Necromancy: Why is it Evil?
prefer video? watch here. https://youtu.be/vja_0TB2hhw
By now, we've all heard or seen the many times the following question posed “Why is necromancy evil, but enchantment isn't?” (in the context of fantasy worlds, to be clear.)
There are a lot of good explorations of this, but I think they miss some key points about the way necromancy is conceived of, starting with its origins as a concept in real world magical practice and belief. First of all, I would like to express very clearly that any application of Enchantment that abrogates free will is evil, arguably more so than doing actual physical violence. That's another post. But here, we're talking about necromancy.
Most of the arguments seem to follow the lines of, “What's evil about using dead bodies?” To a certain extent, if that were all it was, they'd have a point. Except for one specific note: Bodily autonomy. In most modern societies, especially the west, we determine what is done with our bodies. After we are dead, we get burned, buried, etc, according to choice and means. Our organs cannot be taken, even to save the life of another, after our deaths. Why does that principle exist? Fundamentally, it's because our bodies may be the only thing we have ever truly owned. The only thing that was ours. Abrogating that right means we never even belonged to ourselves.
The real problem is...that's not all necromancy is. It is conceived of many different ways in many different fantasy worlds and game systems and settings, and in DnD specifically, it has very specific connotations which we will explore. Obviously all this can be changed for your own setting.
To really get the explanation right we have to go back to the origins of necromancy, both the word, and the practice that it described, at least in the west. It cannot really be used to describe Asian systems accurately, they usually operate under a very different paradigm and have their own words for even similar practices.
Necromancy is a Greek compound word. Necro, obviously, means death. So mancy means magic, right?
Nope. Well, sort of. The root' mancy' actually refers very specifically to divination. Determining the future. So necromancy is the art of divination by using the dead. Historically, and mythologically, this meant summoning ghosts and binding them or bribing them, in order to force them to answer questions about the world, often the future, because the dead were seen as being outside time, and unbound by its strictures. So right at the beginning we see a difference: necromancy explicitly deals with ghosts, which are probably the souls or at least shades of the dead, and certainly seem to have knowledge and sapience even if they are not the actual 'souls' of the departed.
Now we come to the next part. Animated corpses. The argument seems to be that animated corpses are simply objects given animation by, and controlled by, magic, with no part of the person remaining. This is, under most Western conceptions ( and most others actually, but I digress) a purely modern concept. Animating corpses, or indeed even other objects, was done explicitly by imbuing them with spirits...in the case of the dead, most often their own, but sometimes demons or other evil spirits...all of whom are compelled by the practitioner, the same way Enchantment compels the living. It's a step even farther into the dark, because not even death is an escape from slavery. And yes, I use that word very intentionally. The modern conception of necromancy , though badly skewed from it, owes a great deal to the voudoun concept of the zombie...which is explicitly an enslaved soul trapped in its dead body , bound to the will of the Bokor for eternity, aware of its plight but unable even to complain about it. The fears of enslaved people made manifest. One could even create a 'zombi astral' which was the enslaved spirit without the body, kept in a jar.
Let's head to the Ancient World, where, arguably, most of our modern magical tradition stems from, and certainly much of our ideas of undeath. Again, the argument seems to be that animating the body is just corporeal. Nothing remains of the person. But in Egyptian myth, which is the source of many of our notions, this is explicitly not the case. Not only is the body itself considered one of the parts of the soul, the khet, but undead like mummies are specifically animated by another part of the soul, usually the ka , the life force, but sometimes the khaibit or shut, the shadow. In Egyptian myth, like many others, one was barred from the afterlife if they had no body to inhabit (thus the practice of mummification). In Mesopotamia, the oldest reference to the dead walking is as 'hungry dead', as Ereshkigal threatened to send up the dead to devour the living. Those undead were as much demon as they were undead, called gallu...the original source of the Arabian ghul and thus our modern ghoul. They clearly saw undead as inherently evil, or at least dangerous. But I digress. As I usually do.
Now, obviously, none of these things automatically apply in your given fanatsy world. But there is still the notion of bodily autonomy, and another interesting thing common to nearly every culture: improper burial angers the dead, or traps them in the world. The Norse draugr and Egyptian mummies are just two examples. Some vampires are even made that way. Disturbing the remains of the dead does the same. There is an indelible connection between the body and the soul that used to inhabit it, and disturbing one disturbs the rest of the other. Getting animated and used as slave labor or soldiers probably counts as pretty disturbing to the soul that originally owned the body. Even if it isn't actually in there. Which, in most cases, it probably is...or at least an echo of it. Mindless undead are basically a modern concept, because if they appeared mindless in earlier lore, it was because they were constrained and compelled. There was definitely something in there.
Let's get into specific gaming applications. In editions of DnD prior to 5e, undead were created through the invocation of negative energy, a specifically evil force that literally endangered the material world as it was accumulated. In modern DnD, even 'mindless' undead have Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores, all indicators of a mind and personality, however weak. In addition, they have an alignment. Neutral Evil. The process used to bring them back, barring exceptional cases, turns them to evil. Left uncontrolled, they wreak evil on their own. The official statblock does have some contradictions, stating both that nothing is left of the original, but “The magic animating a zombie imbues it with evil, so left without purpose, it attacks any living
creature it encounters.”
And that's just undead. The other things necromancy can do...well. Pure necrotic damage, sure, I can see a case for that not being worse than burning to death in a fireball. Rotting to death or burning to death are both pretty grisly. But. How about, say, Magic Jar. It solely exists to allow your soul to completely steal another persons body. It can be permanent. The creature is imprisoned in the jar. That's at least as bad as Dominate Person. Soul Cage, is like a step up in how evil a spell can be. And these are just the basic spells. The thing to understand about necromancy is, as I said in my TikTok and YT short, it isn't just about animating the bodies (which, as you will see above is arguably bad enough). It's about controlling the souls of others, engaging them, eating them, enslaving them. Denying them the afterlife that they earned. If it was just about the bodies, well, you can get them on their feet and fighting with Animate Objects, a transmutation spell. Heck, for the short term at least, you get better fighters, and more of them, from Animate Object.
Let's step over to GURPS. In GURPS, the school of Necromancy explicitly includes demon summoning, and even more grisly magics. What does that have to do with Death magic? Well...the line between soul, spirit, demon, is super thin in most mythoi, maybe even nonexistent. The arts to summon one are the same as the arts to summon another. Not to mention we have the semi-modern confusion of necromancy with negromancy . . . general 'black magic', which actually informs nearly all fantasy portrayals.
Most other games and settings take one of these two approaches. You are of course free to chart another course, but these are some of the reasons why in the context of these worlds, from the point of view of the people that have to live there, Necromancy is definitely evil.
The YouTube Short I made that spurred this article is here.
And here’s what the community thought, according to a poll by Geek Native.
https://www.geeknative.com/69529/can-necromancers-ever-be-good/
