The Spirit World is sort of a... well, direct metaphor doesn't really do it, the result becomes a little like the classic explanation of Einsteinian gravity that involves a bowling ball stretching a rubber sheet, but basically, it's a fold in the astral plane, like the æther is doubled over on itself with Dìqiú tucked inside the "pocket" thus formed. (Like a tennis ball hidden in a fold of a blanket, only in four or five dimensions, and what's on the other side of the blanket is Asgard - that's why it's simple, indeed trivial, to get from the Spirit World to Valhalla and vice versa if you know the route. All the afterlives are connected.)

Another vaguely accurate oversimplification would be to think of it as a kind of æthereal deadwater, where the river is the Celestial Plane and the land is Midgard (and Dìqiú is an island in the middle of the deadwater, but there are a few spots where you can wade to the mainland if you know where they are).

The Dìqiú/Spirit World system is, indeed, not a complete alternate cosmos like Cephiro - not a World by the nomenclature used in the Asgardian Celestial System. The corporeal part of it is technically part of Midgard, albeit only reachable by æthereal transit through the folded spur of Asgard that envelops it.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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