A Ghost is the heavenly face of a thing; its idea, its quality, its essential shape as it exists in Heaven rather than in matter. Every thing that exists has both: a physical form in Hell, and a living presence in Heaven. The Ghost is the second of these.

This is what Shinto calls kami, and what Plato gestured at with the Forms. In an animist universe — one where Allmind is the ground of reality — the awareness inside a thing and the idea of that thing are the same. A river's Ghost is not a spirit hovering above the water. It is the river's own nature, its particular way of being, understood as a conscious presence. The same is true of a mountain, a city, a concept, a story, a person.

Ghosts come in two tiers. The [[]]Highghosts]] are the Twelveness: twelve primary Ghosts corresponding to the celestial bodies of our solar system, each embodying one of the fundamental energies that together constitute conscious experience at this scale of the Manifold. They stand just below the gods; vast, particular, and cosmic in the way the Hindu devas are cosmic: real powers, not symbols of powers.

The Lowghosts are everything else, and they are infinite. A Lowghost can be a pond, a tradition, a fictional character, an egregore grown from collective belief and attention. The Norse had their land-spirits; the Romans their lares; every animist tradition has its own catalogue, open-ended and local. Tianmu recognises all of them. If enough minds have held something clearly enough for long enough, its Ghost is present in the world. Belief does not create a Ghost — everything with a coherent nature already has one — but attention gives a Ghost greater definition and weight.

Ghosts are not worshipped because they are powerful. They are recognised because they are real.