The term astral projection, also known as etheric projection or out-of-the-body traveling, refers to the ability to travel outside the physical out-of-the-body. The astral body is said to be an exact replica of the physical body but more subtle.
An astral body is able to detach itself from the physical body at will (or under special circumstances) and is inhabited after death. The astral body remains attached to the physical body via a stream of energy commonly called the sil-ver cord. The astral body is able to spontaneously leave the physical body dur-ing sleep, trance, or coma, under the influence of anesthetics or drugs, or as the result of accidents.
The astral body of a dying person is often projected into the presence of loved ones a few moments before the physical body dies, and this phenome-non is said to arise from the strong desire of the dying person to see and be seen. There are many reports of this phenomenon, and it has been found pos-sible to project the astral body at will during subjective experiments, though the existence of such a body has not been proven to the satisfaction of main-stream science.
The astral body is said to be composed of subtle elements, ethereal in na-ture, which correspond to what the Yogis consider the vital centers of the physical body, more connected with the life force than with matter. The con-cept of bilocation is associated with the concon-cept of astral projection. Biloca-tion is the ability to be in two places at the same time, but since a person can-not be in both places at once, one can postulate that the physical body could be in one place, while the astral body could be in another.
Many experiences of astral projection have been reported. Among the re-searchers who have studied this phenomenon is the British scientist Robert Crookall, who compared hundreds of cases in which people claimed to have left the physical body and reentered it after traveling, unseen, in the astral body. Sylvan Muldoon and Hereward Carrington, in their famous books The Phenomena of Astral Projection and The Projection of the Astral Body, maintain that there are three kinds of projection: conscious projection, in which the subject is awake; partially conscious projection; and unconscious projection.
Unconscious projection has two distinct forms, the first of which is immotive astral projection—unconscious astral catalepsy (a state of suspended anima-ASTRALPROJECTION
tion in which there can be no voluntary motion) in a perpendicular or stand-ing position. The second type of unconscious projection is motive astral pro-jection, in which the subject is lying down. Besides describing the phenome-non, Muldoon and Carrington also report some techniques for experiencing the astral projection at will. These methods are based on a simple, strong de-sire to project one’s own astral body.
In contemporary Witchcraft, conscious astral projection is practiced in association with certain kinds of magical workings. For example, contempo-rary Witches sometimes utilize astral projection to communicate with spirit entities, to examine the future, and for distant healing.
See Also: Astral Plane Further Reading
Muldoon, Sylvan J., and Hereward Carrington. The Phenomena of Astral Projection.
London: Rider and Company, 1969.
———. The Projection of the Astral Body. York Beach, ME: Weiser, 1970.
Shepard, Leslie A., ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1991.
Astrology
Astrology is the science (or study, Greek: logos) of the stars (astron). The gen-eral public is familiar with only a tiny portion of this subject, namely the 12 signs of the Zodiac as they relate to the personality of individuals and the use of astrology for divinatory purposes. The Zodiac (literally the “circle of ani-mals”) is a belt constituted by the 12 signs—Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces.
The notion of the Zodiac is ancient, with roots in the early cultures of Mesopotamia. The first 12-sign Zodiacs were named after the gods of these cultures. The Greeks adopted astrology from the Babylonians, and the Ro-mans, in turn, adopted astrology from the Greeks. These peoples renamed the signs of the Mesopotamian Zodiac in terms of their own mythologies, which is why the familiar Zodiac of the contemporary West bears names out of Mediterranean mythology.
From a broad historical perspective, Zodiacal symbolism can be found everywhere, and zodiacal expressions are still in use in modern English—e.g.,
“bull-headed” (an allusion to Taurus) or “crabby” (an allusion to Cancer).
The popularity of sun sign astrology (the kind found in the daily newspaper) has kept these ancient symbols alive in modern society, so that even such prominent artifacts as automobiles have been named after them (e.g., the Taurus and the Scorpio).
Approaches to astrology differ widely. One approach stresses the study of the stars as a natural science (and consequently attempts to distance itself from occultism). Other approaches emphasize the spiritual or occult dimen-sion of the study of planetary influences. The former perspective, using the ASTROLOGY
natural science model, tends to conceive of astrological influences in terms of forces, analogous to the forces of gravity and magnetism, that are actually “ra-diated” by the planets.
While often speaking in terms of “occult forces,” the more spiritual per-spective usually emphasizes correlations between celestial and mundane spheres that result from a kind of “pre-arranged harmony” built into the very structure of the cosmos. In other words, this harmony is a result of “syn-chronicity” (to use Carl Jung’s term) rather than cause and effect. A large number of astrologers attempt to adhere simultaneously to both a natural sci-ence and a spiritual approach in the study of astrology.
Magic, the art of influencing events by occult means, is clearly related to the science of the stars. While astrology is not, in the proper sense of the term, “magical,” techniques such as electional astrology—determining the best times to perform certain actions—border on magic. Traditional Western magic views astrology as providing insight into the occult forces that are play-ing on the Earth at any given time, and a specialized form of electional astrol-ogy is utilized by magicians to determine the best times for performing partic-ular rituals.
Much of the astrological lore traditionally associated with magic is fo-cused on the days of the week, the planetary hours, and the gems and metals connected with the planets. Each of the traditional seven “planets”—the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn—are said to rule ASTROLOGY
An astrologer works on a star chart at the Tibetan Medical Astrological Institute in Dharamsala, India. (Corbis/Alison Wright)
(meaning “to have a special connection with”) the seven days of the week.
Thus, Saturn rules Saturday, the Sun rules Sunday, and so forth.
A similar relationship exists between the planets and the hours of the day. Magicians utilize these relationships and other traditional associations with the planets in various ways. For example, rituals to gain love would be performed on Friday (“Fri-” comes from “Frigga,” the Norse Venus) during an hour ruled by Venus (the planet of love), rituals to gain money would be per-formed on Thursday (“Thur-” comes from “Thor,” the Norse Jupiter) during an hour ruled by Jupiter (the planet of wealth), and so forth.
Amulets, which are fabricated objects used as charms, are also con-structed during days and hours in symbolic harmony with the task the amulet is intended to perform. Additionally, such objects are constructed from mate-rials ruled by the relevant planet. In the above examples, for instance, an amulet designed to attract love might be constructed from copper (the metal traditionally associated with Venus), and an amulet intended to attract pros-perity might be made from tin (associated with Jupiter).
Magicians who are competent astrologers also pay attention to the sign in which the relevant planet is located, as well as the aspects (angular rela-tionships with the other planets) the planet is making at the time of the cer-emony. Thus, once again taking Venus as an example, a magician would wait until Venus was located in a favorable sign (which, for Venus, would be Libra, Taurus, or Pisces) and favorably aspected (making harmonious aspects with other planets) before performing a love ritual or constructing a love amulet.
See Also: Amulet; Divination; Magic Further Reading
Daniels, Estelle. Astrologickal Magick. York Beach, ME: Weiser, 1995.
Denning, Melita, and Osborne Phillips. Planetary Magick: The Heart of Western Magick. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1989.
Lewis, James R. The Astrology Encyclopedia. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Inc., 1994.
Athame
The athame is a black-handled ritual knife—one of the most common distin-guishing marks of the Neopagan Witch. Gerald Gardner, in Witchcraft Today, called the athame one of the three most essential tools of the Witch. It is clear that this tool is derived from the black-handled knife of ceremonial magic, as described, for example, in Mathers’s translation of The Greater Key of Solomon, but it is not at all clear where Gardner got the term athame. De-spite much scholarly speculation, the source and etymology of the word re-main unclear.
There is nothing unclear about the athame’s current functions, however.
The athame is the main tool used to cast a circle during a coven Esbat (regu-lar meeting of a coven during a full moon); the sword, being an en(regu-larged and grandiose magical athame, is used more often at Sabbats and for rituals during ATHAME
festivals. The athame is often associated with the element of fire; but differ-ent covens may have differdiffer-ent systems of association for the athame. Cere-monial magical traditions require that it never be used to actually cut any-thing, because it will lose its accumulated “magical charge” and will have to be cleansed, reconsecrated, and slowly “recharged” by use. These traditions state that if something must be cut, the white-handled knife, also derived from ceremonial magic, must be used. The white knife has no charge, posi-tive or negaposi-tive, and so will not magically affect what is being cut. Other tra-ditions feel that if a Witch uses an athame to cut fruit, for example, the fruit is then consecrated, calling attention to the presence of sacredness in this everyday task.
See Also: Cast; Circle, Magic; Fire; Knife, White Further Reading
Buckland, Raymond. Witchcraft from the Inside, 3d ed. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1996 [1971].
Farrar, Stewart. What Witches Do: The Modern Coven Revealed. New York: Coward McCann, 1971.
Aura
An aura is a field or body of subtle (nonphysical or quasi-physical) energy that envelops living entities, and is sometimes conceived of as emanating from nonliving minerals. Belief in the existence of an aura is widespread in the larger occult subculture, and its reality is taken for granted by most Neo-pagan Witches. Invisible and undetectable to human sight, the aura can be seen by people with the gift of clairvoyance, or “psychic sight.” Individuals with such gifts describe the aura as a colorful field that can have rays, stream-ers, and other distinct phenomena associated with it. The size, brightness, and colors indicate different things about the individual’s emotional and physical state, from strong desires to low vitality. Clairvoyant healers assert that illness begins as an irregularity, a disturbance in the aura, and that it takes months or sometimes even years before a physical illness manifests itself after the aura is disturbed.
Because its perception is restricted to clairvoyants, an aura is, as might be anticipated, not the subject of mainstream scientific research. Although liv-ing tissue does emit a magnetic field, termed a biofield, this magnetic field would seem to be much too weak to be the aura described in occult literature.
A popular quasi-scientific theory postulates that the aura is a form of light vi-brating at frequencies that normal vision cannot perceive. The existence of the human aura is widely accepted in the occult-metaphysical subculture, in-cluding contemporary Neopaganism. Many basic magical techniques tap the energies that flow through the human aura.
The concept of an envelope of subtle, vital energy emanating from the body and from other forms of life has been widely accepted in many cultures AURA
and times. There are written records and artifacts that indicate such a belief existed in ancient India, Egypt, Rome, and Greece. The great sixteenth-cen-tury occultist Paracelsus was one of the earliest Westerners to write at length on this envelope of energy, which he referred to as a “fiery globe.” In the late eighteenth century, Franz Anton Mesmer explained hypnotism via his notion of “animal magnetism,” an electromagnetic energy that could emanate from one person to another in healing situations. In the mid–nineteenth century, Baron Karl von Reichenbach described a similar energy, which he termed an
“odic force.”
In the second decade of the twentieth century, Dr. Walter J. Kilner, an electrotherapist at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London, invented an apparatus for detecting what appeared to be a human aura. This device contained di-cyanin, a coal-tar dye that allowed one to see ultraviolet light. Kilner asserted that the state of the aura indicated the state of one’s physical health, and, in 1919, he claimed to have developed a way to use the aura to diagnose illness.
Kilner also claimed that weaker auras tended to draw off the energy from the more vigorous auras with which they came into contact. Kilner’s early re-search was published in his 1911 book, The Human Aura. Despite the criti-cism with which the book was greeted, he continued his research until World War I interrupted it. When a revised edition of The Human Aura was pub-lished in 1920, his studies were greeted more sympathetically. Kilner passed away soon afterward, on June 23, 1920. A more recent procedure for sensing the aura, developed in 1939 by a Russian electrician, Semyon Davidovich Kirlian, produces photographs of the energy field.
Many religious traditions, as well as traditional occultism, view the aura as emanating from a subtle, nonphysical “body.” This subtle body can be one of several secondary “bodies” in which the soul is “clothed” and which consti-tute intermediary levels between the physical body and the soul proper. Be-cause auras are nonphysical, they survive the death of the physical body.
Some traditional cultures have gone so far as to map out the anatomy of some of the subtle bodies. The best known map of auras is used in Chinese acupuncture. Another tradition with a complex understanding of the subtle body is the Hindu yoga tradition, in which the subtle body is referred to as the linga sharira. Different strands of the Western occult tradition postulate about the different set of bodies. The most common are said to be:
1. Ethereal, or vital, energy body 2. Astral, or emotional, body 3. Mental body
4. Causal body (containing the seeds of all of one’s karma) 5. Spiritual body
See Also: Astral Plane; Chakras Further Reading
Bagnall, Oscar. The Properties of the Human Aura. New York: University Books, 1970 [1937].
AURA
Becker, Robert O., M.D., and Gary Selden. The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life. New York: William Morrow, 1985.
Kilner, Walter J. The Human Aura. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1964 [1920].
Ostrander, Sheila, and Lynn Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries behind the Iron Curtain.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970.