Human constitutionDisplacedDefined by Blavatsky

Astral Body

Also: Linga-śarīra · Astral double · Doppelgänger · Etheric double

Western occult ‘astral’ + Sanskrit liṅga-śarīra; systematized by Blavatsky · LING-ga sha-REE-ra

Blavatsky

Original sense

In her sevenfold constitution the astral body is the linga-śarīra: the model-body or design-body, a subtle double that is the mold of the physical form. It is born with the body, dies with it, and is not the vehicle of conscious travel after death. She warned that ‘astral body’ was used loosely for several different sheaths.

The Linga-Śarîra is the astral body, the phantom or double, the design-body that perishes with the physical.
The Key to Theosophy, on the seven principles; Theosophical Glossary

She also spoke of kama-rupa (the desire-form that can persist after death) as an ‘astral soul,’ which later writers mixed with this. Besant and Leadbeater reassigned ‘astral body’ to the emotional body and renamed her linga-śarīra the ‘etheric double’ — a nomenclature New Age inherited.

New Age

Later sense

The body you ‘leave’ in astral projection, lucid dreaming, and death. It is usually a full-color traveling self that visits other rooms, planets, or the astral plane at will, then returns.

Typical use. Astral-projection tutorials, ‘meet me on the astral,’ and weekend workshops on leaving the body.

The drift

The word stayed; it now names a different object.

A technical name for the physical body’s subtle mold became the name of a tourist vehicle. The later Theosophical swap (astral = kama; etheric = linga-śarīra) is now so complete that readers of Blavatsky must re-translate her every use of ‘astral body.’

Related terms

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