I really do commend it to you. The Dead hold knowledge that we Living need. They are, in many ways, the key to successful living...and a vital part of the Way.
Now, I know what you're thinking. Or, rather, I know what you're visualizing. It's a circle of candles in a darkened room, with a cloying pall of strange incense and arcane mumblings humming through the eldritch light. In the center of the room lies a dessicated corpse that may or may not have been human. The spell is cast, and the corpse strains, moaning out a foreboding answer to an unspeakable question.
Either that, or you see Billy Crystal working some bellows, and hey presto, "To blave," says the Mostly Dead Cary Elwes. Or words to that general effect.
But in this branch of the material plane, finding the answers that dwell in the souls of the dead takes on a rather different form.
It's called reading.
Yeah. It's just been right there in front of you. Because the knowledge and wisdom and answers of so many long passed are etched onto the pages of thousands upon thousands of books. They're downloadable to your Kindle. They can be found in your library. In those words, some from the recently passed, some from souls that have been gone for thousands upon thousands of years, you'll find an amazingly rich resource of answers.
Within the Presbyterian Order, we place a great amount of emphasis on this particular spell. We use it to study and interpret the Rule Book, of course, which is filled with voices that go back sometimes even deeper than recorded history. The long passed souls who helped craft that book are well worth listening to, because they...as we...had their ears open to our Maker. Listening carefully to their voices teaches us about the Master and how to make our whole lives reflect that Good Spell he came to teach.
But we also make a point of engaging with the thousands of fellow travelers who have walked the Way before us, the Patriarchs and Saints and Matriarchs who have left us with the echo of their wisdom. Listening to those voices really can make a difference. Standing in relationship to those souls and their teachings really can give you the answers you need.
To get those answers, though, you need to know the difference between just plain ol' reading and really casting a potent Speaking with the Dead spell.
There are three key differences. The first has to do with what you are reading. If you stick only with a particular genre, or only with whatever is selling well, or only with writers who tell you Seven Ways You Can Be [Fill In The Blank,] you're not going to get anywhere. Oh, those books are fine, in that they sell a whole bunch. Nothing wrong with reading for fun. But if you stick with the book of the hour, you don't stretch yourself back to other times or other ways of thinking. They don't expand you. They don't enrich you.
Plus, generally speaking, they're written by living people. Those authors are your contemporaries, the people formed by the same culture and set of cultural expectations that shaped you. Oh, you should read current folks, sure. Read the cutting edge. Read some page turning trash now and again.
But to cast Speak with the Dead, you need to let yourself read wildly and wantonly, both those writers present and those whose voices sound from deep in the past.
The second has to do with where you are as you're reading. Well, I'm sitting right here reading, you say, knowing full well that's not what I meant. I mean, are you actually listening to what that soul is saying, or are you listening only to yourself?
If you're listening to yourself, you'll learn nothing but what you already know. You'll project your own biases and assumptions into the words before you, and amazingly enough, you'll come out absolutely certain that the individual who wrote it believed exactly what you believe. This feels great, but it invariably gets us into trouble. We learn nothing.
If you're really Speaking with the Dead, though, you're really open to who that person was when they lived and breathed and walked the world. You understand why they said what they said, knowing it from tone and context and the way they play with language. You hear their voices. You start to know them, as you'd know those around you.
Those voices, once you're really hearing them, can change your life. They can give you answers to questions that are tearing you apart. They can save your soul.
Like, say, my own reading of a particular bare knuckled Scots cleric. Over the years, I came to know him, the ferocity of his spirit, and how deeply he understood how to overcome suffering. When I found myself caught in a trap set by a particularly devilish incubus a few years back, and my mind was reeling, and there were no answers to be found, I knew him well enough to find the key out of the trap hiding in his poetry.
It wasn't data he gave me. It was a far deeper answer, the kind that rises up behind the words when you really know a person. Was it "just for me?" No. But it was the answer I needed, and I would never ever have found it if I'd been relying only on my own abilities or knowledge.
The third key difference relates to the second. The relationships you establish when you really listen to the voices of those who have gone before are not short term relationships. As with so many of the spells cast by Clerics of our order, they have to be cast and recast. You have to Speak with the Dead again and again, making it a regular part of your discipline. You have to get to know those who have come before. Know them as you know your friends, as you know the living.
And in listening to them, you'll find yourself with richer and better answers to those questions that vex you.
So crack that book. Read widely and deeply. Respect the souls you encounter. And know them as your teachers.
Speak with the Dead. It's a great way to spend an evening.
