Astral Entities
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Just something to think about...
I'm a musician. Let's say I have a bout of inspiration. Obviously, I'm pretty much the only one capable of really perceiving this inspiration in myself. Let's say I write something beautiful for the guitar, and record it; or let's say I have a keyboard and I sequence a melody that's really pretty.
Then I die.
No one else will ever perceive the inspiration, and I never will again, as I'm dead.
Is the inspiration objective? It's fruits certainly are, and are perceptible to you. Yet it was entirely within my head; nothing objective within my head, such as electrical impulses themselves, or a brain tumor, is perceptible to you (or 99% of the time these things aren't). Are they objective? Yes, you can scientifically test for these things, but just because we can't test for inspiration yet doesn't meant it isn't objective.Is an astral entity all that different than these?
I dunno
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Are canine beings trustworthy companions or fierce predators? In that question, it depends on the specific canine - wolf or mongrel.
Some astral beings that people meet with in their journeys are purely constructs of the observers being. But then again, maybe the label "astral being" shouldn't be given them. We can surely at least know that it is factual to say "while on an astral journey (as I believed it), I perceived a being there," but in the case of a purely imaginative conversation with a construct of our personality, I'm not sure we should call that construct astral or mental.
On the other hand, there are some places and beings that are not constructs of the individual who might meet them. They actually live on the astral level or somewhere where they, like us, can accomplish being in the astral. They have consistent features and characteristics about them when meeting other people, they become rather universally described by many, and this suggests proof of their objectiveness in existence.
I've been on guided journeys where my impatient mind and I raced ahead of the group, not wanting to listen to the speaker/guide describe all the nice little details along the path, and found myself in places that the guide (and group) would finally catch up and then describe exactly as I had already been seeing it. I've even been told by the the others of the group that they saw me race ahead etc, so that to me seemed like proof of some partial objective reality to the journeys. I've been in group journeys where after some portion of guiding, there was silent exploration by the rest of us - and later we would describe our experiences. Surely, if you take my word for it, this proves some amount of objective truth exists for us on the astral, because we would describe with slight variations the same things. I even had the pleasure of meeting two of my closest friends in the group on a hill under a tree that had three big branches only and a picnic table beneath it. Although the picnic table had no variety of description among the three of us later (it was a standard green picnic table found in parks all across the country), we each described (actually, we drew on paper) the tree of three branches with only slight variation. One thing in common was that it had three branches only. To me it looked a bit like a fleur-de-lis with three branches each one a giant leaf, to another it had three straight branches stretching straight up and the leaves filled it well that it had a shape like a pine as a result. To the third person, it also had only three branches but in the shape of a upside down peace sign and it's leaves spiraled around like a giant web of vine.
We all saw the hill, saw the bench, and saw a three branched tree - we just colored on paper a slightly different way of seeing it.
So to answer your question - it is my impression that these events and entities are indeed real things.
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@DavidH said
"Yes.
I can have something exist ONLY in my mind where it is not able to be observed in any way by another person. I can also witness something in the objective reality where I can observe it along with you, we both can agree it is there, and we can verbalize similar characteristics even if we both have slightly different subjective views. I can close my eyes and imagine a bolt of lightning, or a "real" bolt of lightning can hit one of us. In the second case, we both can predict the outcome."
But this presupposes that your mind is only within you as a disconnected individual. Part of it is, but part of it isn't.
The astral involves entering a "collective" mind.
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93,
The mind is not limited to the body. Ruach precedes, is above and beyond Guph, the physical body. Yetzirah is above Assiah.
Should you die without having painted that particular work, the mental image would continue to exist after your death, and would perhaps be picked up by someone else who was open to it.
93s,
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@Frater Aster Lux said
"Your personal experiences are very interesting though. I have had a few similar ones. I hear a lot of my friends report these kinds of "shared hallucinations", after they have been high on various psychedelics."
No drugs (in my body) where involved at any time. These were group guided visualization things or so forth. Some call it Skrying in the Spirit, some call it Astral or whatever. I'm down with adopting whatever convenient convention suits the audience. I could say a lot more but plenty of Theory & Practice is already in print. It is, after all, a Golden Dawn tradition really.
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Many interesting responses! Thank you.
On the subject of Astral Projection, can anyone suggest a very good book?
A friend of mine has sponteneous projections and usually onl hovers around her body. She also has increased brathing and heart rate which scares her. Is this more of an OBE in the Etheric, rather than astral world? I'm assuming she sort of gets stuck in the etheric before she breaks free into the astral. Any thoughts or advice I can give her?
93 93/93
David -
I was thinking about this question today too. I was thinking about it because i was reading another thread where it was mentioned that it is black magick to evoke spirits if one hasn't attained kc/hga. I went through a period of about 8 years where i had a lot of contact with entities and could get them to appear simply by calling out and/or willing it. Being raised a christian i was taught these beings were demons. I took a different approach and wondered if they were merely aspects of my own psyche and began testing them by asking for favours. These things would happen and I grew in pride and confidence.
There was a night where I took 4 friends out into the wilderness in my truck. We were all smoking a joint and i said, " You guys want to see something scary?" They said, "ok.." a bit hesitant. Mind you these were all really christian-y kids being naughty smoking pot, so asking that question already got them nervous. I did an internal calling for a being to appear and soon a purple light appeared in the sky. It glared bright and they marvelled, "is that a star!? is that a plane?!" It shot a beam at us in the truck and my body went rigid and I couldn't move but i still watched what happened next. A 7' tall elven looking man with silver hair to his waste and big pure black eyes suddenly slammed his hands on the hood of my truck and all of them screamed in terror. He paced around the car and went around to my friends side. I could command him too. He reached through the door into the back of my friend and squeezed his heart as my friend struggled for breath and whispering a prayer. My two friends in the back flung themselves on their backs and screamed and cried to Jesus. These were 19 yo kids btw. I dismissed the spirit and they all cried for some time until calming down and i drove them all back into town. Obviously this story spread about me and a lot of kids feared me.
Was I envoking to appearance an aspect of my own sick psyche? They saw it too, but was i digging down to a level where the same being existed in them and they were able to witness it?
That's just one example, but I'll mention briefly another one where we were at a party smoking salvia and some Mantoid Alien looking beings appeared to me who kept bugging me to listen to them and do what they said and if i did I'd become rich and powerful. I said, "how do i know you're not just a hallucination." because i had just been smoking salvia prior, so for proof i told them to attack a kid at the party who had pissed me off. They agreed on the condition i go and give him some salvia. I did and after smoking it the kid freaked out and ran around the house screaming and crying because something was tormenting him, showing him something horrible and he had to leave.
(i wasn't a nice person.)That was before I attained kc/hga. Obviously I would never do that to people now, but the question remains about the objective nature of entities. I know the answer inside but its hard to articulate. I agree with Lon Milo when he says, "its all in your head, you just don't know how big your head is."
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@DavidH said
"On the subject of Astral Projection, can anyone suggest a very good book?
A friend of mine has sponteneous projections and usually onl hovers around her body. She also has increased brathing and heart rate which scares her. Is this more of an OBE in the Etheric, rather than astral world? I'm assuming she sort of gets stuck in the etheric before she breaks free into the astral. Any thoughts or advice I can give her?
"If you want to do Astral Projection I think the Robert Bruce MAP and CD-set are best among the more recent publications. As discussed in another thread the Ophiel work is also pretty good.
If you want to read about AP I think Robert Monroe, Albert Taylor and William Buhlman are very good authors, Monroe being the best.
re your friend. The increased heart rate is a typical pre-projection symptom. A good way to make it stop is to get out of the "pre" condition by either grounding back in the body by simply moving a part of it (like lift the hand, assuming sleep paralysis has not set in) or just going ahead and completing the projection by various methods that can be found in the RBruce books mentioned above.
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@DavidH said
"I was wondering what people think about the nature of astral entities. Do they exist as sentient beings in an objective way, or "just" part of our mind? Do beings that we evoke during ritual exist as a force in the universe like lightning or gravity, apart from us?
And if they do not exist other than in our own minds, how is it any different than lucid dreaming?
"Right after I started trying to AP and started having some success I projected to my mom's house and saw both her and my sister and I am pretty sure that they are real entities. One thing I noticed was that there was something 'unusual' about them that I do not want to reveal so as not to ruin it for someone else who does this later. I was reading the works of some Gnostic Leader out there and he said some things that validated my observations in the astral realm. They were quite unusual and it really surprised me to see someone else describe it almost exactly as I had experienced it.
Lucid dreaming is actually very close to bona fide AP, if you ask me. In fact, LD can be more useful in certain respects. What starts as an AP can dissolve into an LD too. And what starts as an LD can be opened up into a full conscious AP.
I also met a mythical character on a recent projection. I think astral experiences can run the gamut of being mostly real to mostly symbolic. The real question is what is your Goal and are you making progress?
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@Foolster said
"My two friends in the back flung themselves on their backs and screamed and cried to Jesus. These were 19 yo kids btw. I dismissed the spirit and they all cried for some time until calming down and i drove them all back into town. Obviously this story spread about me and a lot of kids feared me.
Was I envoking to appearance an aspect of my own sick psyche? They saw it too, but was i digging down to a level where the same being existed in them and they were able to witness it?"
This is a pretty wild experience. I would be interested in the reply to your question from a practicing Thelemite.
Foolster, how many times prior to this had you done this sort of thing?
(and how many since?;)