Friday, February 12, 2010

Concept Declaration

For my concept, I have chosen to display the gruesome knowledge I possess on the subject on Necromancy and the Undead. I've always been maddeningly fascinated by the concept of life, death, and the invisible world that is said to lie in between it: the Land of the Dead. I am an aspiring novelist and author-in-training, and many of the themes of my stories revolve around life and the complete avoidance of death itself. Why do we die? Is there not a way to extend human life into infinity like the machine? Why can we not live forever in the flesh? Is there not a power source or a means of bio electrical neuro/cardiostimulation that can sustain our corporeal shells? I've always wanted to know these answers. I have seen and touched death, felt its icy cold feeling of soullessness upon my fingertips, and I wanted to know why it had to be that way. I am not bitter, but confused. Confused as to why human beings can’t avoid death, when it seems so trivial a thing. Yes, death is funny that way. It takes from you everything you hold dear whether you want it to or not, but you always find yourself wondering, not how, but WHY? Or WHY NOT? No matter how obvious the answer is, humans will never grasp it, for if they did, it would pervert the balance of power of the universe. “Everyone has to die at some point”. “We’re born to die”. “Can’t live if ya don’t die”. I’m sick and tired of hearing such asinine philosophies on such an infinite concept. Why death, if not life? Why death, if not immortality. I chose my concept because I sympathize with the sorcerers of old, and their futile attempt to find immortality.
Someone once told me one could drive himself mad pondering these things so much. Death and the meaning of life both confound and intrigue me, and I've always wanted to know what other people, religions, and cultures have thought about death and the means they had, if any, of avoiding it. In short, "Necromancy" is the ancient art of raising and manipulating a corpse whose soul has departed its corporeal body, and can thus be controlled like a macabre marionette. This is not to be confused with Necrophilia, which is a far more disturbing concept, where an individual takes pleasure in having sexual intercourse with dead bodies. The "Undead" simply means one that is dead/no longer living, but animated as though it were still alive. I know for a fact that human beings fear the idea of death and the absence of life, so they invented concepts like “God” and “the afterlife” to ease the heavy burden that someday they will expire and rot in a hole in the earth. But perhaps some people really did find a way to raise the dead. Perhaps a Frankenstein’s Monster is not so farfetched an idea after all. Is it possible to dance with the dead on a pale moon night? With this concept, I will reveal to any and all who care to listen, an answer that is, hopefully, less vague than what any right hand of God or minister of judgment can offer you.
I drew my inspiration from such stories as Dracula by Bram Stoker, old fashioned zombie movies with terrible acting and crappy make-up jobs and ludicrous plots where one finds themselves yelling, “Why didn’t you just run the other way!? Idiot!” Other inspiration comes from video games, modern movies, and novels. Movies include: The Blade Trilogy, Van Helsing, Resident Evil, The Crow (feat. Brandon Lee), DOOM, and the Saw movies (even though they aren’t related to the idea of undead, they still possess high-octane nightmare fuel). Video games include: Resident Evil, Dead Space, Bioshock, The Suffering, Shadow Man, Silent Hill, and various Animes and Manga as well. Novels concerning the undead include: Seduce the Darkness, The Mortal Instruments, Silent Corrosive Annihilation Theory, Zombies, Vampires and Sins, Oh My!, Moonlight Fang, and various Animes and Manga as well. As a child I have always wondered why people expired the way they did. It seems that even the worlds in which those movies and games take place in above can’t quite explain it, either.

I hope you learn a great deal from this as I have.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Necromancy: What is It?

Soooo, who knows what Necromancy REALLY is? Any takers? NO? Is it some evil, half-cracked nutjob sorcerer with plans for world domination, who hopes to achieve his goal by raising the corpses of dead people in the form of flesh eating zombies with the strength of ten men and an unquenchable thirst for flesh? *inhale deeply* NO! In fact, it is

Necromancy is a Greek word that refers to a form of magic in which the practitioner seeks to summon "operative spirits" or "spirits of divination", for multiple reasons, from spiritual protection to wisdom, to truth and to great power. Though commonly thought to be an evil form of sorcery, or the belief in magical spells that harness occult forces or evil spirits to produce unnatural effects in the world, it is actually a very spiritual art. Shamans, druids, and the like, thought that they could contact other dimensions and realms through the dead, like a long-distance phone call to anywhere not on earth. Necromancy is a misunderstood act that not only involves just conjuring up the dead, even for prophesying. The so-called “undead” they used were actually just regular people who martyred themselves by offering their bodies to the good of the ritual. They were given numerous types of poisons, foods, chemicals and surgical transformations of all kinds that put them in a state of pseudo-death. This is like connecting the call. Through the dead body, the living soul could be “tuned” like a radio by chanting, humming and prayers performed by the shamans, and contact other realms.

The Definition of "Undead"
First and foremost, the term "undead" is a collective name for fictional, mythological, or legendary beings that are deceased yet behave as if they are alive. Undead may be either corporeal (physically able to touch see, and communicate with them) or non-corporeal (spiritual and ghostly; unable to touch them, difficult to see them. The phenomenon of spirits contacting us from "beyond the grave" has existed since the beginning of time.