To Light a Thousand Lamps - The Theosophical Society

Psychism / 115
they conceived as surrounding and vivifying all beings. To
most peoples of earlier times the celestial bodies, stars,
and planets, were ‘‘animals’’ — living beings filled with
the ‘‘breath’’ (anima, spiritus) of life. They were gods
using stellar and planetary bodies as their means of gaining
experience, each having its nous and psyche (its noetic and
psychical aspects, its spirit and soul). There was never any
question in the minds of those schooled in the Mysteries
about the intimate and continuing interconnection of man
and nature.
In modern theosophy the term ‘‘astral’’ is used for the
subtle model on which the physical bodies of both man and
globe build themselves. Today the word astral is frequently
found in parapsychology journals, although various terms
are likewise employed, such as energy body, bioplasma, and
the like.
The astral light, as earth’s finer counterpart is called in
theosophical parlance, ranges from the most dense to the
most ethereal and spiritual, its lowest levels being heavy with
the dregs of human thought and emotion, its uppermost
levels merging with the ākāśa through which higher beings
may commune at rare intervals with those who command
their interest. H. P. Blavatsky refers to the astral light as
‘‘the great picture-gallery of eternity’’ because it contains ‘‘a
faithful record of every act, and even thought, of man, of all
that was, is, or ever will be, in the phenomenal Universe.’’*
Since whatever is experienced leaves its seal on the
earth’s aura and on our own, the astral light is the repository
*The Secret Doctrine 1:104.