I've officially finished my busy season now, so I'm back to writing when I'm not procrastinating with other forms of media! Always fun.

Speaking of fun, here's this as well!

Chapter 15: Let's Get (Meta) Physical!

OR

1 Of Everything, Please

It was time again for my 7th Year Class, and today we were talking about a subject near and dear to the heart.

Namely, the existence of the human soul.

"When one thinks about the Human Soul, the conversation always circles around to religion." My lecture today was slow, forming a bit of a buffer to let the students decompress while they further refined their chosen fields of focus in terms of Divination. This, meanwhile, would serve as both a welcome reprieve, but also as good background information.

"To the normal world, Religion serves primarily as guidelines one should follow to either ensure they reach an appropriately deserved Afterlife, or improve the overall quality of their Soul in an attempt to ascend the normal cycle of reincarnation and enter the next step of existence. This slightly differs from the Magical world interpretation of the same, for a few key reasons." With a wave of my hand, a scroll unfolded for the roof, displaying a massive caricature of a man with a shadowed face and a bolt of lightning in his hands.

"The first, is the confirmed existence of Gods of assorted mythologies and backgrounds." Seeing the stunned look on my students faces, I hurried along.

"Now, this is not to say every God or Goddess was in fact real, or that any one religion is completely correct, but it is an important point none the less. There are those in the Magical world that will readily claim that even these 'confirmed' Deities were in fact just massively over-powered Magic practitioners, and you will have other cry that we are all in fact descended from a wide assortment of Beings for one reason or another. This is where the juxtaposition of religion functionally lies with the Magical world." I finished as I immediately saw some of my students who were about to burst calm a fair amount, now simply curious than defensive.

"So, then why do you say it so certainly that any of them were God's at all?" Mary asked from the middle of the class, looking up from where she had been busy escribing a pencil with some form of detection rune.

At the question, I illuminated my second slide, showing the same figure from before now surrounded by smaller figures maybe a quarter its size pushing their hands upward.

"An excellent question. The main answer, I believe, lies in the display of abilities described and the followings they would amass seemingly without effort. People like to talk about the Miracles Magic can create compared to the common man, but in the days of old? They still completely overtake anything we can do. The Son of Yahweh healed most anyone in his path throughout the entirety of his life, and created food from near-nothing which modern spells still fail to do. Herpo the Foul was a scourge of Greece before he was struck by, consecutively, three hundreds and twenty one lightning bolts one after another until he wasn't even ash in front of a Temple to Zeus he was about to desecrate. The great Buddha went on a journey and inspired hundreds upon thousands to follow in his footsteps to individual heights. Are these not the feats of Gods? To me, they've earned that title by that point. In any case, I've gotten side-tracked a bit from the original topic, even though this was indeed going to be another lesson."

After a moment of thought, I remembered why I started this monologue.

"Right! Yes, the Soul. So, with the acknowledgement to the purpose of religion, one must look at the actual, tangible nature of the Soul." I took a moment to sip my sugar drink, the refreshing back cherry wetting my throat before I continued.

"For all it's mystery, there are still facts that we hold immutably true, even if we don't truly understand or are properly aware of them. Even its name, the 'Soul', is a clue."

"We, as a whole, become and beget, from 'The Sole'. The first, the last, the eternal fragments of infinity. When we are born, a small piece of this endless mass is temporarily separated from the whole, and from it we come. We then experience Life. It's ups, downs, trials and tribulations ever adding to this whole until the end, when we shuffle this mortal coil these same experiences and emotions are added back to the entirety, ever adding and mixing to the point it can follow what has been, and what will be by Pattern Recognition and Context. This is not a perfect bleed over though, occasionally the soul will 'overflow', for lack of a better word, flowing back into the physical world around newly formed Souls, bringing with it former habits, talents, and vague memories that often effect early personality formation. This is where the process of Reincarnation comes from, creating an overflowing soul so that the details become more apparent with time." I ushered my arms to my sides in the wake of my grand revelation, before crossing them behind my back.

"Wow, that seems...implausible."

"No, no, that could work. I think. Metaphysics are bit fuzzy though..."

"CheYEAH, that's what makes it META-Physics, and not just regular physics! I'm all for it! I'm gonna stuff my soul to the brim so I can come back as a wicked tiger who can fully enjoy their zoo life and back scritches, yey!"

"Damn it Nicole, just become an Animagus if you want to be that simultaneously lazy and over-achieving."

The results were mixed, and I nodded proudly. Any other Wizarding class would have either been outraged or internalized it as fact due to the minor distinction that a teacher said it. Wand-waving Sheep. And not even the fun party kind.

The rest of the class was spent discussing who was and who wasn't a Deity, theorized how much different experiences would 'weigh', known methods of 'feeding' the soul, and what would happen if you theoretically happened to shove a Ghost face-first back into The Sole. It was a fun Friday.

END OF CHAPTER

Not really a funny one, but still one I enjoyed immensely. It also explains a fair amount of my personal beliefs, outside my Presbyterian background. I also don't mean to imply anything about actual religion as well, and I think it in itself says a fair amount of the world when I need to write that aforementioned sentence. Eh, is what it is. Leave a like, a review, and I'll be back with more fun soon! God knows I have more time these days again. Yay? Yay.