frustrated during life.” They are also stated to manifest as “blood dripping from statues, whirls of dust on roads, minor rockslides on hillocks, cliffs, and mountainsides, and, in the case of possession, as sudden mania or murderous rage.” Ok, so the blood dripping from statues is a common ghost trope and blood an be strongly associated with emotion, phrases like “OH, THEY MAKE MY BLOOD BOIL!!!” help get this idea across. Also blood is usually Red in color so there is a visual connection there too. The whirls of dust, and rock slides is due to Red’s connection with the elements of earth and fire, which is something I touched on in my last talk, but to make it simple both of those elements are often associated with the body, base urges and emotions. The fact that these geists can appear as living fire or as "blood mist" and are capable engulf victims in order to inflict cuts and welts that are slow to heal ties into Red’s association with fire and blood mentioned for the reasons above. The effects of mania or murderous rage when possessing is simply Red’s connection to emotion. Red is also a color that tends to be very good at appealing to emotions so causing something to be filled with some sort of strong emotion as a ghost also makes sense from that angle. Although, it should also be mentioned that, similar to Blue, Red can take control of creatures which could be likened to “possession.” However, unlike Blue, Red’s control usually untaps them and gives them Haste but relinquishes control of them by the end of the turn. This is a representation of how a Red mage or character may be good at appealing to emotions but ultimately emotions tend to be fast and strong but fleeting and aren’t very logical if the one feeling them has enough time to think clearly. Which is in contrast to Blue’s more methodical long term oriented manipulation. The unavenged Red geists are also described as the most dangerous geists on Innistrad and that is something that ties into how Red can be a really volatile and in the moment color due to it following its emotions, which can be fleeting, strong or short-sighted.
Last but not least is Green. Green geists want to be reconnected with the nature they revered in life. Which is something that’s pretty plainly a connection to how Green values nature and looks towards it for guidance. We know that some of these spirits attach themselves to things like animals and plants which ends up imbuing the affected with special powers or turns them into otherworldly entities. This also ties into Green’s love of nature and desire to be connected to it.
There are also Green geists that attach to landforms themselves, which also imbues said landform with special powers or turns them into weird entities, and if the spirits that live within that landform are not appeased, they can create blight, crop failure and famine. These geists are clearly leaning towards a nature spirit vibe, which is a common concept, and the fact that they will punish those who do not treat them well or respect the land ties in with Green’s ideology of showing respect and reverence for the natural order and stuff.
Oh and geists are sometimes used as a power source on Innistrad, usually by mad scientists and the like, and while this doesn’t say anything about them philosophically it does add to the atmosphere and vibe of Innistrad(especially if your a mad scientist/necro-alchemist who needs some interesting tech).
Ok, that was way more that I thought I would have to write but hopefully you enjoyed it. Do you have a favorite spirit in Magic the Gathering, either mechanic wise, flavor wise, or character wise? Also, as always if you find yourself dealing with a spirit problem call Kaya’s Spirit Killing Services(KSKS for short). We make sure the dead stay dead so you don’t have to. We are located on Goldbrick Road near the the Orzhov Syndicate’s main guild building, and don’t worry we won’t try to extort you for all your money. If you need a bit more convenience in your life you can always send a message via the new Izzet teleportation devices(we are not responsible any injuries caused by these devices whether they be physical, mental or spiritual).
