In my quest to try and find out if everyone is talking about the same thing , I would like to take a few terms that pagans especially use a lot and try to get a clearer understanding of them. Yes, I realize some will remark that "you have to have been there to understand", but I'm hoping people's powers of description haven't deserted them!

So, the 'Astral'. People use this term a lot, but not everybody seems to be writing about the same phenomenon or place or whatever. I must point out that I am 'Astral challenged' so this is a legitimate question from a curious person. Outside of 'Lucid Dreaming' ( which I have my own theories about that don't involve Astral travel), I've never gone anywhere on the 'astral plane'.

People tend to speak of it like the M4, you know, hop on and go. But is this right and is it right for everyone?

So, if people would be so kind ( and I realize that it might be different for everybody), I wonder if some would undertake to try and answer these questions so I don't remain in 'Astral Ignorance'

1) WHAT is it?

2) WHERE is it? ( i.e. - an actual separate plane outside ourselves, or confined within our 'mind' or both?)

3) Does one go to the same place every time? Do you recognize it as the same place every time and so are able to negotiate the way?

4) HOW do you get 'on it'?

5) WHY do you go?

6) In what way is it useful to you?

I'm just looking for opinions and U.P.G.'s even, but I'd like to see if there is some congruence or correlation between people on this topic. As I started out: are people talking about the same place/thing/experience?

Thanks muchly,

Marto

Good question. Another level of reality (define reality)? Another dimension - one that is curled up at the sub-atomic level? Another brane/universe?



Pretty much the same answer as the previous one! I suspect that it is actually another universe, mere millimetres away from us but occupying the same spatial coordinates but different dimensional coordinates. Of course it could be all in my mind and has no reality beyond my own imaginings!



The same places, yes. I do recognise them so I can navigate around.



I don't get on it, but I get to those places when trance journeying. What the mechanisms are for that I don't know, but I suppose I could go on about that somehow the soul (if you believe in the concept) can go through some sort of quantum decoherence and transport itself into these other dimensions/universes/realms/whatever. However, that would come have to come under a pseudo-science heading and is of course completely unprovable. Curiously scientists have just managed to pass a photon from the quantum state and back again, something they didn't think could happen.



For information and guidance at times.



It's useful to me in that has strengthened bonds with my ancestors. It has given me certain pieces of information which have proved useful. It's also fascinating exploring other worlds.

I don't care for the term "astral". When I journey I go to one of the nine worlds - but then being a heathen I suppose I would because those are the places that fascinate me.

I suspect, but of course have no way or proving, that the "other world" or the astral plane or whatever you want to call it is no different from this universe - lots of different locations and places, some vastly different from our and yet some similar to ours.

I agree broadly with Wulfric, I think.

The term 'astral', and 'astral plane', are much abused, redefined, reframed, and generally glibly bandied around. As are so many 'words of spirit' these days. It's hard getting a handle on so many concepts because everyone means something different. Sadly, that's especially true in the pagan community. I can get a bit anal at times on definitions.

However, I'll assume for this purpose that the 'astral travel' and what I loosely call 'journeying' are the same thing, and that the 'astral plane' is the same or similar reality to what I would call 'Otherworld'. There is a problem with this, of course, when you get to 'levels': the astral; the etheric; which particular Otherworld; etc.



I think lucid dreaming and journeying do overlap to some extent (my view) but I agree with you in general.



Unsure. My current interpretation of my experience is that all these different 'planes' are the same place (?) as our ordinary everyday reality. A change in our method of perceiving, our mode of consciousness if you like, enables us to view ordinary reality in a different way, and gain insight, information and experience not normally available to us. We're not looking in the same way at a different place, but looking in a different way at the same place.

I don't subscribe to any particular 'map' of where I go (Celtic Otherworld, Heathen Nine Worlds, etc.), preferring to construct my own map from my experience, which is then informed and interpreted by many different cultural 'takes' on the process and territory. Currently, and for the last few years, I've found my experience strongly corroborates a mix of the Nine Worlds, the Celtic Three Worlds, and the Siberian/Northern Asian models. That, however, could well be just my own cultural slant and the way I've been taught.



Not every time, no. I do return to certain places, and navigate reasonably well. I find that the different methods of getting 'there' lend a different feel to some places that are (maybe) actually the same. For instance, a drummed journey to a particular place may feel and look very different to an entheogen-driven journey to the same place - the perceptions and experiences may feel different - even though I 'know' somehow that they're actually the same place. Does that make sense?



Trance work (e.g. drumming, chanting), entheogens, hypnagogic states. Even been there at clubs, raves and free parties. Anything that puts me into a liminal space, really. Liminality really describes everything about the experience, states and process, really.



Understanding. Personal growth. Information. Insight. Ecstatic experience Sheer hell of it. Sometimes it's involuntary.



See above.



No idea if they're all the same things, they may well be. I've never personally looked at what I do as astral travelling - it's never really crossed my mind - but I suppose it could well be.

Does any of that need clarifying at all? It's a bit of a slippery subject to describe

Caerthan

[quote]Outside of 'Lucid Dreaming' ( which I have my own theories about that don't involve Astral travel), I've never gone anywhere on the 'astral plane'.[/quote]

Be interested to hear them.

[quote]1) WHAT is it?[/quote]

Well, I went to have a think about this because I was curious about the origins of the word - I rather think, but may be wrong, that the term 'astral' derives from 1600s religion-accommodates-science theology of heaven and earth having a meeting point which joins earth to Heaven - in which the human spirit lives, as do ghosts, spectres and all things phenomenal. It's not a solely Christian perspective and can be found in things like the mirror concept of Haitian Vodoun and Spiritualism. Not surprising with the latter as Spiritualism was very much a bi-product of the aforementioned age of reason and science.

The dictionary seems to say:

–adjective
1. pertaining to or proceeding from the stars; stellar; star-shaped.
2. Biology. pertaining to, consisting of, or resembling an aster; having a discoid, radiate flower head.
3. Theosophy. noting a supersensible substance pervading all space and forming the substance of a second body (astral body) belonging to each individual. It accompanies the individual through life, is able to leave the human body at will, and survives the individual after death.

I think the third definition is the one we're particularly concerned with - I have to admit to not knowing it was Theosophic in origin.

My old buddy EtymologyOnline cites the origin simply as:

astral
1605, from L.L. astralis, from L. astrum "star," from Gk. astron.

Making the third definition very much one of spiritual lexicon.

Wiki explains that:

"Astral projection (or astral travel) is an esoteric interpretation of a type of out-of-body experience that assumes the existence of an "astral body" separate from the physical body and capable of travelling outside it.[1] Astral projection is experienced as being "out of the body".[2] Unlike dreaming or near death experiences, astral projection is practiced deliberately."

Which rather backs up the 1600s explanation that always stuck in my mind: in order to have a body existing in the 'spiritual realms' (AKA 'astral') then there needs to exist a sphere or buffer between being completely detached of your body/dead and being trapped within your body - the astral. Most cultures - if not all - seem to agree this theory in some form or another. I suppose one of the better illustrative examples of the 'astral' are auras - when you can see the energy of something that is not physically there but not non-existent. The 'in-between'. A layer of energy that is neither physically a solid nor purely imaginary.

[quote]2) WHERE is it? ( i.e. - an actual separate plane outside ourselves, or confined within our 'mind' or both?)[/quote]

Well, according to the Christian conceptualisation it is the bit that attaches us, the earthly presence, to 'Heaven'. The bit between here and there In an occult sense perhaps we'd describe the 'earthly' to be us in day-to-day mode/solid physicality and at the extreme end 'death' - the 'other side of the mirror'. So it is the mirror, if you like.

I imagine the levels of astral reality that so many cultures document depends as to whether you're standing closer to the earthly side or the 'beyond' side.

As for confined within our minds, there was a brilliant quote in DreamFlesh to the effect that everything was once animism, but we analysed and critiqued it so much in order that we should understand that we made it thought and pushed it deep within us. Now we're all struggling to bring it back out of our heads again

I think whether it's inside or outside of us is ultimately irrelevant 1. to what it is and 2. to what it does. As all is within itself anyway.

[quote]3) Does one go to the same place every time? Do you recognize it as the same place every time and so are able to negotiate the way?[/quote]

Oh how many ways of answering that are there!

If you go to Totness ten times in a year, are you always going to the same place every time? Bar geography

Yes, I think from reading certain accounts such as the ayahuasca experience and subsequent conversation with the blind shaman in Harner's Way of the Shaman - yes, there are characters and places which are relatively constant in the same way Totness is constant give or take the wind, rain, sun, snow, people you meet, new buildings and different parking space. I think we know so very little of it it's easy to get very lost and not to recognise your surroundings - as with any big city you visit for a day or continent you fly over in a plane then try and navigate by map.

There are certainly things we can negotiate - as with dream mapping and lucid dreams. There are many things, as with day-to-day life, we cannot control, navigate or understand. We spend more time in day-to-day so the rules seem clearer to us - it's home turf

[quote]4) HOW do you get 'on it'?[/quote]

Entheogens; dreaming; meditation; concerted effort; trance work

[quote]5) WHY do you go?[quote]

Pure curiosity; a belief that it might be useful; pushing the boundaries; validating what we've been told or read about; fascination; human nature to do so; because.

[quote]6) In what way is it useful to you?[/quote]

Probably in whatever way we are useful to it. Would it exist without us? Who knows, our conceptualisation of it wouldn't if we didn't - so to some extend our perception of it gives it existence - in a wonderfully existential way.

It's useful because it is there - it's a dimension in which to exist. In the same way 'existence' is useful. We need it, it's a necessity to our being even if we don't know why.

[quote]I'm just looking for opinions and U.P.G.'s even[/quote]

UPGs?

Best wishes,

Marion.

Thank you, Thinair! That was a lovely post: lots to think about there. Indeed, there are several posts within it!

There's a number of things you mention I would love to discuss. Mirrors, dreams, animism, planes etc. (Expect a prolix post full of questions soon ).

'Liminal areas' are something I've been interested in and studied for a long time and really, the 'Astral' as yourself and other people here have outlined it could almost be considered the ultimate 'liminal area'.

I have to heed the call of work now, but I'll be keeping this: ++The bit between here and there++ with me . It's so simple yet SO descriptive. I love it!

Right, must...think...work...thoughts....

Damn.

Thanks again,

Marto

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