Chapter 21, of William Q. Judge, Echoes from the Orient : A Broad Outline of Theosophical Doctrines. Published
as a booklet in 1890, it is a collection of 21 articles appearing in a new
independent weekly newspaper, Kate Field's (1838-1896) Washington, which ran from 1890-95. The pieces have a casual, anecdotal flavour and
have to stand as one of the most esoteric presentations of Theosophy in a mainstream
platform. Very good concise overview of the Theosophical views on the astral plane or in a general way, the akasha, in Sanskrit.
1- Esoteric symbolism of the snake
High in the esteem of the Hindu stands the serpent, both as a
symbol and a creature. Moving in a wavy line, he figures the vast
revolution of the Sun through eternal space carrying the rapidly
whirling Earth in her lesser orbit; periodically casting his skin, he
presents a visible illustration of renewal of life or reincarnation;
coiling to strike, he shows the working of the law of Karma-Nemesis
which, with a basis in our actions, deals an unerring blow. As a symbol
with tail in mouth, forming a circle, he represents eternity, the circle
of necessity, all-devouring Time. For the older Initiates he spoke to
them also of the astral light which is at once devilish and divine.
2- The Astral Light, agent of psychic powers
Probably in the whole field of Theosophic study there is nothing
so interesting as the astral light. Among the Hindus it is known as
Akasa, which can also be translated as æther. Through a knowledge of its
properties they say that all the wonderful phenomena of the Oriental
Yogis are accomplished. It is also claimed that clairvoyance,
clairaudience, mediumship, and seership as known to the Western world
are possible only through its means. It is the register of our deeds and
thoughts, the great picture gallery of the earth, where the seer can
always gaze upon any event that has ever happened, as well as those to
come.
3- Astral beings, elementals
Swimming in it as in a sea are beings of various orders and also
the astral remains of deceased men and women. The Rosicrucians and other
European mystics called these beings Sylphs, Salamanders, Gnomes,
Undines, Elementals; the Hindu calls them Gandharvas or celestial
musicians, Yakshas, Rakshasas and many more. The "spooks" of the dead —
mistaken by Spiritualists
for the individuals who are no more — float in this Akasic
substance, and for centuries have been known to the mystical Hindu as
Bhuta, another name for devil, or Pisacha, a most horrible devil —
neither of them any more than the cast-off soul-body nearest earth,
devoid of conscience and only powerful for evil.
4- Porphyry, Paracelsus
But the term "astral light," while not new, is purely of
Occidental origin. Porphyry spoke of it when referring to the celestial
or soul-body, which he says is immortal, luminous, and "star-like";
Paracelsus called it the "sidereal light"; later it grew to be known as
astral. It was said to be the same as the anima mundi or soul
of the world. Modern scientific investigators approach it when they
speak of "luminiferous ether" and "radiant matter." The great
astronomer, Camille Flammarion, who was a member of the Theosophical
Society during his life, speaks of the astral light in his novel Uranie
and says: "The light emanating from all these suns that people
immensity, the light reflected through space by all these worlds lighted
by these suns, photographs throughout the boundless heaven the
centuries, the days, the moments as they pass.... From this it results
that the histories of all the worlds are travelling through
space without dispersing altogether, and that all the events of
the past are present and live evermore in the bosom of the infinite."
5- Not really light - a medium for many psychic phenomena and action
Like all unfamiliar or occult things the astral light is difficult
to define, and especially so from the very fact that it is called
"light." It is not the light as we know it, and neither is it darkness.
Perhaps it was said to be a light because when clairvoyants saw by means
of it, the distant objects seemed to be illuminated. But as equally
well distant sounds can be heard in it, heavy bodies levitated by it,
odors carried thousands of miles through it, thoughts read in it, and
all the various phenomena by mediums brought about under its action,
there has been a use of the term "light" which while unavoidable is none
the less erroneous.
6- An all-permeating substance
A definition to be accurate must include all the functions and
powers of this light, but as those are not fully known even to the
mystic, and wholly terra incognita for the scientist, we must
be content with a partial analysis. It is a substance easily imagined as
imponderable ether which, emanating from the stars, envelopes the earth
and permeates every atom of the globe and each molecule upon it.
Obeying the laws of attraction and repulsion, it vibrates to and fro,
making itself now positive and now negative. This gives it a circular
motion which is symbolized by the serpent. It is the great final agent,
or prime mover, cosmically speaking, which not only makes the plant grow
but also keeps up the diastole and systole of the human heart.
7- Astral Light records everything
Very like the action of the sensitive photographic plate is this
light. It takes, as Flammarion says, the pictures of every moment and
holds them in its grasp. For this reason the Egyptians knew it as the
Recorder; it is the Recording Angel of the Christian, and in one aspect
it is Yama, the judge of the dead in the Hindu pantheon, for it is by
the pictures we impress therein that we are judged by Karma.
8- Influences humanity's vices
As an enormous screen or reflector the astral light hangs over the
earth and becomes a powerful universal hypnotizer of human beings. The
pictures of all acts good and bad done by our ancestors as by ourselves,
being ever present to our inner selves, we constantly are impressed by
them by way of suggestion and go then and do likewise. Upon this the
great French priest-mystic, Eliphas Levi, says: "we are often astonished
when in society at being assailed by evil thoughts and suggestions that
we would not have imagined possible, and we are not aware that we owe
them solely to the presence of some morbid neighbor; this fact is of
great importance, since it relates to the manifestation of conscience —
one of the most terrible and incontestable secrets of the magic art....
So diseased souls have a bad breath, and vitiate the moral atmosphere;
that is to say, they mingle impure reflections with the astral light
which penetrates them, and thus establish deleterious currents." (Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie. )
9- Preserves fruits of great achievements
There is also a useful function of this light. As it preserves the
pictures of all past events and things, and as there is nothing new
under the sun, the appliances, the ideas, the philosophy, the arts and
sciences of long buried civilizations are continually being projected in
pictures out of the astral into the brains of living men. This gives a
meaning not only to the oft-recurring "coincidence" of two or more
inventors or scientists hitting upon the same ideas or inventions at
about the same time and independently of each other, but also to other
events and curious happenings.
10- The medium for psychic phenomena and powers
Some self-styled scientists have spoken learnedly of telepathy,
and other phenomena, but give no sufficient reason in nature for
thought-transference or apparitions or clairvoyance or the hundred and
one varieties of occurrences of an occult character noticed from day to
day among all conditions of men. It is well to admit that thought may be
transferred without speech directly from one brain to another, but how
can the transference be effected without a medium? That medium is the
astral light. The moment the thought takes shape in the brain it is
pictured in this light, and from there is taken out again by any other
brain sensitive enough to receive it intact.
11- Astral remains cause of ghosts and apparitions
12-Can assume extreme density
Yet all I have referred to here are only instances of a few of the
various properties of the astral light. So far as concerns our world it
may be said that astral light is everywhere, interpenetrating all
things; to have a photographic power by which it grasps pictures of
thoughts, deeds, events, tones, sounds, colors, and all things;
reflective in the sense that it reflects itself into the minds of men;
repellent from its positive side and attractive from the negative;
capable of assuming extreme density when drawn in around the body by
powerful will or by abnormal bodily states, so that no physical force
can penetrate it.
This phase of its action explains some facts
officially recorded during the witchcraft excitement in Salem. It was
there found that although stones and other flying objects came toward
the possessed one they always fell as it were from the force of gravity just at the person's feet.
The Hindu Yogi gives evidence of a use of this condensation of the
astral light when he
allows arrows and other projectiles to be thrown at him, all of
them falling at his feet no matter how great their momentum, and the
records of genuine Spiritualistic phenomena in the United States furnish
similar experiences.
13- Possesses powerful hypnotic properties, clairvoyance, clairaudience
The astral light is a powerful factor, unrecognized by science, in
the phenomenon of hypnotism. Its action will explain many of the
problems raised by Binet, Charcot and others, and especially that class
in which two or more distinct personalities seem to be assumed by the
subject, who can remember in each only those things and peculiarities of
expression which belong to that particular stratum of their experience.
These strange things are due to the currents in the astral light. In
each current will be found a definite series of reflections, and they
are taken up by the inner man, who reports them through speech and
action on this plane as if they were his own. By the use of these
currents too, but unconsciously, the clairvoyants and clairaudients seem
to read in the hidden pages of life.
14- Potentially both our destroyer and our uplifter
This light can therefore be impressed with evil or good pictures,
and these are reflected into the subconscious mind of every human being.
If you fill the astral light with bad pictures, just such as the
present century is adept at creating, it will be our devil and
destroyer, but if by the example of even a few good men and women a new
and purer sort of events are limned upon this eternal canvas, it will
become our Divine Uplifter.
