Astral Word Morph

Mental, structured awareness of Theosophy
+
Organic, less rigid awareness of Spiritualism
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Awareness Moving Itself into Mass Consciousness

The morph for the term astral went something like this: … in the final quarter of the 1800s, astral was the Theosophical term-of-choice for the plane of reality immediately adjacent the physical. To the movement's founder, H.P. Blavatsky, astral corresponded with the Sanskrit Linga Sharira ~ the refined vehicle of individual consciousness.

Blavatsky's understanding had historical backing but it didn't stand alone for long. Theosophists ~ who felt astral more aptly referred to Kama, the principle of desire ~ and Spiritualists ~ who were deeply concerned with afterlife validation ~ concurrently promoted re-definition. By the 1930s, astral as equivalent to the emotional plane/body was entrenched.

This re-understanding had staying power in no small part because it wasn't removed from accustomed beliefs: … it was a version of Dante's hell, filled with foul and tortured souls. One of the hardest things anyone can do is move her/his perception beyond local and learned confinements.

Standards of duality ~ of here and there, of us and them, of right and wrong, of reward and punishment, of polar opposites ~ are time honored, cross cultural denominators. Tinkering with these mainstays can be the social equivalent of messing with Mother Nature. But forerunners and seekers do it anyway.

Branches on the tree of astral definitions grew outward with ripples in consciousness. The ferment spurring astral re-definition a century ago included the Science of Mind concept of thoughts-as-things … a major tenet that facilitated the feasibility of thoughts ~ from waking and dream states alike ~ as energetic entities.

Reports of the Roswell incident further advanced astral's scope by including the possibility of off-worlders in the unseen population. The paradigm supporting pillar of duality ~ the closed-system, vertically linear model implied by angels & demons ~ became suspect with the inclusion of alien beings.

On the Metaphysical Richter scale, this shift ranks as a 9.7+ quake in perception. The fallout from the upheaval is ongoing: … the astral now presses toward dimensional revision. Consciousness is keeping pace, perhaps setting pace: … beyond the universe, we glimpse the multiverse.

Other than noting that it morphed, continues to morph and means different things to different people, why fret over the definition of astral anything? I'm harping on it is because I highly suspect it is an unacknowledged element of entanglement in modern society.