Codex text
Some outlying nations have differing ideas on what happens to us after death. The southern Avvar, for example, believe in a hazily defined afterlife governed by "the Lady of the Skies" where the dead are reunited with their kin. A comforting notion, and not unfamiliar. The Chantry's idea that on death we cross the Fade to live by the Maker's side is accepted from rough Ferelden to decadent Tevinter. Yet Avvar also believe some of their people are destined to be "reborn," which some among the Chantry have great trouble grasping. It is not, I must emphasize, a spirit possessing a body. Other than invoking the gods, spirits have nothing to do with the process. It is the essence, the soul, which returns clothed in new flesh.
The core of the concept is thus: the souls of a few Avvar "favored" by fate "migrate" on death to inhabit a new body destined for them, so they may return and perform great deeds for the good of their hold. These resurrected souls are not expected to remember their past selves consciously, but instead are assumed to be subtly "guided" by their previous experiences, especially through visions and portents. This most conveniently sidesteps the need for proof that one has been "reborn" or that such things even occur. Then again, perhaps we should not cast scorn too quickly; as of yet, not one of the dead has returned from across the Fade to describe the Maker's paradise.
—Part of a monograph entitled Grand Visions of Life and Death, written by Roberto the Skeptic of Antiva in 9:31 and banned by the Chantry in 9:32