Resurrection

Resurrection was a form of magic that allowed the spell-caster to restore the dead back to life. It could involve restoring a dead human as a living being,^[1] a dead vampire to their previous undead state,^[2] or turning an undead being into a living human.^[3][4] Resurrection was considered a violation to the laws of nature^[1][5] and a controversial issue among witches.^[6]

Known methods of resurrection involve a revivification ritual,^[7] the Blood of Eternity,^[3] Raising,^[4] a resurrection spell,^[1] wish-granting,^[8] temporal fold,^[9] and the Lazarene incantation.^[10]

Resurrection was a different form of magic from reanimation, in which the deceased was raised in their current state as an undead being.^[11] And according to Rupert Giles when he berated Willow Rosenberg for resurrecting Buffy without his knowledge let alone his approval, resurrection is not uncommon as there are others capable of it; and most of them Willow would not want to encounter.

Examples[]

Angel[]

The blood of Mohra demons, known as the Blood of Eternity, had healing abilities strong enough to resurrect Angel, a vampire, making him human again in 1999.^[3]

During the Fall of Los Angeles, the Senior Partners turned Angel into a human again to weaken his ability to resist them.^[12]

Darla[]

Vocah, a demon serving Wolfram & Hart, performed the Raising ritual to resurrect the vampire Darla as a human being. He sacrificed five vampires to bring her back in an elaborate ritual.^[4] Darla's resurrection restored her living body with the same terminal disease she had as a human, but she was sired before it could kill her.^[13]

Buffy Summers[]

Main article: Resurrection of Buffy Summers

Months after Buffy sacrificed herself to save the world,^[14] Willow performed a resurrection spell with the help of Xander, Anya, and Tara in late 2001. A gang of Hellion bikers attacking Sunnydale interrupted the spell by breaking the urn of Osiris and scattering the Scoobies, who believed the spell had been broken. However, it successfully restored Buffy's decaying body inside her coffin and brought her to life^[1] back from a heavenly dimension.^[15]

Frat boys[]

The deaths caused by a wish caused by a vengeance demon may be reversed only by the sacrifice of a vengeance demon. After Anya summoned a Grimslaw demon to grant a wish to Rachel against a group of frat boys. Anyanka eventually regretted it and asked D'Hoffryn to sacrifice a vengeance demon to bring back the boys, intending to give her own life. However, D'Hoffryn killed Halfrek instead, resurrecting the frat boys.^[8]

Spike[]

Spike died because of the Champion's amulet and direct sunlight in the 2003 battle at the Hellmouth.^[16] This process was later seen in reverse, bringing an incorporeal Spike out of the amulet in Wolfram & Hart's LA branch two months later.^[17] He was later made corporeal by a spell by Lindsey, and effectively fully back from the dead from there on out, although he remained an undead vampire and not a living human being.^[2]

Illyria and Fred[]

Illyria succeeded in her plan to resurrect herself from the confines of the Deeper Well; this required her taking on a new form, and possessing a human host — Fred.^[18] When Fred died, Angel was confident that with the resources of Wolfram & Hart at his disposal he could successfully resurrect her. However, Dr. Sparrow told him that Fred's soul had been "consumed in the fires of resurrection", making resurrection spells impossible as her soul no longer existed to be brought back.^[19]

However, after Illyria's death and the restoration of magic,^[20] Fred was brought back to life sharing a body with Illyria. The resurrection was attributed to the new rules, in which old spells had been reset when magic was restored.^[21]

Goran Clan[]

When demons from the Goran Clan died, they pupated and lived again, but only if the proper rituals were performed by the immediate family, and then only if the body is returned to them in time after the subject's death.^[22]

Los Angeles[]

The Senior Partners turned back time after the fall of Los Angeles to undo Angel's death. Gunn, who had been turned into a vampire while in Hell, was restored to his humanity, albeit once again badly injured from the battles he had taken part in prior to time being reversed.^[9] Various other humans and demons were also resurrected as a result of time being turned back to a point before they had been killed.^[23]

Rupert Giles[]

Following the death of Giles, Angel vowed to find a way to resurrect him in spite of the end of magic.^[24] Angel began using a Tooth of Ammut to gather fragments of Giles' soul together by visiting locations that had some meaning to Giles in life.^[25] This resulted in him taking on aspects of Giles' mannerisms on occasion. Angel intended to subsequently transplant Giles' soul into a soulless body, selecting the body of a junkie who had been killed by demons, the victim's body being healed by another artifact.^{[citation needed]}

When discussing the possibility of Angel's success with Faith, Willow admitted that, given Giles' immersion in magic, he could have succeeded, but in the magic-less Earth, he might not. Angel later claimed that this method of resurrection relied on both Giles' prolonged contact with various magical artifacts and another factor, later established to be Giles' continued connection to Eyghon; since his soul was still tied to Eyghon due to the rituals he had performed as a youth, Giles' soul did not pass on but instead went to its "master," allowing Angel to restore Giles to full life if he could kill Eyghon and claim Giles' soul for himself.^{[citation needed]}

The spell Angel subsequently used to reunite Giles' soul with his body, identified as the Lazarene incantation, would traditionally kill the caster, but Angel believed that he would be able to bypass this rule due to him already being physically deceased. However, the ritual restored Giles to life in his twelve-year-old body as his aunts, Lavinia and Sophronia, were focusing on their memories of him as a child to try and give him a new chance at life. The two had been intending to resurrect Giles as the untainted-by-magic ten-year-old he had been, but Giles retained enough awareness and control over the ritual to make himself slightly older.^[10]

Failed attempts[]

The Master[]

In 1997, the Order of Aurelius attempted to perform a revivification ritual to bring the Master back from the dead. Giles implied that there had been other attempts to perform such a ritual, but he had never read of one being successful. This method of resurrection involved covering the Master's retrieved bones with the blood of the humans who were present when he died. Buffy thwarted the Order's plans before they could come to fruition and destroyed the Master's skeleton to prevent any further resurrection attempts.^[7]

Joyce Summers[]

Dawn Summers tried to resurrect her mother Joyce. With the help of Spike and Doc, Dawn was provided with the right ingredients for a resurrection spell so that she could properly bring back her mother to life rather than have her rise as a zombie. Since there was a possibility that Joyce could return differently, Dawn ended the ritual before anyone had a chance to see how she turned out.^[6]

Tara Maclay[]

Andrew used the Vampyr book to attempt to bring Tara back, using its ability to rewrite the rules of magic after the restoration of the Seed of Wonder.^[26] He also stated an intention to bring Jonathan back using the book as well, but he was talked out of this approach before he could put the plan into action.^[27]

Behind the scenes[]

• In 2004, Joss Whedon claimed that he had planned to resurrect Tara at the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 7: "In one of the final episodes, the third to last episode, Buffy was going to basically get a 'get out of jail free' card. One completely reality-altering things that she could have — she could bring Angel back to her, she could do anything she wanted. At the end of the episode she basically comes to Willow and says 'Look at these shoes I got!' and Willow's, like, 'What?' 'I got these really awesome shoes. I wanted them, and now I have them!' and Willow's like 'You... used... the wish... for shoes?' and Buffy says 'Of course not, you idiot,' and walks out of the room and Willow turns around and Tara's standing behind her."^[28]

Appearances[]

References[]