In my opinion life can either nurture growth or be a catalyst for it. If you just look at the 1 life at a time, then yes it mainly seems to suck and is unfair. That is how we all see it while alive in the material realm, because we just have the experience of our current life to go from. See it through the lens of having the experience of a life dozens or maybe even hundreds of times. Then it becomes a temporary state. Most of us can go through a bad, temporary situation just fine. If the rewards are worth it you might even prefer it, instead of the easier but longer path.
This should in no way be an excuse to just throw empathy and compassion out the window completely, though.
To avoid the second death, one needs to feed one’s astral body - that much seems clear.
However, after reading a lot of @Mulberry and @N.D_Blackwood of this forum, there seems to be an open debate:
Does one have to take this energy from humans, or is elemental or cosmic energy the better choice?
Both sides can be argued for. The astral body was fed by the physical body before the first death, so human energy might be what it needs.
However, we all know that we can also drive energy from nature, the sun etc. So shouldn’t that be better and more pure?
Mulberry mentions that the vampires have a broken energy system and thus can’t convert other energy into human energy, which is why they have to take it directly, while normal Occultists can get it from better sources.
Whereas Blackwood says (i don’t remember where) that one feeds on human “ancestral” energy that can’t be replenished in any other way.
Chinese tradition solved it for us .
“Cosmic” energy (our found in air, food, breathing) allows the human circuits/meridians to not have flows, and therefore, consume less of its own ancestral energy reservoir. A better circuit makes you live longer. It should be noted that it is not a matter on consuming more “universal Qi” but having a no interference in the circuit. It requires to take the correct food in the appropriate season, to take practice some exercices at a certain hour to benefits from solar/lunar effects, avoid traveling too much (its spend the ancestral energy).
Therefore in no way, consuming more of it could remplace the ancestral Qi, or Yuang Qi, that have already been spent, and his only avaible in limited quantity at birth.
The only way to get more of it, it to take it from others, straight in their own reservoir, located by chinese accupuncturists somewhere beetwen the kidneys.
This is not something that could be done inconsciously by people with some type of energetic failure (that could probably be solve with few acupuncture session) and mistaken themselves for “vampires”, but his a work of banefull magick, that can only be executed consciously by a trained practionner.
To penetrate this reservoir requires to break what could be translated from chinese as “locks” that protect the reservoir. Therefore, the target must either be placed in a state of hypnosis or better, be sleeping.
Thanks a lot for your answer (I’m really looking forward to read your part of the Deification Spellbook soon )
This is somehow implausible to me. I kind of assume that on the astral plane, there are simply astral beings – of different types, sure, but fundamentally “the same”. Like – all animals from insects to humans are made from animal cells. So I’d expect all astral beings – from our astral bodies over “little” guardian angels, faeries and demon legions to the “big” archangels and demon kings – to also be made from the same etheric “stuff”.
Now the demons and angels seem to be able to live and keep their identities without absorbing “ancestral Qi” from humans – they “just” need energy – so why should it be different for us when we become purely astral beings after the first death?
In that present case, I was dealing with the absorption of Yuang Qi my incarnate magicians.
Undeads entities have a different type of way. They feed from multiple sources, depending on their nature. Feeding on human sources seems to be an excellent way for them to anchor on/close to the material plan.
Interesting!
Do the undead need any other anchors, like preservation of their physical body? Or is a good human food source enough to keep them linked to the material plane?
So I’ve received the Deification book. E.A. dedicates two pages to Soul travel in it, which I liked a lot. I hope excerpting isn’t against the rules, so here are some highlights:
May I propose, may I insist, that soul travel is much easier than any of us dares to think it is?
[…] find an object that’s at a distance away from you […]
with your eyes closed, recreated everything that you see in as clear a detail as you are able, and in that imagined duplicate of reality, […], just imagine that you come out of your body […] and you are pushed across the room […], standing before the object that you’ve previously found.
This is obviously just the starting point, but with practice, it will feel like "your body has translocated to the new place, because […] the experience of it is undeniable. "
In N.D.'s part, @Bruh yes, there are different instructions for astral travel than those found in Draugadrottin. I personally found the ones in Draugadrottin to be more practical though. There are some real highlights in the older book:
We must first act on our astral body, make it autonomous […] and teach it to live without depending on the body. When the astral body is perfectly mastered, then consciousness can leave the physical body and come to inherit its etheric double. […]
The man […] who really lives in his astral body, never dies.
These are the best instructions I’ve ever seen anywhere:
The astral plane is made of thoughts. When you think of a place or an object, a small part of your essence is in contact with it. When you think strongly enough of a place or object to be able to recreate it or feel it through the imagination, more of your essence is in contact with it. You then experience a phenomenon of bilocation, the act of existing in two places at the same time. If you think about this […] enough to lose consciousness of your physical body, you are in a total out of body experience.
[…]
Imagine yourself in the place where you would like to be. […] On the astral plane, the distance does not exist.
[…]
Focus on a particular element […]. Observe it under different angles […]. Imagine your hands touching the object […]. Feel the ground under your feet. […]
You have succeeded. You are out of the body.
One thing I found helpful with this is to smell the air at the new place. Lean your back against something and feel that. In short, involve as many astral senses as possible.
I want to try summarising my current thoughts on the afterlife.
After talking to many people and reading lots of texts, it seems that we don’t really know what will happen. Reincarnation does seem to happen, but we don’t quite know the rules. Also, there does seem to be a life between reincarnations, but we don’t really know how it is.
Many folks claim to know, e.g. from past life regressions and near death experiences, but they don’t quite say the same things. Also, who knows – those experiences might simply be intense dreams or whatever. Many views state that you will see what you expect to see after death, or that your afterlife follows the law of attraction, and so will correspond to what you did in this life.
Obviously, astral projection is possible, but it’s not clear that you can keep your astral body at the death of the physical. Nor is it clear that you’ll loose your astral body at the death of the physical and not go to some afterlife-realm instead.
In light of these uncertainties, I think it all falls back to following one’s True Will, one’s Fulfilment (which for me means practicing magick ).
Insofar as that is our task from the Divine, following it should also ensure a good afterlife. If on the other hand there are some other rules in play, karmic retribution or whatever, I don’t know those and will thus still choose Fulfilment.
(I’m really looking forward to read your part of the Deification Spellbook soon 
)