Astral Light

Astral Light is a term used by the French occultist Eliphas Levi to refer to the medium of all light, energy and movement, much in accordance with the theory of the luminiferous ether commonly held in the nineteenth century. In his view the astral light was a fluidic life force that fills all space and living beings.

H. P. Blavatsky adopted the term and used it in her writings. The Astral Light is not a universal principle, but belongs to our planet. Being a lower aspect of the universal Ākāśa, it embraces the second, third, and fourth of the Prakritic planes, although sometimes it is characterized as being only the second plane, corresponding with the Liṅga-śarīra in human beings.

The Astral Light receives the "impressions" produced on the Terrestrial plane and retains a record of all that happens. It also mirrors the higher planes. However, due to its nature, the reflections are fragmentary and misleading. The Astral Light responds to the will-power and can therefore be used to produce some occult and psychic phenomena.

General description

The Astral Light is not a universal principle, but belongs to our planet, embracing the three lower non-objective Prakritic planes:

The Astral Light is that which mirrors the three higher planes of consciousness, and is above the lower, or terrestrial plane; therefore it does not extend beyond the fourth plane, where, one may say, the Akâsa begins. There is one great difference between the Astral Light and the Akâsa which must be remembered. The latter is eternal, the former periodic. The Astral Light changes not only with the Maha manvantaras but also with every sub-period and planetary cycle or Round.

The invisible region that surrounds our globe, as it does every other, and corresponding as the second Principle of Kosmos (the third being Life, of which it is the vehicle) to the Linga Sharira or the Astral Double in man. A subtle Essence visible only to a clairvoyant eye, and the lowest but one (viz., the earth), of the Seven Akâsic or Kosmic Principles.

The Astral Light is not a universally diffused stuff, but pertains to our earth and all other bodies of the system on the same plane of matter with it. Our Astral Light is, so to speak, the Linga-Sharîra of our earth; only instead of being its primordial prototype, as in the case of our Chhâyâ, or Double, it is the reverse. While the human and animal bodies grow and develop in the model of their antetypal Doubles, it is the Astral Light that is born from the terrene emanations, grows and develops after its prototypal parent.

The "Great Serpent"

The Astral Light is originally a pure reflection of the higher planes. However, since it also absorbs the emanations (thoughts and emotions) produced on our plane, in the course of human evolution it becomes "polluted". This pollution is reflected on earth and becomes a source of moral and physical suffering to humanity:

As the Esoteric Philosophy teaches us, the Astral Light is simply the dregs of Akâsa or the Universal Ideation in its metaphysical sense. Though invisible, it is yet, so to speak, the phosphorescent radiation of the latter, and is the medium between it and man’s thought-faculties. It is these which pollute the Astral Light, and make it what it is—the storehouse of all human and especially psychic iniquities. In its primordial genesis, the astral light as a radiation is quite pure, though the lower it descends approaching our terrestrial sphere, the more it differentiates, and becomes as a result impure in its very constitution. But man helps considerably in this pollution, and gives it back its essence far worse than when he received it.

Eliphas Levi calls it the great Serpent and the Dragon from which radiates on Humanity every evil influence. This is so; but why not add that the Astral Light gives out nothing but what it has received; that it is the great terrestrial crucible, in which the vile emanations of the earth (moral and physical) upon which the Astral Light is fed, are all converted into their subtlest essence, and radiated back intensified, thus becoming epidemics--moral, psychic and physical.

Read and study what Éliphas Lévi says of the Astral Light, which he calls Satan and the Great Serpent. The Astral Light has been taken too literally to mean some sort of a second blue sky. This imaginary space, however, on which are impressed the countless images of all that ever was, is, and will be, is but a too sad reality. It becomes in, and for, man—if at all psychic—and who is not?—a tempting Demon, his “evil angel,” and the inspirer of all our worst deeds. It acts on the will of even the sleeping man, through visions impressed upon his slumbering brain (which visions must not be confused, with the “dreams”), and these germs bear their fruit when he awakes.

Astral "tablets"

The Astral Light has the ability to receive and store "impressions", and thus, it retains a record of everything that happens. Mme. Blavatsky explained:

According to Occult teaching the Astral light is . . . the recorder of every thought; the universal mirror which reflects every event and thought as every being and thing, animate or inanimate. We call it the great Sea of Illusion, Maya.

For more information see also Akashic Records.

Magic agent

In Isis Unveiled Blavatsky writes that the Astral light is related to some occult and psychic phenomena:

The same as the sidereal light of Paracelsus and other Hermetic philosophers. Physically, it is the ether of modern science. Metaphysically, and in its spiritual, or occult sense, ether is a great deal more than is often imagined. In occult physics, and alchemy, it is well demonstrated to enclose within its shoreless waves not only Mr. Tyndall’s “promise and potency of every quality of life,” but also the realization of the potency of every quality of spirit. Alchemists and Hermetists believe that their astral, or sidereal ether, besides the above properties of sulphur, and white and red magnesia, or magnes, is the anima mundi, the workshop of Nature and of all the cosmos, spiritually, as well as physically. The “grand magisterium” asserts itself in the phenomenon of mesmerism, in the “levitation” of human and inert objects; and may be called the ether from its spiritual aspect.

Eliphas Lévi called it the “grand Agent Magique” (great Magic agent) although Mme. Blavatsky says this is so "only so far as Black Magic is concerned".

Online resources

Articles

• Astral Light at Theosopedia
• The Astral Light - A Theosophist's View of It By William Q. Judge
• True Progress - Is it Aided by Watching the Astral Light? By William Q. Judge
• The Astral Light by Louise A. Off

Books

• The Astral Light by Henry T. Edge