The Astral Light Preserves and Reflects Images of Every Thought and Action

Eliphas Levi, translated by H.P. Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 12 pages

A chapter of Eliphas Levi translated from the French by Blavatsky herself and first printed in the Spiritual Scientist in November 1875, with her remarks appended. Its subject is the great magical agent — the Astral Light — understood as a medium in which every impression is preserved: all the images ever formed, whether by the rays of things or by their reflections. Dreams appear to us in this light; it is also what intoxicates the insane and carries their judgment off after phantoms.

The practical instruction follows from that description. To see in this light without illusion, Levi says, one must push aside the reflections by an effort of will and draw to oneself only the rays — the distinction on which the whole of his psychology turns. From there the chapter moves to its most quoted passage, on the dead whom we take for the living and the vampires we mistake for friends: the poisonous mushrooms of the human species, whose approach paralyses the soul. Blavatsky's own contribution is a table setting Akasha and the Astral Light side by side, comparing and contrasting the two, which is the clearest short statement of that distinction in the library.

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