Low Magick: It's All In Your Head ... You Just Have No Idea How Big Your Head Is - Lon Milo DuQuette 2010
Astral Projection: Traveling in the Spirit Vision (or, Real Magicians Eat Quiche)
I’m either out of my body or out of my mind.
RABBI LAMED BEN CLIFFORD66
All my life I’ve experienced dreams of flying. These are wonderful and exciting dreams that are remarkably lucid and detailed. I physically feel intense exhilaration and a thrill in the pit of my stomach as I soar through dream skies, diving and turning and banking just like an airplane. As I move through the air, objects below shift toward or away from my view in perfect obedience to my speed, altitude, and the optical laws of natural perspective—just as if I were looking out the front of an airplane’s cockpit. Only there is no cockpit, no airplane, just me flying like Superman with my dream arms pointed forward into space. It’s wonderful. I feel so free, so alive—I want it never to stop.
It’s likely that you have the same or similar experiences, or else have had vivid dreams of jumping down from high places (and not getting hurt), or of swimming and breathing under water. Perhaps you wander your house at night, unclear in your mind whether you are dreaming or awake.
If all this sounds familiar, I don’t need to tell you that these moments belong to a unique category of dream experience. I believe they are, in fact, not dreams but a natural phenomenon of human consciousness that is often referred to as (for lack of a more accurate term) “astral projection” or “out-of-body experience” (OBE). The term “astral projection” really is a terribly vague and misleading expression for this variety of experience. Astral? What’s that? Is astral a what or is it a where? Is my “astral body” my soul? Is it a body at all? Do I project it into space when I “travel” around in it?
We hear the terms “astral body,” “astral plane,” and “astral world” thrown around in esoteric conversations as if we were talking about conscious ectoplasmic apparitions floating around geographical locations rather than vibratory frequencies of human consciousness (which is precisely what they are). The fact remains, however, that our adventures in these vibratory frequencies of consciousness often feel disturbingly like we are conscious ectoplasmic apparitions floating around geographical locations.
Learning to navigate around this strange universe (which other cultures and other spiritual systems might call “the spirit world”) is particularly helpful to the magician who understands the importance of being able to think and function in this subtler world—a world that lies just behind and beyond waking consciousness. Indeed, just as the inventor’s intangible idea is the foundation for his or her material invention, this world forms the foundation of the material plane of existence. In fact, any magical operation that obliges the magician to see with the mind’s eye a symbol, a pentagram, a hexagram, a spirit, or an angel, or a demon, or any spiritual life that inhabits and animates things deals directly with this so-called astral dimension. Ancient magicians called the ability to view the spirit nature of things “scrying.” The adepts of the Golden Dawn called it “traveling in the spirit vision.”
Lucid dreaming is another dimension (pardon the play on words) to this mysterious phenomenon of consciousness. The ancient Egyptians took the skill of lucid dreaming pretty seriously. In fact, the ability to consciously gain control of our dream self and the circumstances of our dream environment may very well have been the cornerstone of the science of dying whose master textbook is the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Below is a short excerpt from an article I wrote for the October 2004 issue of Fate Magazine67 that attempts to explain the DuQuette field theory on the subject. Please note that the principle for my theory is based upon the now-almost-universally-accepted premise that the function and powers of the mind transcend that of the physical brain.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead is a magical text supposedly written by the god Thoth himself. It is designed to give the newly deceased man or woman a fighting chance of hanging on to his or her individual consciousness center by projecting it step-by-step through each phase of the death experience to arrive intact at a higher level of existence.
The basic idea is this: If a dying person can keep the mind focused and occupied on series of particular ideas and images while the physical body dies, the “self” of the individual can separate from the physical body and take up residence in the “mind.” The preoccupied mind literally becomes an escape pod that will rescue the self from its attachment to the dying body and brain. At each step along the way, the deceased is required to identify with higher and higher aspects of the mind—a process that continues to create new and subtler escape pods that will keep rescuing the self until it is finally delivered safely (and intact) to realm of the gods.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead ingeniously organizes this journey of ideas and images to match the landscape and nature of each of the progressively higher levels of consciousness and requires the deceased to perfectly memorize and rehearse each leg of the trip prior to dying.
Every level is guarded by a gatekeeper who must be identified by name and forced to allow the deceased to pass. Even the furniture has names that must be carefully memorized and identified with constant chatter—everything that can be done to bolster the deceased’s confidence and keep their mind minutely focused on anything but the temptation of allowing oneself to dissolve like the untrained into the sweet oblivion of death.
At this point you might be asking yourself, “All this may have been fine and good for the initiated royalty of ancient Egypt, but what does it mean to me? I’m not going to school to learn how to die.” My staid answer to that question would be, “Aren’t you?”
The idea that consciousness separates from the body at the time of death is as old as human introspection itself, and it should be clear to anyone who has ever had dream experiences like I’ve described above that consciousness can and does separate from the body in times of sleep, distress, or during other extraordinary circumstances. Furthermore, during such periods of separation, our astral senses are attuned to (and perceive) a dramatically different level of reality.
I wish I could say that I am a skilled astral projector. I’m not. Oh, I get out of my body quite often, and when I’m out I’m pretty skilled at controlling my movements and the circumstance of the vision. But only rarely do I consciously initiate the experience. When I do, it is always at that golden moment (at bedtime or naptime) as my thoughts are just beginning to take on visual dream-forms, but while I am still conscious of the fact that I also have a physical body slumbering on a real bed. This moment is characterized by a strange noise that I seem to hear not with my ears but in the very center of my brain, then an intense feeling of an electrical current passing through my entire body. That “current” is actually the body we might call the astral body, and the fact that I’m feeling it is the signal that my conscious self is about to take residence in it. At that fragile moment of transition, I am nestled uncomfortably within the general vicinity of my physical body. It is at this moment that I can transfer my consciousness from I’m in my bed body to I’m in this buzzing electrical body. At this point I can get up, wander around the house (which always looks just a little different than my material house), or take a diving leap into the air and fly straight through the ceiling into the glorious sky.
On most occasions, my out-of-body experiences begin without a conscious effort on my part and within the context of a dream-in-progress. I become conscious within the dream state that I am dreaming and already out. I then become consciously aware of my situation and take control from there. I partially achieve this state when I experience magically induced altered states of consciousness, such as when I purposefully induce a trance in order to scry into tarot cards or Enochian magick tablets and squares.
Most of my projections, however, are those in which I find myself accidentally out, wandering only a few yards away from my snoring body, and this is the story of one such adventure. I wish I could tell you there is some kind of great magical lesson to be learned from this tale. Perhaps there is. But mostly I would like simply to illustrate some of the strange and interesting characteristics of these experiences and, in doing so, encourage you to fearlessly start your own program of exploration.
Before I begin, however, I need to share a strange and often terrifying occurrence that often accompanies out-of-body experiences and which (I believe) has since time immemorial been the cause of all manner of religiously motivated nonsense concerning demons, devils, ghosts, vampires, and the torments of hell. We might call this phenomenon the “terror of the threshold.” The dynamics of consciousness that explain this phenomenon are, however, anything but terrifying. In fact, I believe when the facts are properly understood, they are very interesting and at times downright funny.
A few moments ago, I described the ancient Egyptian concept of the “self” of the deceased progressively passing from lower to higher levels of consciousness during the death experience, and how at each new level the mind creates an escape pod for the essential “self” of the individual. These temporary shuttlecrafts are also bodies formed from progressively finer and more subtle energy “material.” Yogic literature identifies these various bodies as “astral body” or “etheric body” or “causal body” or “mental body” or “emotional body.” These subtle bodies do not necessarily need to be created and cast off only by a person who is dying. Indeed, our thoughts, desires, and emotions are constantly in the process of creating and discarding them the over course of the agonies and ecstasies of this roller-coaster ride we call everyday life.
If you have this concept clearly in mind, I now put to you the idea that all these discarded bodies live on for a time in the same way a decaying corpse and its hair and fingernails, bacteria, DNA, etc., live on in physical bodies buried in your neighborhood cemetery. The only difference being, these astral corpses remain somewhat animated for a period of time while the remaining energy still residually resident in their shell completely decays. And like discarded shells or husks, these astral zombies are made of the heaviest stratum—the slowest and lowest frequencies of energy. They sink to the very lowest levels of the sea of consciousness—the area that is very close to the material plane. This is the borderland between dream and waking consciousness. It is quite literally an astral graveyard.
When we are tired and relaxed, we fall fast asleep and ride an express elevator directly to some pretty high levels of consciousness, those whose environs are revealed in the metaphoric imagery as the dream sky into which we blissfully soar. But if something is burdening our minds and forcing us to slowly drag our sorry astral consciousness kicking and screaming out of our physical body and step-by-step up the back stairs of consciousness, then the first place we slog through on our way “up” is the lowest place in up-land—the graveyard.
The dramatic terrors and ordeals that candidates of ancient mystery schools were required to undergo during their initiation ceremonies illustrated this frightening, yet ultimately harmless, fact of spiritual life. Because this area is so close to the material plane and the solid coordinates of waking space-time consciousness, the “bodies” that populate the cemetery of your threshold are literally those that are hanging around your neighborhood. That is why so many of these bad “dream” experiences seem to include situations dealing with neighborhood “bad people” who, to all dream appearances, are attempting to violate your home or your body or your loved ones. In nine out of ten of my terror of the threshold projections, I find myself trying to chase away neighborhood vandals or (get this … and please forgive my politically incorrect subconscious mind) deranged homeless people who are attempting to get in my house. But in the metaphoric reality of this plane of consciousness, that is exactly what they are—homeless bodies who are no longer animated by a living self, drifting in obedience to the laws of cosmic osmoses toward a realm (my house) that is inhabited by an abundance of living. These astral zombies mean no harm. They mean nothing because there is no “self” inside to provide them with intent. But boy! They scare the living daylights out of you when you stumble into their world.
A moment ago I mentioned that I am not very good at consciously entering into an out-of-body experience. I think I should probably rephrase that to say, “I am not very good at consciously leaving my body unless I’ve first gorged myself to near unconsciousness on my wife’s spinach or broccoli quiche.
It is with no small measure of embarrassment that I confess that, even though I came of mystical age in the psychedelic Sixties—even though I have at one time or another in my sixty-two years on this planet experimented with a cornucopia of mind-altering substances—even though I have labored to control my breathing with pranayama, fasted for days on end—even though I’ve chanted myself to socially acceptable insanity and engaged in magical rituals that I would never dream of describing to your mother—the strongest and most powerful drug I have ever consciously ingested for the purpose of driving myself out of my physical body is Constance’s homemade broccoli or spinach quiche.
I must point out that this dish is not necessarily dangerous to anyone possessing a modicum of common sense and self-discipline. It has, however, challenged the resolve of many a strong-willed magician, and unless you have actually inhaled its savory perfume and laid eyes upon its fluffy buxom filling spilling over the thick flaky fringe of rich shortbread crust—unless you’ve actually slipped a warm forkful of its buttery ambrosia into your watering mouth and felt the living soul of cream and butter and eggs and scallions spiked with nutmeg and a dozen other spices, and Swiss, Parmesan and Cheddar cheeses explode inside your head—then, my friend, you have no right whatsoever to ridicule the weakness of others.
It is a dish to die for. In fact, on one occasion a dear friend of ours actually suffered a massive heart attack within a few hours of his feast of Constance’s spinach quiche, an event that required immediate triple bypass surgery and months of recuperation. I’m happy to say he recovered completely and has reassured us on numerous occasions that the experience was worth the memory of the quiche.
Is it any wonder that a weak-willed and insecure glutton such as myself succumbs to the demons of intemperance whenever I’m confronted with an entire spinach or broccoli quiche during a quiet dinner for two in the privacy of my own home?
The particular out-of-body experience I am about to relate took place five years ago following one such quiet dinner. I must hasten to point out that at that time of my life I had been abusing my body with a litany of bad eating and drinking habits (“crimes against wisdom,” as the ayurvedic folks would call it) and I had allowed myself to grow to nearly three hundred pounds. It was not good.
I am happy to say that I have since I have lost more than one hundred pounds and am feeling better than I have my entire life. At the time, however, my weight made sleeping quite challenging. It was great for lucid dreaming and astral projection because I was often tossing and turning in that twilight world between waking and sleeping. But it was terribly frightening when I realized that many of my colorful nocturnal adventures were kicked off by the suffocating effects of sleep apnea and that my astral projections could probably be more accurately described as near-death experiences! Still, this season of my life was characterized by a rich assortment of out-of-body experiences, and led to my ability to control and direct the circumstances of my dreams and projections.
I wish I could say that Constance was as excited about my astral adventures as I was. But I can’t. In fact, they were often rude and terrifying interruptions to her sleep. She usually knows that I am outside of my body before I do, because I almost always roll over on my back and stick my left arm straight up into the air. I have no idea why I do this, but whenever I do it she wakes her up and grumbles to herself, “Oh no! He’s out of his body again. I wonder when he’s going to make that noise?”
The noise that she dreads is a phenomenon that occurs when my astral body tries to speak, or rather, when my physical vocal cords try to vibrate to the speech impulses coming from my astral body. When I open my astral mouth to say something, my physical mouth back in bed makes the most grotesque and hideously frightening noise …
wooooahhhhhhHHHAAAAeeeeeeeaaaaaAAAAHHHH!
It’s not just a whimper either. I let out a monstrous groan as if I were the most tortured soul in the deepest pit of hell. It’s very loud. I can hear it myself and often wake up. It is so loud that Constance is sure our next-door neighbors must be terrified by the sound. I feel so embarrassed. I always think, “Why can’t I speak? Why am I making these horrible noises?” But instead of shutting up or trying to wake up, I always try again—only louder—
wooooahhhhhhHHHAAAAeeeeeeeaaaaaAAAAHHHH!
That’s when Constance has had enough and jabs me in the ribs with her elbow and yells in my ear, “You’re out of your body again! Wake up and go back to sleep! And put your arm down!”
I don’t recall what the occasion was. Perhaps it was a birthday or an anniversary, or just one of those days Constance was careless enough to innocently ask me, “What would you like for dinner tonight, dear?” My answer was of course, “Broccoli quiche! Please!”
And so began a day of heroic kitchen gymnastics that would give birth to the mystic meal. The quiche itself is made in an oversized pastry dish (not a pie plate) that can easily serve a huge slice to six hungry people. It’s not a thin little breakfast quiche either. The rich whipped filling fluffs up to nearly four inches. Two of these pieces was entirely too much for one sane person to eat at one sitting. But it was so good that I begged for another. Constance reluctantly agreed and succumbed to the temptation of another slice herself. When we were finished, we had eaten two-thirds of the massive pie. We were gorged and painfully uncomfortable. Constance began to serve her penance by cleaning up the kitchen and attacking the dishes. I moved to the computer and tried unsuccessfully to write. The remaining one-third of the quiche cooled on the kitchen counter.
An hour later we were both still groaning and holding our bloated bellies (of course I had a much bigger burden). The quiche had cooled enough to be wrapped in plastic and put in the refrigerator, which is exactly what Constance was preparing to do when a spirit of gluttony most foul whispered in my ear and counseled me that tomorrow the quiche would not taste nearly as good as is does right now. It would be a waste—a sacrilege—a crime! Sated or not, we should eat the rest of the quiche before going to bed tonight—and that was that!
Constance would have none of it, but she was too tired and full to argue with me. She went off to a hot bath, and I sat in the darkened living room and ate the rest of the broccoli quiche straight out of its baking dish. I went to bed—too full to stay awake—too full to fall asleep. Constance joined me in a few minutes and fell immediately asleep. Our cat Luis snuggled in his usual place, sandwiched tightly between us. In a few minutes, I became too uncomfortable to remain in my physical body. I heard that crazy sound in the center of my head and felt the familiar electrical buzz. Then, without further fanfare, I floated out of my body on a sickening wave of pure butterfat.
I should point out the fact that I did indeed know that I was in a projection. But I was extremely groggy and wanted very much just to fall deeply asleep and make this all stop! It seemed like I was heading toward that blessed realm when I heard a noise outside at the front door. I rolled over to see if I could hear a bit better.
Constance: Oh God! He’s rolled over. I hope he doesn’t smash the cat.
Luis the cat: Oh God! He’s out of his body again. I think he’s lying on my back legs.
Yes! It was clear. Somebody was trying to get into the house. I rolled out of bed and quietly crept out into the hallway.
Constance: Well! There goes his arm. He’s out of his body. I’ll get no sleep tonight!
Luis the cat: If he rolls over any farther, there won’t be room for me!
I tiptoed through the living room to the front door. I peered out the window in the door (completely ignoring the fact that there is no window in our front door) and saw three or four shadowy figures crouched on the doorstep. Suddenly, I heard a noise behind me in the living room. “One got in!” I thought. I was right.
As I turned around …
Constance: There he goes rocking back and forth.
Luis the cat: Ouch! Damn it! That hurts! Why doesn’t he just die and let me sleep!
… I saw a shadow slip inside the large closet that forms the entire south side of our living room. Once inside the closet, the intruder slowly slid the door closed from the inside. It was a very spooky moment.
Completely ignoring the fact that there is no closet in our living room, I stood still while I debated with myself about what I should do.
Constance: At least he’s stopped rocking. I wonder if he’s breathing.
Luis the cat: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
It is at this point that I get completely caught up in the action. Part of me knows I’m projecting and/or in a dream, and part of me doesn’t. I start to weigh my options as if there were a real intruder in my real house. “I better be careful. Maybe I can somehow trap him in there and call the police. I don’t have a gun or a knife or a club … what can I do?”
Then the thought hit me, “I’m huge. I weigh three hundred pounds. I can just fall on this bastard and crush him to a pulp!”
Constance: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Luis the cat: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I march over to the closet door and violently slide it open. Cowering in the dark corner is a slimy lump of blackness that looks very much like the character Smeagol or Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. I suddenly feel I have the power to terrorize this creature out of existence—or at least scare it out of my living room. I muster the most hideous face and swell my titan bulk to monstrous stature. To assure that my voice will billow with the thunder of ten thousand volcanic devils, I suck in an enormous breath of air …
Constance: Oh no! Here it comes …
Luis the cat: God! Is he’s blowing up! Is he trying to crush me to death?
“I’LL CRUSH YOU!” were the words my astral body voice was trying to bellow, but all that could come out of my physical body back in bed was a blood-curdling …
eeuuyyyyiiiiiiiiiieyeeeLLLLLLLL …
KRUUSHHHHHSHHH
UUUUUUUUUUUUUeh!
Luis the cat then knew for sure I was going to crush him to death. He clawed Constance, desperately trying to pull his back legs out from under me, and when he was free his feet did not touch the floor until he was well outside the bedroom.
I had awakened fully and the realization of what just happened struck me so funny that I began laughing hysterically (Constance says “maniacally”). She told me I scared her to death, but her main concern was that our neighbors must have heard and had the scare of their lives. We were both certain the police were on their way. What would be my defense … quiche intoxication? Astral projection?
You Know You’re Out of Your Body …
· When you feel a thrilling tingling sensation in the pit of your stomach, heart, throat, or back of the neck. When you notice this thrill in a dream, it means you have made the identity shift necessary for an OBE. Perhaps this has something to do with our chakras or psychic centers that serve as exits from the body. If you are lucid at this moment, you can fly or do most anything you can imagine. Ironically, the most difficult thing you can do when you find yourself in this wonderful state is to actually think of something fun and productive to do. Plan ahead.
· When forward or upward movement in a dream becomes difficult or impossible to continue. For example: you are walking down a dream sidewalk, walking up stairs, or driving or bicycling down a road and you suddenly find your legs are too heavy to move or the car or bike breaks down. This indicates that you are moving from a lower/slower vibratory level into a higher/more subtle vibratory level, one that your big fat dream vehicles can’t enter. If you are lucid at this moment, you can stop walking or riding or driving and will yourself to fly forward, leaving your grosser body behind.
· When you experience forward movement that is interrupted by a curve, right/left turns, or spinning. For example: you are preparing to cross the street or move from one side of a room to the opposite side, but change your mind and move 90 degrees either to the left or right. When you step to the right or left, you are stepping out of your body. Or you are driving a dream car or riding a bicycle very fast and suddenly a curve appears that you are certain you will not be able to make. Or you dream that you are spinning or dancing. The corkscrew effect is also a very common prelude to leaving your body.
· When you hear strange noises—bells, rapping, horns, hissing, thunder. Nearly every OBE is accompanied by strange noises that seem to announce the movement from one plane to the next. No matter what kind of noise it is, it always seems to be “heard” with something other than your ears.
· When you encounter Terrors of the Threshold. Encounters with hideous beings occurs most often when, for one reason or another, you skip the dream transition and are roughly thrust from waking consciousness to an OBE. These are seldom pleasant experiences. I encounter these things when I’ve had too much to eat and try to sleep it off. I roll in and out of uncomfortable consciousness. I actually think I’m getting out up out of bed, but instead I walk right into the lowest region of the astral plane, which, as we have learned, can be a pretty rough neighborhood.
Warning: Don’t eat or drink in dreams, especially with dead people! Greek mythology talks of the “Waters of Forgetfulness” that lure the thirsty newly dead, who, once they’ve had a little sip, fall into a slumber in which all memory of their past life dissolves. This is a very real phenomenon of the astral plane. If you want to remember your experiences, do not eat or drink anything in an OBE. Especially do not eat or drink anything offered you by someone whom you believe to be a person who has passed away … even a friend or loved one. You may be biting off more than you intend to chew.
[contents]
66 From the unpublished works of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford in the author’s private collection.
67 Lon Milo DuQuette, “Terrors of the Threshold: Astral Projection & The Egyptian Book of the Dead,” FATE Magazine Vol. 57, No. 10, Issue 654.