Anyone who had any contact with magic and occult knowledge, even in passing, knew what the perisprit was. Every novice of the esoteric arts was regaled at the very start of his education with a long, convoluted disquisition, given in an extremely obscure way, about the construction of the human creature. Human beings, the disquisition explained, consist of the physical aspect—the material body—through which they interact with the external material world surrounding them. Human beings also have a spirit, built from immortal ether. There also exists something that connects and binds the spirit to the body, something that mediates between the spirit and the body, and that something is the fluid body, known as the perispirit, blah, blah, blah.

Although the matter appeared simple, it was difficult to find two mages who agreed regarding the perispirit. There were arguments about whether the perispirit was coarser or more ethereal, or, in accordance with the Emerald Tablet, grosser or subtler. There was no agreement as to whether the perispirit was permanent or changeable, nor what the perispirit did and didn’t influence.

There was a theory that attributed quite an enormous role and capabilities to it. According to this theory, the perispirit—being by nature a bond between the material body and the ethereal spirit—determined both the strength and the quality of the bond. In other words, it gives the body more or less spirit. But not all perispirits are alike. Some are given a proverbial “great soul,” making artists of them. Others are given great analytic abilities, making them into scientists and inventors. Those granted the ability to control other souls become leaders and statesmen. It allows a select few to see what is unseeable, to gaze into the abyss of astral beings, making them great mages, spiritualists, prophets and psychics. But the perispirit is so stingy with the rest that even though they have a spirit, the only thing they can do is sit in a tavern drinking one beer after another.

Reynevan had known all that for a long time. As it’s been said before, it was elementary knowledge. After the examination of Samson carried out in Prague, Axleben had, however, used the term “positive perispirit” and “circling perispirit.” This was advanced knowledge and the mages of the Archangel only explained it to Reynevan later. According to most theories, the bond between the perispirit and the spirit was unbreakable, but the bond with the body was not. The perispirit, it was claimed, can decide at any moment that the bond between the spirit and a given body didn’t suit it and sever it. As a rule, it was claimed, the perispirit did that at the moment when the bond was being formed, in other words just after birth or in the first weeks of the infant’s life, explaining the high infant mortality rate.