A Witches Bible - Janet Farrar, Stewar Farrar 1981

Astral Projection
The Wiccan Path
Principles, Rituals and Beliefs of Modern Witchcraft

Normal, everyday, waking consciousness is anchored to the physical brain and nervous system. In this state, the body is thought of as ’I’ — an ’I’ which can only be aware of the world through its physical senses and can only think about it from inside its own head. It is the only state of which most people are aware, and in practice the only one in which they believe. Even those who believe in an immortal soul usually accept that, for the duration of their earthly lives, their consciousness is inseparable from the body. Dreams are envisaged as the brain’s functioning when the flow of sense-data is cut off, and the imagination fills the resulting vacuum with fantasies; these fantasies may be conceded to be psychologically meaningful and of therapeutic value, but they are still regarded as activities of the physical brain, from which ’I’ cannot escape.

Witches, occultists and serious students of the paranormal look at the situation rather differently, and their attitude is borne out by formidable evidence.

Men and women are the central nervous system of Gaia, the Earth Organism, through which she becomes conscious of herself

The cervix motif (see note to Section xv, ’Witchcraft and Sex’):

(A) the Omphalos at Delphi;

(B) bullawn stone in Kells Churchyard, Co. Meath;

(C) bullawn stone at Clonegal Castle, Co. Wexford;

(D) disc and horns of Isis, Abydos, Egypt;

(E) typical form of the Assyrian Sacred Moon Tree

Skyclad working seems to have been common among European witches. ’Love’s Enchantment’, Flemish school, c. 1670—80

Above: A pre-war picture of the Christchurch Theatre, Hampshire, ’the first Rosicrucian Theatre in England’, which opened on 16 June, 1938. Membership of this brought Gerald Gardner into contact with the New Forest witches

Above: A 1938 or 1939 performance of Pythagoras, by Alex Matthews, at the Christchurch Rosicrucian Theatre. Doreen Valiente thinks the man on the extreme left of picture ’just might be’ Gerald Gardner

Above: In this cottage in Co. Clare lived Biddy Early, the famous nineteenth-century Irish witch

Above: Janet’s painting of the group thought-form Mara (see Section xxii, ’Spells’)

Occult craftsmanship:

(A) deer’s-foot athame, maker unknown;

(B) bronze athame by Peter Clark, Ireland;

(C) copper athame by Michael Hinch, Ireland;

(D) Hathor mirror and sistrum by George Alexander, England;

(E) pendants by George Alexander;

(F) Isis brooch by Muriel Chastenet, USA;

(G) ankh by Peter Clark, Isis by Christopher Bailey, Horned God Salute by Knut Klimmek, all Ireland; and

(H) bracelet by George Alexander

Large jewelled and small plain zodiacal pentacles photo-etched by Michael Hinch from the same design by Stewart (see Section xxiv, ’Witches’ Tools’)

The restored entrance to Newgrange, the 3000 BC neolithic mound in Co. Meath (see Section XXV, ’In Tune with the Land’). The winter solstice sunrise shines through the ’roof box’ (upper opening) to illumine the central chamber 79 feet away inside

The High Priestess, as representative of the Goddess, may on occasion use the altar as a throne

If one regards a human being as the multi-level entity which we described in Section XII, ’Reincarnation’, then one sees the brain (complex and marvellous though it is) as merely one mechanism of the multi-level phenomenon of awareness (both conscious and unconscious). It is the mechanism by which, via the etheric body, the physical body interacts with the other levels, and also the mechanism by which the physical body regulates and balances its own functions. It is like a very modern house’s wiring, radio, television, telephone and central-heating thermostats. But the occupant of the house is not a prisoner; he can walk out of the front door, meet people instead of phoning them, attend concerts or football matches instead of watching them on television, and know that, although the house is temporarily unanimated by his presence, when he does return it will have kept itself at the right temperature, the television will be waiting to be switched on, his self-timing oven will have his dinner ready, and anyone who phones him will get an answer.

It is the same with human consciousness; while it is reasonable and convenient to spend most of one’s time ’at home’, centred on the physical body and brain, and communicating with the world through its wiring, its aerials and its windows, one does not have to limit oneself to staying there all the time. The front door is not locked.

The technique of shifting consciousness from the physical body and plane to the astral body and plane is known as astral projection. It can be learned, or it can happen involuntarily.

Involuntary astral projection — usually described as an ’out-of-the-body experience’ — is more frequent and widespread than is generally realized, partly because those who experience it are either frightened by it or reluctant to talk about it in case their sanity or truthfulness is questioned. Typically, the person suddenly finds himself or herself seeming to stand or hover in a corner of the room, looking down on his or her physical body from several feet away, with complete visual (and often auditory) awareness. The immediate reaction may be curiosity or panic; if it is the latter, consciousness will usually return to the physical body with an unpleasant jerk.

Such projection can happen when the physical body is very relaxed — particularly in the bath, where it is halfway to weightlessness. It can happen, too, when the physical body is weakened by illness; Carrington and Muldoon’s classic book on the subject, The Projection of the Astral Body, deals with such a case, the physically frail Sylvan Muldoon himself.

Some of the best recorded instances of involuntary projection have been recounted by patients who have recovered from clinical death. Often, ’standing’ to one side in the operating theatre or hospital ward, they have watched and listened while doctors and nurses fought to revive their bodies — and after their recovery described the actions and speech (of which their ’dead’ physical sense could not possibly have been aware) to an astonished staff. Dr Raymond Moody gives many such cases, with direct quotes from the patients, in his book Life After Life.

Descriptions of what the projected state feels like are in general agreement. The astral body feels weightless. Sight and hearing are greatly sharpened. Dr Moody says, ’No one among all of my cases has reported any odours or tastes while out of their physical bodies’, but that may be because all of his were in clinical or accident situations, where sight and sound would be of prime importance. Janet has frequently experienced significant odours during astral projection, though she cannot remember having tasted anything — again, presumably because there is no cause to eat or drink in that state; if there were (if she felt impelled to do so as a ritual act, for instance), she thinks it likely that she would be aware of the significant taste.

Which brings us to another point. If Janet, say, were to drink ritual wine during astral projection, it would be astral wine, manifested on the astral plane by her own willpower — and the significant taste would manifest, too. All subjects agree that, during projection, the astral body cannot mechanically manipulate the physical plane. If Janet tried to pick up a physical chalice, her astral hand would pass through it. The astral body can observe the physical plane, with great acuity, but cannot normally affect it — or be affected by it. The astral body can pass through physical walls, and it need not get out of the way of moving physical bodies, because they will pass through it.

And yet even this is not one hundred per cent true. Very great charges of energy on the astral plane can and do produce effects on the physical — witness poltergeist and telekinetic¹ phenomena. But ’normal’ astral projection does not involve such interaction, except sometimes by highly concentrated willpower.

All subjects agree that movement is unrestricted, and thought processes clearer and faster.

One matter on which there does not appear to be general agreement is the ’silver cord’. Many people, over the centuries, have insisted that a silver cord is seen, infinitely extendable, between the astral and physical bodies during projection, and that this cord is only severed on physical death. (Ecclesiastes xii, 6-7, is said to refer to this: ’Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel be broken at the cistern; then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return to God who gave it.’) If such a cord does exist — and some experienced projectors have never seen it — it would presumably be the vital etheric link between the physical and the astral; and whether one sees it or not would depend on which ’wavelength’ of the broad astral spectrum one’s projection faculty naturally utilized.

We have very briefly outlined the nature of the experience. How does one learn to bring it about deliberately, and under one’s own control?

First, we would emphasize again what we have just said — that the astral spectrum is very broad; some occult traditions divide the astral plane into seven sub-planes, but even these must be regarded as merging into each other. At one end of the spectrum, the phenomena of the astral plane correspond very closely to those of the physical plane. As Doreen Valiente says (An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present), ’everything in the visible world of matter is surrounded and permeated by its astral counterpart.’ It is this world of ’astral counterparts’ that Dr Moody’s patients were projecting into, for example, when they could see and hear exactly what was happening on the physical plane. This world, this end of the astral spectrum, is the one to be mastered if one wishes to observe events on the physical plane which are not directly available to one’s physical senses.

Dion Fortune gives an example of this kind of projection in her novel Moon Magic. Lilith Le Fay, in London, needs to observe Rupert Malcolm as he visits a house in a seaside resort. ’I made the astral projection by the usual method; that is to say, I pictured myself as standing six feet in front of myself and then transferred my consciousness to the simulacrum thus created by my imagination and looked at the room through its eyes. Then I visualised the face of the man with the greying red hair, and imagined myself speaking to him. The magic worked. I had the sensation of the descent of a swift lift, which always characterises the change of the level of consciousness; all awareness of my physical surroundings faded, and I seemed to be in a strange room …’ which she proceeds to describe in detail.

Put like that, it sounds easy; but Lilith Le Fay (like Dion Fortune herself) was a high adept, whose imagination and willpower were powerful tools perfected by long training. And yet it does sum up the basic technique to be followed for projecting consciousness into this ’astral counterpart’ level of the astral plane. You visualize, with all the vividness you can muster, a ’simulacrum’ of your physical body; and then, with all the determination you can muster, you will your consciousness to transfer to it. Your astral body, thus encouraged, integrates with the simulacrum.

For most people, acquiring the technique is a long, hard process, requiring great perseverance and a refusal to be discouraged. At the other extreme, there are people who have what is generally called ’a loose astral body’ who acquire it all too easily and may have to develop control to prevent it happening spontaneously at the wrong moment.

How best to approach the problem may vary from person to person. A favourite method is the use of a full-length mirror; you relax in a chair facing the mirror, in such a way that your physical body would remain in position and come to no harm if it lost consciousness (which after all is the object of the exercise), and use your mirror-image as the simulacrum, willing your consciousness to enter into it.

Sylvan Muldoon used the mirror method and recommended four stages. First, to build into the subconscious a strong desire to transfer consciousness to the astral body. Second, to concentrate on the mirror image. Third, to make yourself clearly aware of your own heartbeat, first in the heart itself and then in different points of your body, one by one. And fourth, to try to slow down the heartbeat by mental suggestion. (No one with a weak or irregular heart should try this fourth stage, of course.)

Another method is to walk round your room learning its visual details by heart. Then you relax in your chair (or lying down) with your eyes shut, and make a mental tour of the room, visualizing and describing it to yourself as accurately as you can — coupled with a strong desire to transfer consciousness to the simulacrum which is making the tour.

A friend of ours who was a hi-fi enthusiast proposed to try a development of this: to set up two microphones on opposite sides of the room, connected to a stereo tape-recorder. He would then walk round the room from viewpoint to viewpoint, describing what he saw in detail. Finally, in his relaxed sitting or lying position, with his eyes shut and earphones on his head, he would listen to the playback, the stereo effect helping him to identify with the touring simulacrum and, aided by his visual memory, to see what it saw. In this way he hoped to make it easier to achieve projection of consciousness into the simulacrum. Unfortunately we lost touch with him before he tried the experiment, so we do not know whether it succeeded or not. But others may like to follow up his suggestion.

Helpful books on developing the faculty of projection on this level are Carrington and Muldoon, referred to above; Ophiel’s The Art and Practice of Astral Projection; and Dr Douglas M. Baker’s The Techniques of Astral Projection.

So far we have concentrated on the ’astral counterpart’ level of the astral plane — the level which corresponds most closely to the physical, and through which we can expand our awareness and understanding of the physical. During projection into this level, our consciousness is mainly directed towards the physical world’s astral double, and we are unlikely to be aware, except dimly or in flashes, of the discarnate entities and phenomena which throng what may be called the middle and upper reaches of the astral.

But when we explore the astral plane as a whole, we discover that it has two characteristics. First, it is populated by the entities and phenomena we have mentioned — and these may be helpful, hostile or neutral. And second, it is extremely malleable — in other words, it can be reshaped and otherwise affected by emotion, imagination and willpower.

This does not mean that what we encounter on the astral plane is illusory; quite the contrary. Just as on the physical plane we may be aware of objects in different ways (a townsman may see a patch of cow-dung as a smelly mess, a farmer see it as valuable manure, and an artist see it as an interesting visual counterpoint to the green of the field — and each one is right), and we can manipulate and reshape our environment physically; so on the astral plane, real entities may clothe themselves in different shapes according to our type of awareness, and we can reshape our astral environment by a different kind of effort.

When we become conscious on the astral plane, we find that in a sense we have more freedom of action on its ’middle reaches’ than we do at either the lowest of the highest level of the spectrum. On the lowest plane, as we have seen, the astral is very closely matched to the physical, and while projection can make our awareness of it more acute, and vastly increase our freedom of movement within it, our freedom of action — our ability to manipulate the ’astral counterparts’ by which we are surrounded — is very limited indeed, because of their tight integration with their physical counterparts.

The highest astral level, on the other hand, has close links with the mental and spiritual levels. The entities which people it tend to be of a higher order of being than ourselves. Conscious experience on that level, once we achieve it, is therefore likely to be receptive rather than active, and the environment to be awe-inspiring rather than malleable. We may, however, be internally active, within the bounds of our own total psyche, because at that level the Personality will be more consciously in communication with the immortal Individuality, to the potential enrichment of the former and the karmic advancement of the latter.

The ’middle reaches’ of the astral plane are much more of a free-for-all than either of these extremes. Experience here can be very rewarding — and it can also be dangerous. We are not mere observers; we are participants, responsible for our own actions and their results.

Astral projection onto these middle levels, from a state of normal waking consciousness, can be learned as a development of the lower-level projection we have already described; but it is more likely to be achieved as a natural consequence of one’s overall psychic development as an advancing witch or occultist than by any drill-book techniques.

We say ’from a state of normal waking consciousness’ because there is one way in which everybody projects onto the middle astral levels: in dreaming. Not in all dreams, because most dreams are an internal dialogue between different elements of the personal psyche. But there are some dreams (and one soon learns to recognize them once the usefulness of recognizing them is realized) in which awareness ventures outside the frontiers of the personal psyche into the busy concourse of the middle astral.

One characteristic of the astral-projection dream is that you know that you are dreaming. You are asleep, but fully conscious. You can examine your dream, experiment with it and manipulate it. Another very convincing bit of confirmation is when you meet friends in your dream and are able to discover later that they shared the experience; though for this you have to be very honest with yourself, and only compare notes with friends you know to be equally honest and free from wishful thinking. (The women of our coven are particularly good at this; when the morning phone-calls start, Stewart is apt to joke: ’Hullo, the girls were out on the astral again last night.’)

Too much of this can be exhausting, and one must have the sense and the willpower to withdraw from it when necessary. A High Priestess in particular, being psychically involved with and concerned for the whole coven, may if she is not careful find her sleep invaded too often for comfort — often involuntarily, where the less experienced members are concerned. In the Sanders’ coven, Maxine often used to tell us new initiates: ’Remember, I’m keeping my beady astral eye on you!’ It was not till much later, when we were running our own coven, that we realized how little of a joke this could be.

Any responsible sensitive who is involved in occult activity is liable to find herself having to take firm action on the astral plane to deal with a crisis. Such confrontations may be expected to take the forms typical of the middle astral — symbolism and shape-changing mixed with actual awareness of physical objects and locations.

An example from our own experience. We knew that X was bitterly jealous of Y, and also that X had considerable raw psychic power, very little psychic or personal responsibility and marked vampiric tendencies; and we were correspondingly worried, since Y was a close friend. Asleep one night, Janet suddenly found herself astrally projecting and knew that X was on the astral war-path. She saw him as a huge green slug-like creature, and she pursued his green slimy trail all over Dublin. The final confrontation was in Y’s flat, where Y was asleep and X attacked him. Janet seized the coven sword and struck at X with it. The green slug disintegrated, the projection ended, and Janet woke up in her physical body.

Now any psychiatrist could diagnose this, on the face of it, as a straightforward anxiety dream triggered off by Janet’s concern over the situation — but for two things. Next morning we found that the coven sword (which had been thoroughly cleaned the day before) was coated in a strange green deposit for which we could find no ’natural’ explanation, though we tried hard enough, as we always do with such phenomena. And on Y’s throat, when we saw him soon after, were two equally inexplicable puncture-marks.

It will be seen from all this that guidelines for conduct on the astral plane can be deduced from what we have said earlier in this book on the theory of levels, on Wiccan ethics and on psychic defence. If all these are constantly borne in mind, astral projection can be an enriching and safe experience, and a great expansion of the human psychic faculties.

A final footnote on one phenomenon which is closely linked to astral projection — bilocation, or the gift of being able to be in two places at once. There are many well-attested cases of people being seen and spoken with, in a thoroughly solid and non-ghostly form, simultaneously in widely separated places. It appears in particular to be a faculty associated with people of outstanding spiritual power, such as the late Padre Pio. If such reports are true (and many of them do seem to be beyond question), one can only infer that the subject has both a perfected gift of astral projection and so much power and motivation that he can make his projected astral body manifest visibility and audibly — and convincingly — to achieve the purpose which he finds important.

Yet there is evidence that it can also happen spontaneously and for no obvious purpose. The French doctor Francis Lefébure, in the Second World War, is a well-known example; and it is interesting that Lefébure was a skilled Yoga practitioner.

And although we do not expect to be believed — we have evidence, which, for all our efforts, we can find no way of breaking, that one or two of our cats have the gift. But then animals are not inhibited by preconceptions. Is there a lesson there for would-be witches?