Customer Reviews

The Astral Plane: Its Scenery, Inhabitants And Phenomena

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Among adepts this remarkable book is simply refered to as "Manual No.5" (that was it's old Theosophical Society designation.) When it was penned in 1894 this book was unique. This is because prior to that time all books on the subject were traditionlly written in an obscure and metaphorical manner. Bishop Leadbeater changed all that- he took 19th century scientific objectivism and applied it to the most mystical and subjective of studies. The result is a virtual Baedecker (travel book) of the astral realms. As a result this was the first modern English language text to be included in the permanent collection of the Brotherhood. This book opened, and continues to open, doors.

Briefly, this little volume, covers: scenary, inhabitants, and phenomena of the astral realm. Since this is the realm most closely in contact with our own it can be a most useful and practical guide book. For instance, you will find summarised here more real facts on black magicians, elementals, shades, vampires, and werewolves than in many thicker, more modern volumes. Indeed, a pocket sized hard cover of this manual is quite convenient to carrry at all times as a review, and passport....

Reading CWL is like walking onto a cloud or getting lost in a dream. He literally takes you in alternate universes of thought and once you wake up, you are never the same again. Leadbeater is a must read for every occult student and this book is a good one!

I thought this was very great, descriptive, informative, and much more. This book is for those who can't achieve an outer body experience. It tells about all of the creatures, scenery, travel, and everything else there is to know about the astral plane. There's not much more to say about this book except that it is a great, informative book.

This book gives a great overall description of the astral plane. It's descriptive, interesting and easy to understand.

This book sounded so promising, especially based on the other review, so I gave it a try. Sadly, it proved grossly disappointing.

Some of the ideas are fascinating, but unfortunately this text is REALLY dated, tedious, and wordy. The author takes ten pages to describe what could have been discussed in a much more succinct and enlightening manner in only a page or two. After dredging through the first few chapters, I decided to do some skimming, and it does get better. Sort of.

Basically, if you want an overly-wordy and very long essay, give it a try. There is some interesting information about different levels of different planes and densities and such, and the part about the different creatures that live on the astral plane was crazy while still drawing you in.

This one just takes a GREAT deal of patience to get through, even for an avid reader who cuddles up with textbooks for fun.

This book suffers badly by the fact that it looks as it has been copied in a copy machine and then bound in a flashy cover. It is almost impossible to read in places. It should definitely have been rewritten and republished.

This book is great in all aspects. I wish the book could go into more detail, but it's delibrately a short essay. A great overview of the astral plane. I wonder how this compares to Steve Richards book?

Well written with a number of in-depth sections. This book is interesting in that it comes from the early 19th century. Seems many new age authors have taken many of his ideas and offered a lot less writing for a lot more money. This is definitely worth the $1.99!

Astral Projection is a subject that I always thought fascinating. So after I installed the kindle application into my portable devices, this ebook was a no brainier for me. However, you must be forewarned that the book is dated 1895, and as such very wordy and repetitive at times. Regardless, it delivers.

This ebook uses a clear, easy to read font type. Paragraphs wraps around well. The title of each chapter is all caps bold, but remain on the same type case. It has a table of contents that is hyperlinked, and easy to use. It contains no pictures.

The hyperlinked table of contents include:

Introduction
Chapter I A General Survey
Chapter II Scenery
Chapter III Inhabitants
. Human
. Non-Human
. Artificial
Chapter IV Phenomena
Chapter V Conclusion

The Astral Planes are described with some detail in Chapter II. In Chapter III, the author describes the inhabitants of the astral planes including human such as the living (adepts, psychically-developed people, ordinary people, and black magicians), and the dead (nirmanakaya, adepts, ordinary people, shades, shells, vitalized shells, suicides, vampires and werewolves, man in the grey world, and black magicians); non-human such as elemental essence, animals, nature spirits, and devas; and Artificial such as elementals, and human artificials.

Interesting enough, Chapter IV presents the author thoughts about a wide range of phenomena including churchyard ghost, apparitions, haunted localities, family ghosts, bell-ringing, fairies, communicating entities, astral resources, clairvoyance, second-sight, astral forces, etheric currents, etheric pressure, Latent energy, sympathetic vibration, mantras, disintegration, materialization, why darkness is required, spirit photographs, reduplication, precipitation, slate-writing, levitation, spirit lights, handling fire, transmutation, and repercussion.

In all, there is a lot of interesting material which is somewhat hindered by its presentation.

This is a good little book, describing the Theosophical point of view concerning the astral pane... fascinating reading, you will refer to it over and over!