"Astral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one way," she said, half aloud, and crossing the room she turned down the astral lamp which was burning brightly ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... handling a jewel, conjured up, it would seem with marvellous exactness, the games and processions of ancient Greece, as though the objects permanently retained the recollection or rediscovered the "astral negatives" of all the events which they once witnessed. But it will be understood that, in such cases, any effective control is, so to speak, impossible and that the part played by telepathy cannot be decided. It is ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... mysticetus does the same. Not one of them gave a thought to Wenus as a source of danger, or thought of it only to dismiss the idea of active rivalry upon it as impossible or improbable. Yet across the gulf of space astral women, with eyes that are to the eyes of English women as diamonds are to boot-buttons, astral women, with hearts vast and warm and sympathetic, were regarding Butterick's with envy, Peter Robinson's with jealousy, and Whiteley's with insatiable yearning, and slowly and surely ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... kunmeti. Assuage dolcxigi. Assume supozi. Assurance, self memfido. Assure certigi. Assure (life etc.) asekuri. Asterisk steleto. Asthma malfacila spirado. Astonish mirigi. Astonished, to be miri. Astonishing mira. Astonishment miro. Astound miregi. Astral astra. Astray, to go erarigxi. Astringent kuntira. Astrologer astrologiisto. Astrology astrologio. Astronomer astronomiisto. Astronomy astronomio. Astute ruza. Asunder aparte. Asylum rifugxejo. At ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... night, there was a phosphorescent and electrical display that could never be forgotten. The sultry air was surcharged with the magic fluid, which made itself evident in most unexpected ways and places. Points of dull iron about the steamer would suddenly break into a soft glow, like an astral lamp silently lighted by unseen hands; certain fabrics crackled fiercely at the touch, and soft waves of light flitted over exposed surfaces, only half perceived till gone. The slow moving waves of the sea glowed and sparkled in phosphorescent ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... of his poetry are intense concentration, a vivid power of impressionism, and a strong leaning in the direction of the occult. Indeed, one of his best-known poems, "The Return to the Mountains", makes mention of the projection of the astral body through space during sleep. Many of his poems leave us with a strange sense of horror which is suggested rather than revealed. It is always some combination of effects which produces this result, and ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... is the wheel of Time—i.e., measured according to the solar, lunar and astral revolutions. The importance of Ashtavakra's reply is this: May the meritorious deeds performed at proper times, during the revolution of this wheel of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... man in overalls and laced boots. He was lean and quick-moving. As he raised his head, and his spectacles flashed, Claire caught Milt's arm and gasped, "Oh, my dear, I'm in a beautiful state of nerves. For a moment I thought that was Jeff Saxton. I bet it is his astral body!" ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... reigned supreme. The very flames danced and capered in the polished grate. A pair of prim candles, that had been staring at the astral lamp, began to wink at other candles far away in the mirrors. There was a long bell-rope suspended from the ceiling in the corner, made of glass beads, netted over a cord nearly as thick as your wrist. ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... my own psychic fitness for the work in which I was engaged, I endeavoured to keep my mind so poised as to readily offer a mark for any astral disturbance that might be about. The result showed that it had offered just such a mark. Our experiment succeeded completely. The two coins ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... light," said Lucy Ann calmly. "You be takin' off your things, an' se' down." She began lighting the tall astral lamp on the table, and its prisms danced and swung. Lucy Ann's delicate hand did not tremble; and when the flame burned up through the shining chimney, more than one started, at seeing how exactly she resembled grandma, in the days ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... letter first, the last four or five sentences would have meant little for me. As it was, I would have given a month out of my future for the gift of an astral body which could go this minute to the ball at the Ghezireh Palace. I was lost in the ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... he had been bewitched! Traitors found excuse for their treason in the assertion that they had been deluded by false predictions or ensnared by magic;[150] princes were governed in their political movements by astral calculations;[151] a grave minister details with complacency, although without comment, various anecdotes of the operation of the occult sciences,[152] and even makes them a study; while a European monarch, strong in the love of his people and his own bravery, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... But Barney's astral jokes were brought to a period by the sharp note of the bugle, as Colonel Oswald, very important under the eye of so many big-wigs, magnificently ordered the march. The regiment passed up the steep hill, out Fourteenth Street—then ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... the astral body of man may be denied or ridiculed, there is no doubt that an unusually vivid thought-presentment of a friend frequently precedes the appearance of that friend in the flesh, and it is certain that ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... him. He came to have a great affection for me, and I took to dropping in at his house at all times of the day, morning, noon or evening. His heart was as large as his body, and a halo of fancy used to surround him like a poetic astral body which seemed to be his truer image. He was always full of true artistic joy, and whenever I have been to him I have breathed in my share of it. Often have I come upon him in his little room on the third storey, in the heat of noonday, sprawling on the cool ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... unfortunately too well grounded to allow a single reasonable doubt to be expressed regarding the Projectile's fate. It was to gravitate for ever around the Moon—a sub-satellite. It was a new born individual in the astral universe, a microcosm, a little world in itself, containing, however, only three inhabitants and even these destined to perish pretty soon for want of air. Our travellers, therefore, had no particular reason for rejoicing over the new destiny reserved for the Projectile in obedience ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... a familiarity generated of the hotel arts he did understand even better than Shirley or Helene. He had seen many other young millionaires and golden-haired actresses. Shirley looked across the table into the astral blue of those gorgeous eyes. Certain unbidden, foolish words strove to liberate themselves from his ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Their garnishing was apt to assist this impression. Large-patterned carpets, which always look discontented in little rooms, haircloth furniture, black and shiny as beetles' wing cases, and centre-tables, with a sullen oil-lamp of the kind called astral by our imaginative ancestors, in the centre,—these things were inevitable. In set piles round the lamp was ranged the current literature of the day, in the form of Temperance Documents, unbound numbers of one of the ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cashier of the local trust has compromised an astral body, and has squandered on her all our funds, including a lot of first mortgages on Nirvana. I suppose he's been dabbling in futures and is short in his accounts. I sha'n't ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... advantage he possessed of signalizing his prowess, that brilliant exploit which he performed in saving you, was nothing but the mere effect of being happy enough to please you, the secret power of a wonderful astral influence which causes the object you love to become famed. Thus all my efforts will be in vain. I am leading an army against your haughty tyrants; but I fulfil this noble duty trembling, because I am ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... Enlil ruled 33 stars, Anu 23 stars, and Ea 15 stars. They also possessed lists of the fixed stars, and drew up tables of the times of their heliacal risings. Such lists were probably based upon very ancient documents, and prove that the astral element in Babylonian religion was ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... time of his boyhood to that of his father and Old Crow. There was the center table with the album and three red volumes of Keepsakes and Garlands, a green worsted mat, hopefully designed to imitate moss, and on the depression in its center the astral lamp. On the wall opposite were pictures of Tenney's father and mother, painful enlargements from stiff photographs, and on the neighboring wall a glazed framing of wax flowers and a hair wreath. The furniture was black ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... the passing motor, at Kennicott and the girl beside him. In that fog world of transference of emotion Vida had no normal jealousy but a conviction that, since through Carol she had received Kennicott's love, then Carol was a part of her, an astral self, a heightened and more beloved self. She was glad of the girl's charm, of the smooth black hair, the airy head and young shoulders. But she was suddenly angry. Carol glanced at her for a quarter-second, but looked past her, at an old roadside barn. If she had made the great sacrifice, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... a Medium.' He found that a current, of a certain number of vibrations, in vacuo, 'insulated' the medium. It is difficult to suggest an explanation non-technically, and if you are really interested you should read Carder's lecture on 'Astral Vibrations Compared with Matero-involuted Vibrations ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... and kissed her mother's pink cheek. "Then he must have an astral body," said she, "since one or the other has been with me all day; and it was to him—or his Doppelgaenger—that you offered your purse to make up for accusing him ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... creature seemed to have as many hands as Briareus, all reaching for things they wanted, or gesticulating and brandishing money, or snatching for change. If each distracted girl had had half a dozen highly trained astral bodies with which to serve these terrible ladies, it would not have been enough. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... where covered with books. A soft and summery atmosphere, the warmth of which emanated from concealed furnaces, neutralized the chill of an autumnal night, and the mellow chiaro-oscuro of a vast astral diffused its lunar ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... sought to know, whether his solar Majesty had yet made a province of the moon; whether the Astral hosts were of much account as territories, or mere Motoos, as the little tufts of verdure are denominated, here and there clinging to Mardi's circle reef; whether the people in the sun vilified, him (Bello) as they did in Mardi; and what they thought of an ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... abstractions like Time and Space could fill with emptiness the place where she now sat and smiled. In some mystical way eternity had breathed upon this hour and given it immortality. It had been suddenly touched with a wand into an enchanted permanence. Theosophists tell of an astral light, where every moment of time endures in strange paintings upon space. Isabel and Theophil and Jenny were sitting together in ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... ones in London, falling in love like the rest! But no! Love was a ribald and voluptuous word to use in such a matter as this. It was generally felt that the Reverend Archibald Jones and Miss Chetwynd the elder would lift marriage to what would now be termed an astral plane. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the rise in railway fares (At which no patriot cavils) Has chained us elders to our chairs And circumscribed our travels, I love to play the festive game Of astral gravitation To any neighbourhood whose name Is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... new book, pronounced by the papers "thrillingly interesting," and "intensely exciting;" he has slept during a political speech, reported as one continued stream of enchaining eloquence, delivered amid thunders of applause; and now, under the blaze of astral lamps, and pink and green candles, while the musicians were tuning their fiddles, and producing all sorts of discordant sounds, he was dozing as quietly as if in his own rocking-chair. Uncle Dozie seldom talked when he could help it; the chief business and pleasure of his life consisted in superintending ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... anguish than any rictus of pain. He stood just as he came into sight, on turning the corner of the house, with the many colors of the rose-bed at his left hand. It was exactly like this, she had always imagined, that disembodied spirits or astral forms made their ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... was a trick. The car was empty to your eyes, but crowded to mine with the astral bodies of the members of the Boston ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... "Arrivals." Mark Twain's Phantom Lady. Phantom Dogcart. Influence of Expectant Attention. Goethe. Shelley. The Wraith of the Czarina. Queen Elizabeth's Wraith. Second Sight. Case at Ballachulish. Experiments in sending Wraiths. An "Astral Body". Evidence discussed. Miss Russell's Case. "Spirits of the Dying." Maori Examples. Theory of Chance Coincidence. In Tavistock Place. The Wynyard Wraith. Lord Brougham's Wraith Story. Lord Brougham's Logic. The Dying ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... "will have one of my friends, Professor Strombergk, or Mrs. Marsh, or my wife, on each side of him. If there should be any attempt to rush the cabinet, we must get there first. I will be outside the cabinet working the rappings, the floating music, and the astral bodies." At the sight of the expression these words brought to the face of Gaylor, Vance permitted himself the shadow of a smile. "I can take care of myself," he went on, "but remember—Vera must not be caught outside ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... place, it must be noticed that the religion was to a certain extent astral. The heaven itself, the sun, the moon, and the five planets, have each their representative in the Chaldaean Pantheon among the chief objects of worship. At the same time it is to be observed that the astral element ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... Gaubertin's house was decorated with the unmeaning commonplaces of modern luxury. Rich papers with gold borders, bronze chandeliers, mahogany furniture of a new pattern, astral lamps, round tables with marble tops, white china with gilt lines for dessert, red morocco chairs and mezzo-tint engravings in the dining-room, and blue cashmere furniture in the salon,—all details of a chilling and perfectly unmeaning character, but which to the eyes of Ville-aux-Fayes seemed ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... item was a yowl in the garden! Everybody rushed out—Mrs. Triangle in her excitement, lest something had happened to "baby," and Nora, the girl, struck the centre-table, upset the "Astral," and not only demolished that ancient piece of furniture, but spilled enough thick oil over the gilt-edged literature, table-cloth, and carpet, to make a barrel of ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... her narrow kitchen walls Stretched away into stately halls; The weary wheel to a spinnet turned, The tallow candle an astral burned; A manly form at her side she saw, And joy was duty and ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Dawson chambers. Isis Unveiled. Their Pali book we tried to pawn. Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones an Aztec logos, functioning on astral levels, their oversoul, mahamahatma. The faithful hermetists await the light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout him. Louis H. Victory. T. Caulfield Irwin. Lotus ladies tend them i'the eyes, their pineal glands aglow. Filled with his god, he thrones, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... some other, or a return from one like the present—universal space occupied with gasiform matter. This, however, was of irregular constitution, so that gravitation caused it to break up and gather into patches, producing at once the relative localities of astral and solar systems, and the movements which they have since observed, in themselves and with regard to each other—from the daily spinning of single bodies on their own axes, to the mazy dances of vast families of orbs, which come to periods ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... for two weeks over this luxury, which seemed unparalleled; but a few months later the community was proud of it, and several rich manufacturers restored their houses and set up fine salons. Modern furniture came into the town, and astral ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... the field is situated which the emperor, in accordance with ancient custom, sows every spring. Here, too, is to be found the "Temple of the Earth," to which the sovereign resorts at the summer solstice, to acknowledge the astral power which lightens the world, and to give ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... hung with golden-colored damask; the furniture was all of the same hue; with a carpet of superb flowers; and vases of living flowers standing everywhere; and a chandelier of diamonds (as to indefatigable and vivid shining), and candlesticks of the same,—not the long prisms like those on Mary's astral, but ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Mrs. Wharton's recollections of the grotesque little stranger. "I never saw anything so like the light of an astral lamp as those beautiful large eyes of hers," said she. "I began to love the odd little thing; and if she had stayed much longer, I should have been very loath to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... and by the force of a well-trained mind and will; some of them were what she would describe as "psychological tricks," the creation of images by force of imagination, and in pressing them on others as a "collective hallucination"; others, such as the moving of solid articles, either by an astral hand projected to draw them towards her, or by using an Elemental; others by reading in the Astral Light, and so on. But the proof of the reality of her mission from those whom she spoke of as Masters lay not in these comparatively trivial physical and mental phenomena, but in the splendour ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... seems spheres removed from the philosophy of 'The Will and the Idea,' What a wonderful woman Madame Blavatsky must be. I can't say I follow her, for she is up in the clouds nearly all the time, and I haven't as yet developed an astral body. Shall I send you on her book? It is fascinating.... I am becoming quite a fluent orator. One soon gets into the way of it. The horrible thing is that you catch yourself saying things to lead up to 'Cheers' instead of sticking to the plain ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... thus giving to man a complete history of His works and will, for man's enlightenment, so that he, too, may cooperate intelligently with his God in every way that intelligence wills to manifest. Prehistoric history is not blotted out from Nature's laboratory. The Astral Book of Karmic evolution will one day reveal its hidden treasures to a waiting world in such a manner as to surprise and enlighten mankind as the recording angels give up those gems of truth they have so jealously guarded for untold cycles of time, simply because ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... of consciousness? Are the separate heavenly bodies, to start with, bearers of a unified inner life? Are the stars, is the earth an animated being? The poets speak of the earth-spirit; is that more than a poetic metaphor? The Greek philosophers, among them Plato and Aristotle, speak of astral spirits; is that more than the last reflection of a ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... invented an excuse to call, some detail of work which, more easily than not, could have waited until the next day. He was not only using the detail of work as a means to visit Mary but as an excuse to escape a parlour lecture on "What astral vibrations does your given name bring you?" by a pale-faced young woman. The pale-faced young woman boasted of an advanced soul and was making a snug bank account from the rich set in undertaking occult analyses of their names by which to decide whether or not the accompanying ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... almost vulgar manner of speech was in reality foreign to both Tutt and Miss Wiggin and it was born of the instant, due doubtless to some peculiar juxtaposition of astral bodies in Cupid's horoscope unknown to them, but which none the less had its influence. Strange things happen on the eve of St. Agnes and on Midsummer ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... of observation must be truly wonderful—you manage to exercise it at so great a distance, or perhaps you send out your astral body to do the observing, which must be the reason ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... it; for the work of Reginald Scott is a compilation of the absurd and superstitious ideas concerning witches so generally entertained at the time, and the pretended conclusion is a serious treatise on the various means of conjuring astral spirits. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to be able to keep your husband's material body in the house evenings, when his astral body keeps wandering off to the club, every ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... to believe that Eustace was ever at any pains to conceal the effects of this astral phenomenon from his family, for its members were very quickly excited. If in that vale the woman-call could be heard by ears attuned to its haunting cadences, so also did the frightened mother-call echo its equally primitive note, accompanied by the less ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Egyptian religion the being Man is composed of four parts: the body, the double or astral shape (ka), the soul (bi), and the spark of life sprung ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... which may be, and often has been, described as a continuous creation, and yet has no tendency to destroy, or even to diminish, the evidence of a presiding Intelligence in Nature, so no good reason can be assigned why it might not also have been adopted in the production of planets and astral systems, if so it had seemed good to Supreme Wisdom. If this method was adopted for the propagation of plants and animals, no reason can be given why it might not also have been adopted for the production ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... occasions, I must needs be held responsible for the act. Evidently the American police credit me with occult powers. I did not know Averbuch; in fact, had never before heard his name, and the only way I could have possibly "conspired" with him was in my astral body. But, then, the police are not concerned with logic or justice. What they seek is a target, to mask their absolute ignorance of the cause, of the psychology of a political act. Was Averbuch an Anarchist? ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... those birds whiter than snow and more brilliant than stars," said then Cuculain, "which are before us upon the plain, as if Heaven with its astral lights and splendour ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... heaven, this day, Libertad, from the conqueress' field return'd, I mark the new aureola around your head, No more of soft astral, but dazzling and fierce, With war's flames and the lambent lightnings playing, And your port immovable where you stand, With still the inextinguishable glance and the clinch'd and lifted fist, And your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the scorner utterly crush'd beneath you, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... integument seems to drop away, and the spirit ranges at will among the tranquil clouds. This way Nirvana nearest lies. Earth no longer obtrudes herself; possibly somewhere a thousand miles or so below him the thing still "spins like a fretful midge.'' The Loafer knows not nor cares. His is now an astral body, and through golden spaces of imagination his soul is winging her untrammelled flight. And there he really might remain for ever, but that his vagrom spirit is called back to earth by a gentle but resistless, very human summons, — a gradual, ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... Sub-Consciousness, I will explain you Clairvoyance (that is, not the mere seeing of pictures, which is a phenomenon akin to dreaming, but the vision of other people's Sub-Consciousnesses), ghosts, witchcraft, possession, wraiths, Mahatmas, astral bodies, etc., etc. But it is rather absurd to call in a new mystery to explain what may not even be facts. And so, till I am convinced either of ghosts or of telepathy, I must accord an impartial incredulousness to both. Credat Christianus, F. W. Myers or W. T. Stead! ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... multiplicity of myths, developed in brilliant anthropomorphic groups in different theologies, gradually becoming more simple as time went on, then uniting in the vague primitive personification of the winds, the storms, the sun, the dawn; in short, of astral and ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... feeble lamp, which seemed to have husbanded all its strength for this critical moment, could disclose to him anything of the personal appearance of his relative. At this moment the twinkling light, like a star at dawn, went out; and Mrs. Manlius, rushing off, reappeared with an astral, which turned the somewhat gloomy aspect of affairs into cheerful light. Perhaps it was symbolic of a sunrise upon the world which enclosed Nicholas and his aunt. Nicholas looked at Mrs. Starkey, who was indeed flurried, and saw a pinched and meagre woman, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Madame's table, with its basket of chenilles, stood in the same place, and by it was her enamelled snuffbox. Rosa recognized a few articles that had been purchased at the auction of her father's furniture;—his arm-chair, and the astral lamp by which he used to sit to read his newspaper; a sewing-chair that was her mother's; and one of Flora's embroidered slippers, hung up for a watch-case. With these memories floating before her drowsy eyes, she fell asleep, and slept for ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... effort to enumerate a tithe of the articles decorated with poetical texts. Probably my readers know of those social gatherings at which it is the custom to compose verses, and to suspend the compositions to blossoming frees,— also of the Tanabata festival in honor of certain astral gods, when poems inscribed on strips of colored paper, and attached to thin bamboos, are to be seen even by the roadside,—all fluttering in the wind like so many tiny flags.... Perhaps you might find your way to some Japanese hamlet ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... library floor. If the Otis family did not want it, they clearly did not deserve it. They were evidently people on a low, material plane of existence, and quite incapable of appreciating the symbolic value of sensuous phenomena. The question of phantasmic apparitions, and the development of astral bodies, was of course quite a different matter, and really not under his control. It was his solemn duty to appear in the corridor once a week, and to gibber from the large oriel window on the first and third ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... gave us lectures in drawing-rooms on Theosophy. He expatiated on the wonders performed by Madame Blavatsky with the aid of certain "Mahatmas," who by secret knowledge, had gained powers of prolonged existence, and of appearing in their "astral" forms at vast distances from their ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... had imagined), were still true (as you were to imagine): here was an Artist who could burn you up an old Church, root and branch; and then as the Alchemists professed to do with organic substances in general, distil you an "Astral Spirit" from the ashes, which was the very image of the old burnt article, its air-drawn counterpart,—this you still had, or might get, and draw uses from, if you could. Wait till the Book on the Logos were done;—alas, till your own terrene eyes, blind with conceit and the dust ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... evening we are gathered together beneath our luminous star, in the Study, for we have a large hanging astral lamp, which beautifully illumines the room, with its walls of pale yellow paper, its Holy Mother over the fireplace, and pleasant books, and its pretty bronze vase, on one of the secretaries, filled with ferns. Except once Mr. Emerson, no one hunts us out in the evening. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... years—in fact ever since my first acquaintance with these "occult" matters whereinto I am now such a veteran investigator—my great wish has been to become practically acquainted with some Professor of Astral Science. One friend, indeed, I had who had devoted a long lifetime to this and kindred subjects, and of whom I shall have to speak anon; but he had never utilized his knowledge so as to become the guide, philosopher, and friend of ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... of the hand of a living person to record the thoughts of another who has lost the physical body—is perhaps one of the least objectionable ways in which communications have come from the astral world, and to it we are indebted for some useful books with interesting accounts of the life in the unseen regions. Here, of course, as elsewhere, discrimination must be used, for the wise and foolish, the useful and ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... of the alternatives happened did not appear to him to matter seriously. The whole affair was fantastic; it was unreal, in addition to being silly. But, real or unreal, he would finish it. If he was a phantom and Kingswood a mirage, the phantom would reach the mirage or sink senseless into astral mud. He had Colonel Hullocher in mind, and, quite illogically, he envisaged the Colonel as a reality. Often he had heard of the ways of the Army, and had scarcely credited the tales told and printed. Well, he now credited them. Was it ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... is in the heavens. The disappearance of the planet has been combined with the nature-myth of the decay of vegetation. As the evening star, Venus dips down into the west, to reappear after a long interval in the east. The astral character of Ishtar dominates the latter half of the story in its present form. It is not the goddess of love and fertility nor the goddess of war who is rescued from her prison by Ea, but the planet Ishtar. Shamash ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... Wonderland. The rain runs from his stringy, slate-colored hair. He approaches the high shelves, thrusts the silver spectacles farther down on his nose. In front of him a curious row of literary gargoyles—"The Astral Light," "What and Where Is God?", "Man" by Dohony of Texas, "The Star ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... relationship, are caught up by someone else who is just able, however unconscious of the method he uses—to range Nature's memory under favourable conditions, a little beyond the area with which he him self is in normal relationship. Such a person has begun, however slightly, to exercise the faculty of astral clairvoyance. That term may be conveniently used to denote the kind of clairvoyance I am now endeavouring to elucidate, the kind which, in some of its more magnificent developments, has been employed to carry out the investigations on the basis of which ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... the interior of the house seem to be in perfectly good taste, though the heavy old beams and high wainscoting of the walls speak of ages gone by. But so it is. The cheerful paper-hangings have the air of belonging to the old walls; and such modernisms as astral lamps, card-tables, gilded Cologne-bottles, silver taper-stands, and bronze and alabaster flower-vases, do not seem at all impertinent. It is thus that an aged man may keep his heart warm for new things and new friends, and often furnish himself anew with ideas; though it would not be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... exactly what I do mean," she said. "It's a sort of power that grows—and oh, Bill, I'd do anything in the world to get rid of it! But this woman whom I saw standing by Lionel Varick in the porch was not a spirit. She was an astral body; that is, she was alive somewhere else: it was her thoughts—her vengeful, malicious thoughts—which brought ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... it that our subliminal ego, to use the jargon of the new psychology, or our astral, in the terms of the new theology, can learn and convey to the mind that which our own known senses are unable to apprehend? But that is too long a side track for us ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the way into a comfortable sitting room, and his rough visitor followed him. By the light of an astral lamp Squire Davenport looked ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... astral sluice-gate was raised; a dreadful sense of foreboding for the first time flooded my mind. Whilst the girl had stood before me it had been different—the mysterious charm of her personality had swamped all else. But now, ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... rite of burying Ram Spudd alive in the garden of the Rasselyer-Brown residence and leaving him there in a state of Stoj, or Suspended Inanition, for eight days. But this project was abandoned, owing to some doubt, apparently, in the mind of Mr. Ram Spudd as to his astral fitness for the high state of Stoj necessitated ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... manuscript), she could contrive to decipher by a little assistance from her memory, in recalling the signs and hieroglyphics which her father had often explained to her, and, indeed, caused her to copy out for him in his calculations. Always possessing an untaxed and unquestioned belief in the astral powers, she now took some interest in reading of their mysteries. Her father, secretly, perhaps, hoping to bequeath his name to the gratitude of some future Hermes, had in his manuscripts reduced into a system many scattered theories of others, ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... either from a dream or a wandering reverie. I was not unwilling to have more light in the apartment, and presently had lighted an astral lamp that stood on a table.—He pointed to a portrait hanging against the wall.—Look at her,—he said,—look at her! Wasn't that a pretty neck to slip ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the Witches Body, has Carnal Copulation, or that Witches are turned into Cats, Dogs, raise Tempests, or the like, is utterly denied and disproved. Wherein also is handled, the Existence of Angels and Spirits, the truth of Apparitions, the Nature of Astral and Sydereal Spirits, the force of Charms and Philters; with other abstruse matters. By John Webster, Practitioner in Physic. Falsae etenim opiniones Hominum praeoccupantes, non solum surdos, sed et caecos faciunt, ita ut videre nequeant, quae aliis perspicua apparent. Galen, lib. 8. de Comp. ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... the section in which figured "No. 548. Miss F. Fitzroy's 'Gamble,' grey mare; 4 years, by Grey Dawn," and opposite them was stall No. 548. In it stood the Connemara filly, or rather something that might have been her astral body. A more spectral, deplorable object could hardly be imagined. Her hind quarters had fallen in, her hips were standing out; her ribs were like the bars of a grate; her head, hung low before her, was turned so that one frightened eye scanned the passers-by, and ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... slightest attention to his hypothesis or made even a passing reference to his memoir.[317] Fantastic and far-fetched though it may seem at first sight (though surely not more so than the strictly orthodox solar theory advocated by Mr. Cook or Mrs. Nuttall's astral speculations) Houssay's suggestion offers an explanation of some of the salient attributes of the swastika on which the alternative hypotheses shed little or ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... grotesques—I might almost say entirely in goblins. On Christmas Eve one may talk about ghosts so long as they are turnip ghosts. But one would not be allowed (I hope, in any decent family) to talk on Christmas Eve about astral bodies. The boar's head of old Yule-time was as grotesque as the donkey's head of Bottom the Weaver. But there is only one set of goblins quite wild enough to express the wild goodwill of Christmas. Those goblins are the characters ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... brilliant brunette, but here was another brunette who eclipsed her in her own splendid style of beauty as an astral lamp outshines a candle. Cleopatra, Thais, Aspasia, or any other world-renowned siren who had governed kingdoms through kings' passions, might have been just such a ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... wheresoe'er through the wondrous space My soul wings its noiseless flight, On their astral rounds Float divinest sounds, Unseen, save by spirit-sight, Obeying some wise, eternal law, As fixed as ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... supernatural agencies had become slightly modified in this country at least, giants and dragons having given way to fairies, brownies, elves, witches, etc. The Rev. Mr. Kirk, of Aberfeldy, published a work descriptive of these supernatural beings. He says they are a kind of astral spirits between angels and humanity, being like men and women in appearance, and similar in many of their habits; some of them, however, are double. They marry and have children, for which they keep nurses; have deaths and burials amongst them, and they can make themselves visible or ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... relatively later. The idea which has long prevailed that Baal was properly a sky-god affords no explanation of the local character of the many baals; on the other hand, on the theory of a higher development where the gods become heavenly or astral beings, the fact that ruder conceptions of nature were still retained (often in the unofficial but more popular forms ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... he said, "facing the west. Extend your arms to the heavens and concentrate your gaze upon that big star up yonder. Go ahead, doctor," he urged, as Hinman hesitated. "We're trying to persuade an astral visitor to pay us a call, and it ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... Corps in a general order published to specially commend it. Naturally his spirit rose to meet these expanding liberties of achievement. He looked for further promotion—for eminence. In a vague glimmer, growing ever stronger and clearer, he could see himself in the astral splendor of the official stars of a major-general—for in the far day of the anticipated success of the Confederacy he looked to be an officer of ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... not yet done with him. That cautious monarch had to consult a counsellor of a different stamp from Oliver le Diable, who was supposed to derive his skill from the superior and astral intelligences, as men, judging from their fruits, were apt to think the counsels of Oliver sprang from ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Theosophical Society, with all its absurdities of levitation and the astral body, has been compelled to bear some witness to Jesus Christ. He is "the light that lighteth every man," and he has given even to this system some elements of truth. We do not hesitate to recognize the truth that Buddha and Confucius, taught, and to regard ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... have a competent estate, and only use the knowledge I possess for the benefit of those in whom I feel an interest.' The laird bowed in respect and gratitude, and the stranger was accommodated with an apartment which commanded an ample view of the astral regions. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... some meaning in his queerness. "Hush your nonsense!" she said, good-naturedly, the astral of a troubled smile appearing. "You ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... the attack, for, besides drugs, there are certain violent emotions, certain moods of the soul, certain spiritual fevers, if I may so call them, which directly open the inner being to a cognisance of this astral region I have mentioned. In your case it happened to be a peculiarly potent drug ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... OILS, the Astral Oil is perfectly pure and free from all adulterations of any kind. It emits no offensive smell while burning, gives a soft and brillant light, and can be used with as little danger as gas. Chemists pronounce it the best and safest Illuminating ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... are amongst us many who possess an astral trunk—that is to say, behind the ear a long tube which ascends from the hair to the planets, and permits us to converse with the spirits of Saturn. Intangible things are not less real, and from the earth to the stars, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... is only one of him in each set of envelopes, and sometimes the Theosophist has to revise his ideas about man when he begins this practical line. Theosophy quite usefully and rightly, for the understanding of the human constitution, divides man into many parts and pieces. We talk of physical, astral, mental, etc. Or we talk about Sthula-sarira, Sukshma-sarira, Karana-sarira, and so on. Sometimes we divide man into Anna-maya-kosa, Prana-maya-kosa, Mano-maya-kosa, etc. We divide man into so many pieces in order to study ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... conditions of different parts with respect to the frequency of the stars. The result has been a conviction that, as the planets are parts of solar systems, so are solar systems parts of what may be called astral systems—that is, systems composed of a multitude of stars, bearing a certain relation to each other. The astral system to which we belong, is conceived to be of an oblong, flattish form, with a space wholly or comparatively vacant in the centre, ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... 'the Brazilian! He has kept his word. And he is just as courteous and respectful as ever!' I open the door for you, prepare a fine place for you on the bench, so that you may warm your tropical astral body, and give you the fur robe to wrap your poor spiritual feet in. Then you shall have coffee and cigarettes and fruit-cakes and a glass of genuine cherry brandy—anything you want! Then we will talk Portuguese, long for the Brazilian sun, and sing, I ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... wrong by three hours, which would, of course, completely alter the aspect of the heavenly bodies, and cause the best of astrologers to err. Veronica Terry talked darkly of experiences in the psychic world, of astral bodies, etheric doubles, elemental entities, and nature spirits. She went to sleep at night with her thumbs and big toes crossed, in the hope of bringing back the adventures of her dreams into her waking consciousness. She was a little hazy on the subject, but yearned ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... deep, has a tendency to repair the loss and reunite; a piece of lost skin is very soon replaced by another. Hence, if a man, partially flayed alive, may sometimes survive and be covered with a new skin, so our astral, vital body—the fourth of the seven (having attracted and assimilated to itself the second) and which is so much more ethereal than the physical one—may be made to harden its particles to the atmospheric changes. The whole secret is to succeed in evolving it out, and separating ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... glanced at the astral chronometer over his head. The boys crowded around as the Solar Guard captain quickly computed Tom's score. "Nine minutes, fifty-one seconds, and two corrections," he announced, unable to keep the pride ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... indeed I discovered much that was worldly new to me), I returned to the good old ghost-haunted paths trodden by my ancestors, to dryads and elves and voices from the stars, and the archaeus formed by the astral spirit (not the modern Blavatsky affair, by-the-bye), which entyped all things . . . and so went elving and dreaming on 'mid ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... "one of nature's secrets not yet discovered by conventional Western science. It was known to the Egyptian priesthood, of course; hence the Vocal Memnon. It was known to Madame Blavatsky, who employed an 'astral bell'; and it is known ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... am aware that these things are but trifles to the Theosophists and Esoteric Buddhists, who profess to project their astral bodies, and play many other hocus pocus tricks of transmitting voices and articles to immense distances. They may therefore be able to explain these phenomena, I cannot; still I have the belief that there is some spirit-force which can ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... statuette of lion, or stag, or Indian hunter—and a very choice statuette too—appropriate for the rosewood or marble bracket of parlor or library; never the animal itself, or the hunter himself. Indeed, who wants the real animal or hunter? What would that do amid astral and bric-a-brac and tapestry, and ladies and gentlemen talking in subdued tones of Browning and Longfellow and art? The least suspicion of such actual bull, or Indian, or of Nature carrying out ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Cesario really had had any past astral experience, he made a good job of firebugging on this forest. We waited around for a while, far enough back for the heat to be just comfortable and pleasant, until we were sure that it was burning well on both sides of the frozen stream. It even made the double ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... sort of spiritual second self, a sort of astral residuum left behind by a personality of this kind, which to certain natures becomes more sacred and suggestive than any of those tedious speculations or literary theories about ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Titanic "potential" energy, the infinitesimal atomic engines, the "kinetic" force, the chemical motors, the subtle intangible magnetic currents, whereby in the thundering, hissing, whirling laboratory of Nature, nebulae grow into astral and solar systems; the prophetic floral forms of crystals become, after disintegration, instinct with organic vegetable germs,—and the Sphinx Life—blur-eyed—deaf, blind, sets forth on her slow evolutionary journey through the wastes of aeons; mounting finally into ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... astronomy, it was a source of constant delight. What is more, it provided a link of common interest that soon ripened into friendship between himself and his odd old tutor, who had been obliged hitherto to pursue his astral researches in solitude, since to Madame and to Juliette these did not appeal. Night by night, especially after the winter snows began to fall, they would sit by the stove in the little observatory, gazing at the stars, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... be a Theosophist, and used to sit in her room upstairs projecting her astral body out of the window into the back yard, and pulling it in again like a ball on a rubber string—just for practice, you know. But that attack didn't ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... and flashed their joy from every flaming center. The wheeling orbs that course their paths of light were vibrant with the strain, and pealed it back into the glad ear of God. The far off milky way, bright gulf-stream of astral glories, spanning the ethereal deep, resounded with its harmonies, and the star-dust isles floating in that river of opal, re-echoed the happy ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... fell thy grace of old Down from me, down from me. O my light-bearer, Is another fairer Won to thee, won to thee? Ai, ai, Heosphoros, Great love preceded loss, Known to thee, known to thee. Ai, ai! Thou, breathing they communicable grace Of life into my light Mine astral faces, from thine angel face, Hast inly fed, And flooded me with radiance overmuch From thy pure height. Ai, ai! Thou, with calm, floating pinions both ways spread, Erect, irradiated, Didst sting my wheel of glory On, on before thee, Along the Godlight, by a quickening ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... the cosmos as governors of the various interactions between levity and gravity. The astral aspect of the planetary system. Its reflexion in earthly substances. Beginnings of an astral conception of the human organism ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... Well, the great Towle detached this astral body once at a seance and, for a joke—a ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... said Tom, and then turned to the logbook and jotted down the time in the ship's journal. The astral chronometer over the control board read exactly ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... have already mentioned in various parts of this history, that when our Recollects arrived at the Philipinas Islands, in order to illumine them with the splendors of the faith, and to fight like well-ordained astral bodies against the sissara of the abyss, they chose with apostolic strength the most difficult districts, the islands of the most barbaric people, and the places where, if the light of the gospel had shone, it had allowed ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... George Stephenson having in 1814 made the first locomotive to run on a track, the people began to feel that theosophy was about all they needed to place them on a level with the seraphim and other astral bodies. ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... no pretence to a knowledge of science or the Vedas or Persian, our admiration for him went on increasing, and my kinsman, a theosophist, was firmly convinced that our fellow-passenger must have been supernaturally inspired by some strange "magnetism" or "occult power," by an "astral body" or something of that kind. He listened to the tritest saying that fell from the lips of our extraordinary companion with devotional rapture, and secretly took down notes of his conversation. I fancy that the extraordinary man saw this, and was a little pleased ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... when one came to reflect soberly upon it all. Events, say the occultists, have souls, or at least that agglomerate life due to the emotions and thoughts of all concerned in them, so that cities, and even whole countries, have great astral shapes which may become visible to the eye of vision; and certainly here, the soul of this drive—this vain, blundering, futile drive—stood somewhere ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... would only weary the reader, who is impatient for results and arrivals. Ingenious Herr Professor Ranke,—whose HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH consists mainly of such matter excellently done, and offers mankind a wondrously distilled "ASTRAL SPIRIT," or ghost-like fac-simile (elegant gray ghost, with stars dim-twinkling through), of Friedrich's and other people's Diplomatizings in this World,—will satisfy the strongest diplomatic appetite; and to him we refer such as are given ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... were the audience. It was a question. Would the thumbs go down or up? Life and death held the chances even; but it was at the will of Heaven, not of the stars. "Hoc habet" must follow the stroke ordered from beyond the astral clusters and ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson |
