Talk:Astral body (disambiguation)

Notes

The term 'astral body' may refer to any of these.

The original Western concept was body of light and until Theosophy muddied the waters, 'astral body' in the West was a synonym for and referred only to this concept.

The original Eastern concept was subtle body, of which there are multiple 'sheathes', one of which got dubbed the 'astral body' by Theosophists, but which is covered in its original Indic form in the subtle body article.

Theosophists syncretized the two concepts to form their own conception of the astral body, which is at astral body (and probably shouldn't be, but another editor is working on straightening that out), which is not the same as the equivalent 'sheath' described in subtle body, but rather got the usual Theosophical overlay of their own complex mysticism on top of it thus distinguishing it from the original Indic conception and theory.

Buddhists would understand the term 'astral body' as referring to their own concept of the illusory body. 'Astral body' is a hugely overloaded term understood by each culture as referring to their own particular variant of it, all of which except Theosophy having developed mostly independently.

There are most likely other cultural interpretations of the phrase that I have missed. Perhaps an aboriginal and/or other indigenous variants, and one or more non-Buddhist Chinese variants. Skyerise (talk) 23:19, 7 January 2022 (UTC)