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He considered the astral light the medium of all light, energy and movement, describing it in terms that recall both Mesmer and the luminiferous ether. In the mid-nineteenth century the French occultist Eliphas Levi wrote much of "the astral light", a factor he considered of key importance to magic, alongside the power of will and the doctrine of correspondences. In 1801, the English occultist Francis Barrett wrote of a herb's "excellent astral and magnetic powers" - for herbalists had categorised herbs according to their supposed correspondence with the seven planetary influences. Franz Anton Mesmer spoke of the stars, animal magnetism and magnetic fluids. In the romantic era, alongside the discovery of electromagnetism and the nervous system, there came a new interest in the spirit world. Such ideas greatly influenced mediaeval religious thought and are visible in the Renaissance medicine of Paracelsus and Servetus. There are "seven types of astral matter" by means of which "psychic changes occur periodically". The word "astral" means "of the stars", thus the astral plane, consisting of the celestial spheres, is held to be an astrological phenomenon: "The whole of the astral portion of our earth and of the physical planets, together with the purely astral planets of our System, make up collectively the astral body of the Solar Logos". These were 1) the astral vehicle which was the immortal vehicle of the Soul and 2) the spiritual ( pneuma) vehicle, aligned with the vital breath, which he considered mortal.
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The late Neoplatonist Proclus, who is credited the first to speak of subtle "planes", posited two subtle bodies or "carriers" ( okhema) intermediate between the rational soul and the physical body. Neoplatonists agreed with Plato as to the immortality of the rational soul but disagreed as to whether man's "irrational soul" was immortal and celestial ("starry", hence astral) or whether it remained on earth and dissolved after death. Elsewhere this latter is termed "etheric", while "astral" denotes an experience of dream-symbols, archetypes, memories, spiritual beings and visionary landscapes. Where this refers to a supposed movement around the real world, as in Muldoon and Carrington's book The Projection of the Astral Body, it conforms to Madame Blavatsky's usage of the term. It is widely linked today with out-of-body experiences or astral projection. The astral body is sometimes said to be visible as an aura of swirling colours. The phenomenon of apparitional experience is therefore related, as is made explicit in Cicero's Dream of Scipio. Hence "the "many kinds of 'heavens', 'hells', and purgatorial existences believed in by followers of innumerable religions" may also be understood as astral phenomena, as may the various "phenomena of the séance room". The idea is rooted in common worldwide religious accounts of the afterlife in which the soul's journey or "ascent" is described in such terms as "an ecstatic., mystical or out-of body experience, wherein the spiritual traveller leaves the physical body and travels in his/her subtle body (or dreambody or astral body) into ‘higher’ realms". The term was adopted by nineteenth-century Theosophists and neo-Rosicrucians.
In many recensions the concept ultimately derives from the philosophy of Plato though the same or similar ideas have existed all over the world well before Plato’s time: it is related to an astral plane, which consists of the planetary heavens of astrology. The astral body is a subtle body posited by many philosophers, intermediate between the intelligent soul and the mental body, composed of a subtle material. The Astral Sleep - by Jeroen van Valkenburg