Greetings all,
It so happens, I was just reading through Eliphas Levi’s ‘Dogme Et Ritual De La Haute Magie’, and this thread did come to mind.
Consequently, the section on Necromancy begins with a Kabblistic approach to the Soul; which, perhaps biased as I am, has also been my experience regarding the process of premortem incarnation{birth} to existential reality.
Here is the section for your perusal:
“Souls grow and multiply in heaven, as bodies do upon earth. Immaculate souls are the daughters of the kisses and angels. Nothing can enter heaven save that which comes from heaven. Hence, after death, the divine spirit which animated man ascends by itself above and leaves two corpses below, one upon earth, the other in the atmosphere; one terrestrial and elementary, the other aerial and sidereal, one already inert, the other still animated by the universal movement of the soul of the world, yet destined to die slowly, absorbed by the astral forces which produced it. The terrestrial body is visible; the other is unseen by the eyes of earthly and living bodies, nor can it be beheld except by the application of the astral light to the translucid, which conveys its impressions to the nervous system and thus influences the organ of sight, so that it perceives the forms which are preserved and the words which are written in the book of vital light.”
The thing to know about literature such as this, is to look to the definition of the words; ‘Heaven’, as understood to the ancients, was the ‘heavens’, the Starry bodies you see in the night sky; Thus, the ‘higher self’, or immortal soul, descends from ‘the heavens’, or the Stars.
In Kaballah, this is what is the Tiphareth, perhaps better known as your personal higher-self, or to some groups the Holy Guardian Angel, which can be viewed as a Mini-Nova, or Star.
After death, according to the Kabbalists, the Higher Self(GodSoul) ascends back to whence it came{Your personal Star}, a much higher vibratory realm unseen to the human eye{in real time}, presumably to work out the terms of a new incarnation, and to process what it has just learned from it’s latest manifestation.
In so-doing, it leaves behind two ethereal bodies, one that corresponds to the elements of nature (Earth, Wind, Fire, Air), and one that corresponds to the sidereal element of light.
Thus; the dead leave behind two parts:
The first being the ‘shade’ of the earth, which is pure ego; it being (the souls) inherent response to the outside world, it’s ‘lower nature’ expressed; this will die as nature evolves, as all shades ultimately fade. This is the form of the dead that the uninitiated report as in ghost sightings, etc.
The second nature being the sidereal, it’s light body, which is only viewable as an astral impression by the initiate, as all acts are ultimately kept in the cosmic book of records, or in Kaballah known as Hod, in other cultures the Akashic Records; this is the ethereal body that is summoned by the conjurer, if he would so-choose.
So, from this perspective, you never truly ‘die’, your greater being ascends to bigger and better things, while you leave behind a record here on earth.
Hope this helped some.
