It has a hierarchy of Dead. The lowest to the highest.  The highest being the more dangerous.

  The lowest on the list is  the Inferi.  An inferi is more commonly known as a zombie.  A zombie is a soulless corpse animated, not by a spirit, but by necromancy.  An inferi has no mind of its own, and obeys the simple instructions of its master.   A master less zombie will just wander, satisfying its simple desire to feed.   Nothing short of destroying the brain can kill them.  So fire and beheading are the best was to stop this walking dead.

Spirits are souls without bodies.   There are many types of spirits.   They can be the disembodied souls of living humans.  They can be mindless, wandering phantoms of beings that never had a material body.   They can be  demonic beings from beyond creation.   The word spirit is a catch all phrase to describe  the things that lurk in the places beyond the Material World.

  The next is a Mane.  A mane is a spirit of the recently dead.  They are confused and harmless.  They  are simply  spirits on the way to their eternal reward.  They can be helpful or bitter, as they mostly retain their personalities of when they were alive.   Manes can still be resurrected, as they have not become accustomed to being a spirit.  They can wander the earth, or follow the light to Elysium. 

Poltergeists are mindless spirits that are attracted to certain souls. They hover around their adopted soul and  without meaning to, cause trouble.  Any experienced Exorcist can dismiss a poltergeist. 

Animas are spirits with an affinity for some form of matter or energy.  Theses are the spirits that many believe, correctly, to inhabit trees, rocks, mountains, rivers, what have you.  When a wizard creates an Elemental, what they really are doing is binding an anima to matter ( or energy in the case of a Fire Elemental).

A ghost is a poor mane that is bound to an area.   The ghost can not move on for what ever reason and is locked, repeating an action over and over again until it becomes free.   Most ghosts are harmless and will be thankful to whomever frees them.   

Demons are spirits from beyond Creation, beyons God.  They can not enter our worlds without God's permission.  And since any intelligent being is made in the image of god and their for holds a spark of divinity,  any human can invite a demon to our world.   Most demons need a material body to interact with our world.   Recently dead can be possessed for a short while, as well as an unprotected body of a human astral projecting.   Some demons even teach evil humans how to build them bodies.  These bodies can be nearly human looking or hideously monstrous.

Succubae or Incubi are spirits from the Abyss, the realms beyond Law And Chaos.  They are believed to originate in the Imagination, and are beings of pure dreams.   They are Dream Vampires and feed on the dreams of humans.   They can appear as male or female, or as non human.  They are highly dangerous.

Devils are fallen Angels. They have rebelled, attained free will and fled creation.  Some, however, find loopholes and find their way back to the Material world.

Angels are spirits from our realm, the realm of Balance.  They are the servants of Elohim, or god.  Angels have no free will, and can not leave Creation.

The Lillium are living monsters.  Legend says they are the children of Lilith,  Adam's first wife.  Whether or not this is true,  the Lillium are too varied to be described in a simple paragraph.  To put it simply, they are monsters of flesh and blood.  Minotaurs, Gorgons, Gargoyles, these are all the sons and daughters of Lilith.

Vampires are one of the more dangerous of spirits.  Vampires are spirits that are bound to a corpse.  During the day, they are free to roam in their spirit form, while at night, they return to inhabit their own corpse.  They must feed on human blood to keep their corpse from decaying.   When their spirit is absent from their corpse, the body is just that, a corpse.  It has non of the benifits or detriments of the vampire.   It decays in the hours the spirit is gone. So the older the vampire, the more blood it needs to  repair its body each night.  Eventually the vampire will have to abandon its corpse and bond with a new corpse.   A vampire will only bond with a fresh corpse, for obvious reasons.   Killing a vampire's corpse will only destroy the body, not the spirit.   The spirit will then be forced to bond with a new body.  A stake through the heart will trap the vampire in the body until the stake is removed, making it easier to kill the vampire for good.
  Sunlight is painful to the vampire, and can cause its corpse to burn, or even force the spirit to flee its body.

  A lich is like an inferi in that it is a walking corpse, but its unlike an inferi in that it retains it's intellegence and free will.  To become a lich one must drink a formula made from poisons and a powdered Philosopher's Stone.    The lich is then dependant on this formula much like a vampire is dependant on human blood.   Only a mad man would seek immortaly by becoming undead.

A revenant is a murder spirit.   Sometimes when a human dies by violence, a murder spirit enters their corpse and reanimates it.  The revenant retains most of it’s host’s memories.  It will then kill and destroy until it’s murderous appetite is satisfied.

I  can't say I made them up whole cloth as the word inferi is from Harry Potter ( by way of ancient Rome), but the ideas of all undead being spirits that inhabit corpses is pretty much mine.  Feel free to take what you want.

Thanks to to some further study into the Vaccuous Grimorie,  I have found some futher information about Inferi, or Zombies.

First there are three types of Zombies, each pertaining to one part of the human that has perished.   Normally when a body dies, the mind also dies and the soul goes free.  But sometimes, by either accident, or design, things go awry.

Sometimes the body  dies but the mind and soul survive, this is how Liches are created.  They retain their intellect and gain the benifits and curses of undeath.  They need to maintain their unlife by surgical or magical means.

Sometimes the body dies, the soul is released but the mind survives.  This poor creatures are zombies.  Their corpse roams the earth satifising the urges of their undeath.  It is only a matter of time before their body will decay bringing their horried undead state to an end.

And sometimes  the mind dies but the body and soul remain intact.  This is usually caused by a Voodoo Priest.  These living  dead are mindless slaves of whomever created them.   These are Xombies.  They can be cured from this state, but the mind is usually horribly limited.

John wrote on Jun 10^th, 2012 at 10:18pm:


And tax evaders, like Wesley Snipes.

That would be telling.

There are three types of vampires.

First, the normal vampire.  The blood feeding ones.  They take over the physical body.  Do not be confused, when you become a vampire you are gone.  What the vampire really is, is an alien spirit pretending to be the person of the body they have stolen.  They are body thieves.


Next are the mind thieves, the Succubi.  These are Dreams that come to the material world to steal your dreams.  Be warned, succubi are powerful, and hard to destroy.


And lastly, and most terrible, are the soul thieves, the wraiths!  Invisible,  powerful and eneffable spirits that feed on the soul.   How do you know you are under attack by a wraith?  The most common symptom is depression.    Most wraith afflicted persons end up as suicides.