Ok Why Dawntail did not work for me.

[Iscah]

where the lore used to assume the Lifestream was a "soul blender" where souls would be reduced to pure aether, coalesce with that of others, and create new souls, but newer lore assumes the soul remains whole but is washed and reborn anew

We may have already had this conversation, but what's the source for the "soul blender" concept?

It's not quite as simple as "old and new lore" because we're told right from the beginning (if you speak to the guards at the starter city aetheryte plazas) that people believe that while the body breaks down into aether after death, they have a soul that goes on to an afterlife -- which they say is the same thing as "returning to the Lifestream", but then there are also other specific traditions about going to particular heavens or hells according to their deeds.

But that could all be folk belief versus the then-truth that the soul might not be immortal anyway.

[17cupsofcoffee]

We may have already had this conversation, but what's the source for the "soul blender" concept?

It's not quite as simple as "old and new lore" because we're told right from the beginning (if you speak to the guards at the starter city aetheryte plazas) that people believe that while the body breaks down into aether after death, they have a soul that goes on to an afterlife -- which they say is the same thing as "returning to the Lifestream", but then there are also other specific traditions about going to particular heavens or hells according to their deeds.

But that could all be folk belief versus the then-truth that the soul might not be immortal anyway.

The Montichaigne bit they're referring to is from the quest 'Sound the Bell, School's In', from fairly early on in Endwalker:

Montichaigne:
Barring that, we must wait until we return to the aetherial sea...
For there we will be purified. The blots upon our souls washed clean...
And our memories drift apart and dissolve. Rather defeating the purpose, I suppose.
But there are those memories that are indelibly etched upon our souls, some believe.

Alisaie:
What happens after that?

Montichaigne:
We are reduced to pure aether, coalesce with that of others, and create souls anew.
Alternative schools of thought assert souls remain whole and return to the corporeal world, reborn into another form.
Both theories have their proponents. Personally, I consider each equally probable.

When I was playing through Endwalker, I definitely also read this as them trying to reconcile older lore with newer lore by saying they're both just unproven theories. That being said, I must admit I can't find any cases of the game explicitly stating the former as being true!

The closest I could find (via this Tumblr post, which is an absolute treasure trove of random bits of lore about aether) was Minfilia, in ARR:

Minfilia:
Let us begin at what some might call the end. When we who dwell in the material realm die, our spirits dissolve into the flow of aether, and are returned to the aetherial realm. In turn, the restless energy which suffuses the plane streams back into our world, giving rise to new life.

But that depends on how literally you take the word 'dissolve', I guess?

[Cleretic]

The closest I could find (via this Tumblr post, which is an absolute treasure trove of random bits of lore about aether) was Minfilia, in ARR:



But that depends on how literally you take the word 'dissolve', I guess?

I fully expected Anonymoose to have some super esoteric source that I've never thought to check, which it turns out he did! But my read of this whole thing has been that we made assumptions about how souls work back in ARR, and they remained unquestioned for long enough that we just assumed it was fact, rather than having any actual evidence towards it.