Souls don’t enter the Warp after death; they are always within the Warp part 2

In part 1, I surveyed the now very old foundational lore about the relationship between the Warp, souls, and living beings within the Materium: https://madministratum.blogspot.com/2026/08/souls-dont-enter-warp-after-death-they.html 

This old lore which explicitly explained some aspects of the nature of souls and their place within and relationship to the Warp has come to often be stated far less explicitly in the decades since – but it still provides some foundational concepts which later lore built upon, and helps shed insight into why aspects of the lore take the form they do. And the later lore still (on the whole - as there are exceptions) conceives the souls of mortals as being situated within the Warp, but linked to mortal bodies. So, let’s cover some relevant material.

First, psykers still remain dangerous because their souls attract attention from Warp entities, and the link between their body in the Materium and soul in the Warp acts as a conduit:

If not properly trained, a psyker mutant can become the unwitting pawn of the malevolent creatures of the warp. These creatures can enter real space by using the psyker as a gateway or conduit, in the process consuming the psyker body and soul!

Warhammer 40k Rulebook 3rd ed. (1998), p. 118.

Though, one possible change in the details from the earliest lore is that it seems Warp entities may (sometimes) be conceptualized as being able to “see” mortal souls within the Warp, even if those souls remain safe from them (due to the anchor, presumably), unless a vulnerability emerges. A vulnerability such as using psychic powers:

The souls of mortals are as flickering fireflies in the Warp, pricking the darkness before fading into obscurity, though the souls of psykers are blazing torches, flaring like the brightest of beacons.

Warhammer 40k Rulebook 4th ed. (2004), p. 122.

And:

PSYKERS

More and more psykers emerge throughout the Imperium and though they represent the future promise of Mankind, they are also its most deadly threat. Psykers draw their powers from the immaterial energies of warp space and their souls burn like the brightest flames in the darkness of the Warp, drawing terrifying Warp creatures to them like moths to a flame.

Warhammer 40k Rulebook 4th ed. (2004), p. 123.

And:

ALPHA-LEVEL PSYKERS

The soul of one with such power burns like a supenova within the Empyrean, and all too frequently the denizens of the Warp flock to the uncontrolled mind like scavengers to a corpse, pushing through the veil into the mind of their prey. Such is the price of power, for the Warp does not give its gifts freely.

Warhammer 40k Rulebook 4th ed. (2004), p. 125.

And:

The minds of psykers act as portals for daemonic presences, appearing as bright flames in the ether. If a psyker is untrained, malevolent daemons will slide into his mind like cold, twisting knives. Ultimately, the psyker will be transformed into a portal through which streams of hellspawn begin to manifest, at first a trickle, then a flood as they pour unchecked into the material realm.

Warhammer 40k Rulebook 4th ed. (2004), p. 151.

And:

Until the Great Rift, the most common gateway between the warp and realspace was the unprotected mind of a psyker. Such a being draws upon the otherworldly powers of the immaterium, whether consciously or not, yet without training or exceptional will they are vulnerable to daemonic possession.

Warhammer 40k Rulebook 8th ed. (2017), p. 151.

Aside from daemons exploiting this vulnerability, this is also the means by which Enslavers gain access to the Materium: they psychically enslave a psyker from within the Warp, and then use the link to the physical body to turn it into a fleshy Warp-gate. Although not explicitly described as such, the notion of the “anchor” between body and soul, straddling the Veil between Warp and Materium, remains key. See, for example:

All Genestealers share a psychic connection that allows them to function as an independent brood. This extends to their offspring; indeed Genestealers will actively seek out psykers as hosts to strengthen this link and their own Tyranid psychic powers. However, these psychically attuned offspring shine in the Warp as a near irresistible beacon to the Enslavers who follow the vessel as it dances between the Empyrean and real space.

Deathwatch: The Achilus Assault (2011), p. 64.

We also have technology which suggests souls reside within the Warp:

Psi-tracker

This is a very arcane device that can read shifts in warpspace, essentially detecting the souls of those nearby.

Inquisitor Rulebook (2001), p. 91.

It is also instructive to look over relevant passages in the recent Warhammer 40k: The Ultimate Guide, written by Guy Haley (who we have already seen in Part 1 very obviously plays around with the old concepts) and Gav Thorpe, former core games developer and longstanding BL author who often serves as a lore supremo for other Warhammer authors:

Through the otherworldly dimension of the Warp, astropaths can communicate between worlds and ships can travel celestial distances within weeks and months rather than millennia. Adjacent to Realspace, the Warp is formed of pure psychic energy, giving rise to its many monikers: Otherspace, the Sea of Souls, the Empyrean, the Abyss.

The Warp is not a placid realm. Like a churning sea, it has tides and waves, currents and eddies. The smallest disturbance, the flickering of a soul, may not change the course of these great flows but, over time, the mass of mortals and their base emotions have created raging torrents and unending storms.

For millions of years, the accumulation of mortal desires and fears have formed into pools of consciousness. These pools are impossibly vast and unknowable, and yet they are forged in the minds of mortals and connected to them through their souls. They are the Great Powers of the Warp and they hunger after the real universe, desiring dominion over it just as they desire superiority over one another. In the Great Game between these Gods of Chaos, mortals are vital Champions and endless currency, whose worship and sacrifice can see the strength of a Great Power wax supreme, until another rises above them, buoyed up on their own swell of mortal dedication.

Thorpe, Haley, Warhammer 40,000: The Ultimate Guide (2024).

This definitely evokes the early conceptualization of the Warp, even if some of the terminology and details have evolved. A soul flickering can disturb the currents of the Warp, because the soul is within the Warp.

All living creatures are connected to the Warp, the realm of the animus or soul. For most things this Warp-body is a pinprick, a mote of soulstuff in a raging ocean.

The Tyranids have a presence in the Warp too, but rather than remaining as individual specks of awareness, their Warp-resonance melds together to create the Hive Mind. The effect of so many interlinked “souls” overwhelms the rhythms and ripples of Warpspace, turning everything into unfathomable emptiness—a Shadow in the Warp that casts a pall of dread where it falls, and blots out astrotelepathic communication.

Thorpe, Haley, Warhammer 40,000: The Ultimate Guide (2024).

Note that the bit in bold positions the souls of mortals as being within the Warp. The soulstuff resides within the raging ocean. This presence of souls within the Warp is how and why the Tyranid Shadow in the Warp exists and functions.

It is important to note that this exact mechanism is not explained explicitly or in detail every time the Hivemind is described. 40k lore doesn’t work like that. But that doesn’t mean this concept isn't still at play.

Take, for example:

THE SHADOW IN THE WARP

Most of the organisms in a Tyranid swarm are nonsapients with an intelligence focused solely on fulfilling their instinctive behaviour. This limitation is overcome by the presence of the species’ powerful psychic link, known as the Hive Mind. A constant two-way communication between the Hive Mind and the lesser organisms allows for tactical control and information gathering. The massive hive ships are a primary source of these broadcasts, though some other organisms, including Hive Tyrants, Broodlords, and Tyranid Warriors, may also function as nodes to coordinate swarms of smaller Tyranids.

This control requires a phenomenal amount of psychic activity through a region, which some scholars suggest is the root cause for the so-called Shadow in the Warp. Whatever the reason, the Tyranids’ arrival heralds a blanket of psychic static that scratches at the mind.

Deathwatch: The Achilus Assault (2011), p. 45.

This does not explicitly state that Tyranids have souls, and indeed plays into the notion that their souls may in some sense be individually stunted. But it explains that the communication between organisms of the synaptic network is two-way. So each Tyranid must be producing psychic energy within the Warp. And psychic energy is, of course, produced and used by souls. Genestealer Broodminds work in a similar fashion: the psychic energies of the Cult members within the Warp form a gestalt consciousness led by the Patriarch.

On to the Eldar:

Feeling every moment so keenly, their souls burning bright in the Warp, free to indulge every fantasy they could imagine, the Aeldari became enamored of ever more extreme pursuits, seeking novelty and fresh stimuli.

Their society slowly became amoral, indulging in bloodsports and hunts, or celebrating extremes of body modification in which one could soar with the wings of a bird against an endless sunset, or swim starlit oceans like a fish, form moldable to will. Depravity abounded, every new indulgence and debauchery feeding another. And in this endless pursuit of pleasure, the Aeldari unknowingly sealed their fate.

For in the Warp their souls churned the immaterial energies, and something vast began to form. Fed on rapture and excess, this nascent power pushed itself into the dreams and waking lives of the Aeldari, fueling their need for experience. A selffulfilling spiral with this Warp entity grew, until it became so engorged on their depravity that it burst into existence as a full Chaos God—Slaanesh, the Prince of Pleasure, or as the Aeldari know it, She Who Thirsts. Its birth spasm consumed billions of Aeldari in an instant.

Thorpe, Haley, Warhammer 40,000: The Ultimate Guide (2024).

Their souls were in the Warp while they lived, and this is how mortal souls affect the Warp: they release energy, and create ripples and currents.

Such an idea has been restated in various Codexes too, such as:

The Aeldari's psychic souls flare brightly in the mirror realm of the warp. Powerful emotions in that dimension can take form, and the soaring highs and crushing lows of the psychically sensitive Aeldari began to coalesce.

Codex: Drukhari 9th ed. (2021), p. 8.

And we also see the Kin’s souls being situated within the Warp:

The souls of the Kin shine only dimly in the Warp, and as such psychic powers are very rare among the Leagues.

Thorpe, Haley, Warhammer 40,000: The Ultimate Guide (2024).

Now, there are also some statements which, taken on their own, seemingly suggest souls reside within mortal bodies:

HEMLOCK WRAITHFIGHTER

The Hemlock Wraithfighter is a controversial weapon. It earns the title wraithfighter from being powered by spirit stones—the psychic energy of dead Aeldari. Spiritseer pilots use this to charge heavy d-scythes to rip out the souls of their targets, leaving lines of corpses tumbling silently in the wake of their terrifying attack runs.

Thorpe, Haley, Warhammer 40,000: The Ultimate Guide (2024). Similar has also be said in Eldar Codexes, such as 6th ed.

I would suggest this perhaps actually means the “anchor” is being cut, or ripped out, separating soul from body.

And it is true that there are other examples in the lore which, as phrased, suggest – or seemingly suggest – that souls inhabit mortal bodies in the Materium. From my surveying of the lore I can find, it does seem that these are exceptions though, rather than the norm. In most cases souls are just described as fading/melting into the Warp (which is in line with the idea that they lose coherence when the anchor is severed), not as moving from a mortal body into the Warp and then fading.

But here are some examples which could suggest otherwise:

Daemons lust after the flesh and blood of living creatures. They want only to destroy Mankind, to drag the souls of men back to their shadowy realm, to obliterate the material universe and engulf it within the roiling energy of Warp space. Fortunately, this is not easy quest to accomplish. Daemons cannot exist for long in the material universe and they need to find psychic gateways in order to leave the Warp. Such gateways exist - they are rare, but not so rare that their threat can be ignored. The most vulnerable portals of all are the souls of psykers. A psyker's powers open up a path between reality and the Warp, a path which a Daemon may discover and follow to the mind of the psyker himself.

Warhammer 40k Rulebook 5th ed. (2008), p. 104.

Dragging souls back to their shadowy realm (presumably the Warp, rather than sub-realm within it?) definitely seems to imply the souls reside in the Materium. But note how this very same passage also repeats the explanation of why psykers are vulnerable to daemons.

When their spirits eventually left their mortal bodies they dissolved peacefully back into the Warp to be reborn again

…

All Eldar within thousands of light years were reduced to lifeless husks, their spirits sucked into the Warp.

Codex Eldar 4th ed. (2006), p. 4.

Which definitely does seem to imply the souls moved from Materium (back) into the Warp.

He and Garreon combined their knowledge to produce the biomechanical miracle that has maintained Huron’s body since the retreat from the Palace of Thorns, but it was not this that brought his spirit back.  That was something else, a manifestation of which is the Hamadrya that accompanies the Master of the Maelstrom. Huron made bargains while his soul drifted on the tides of the warp, and no one knows exactly with whom or what those bargains were made, or what coin the Blood Reaver used.

…

He came here to claim this artefact, and that is what he intends to do: it might strip his soul from his body, or his flesh from his bones, but if he were fearful of such fates then he would never have made his home in the Maelstrom.

Brooks, Huron Blackheart: Master of the Maelstrom (2022), p. 52, 113.

These definitely read as if they could imply the soul resided in the body before death/before he came back to life, but could they not also be true if we instead view them as talking about a soul within the Warp being anchored to the body?

And thanks to u/reptiloidruler on r/40klore for suggesting these next three examples which I did not have on my list, in a reply to the previous post:

The Warhawk is dead, by any mortal standard. Because he fell so close by, just beyond the walls, his body was carried in at once, and placed on this catafalque in a balming field of catalepsean stasis and life-suspense. If he had died further out, or on another world, there would be no hope at all. But there is. For now and not much longer, an iota of necro mimesis remains. The tattered banner of Jaghatai’s soul, gusting into the warp, is still attached to his corpse by a single thread. I have determined this, and I have been trying, repeatedly in these last few hours, to draw it back. Every shred of healing science has been exhausted, for it is a matter quite beyond medicae lore. I have been ministering my anagogic craft to keep that thread attached.

Abnett, The End and the Death I (2023), pp. 139-140.

But I think this passage also suggests Jaghatai Khan’s soul was in the Warp, and is evoking the notion of the anchor. The reason he isn’t truly dead (or beyond recovery) is because some link between soul and mortal body remains – but it needs to be strengthened.

And we have Mortarian talking about Guilliman:

‘He never died. His soul was bound to his body – you could see its echo in the warp, if you knew where to look. But the day is coming, and here’s the irony – the Gate will break, and that shall release him.’

Wraight, Lords of Silence (2018), p. 74.

Which is ambiguous. It says it is bound to, not in, his body, though that might just be semantics. That you can see its echo in the Warp doesn’t mean the soul itself is not within the Warp, just that only it’s echo can be directly perceived – which wouldn’t really conflict with the old notion of shadowselves.

Mephiston felt it swell up, threatening to pull him in and consume him, so he threw himself out of the warp, back into the relative safety of the Bloodcaller. Such pain there was from so abrupt a shift, gone in an instant as his soul sped back into his body.

Settling back into reality made his soul crawl, as if being free in the warp was his natural condition, and flesh a terrible prison. Mephiston drew a great racking breath into his lungs. With disgust he felt them quiver. Such carnal impermanence was no vehicle for his immortal soul.

Haley, Darkness in the Blood (2019), p. 54.

Which I think is talking about his consciousness, rather than his soul. He was astral projecting through the Warp. His consciousness is back within his body, but that does not mean his soul is there – even if the sensation affects his soul.

I totally accept that all three scenes could be read in another way, though. I just think that they can be read in the manner I suggest if knowledge of the wider context of the lore is applied. Whether that was the intention of the author is another question.

And there is this scene of an Imperial Army conscript committing suicide:

Please let this end, he thought, which was the closest he’d come to thinking clearly in weeks. He ate the barrel of his pistol and pulled the trigger.

His anima – what some would call a soul – unanchored from his body and went screaming through the veil between corporeality and unreality, plunging immediately into the boiling tides of the warp. The weakling soul-light that had been Ja-Hen Uquar experienced one final sensation as it learned the lesson of what waited in death for all living things, and that lesson was pain. The pain of dissolution. The pain of one’s soul-light drawing daemons the way blood draws sharks in dark water.

Finally, mercifully, and in accordance with his dying wish, it ended.

Dembski-Bowden, Echoes of Eternity (2022), p. 337.

Which literally states that something - what some would call his soul - traversed the veil between the Materium and the Warp. But it does actually use the term "anima", unlike "soul" which is presented as an in-universe belief. Bear this in mind later on...

This is interesting, given Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s out of universe explanation of the nature of souls, which, it is important to note, appeared in a forum post, not an official publication – so usual caveats for such material apply. ADB, for those who may be unaware, is a prominent Black Library author, who also later became Head of Narrative at GW. He stated:

Most human souls are fragile, weak things in a cosmic sense (say, compared to the eldar). They wink out of existence when the person dies, vanishing forever into nothingness or becoming part of the "stuff" of the Warp. Souls don't go to the Warp, exactly. They are the Warp. The Warp is made of souls in the same way water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. The Warp is souls.

Everything has a reflection in the Warp. Every weapon has a faint spiritual echo of all the pain it's inflicted, and every place of death and catastrophe filters through the "stuff" behind the veil. The Warp reacts to emotion, torment, and so on, when the corporeal universe influences the endless reality of boiling, roiling, churning ectoplasma unseen by mankind. Negative emotion and horrific events shape the "stuff" into malicious forces that the human mind interprets as daemons and Dark Gods. These, in turn, reshape the Warp around them, and affect the material universe according to their natures. 

Very strong souls can maintain their... theirness... in the Warp, usually attracting daemonic attention. So when you die, your soul becomes part of the Great Ocean, or if you're an immensely rare sort of creature, you get to burn bright enough to draw daemons to you.

Link here: https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/288595-thoughts-on-the-afterlive-in-40k/#findComment-3632931

So, souls don't go to the Warp. Though the "exactly" maintains a hint of ambiguity.

And, while I don’t have access to the original source, for completeness sake, Gav Thorpe apparently stated (at least it has been requoted many times on Reddit) on his Patreon:

Souls are the energy of the warp. They don't exist IN it, they ARE the warp. If water is made up of H20 molecules, the warp is made up of souls. You don't get H20 in water. The smallest indivisible fragment of warp is soul. Most human souls are that - tiny grains temporarily attached to a body in realspace, all smushed together with minimal effect. Some are bigger, larger chunks of warp; the souls of aeldari, or psykers, which have more of a presence and make more of an impact on the surrounding souls. This stuff is not physical though, it's energy. It can be used - to make a Chaos God, turned into a daemon, forged into a world.

So therefore that playdoh we were playing about with earlier is actually people's souls. That bizarre burning fortress of awesome is constructed and fuelled by souls. Souls are power.

....

In the warp, a human soul is just a daemon with better PR.

Gav Thorpe, "Abaddon and the Warp"

Souls are the Warp, but they can get attached to mortal bodies (presumably via the anchor).

An overview of the key points has also been provided by u/Shaskais here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShaskaisWarhamBits/comments/hszu33/interesting_bits_from_gav_thorpes_eye_of_terror/

Who does an amazing job of providing overviews of a wide variety of lore as well as author interviews/commentaries etc – and who I trust to have reported this accurately. Seriously, please do check out his stuff.

And we also have this paraphrased statement from another Thorpe Patreon piece:

Each mortal creature has a spark, reflection, in the Realm of Chaos. This is called a soul, psychic potential, consciousness. This reflection has a casual connection to the physical body it belongs to, and it acts as conduit between the Realm of Chaos and the material plane

Covered here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShaskaisWarhamBits/comments/gibd6k/interesting_bits_from_gav_thorpes_explanation_of/

The reflection in the Warp is the soul, but it has a causal connection to the physical body. Sounds like the original conception, to me.

Why, though, are both ADB and Thorpe stating that the very Warp itself is made out of souls (and using a very similar metaphor to explain this)? I’d presume that the authors working on the HH series discussed this idea in their planning meetings, and that they were looking back to the early foundational lore for guidance. And let’s remind ourselves of a key passage:

The soul is not aware. It is simply a coherent lump of raw Chaos energy maintained whole by its anchor to the material body.

…

When a creature dies the anchor holding its body and soul is broken. The raw material of the soul is cast adrift amongst the other raw material of Chaos. Most souls are weak and insubstantial, and soon dissolve back into Chaos and are lost forever. Because of this relationship, the universe of Chaos is sometimes called The Sea of Lost Souls or (because souls are recreated with every new birth) the Well of Souls.

Priestley, ‘CHAOS: Guide to the fictional background of Chaos in GW games’ (1989), p. 1.

The Warp is all composed of what could be called “soul energy”. Some of this energy can be anchored to a mortal, and then reshaped by their actions and thoughts and emotions. Some of the energy coalesces if resonant, and this how the Chaos gods formed. Some of the energy is consumed by Warp entities and perverted for their own purposes. But it is all fundamentally Warp energy; soul stuff. Which is why soul are so important.

Now, these two posts obviously don’t discuss every topic relevant to the metaphysics of souls in 40k, but they hopefully provide some useful insights for other discussions.

These insights may help to explain why the Null fields of Blackstone Pylons not just dampen psychic powers, but also cause mortal beings to become listless – because their bodies are literally being cut off from accessing the Warp, and hence their soul. Of course, you could presume that the Pylons are quashing souls within mortal bodies – but the relevant lore generally talks about the Materium being severed/insulated from the Warp:

The relentless expansion of the pariah Nexus is the work of the Necrons. The ancient android-bodied xenos are enacting the first steps of a plan aeons in the making, driven by Szarekh, last of the Silent Kings. With the uneasy allegiance of an ancient conclave of Crypteks known as the Technomandrites, Szarekh is attempting to propagate a star-spanning weapon of such potency that it could end the threat of Chaos altogether. That this sea changes in the galaxy’s fortunes would come at the cost of soul death of every non-Necron life form is simply and additional bonus from the Silent King’s point of view.

…

Somehow, the cyclopean Obelisks are now channelling the energies of the caged Xenduan star to generate a supernatural barrier between realspace and the warp.

The vast majority of worlds within the Nexus are already considered lost, their Human populations stilled.

War Zone Pariah: The Edge of Silence (2020), p. 2.

And we have this interesting passage:

Beyond the shrouding warp mists, the Imperial ships sailed into a region of deathly calm. Some of the battle group’s psykers claimed that the warp itself had been brought to a millpond stillness**. Others attested to perceiving the seething tides of the empyrean still raging, but trapped impotent beyond the walls of a fractally complex crystal dome**.

Psychic Awakening: Pariah (2020), p. 8.

But my two posts about the location of the soul don’t explain, for example, why the Sisters of Battle faith powers work within Null zones, or why the purely Materium-based C’tan can apparently consume souls. Perhaps the notion of the soul anchor plays a role?

It is my contention that an underlying concept of souls residing within the Warp but anchored to mortal bodies has remained endured in the lore and serves as a conceptual foundation for much of the related lore about how souls and the Warp function, even if some aspects have evolved, specific details and terminology have been tweaked, and the mechanisms at play often are alluded without being explained explicitly or in detail. By looking widely over the lore, new and old, the underlying concepts can be made more easily visible and understandable.

However, there definitely are examples within the lore which state, or seem to suggest, that souls reside within mortal bodies. Such discrepancies are par for the course when so many creators have been adding to a setting over decades. Some writers perhaps aren’t aware of the underlying concepts, or just don’t like them and choose to present a different view. Editors may not spot such divergent interpretations, or might not care they exist.

And, I think, in many cases, there is also just some loose language at play, and some shorthand. Rather than saying “the anchor between the soul within the Warp and the mortal body was sundered, leading to the soul losing coherence”, we instead get vague statements about the soul leaving the body/entering the Warp. Which, in a sense, is true even if you view souls as residing in the Warp: the anchor component has been broken/removed, even if the actual bundle of soul energy was in the Warp. But that first version is less snappy. We also have the issue that some, though not all, such accounts may be from an in-universe perspective, and thus reflect the subjective experience/understanding of the character, and not be accurate appraisals of the metaphysical mechanisms at play. Meanwhile, the term “souls” often also gets used in a less metaphysical and more everyday sense – just to talk about people, basically (i.e. things like a worlds of 10 billion souls).

It is a messy state of affairs. We have seen, for example, ADB writing a passage which seemingly implies a soul left a body and entered the Warp, even though, when elsewhere specifically talking about the concept of souls, he was very clear that souls reside within the Warp and indeed that the Warp is made of souls. So even authors who clearly state that they believe souls reside in the Warp can end up penning passages which seem to run contrary to this.

I do want to end with one final very interesting passage, however, which perhaps complicates matters even further – or perhaps offers a resolution? It comes from Liber Chaotica, the Warhammer Fantasy book series which provided lots of insight into 40k, too, which I have covered previously in relation to 40k/Fantasy links: https://madministratum.blogspot.com/2025/06/liber-chaotica-and-its-links-between.html

A character, who offers some pretty damn perceptive insights about lots of other issues, muses as to the nature of the soul (note both that the Aethyr that is being talked about is another name for the Warp, and that this is an in-universe viewpoint, and so needs to be treated appropriately):

As has been suggested time and again throughout this discourse, the great powers of Chaos (being Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle and Slaanesh) are Aethyric projections of certain thoughts. To be more precise, they are the personified manifestations of common beliefs and emotions associated with particular states of mind and dictated by the vagaries of life in general.

Yet the gods must be more than just conscious vortices of emotion, for that does not explain how it is that the gods became conscious, self-aware and intelligent — there seems to be nothing within the cold process of coalescence that in itself will naturally lead to consciousness. This is where the souls of the dead-come into play, or so I believe.

Searching for the Soul

What is the soul? That is perhaps the most difficult question of all. Just as with an attempt to define the Aethyr in simple terms, it is difficult — nigh on impossible — to know or express what the soul of mortal beings might be is even harder to explain, but answering the question may help us understand the nature of the Chaos Gods.

...

Many chaoticians believe that all mortals exist in both the mortal world and the heart of the Aethyr simultaneously. That is to say the body and mind of every mortal exists in the Materium while an immortal essence exists within Immaterium. But do not be deceived, for despite the fact that this essence is supposed to exist within the Immaterium, it is also, and at the same time, within us here upon the Mortal Plane. This does not mean that this essence is split in two, nor does it mean that every mortal has two essences — it means merely that because the Immaterium has no dimension or temporal positioning of its own, it exists everywhere as much as it exists anywhere. As such, one could truly say that this essence is within the Aethyr and separate from the body, and at the same time one could say that the Aethyr is within us along with our essence — both comments are as true, or false, as each other.

With the important insight above in bold.

In addition to this essence, there is in each intelligent mortal being consciousness, will and purpose. This, one could call the self, and it is situated within, and generated by the mind. This spirit of self-awareness can act as an intermediary between the material and the immaterial, it can both analyse that which is, and dream about that which is not. It is quintessentially us, and it is also the thing we use to contact the divine. It is the thing that spell casters use to weave their spells.

But which of these is the soul? The Aethyric essence or the conscious will? The Anima or the Animus? The Phaos or the Dhaos?

For my part, I do not see the soul as any one thing in its own right. I see it as the very interaction between the anima and the animus. It is like a waterspout on a stormy sea — a process, an interaction of both water and wind, and it only comes into existence when these two things meet in the right way and in the right place. In this sense I see the soul as similar to the gods of Chaos, only smaller and far less powerful. Both could be seen as a kind of vortex made up of unconscious emotive energy and conscious will and thought. Take away one side of the equation and the vortex stops spinning and becomes formless and disparate.

Despite the comparative weakness of a mortal's soul when judged in comparison with a god's, mortals posses one great strength that the gods do not — one thing that even the greatest gods, including Tzeentch, crave. Mortals are beings of both the Materium and the Immaterium; this gives us our strength. Both my training as a priest and my studies into the ways and means of Chaos and the occult have led me to believe that mortals are as much Aethyric beings as they are physical beings. And that is the great and terrible truth, my reader — the fact that the gods are our creations, not the other way around, and that while we can exist without the gods, they cannot exist without us!

All the gods, despite their vast knowledge and near infinite power, would be nothing without mortals to embody them with their emotions and personify them with their worship. This I now believe.

So, no clear answers, but it points to something important: disentangling these concepts - soul, spirit, mind, consciousness etc - is tricky, even perhaps impossible. When ADB uses the phrase anima, is actually referring to a "soul", or not?

It is hopefully clear how the next part is very clearly drawing heavily on the concepts from the very early lore:

MERGING WITH ETERNITY

Every text I have read agrees that when an intelligent being dies, his soul (what I believe to be the interaction of his amina and animus combined) is drawn into the Aethyr. For those beings that were most sensitive to the Aethyr in life, such as magisters or the Asur as a race, there is no separation between their anima and animus, and their souls remain as a conscious and self-determining thing. This is, by all accounts, a mixed blessing, for although it means that there is no true death for such souls, it also means that they are likely to fall victim to one of the Aethyr’s many soul predators, and experience the full horror and eternal damnation of being consumed by it.

Yet many of the grimoires I have read state that when the vast majority of mortal beings die, their souls fragment and dissipate, dividing into the constituent parts of their quintessential t energy (anima) and their consciousness (animus). The energy of a mortal soul is then, I believe, reabsorbed into the broiling potential of the Aethyr, while the animus fragments dissipate even further, so that the separate parts of every thought, memory and emotion that it had contained within it scatter across the Aethyr, where they gradually meet and coalesce with other similar or identical thoughts, memories and emotions from other dissipated souls.

Many of the heretic scholars that I have studied insist that only the most deeply rooted and profound ideas and emotional states survive this fragmentation and dissipation, and those that remain are not a true reflection of the personality that they originally came from. This might help explain why the great gods and daemons that plague our world seem to be ones of such acute emotions or concepts as love and hate, anger and ecstasy or justice and vengeance (to name but a few), because only powerful notions and feelings such as these retain any coherence within the Aethyr. The Aethyric entities that are formed from memories and experiences of such persistent though mundane activities such as housework or farming tend to be very minor spirits in our folklore — creatures that barely have the power and sentience to do more than ensure a good fire in a hearth, or help with the curdling of milk.

Yet regardless of a Chaos entity’s size, each and every one of them is created by the same process of coalescence. A workable (though naturally limited) analogy for this process would be to describe it as the formation and maintenance within the Aethyr of whirlpools of related emotion and thought. Each of these “whirlpools” represents a particular aspect of those mortal races whose thoughts and feelings have contributed towards them. The largest and most extensive of these whirlpools are those associated with those concepts and emotions that have the greatest effect on, and are found most commonly within, intelligent mortals. Yet even so, there are undoubtedly smaller whirlpools within the Aethyr, lesser vortices that spin around the fringes of the greater powers, growing, converging, dividing and eternally moving like the waters of a deep and turbulent river.

Liber Chaotica: Complete Edition (2006), pp. 366-339.

So, perhaps the question of whether the soul resides within the Warp is actually misleading: perhaps it does, but also kind of doesn't too, depending on how you look at it? Which is a suitably Warp-y take, imo.

Or perhaps the soul can be viewed in a purely narrow sense: just the bundle of energy in the Warp.

Or a broader sense: consciousness in the mind (the Animus), the bundle of energy in the Warp (the Animus), and the soul anchor which binds them?

Anyway, hopefully you found this lengthy survey of the lore interesting and useful. Please do add any examples from the lore which further support these ideas, or which seem to suggest a different interpretation. I am sure I must have missed some examples which imply souls reside in the Materium while mortals are alive, or, indeed, that suggest they reside within the Warp.

I’m sure some will disagree with my conclusions, and I do think there are grounds to do so. But that’s why discussion and in-depth analysis of all the relevant lore is useful – so we can actually get an informed view, weigh the evidence, and look for patterns. Maybe we need to, for example, disentangle or get a better grip on some of the key related terms and concepts: soul, spirit, consciousness, anima etc. Perhaps it is "soul energy" which is indeed within the Warp, from a 40k metaphysical perspective, but other elements of what we more commonly think of as the soul are within the mortal body/mind, and the two are intrinsically linked?

So, I’d love to see what other relevant source material is out there, or hear your ideas!