Umertviya and Necromancy

In our previous conversations we mentioned two magical practices that, at first glance, seem closely related — the creation of “umertviya” and the “summoning of the dead“.

Although these practices appear to belong to the same tradition, this is not quite the case.

The tradition of creating all manner of “guardian spirits” on the basis of umertviya, as we have already said, goes back to the oldest strata of priestly magic. As it turns out, a number of guardian spirits of various Places of Power originate draugars, i.e., ‘enshrined’ dead. And often the creation of such a being was accompanied by the ritual sacrifice of a human (most often one of the priests). It must be understood that the person offered as a sacrifice voluntarily renounced returning for an indefinite time to Gilgul in order to protect and tend that place. Often the guardian spirit became the priest-guardian of the “magical territories“, supporting his Line.

In other cases, for example in royal burials, a draugar would be the bodyguard or servant of the king, continuing after death to watch over his ruler. One way or another, in the majority of cases an umertviya is the product of voluntary sacrifice, a more or less conscious choice.

At the same time, necromantic operations are associated with the coercive exploitation of the deceased’s power. We have even encountered instances where the skeletons of the enshrined dead were stolen in order to harness their power; as a result, the place lost the protection of the draugar, and second, the spirit, torn from its function, turned into a restless utukku, changing from guardian and helper into a malevolent being.

Such operations, while yielding relatively little benefit to the necromancer (even if they succeed), nonetheless inflict irreparable harm both on the Places of Power and on the ‘Breath of Bones’ of the umertviya. The terms “breath of bones” and “khuš ha-Guf” traditionally denote the energetic currents produced by an undecayed skeleton and are the source of activity for both draugars and ghosts.