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Vampiric immortality is characterized by being conditional, inasmuch as continued access to human blood is necessary to sustain it. [4] [17] Zombie immortality, on the other hand, is characterized by the loss of personhood. [16] [18] Works of fiction featuring immortality can be classified by the number of immortals: one, several, or everyone.
Immortality in religion refers usually to either the belief in physical immortality or a more spiritual afterlife. In traditions such as ancient Egyptian beliefs, Mesopotamian beliefs and ancient Greek beliefs, the immortal gods consequently were considered to have physical bodies.
Eternal youth is the concept of human physical immortality free of ageing. The youth referred to is usually meant to be in contrast to the depredations of aging, rather than a specific age of the human lifespan. Eternal youth is common in mythology, and is a popular theme in fiction.
The doctrine of conditional immortality states the human soul is naturally mortal, and that immortality is granted by God as a gift. The doctrine is a "significant minority evangelical view" that has "grown within evangelicalism in recent years".
Plato's theory of the soul, which was inspired variously by the teachings of Socrates, considered the psyche (Ancient Greek: ψῡχή, romanized: psūkhḗ) to be the essence of a person, being that which decides how people behave.
Maimonides describes the Olam Haba in spiritual terms, relegating the prophesied physical resurrection to the status of a future miracle unrelated to the afterlife or the Messianic era. According to Maimonides, an afterlife continues for the soul of every human being: soul now separated from the body in which it was "housed" during its earthly ...
The elixir of life (Medieval Latin: elixir vitae), also known as elixir of immortality, is a potion that supposedly grants the drinker eternal life and/or eternal youth. This elixir was also said to cure all diseases. Alchemists in various ages and cultures sought the means of formulating the elixir.
Early text such as Zhuangzi, Chuci, and Liezi texts allegorically used xian immortals and magic islands to describe spiritual immortality, sometimes using the word yuren 羽人 or "feathered person" (later another word for "Daoist" [Notes 1]), and were described with motifs of feathers and flying, such as yǔhuà (羽化, with "feather; wing ...