Astral projection is a much wider phenomenon than most people realize. The term usually conjures up images of Victorians rising in their astral shells from their beds, still attached to their entranced bodies by the famous silver cord, and going off to explore the world, invisible to those they might chance to meet. This concept is hopelessly simplistic, but it has been cast in concrete by the hugely influential books of co-authors Sylvan Muldoon and Hereward Carrington.

Both men were associated with the Spiritualist movement of the early part of the 20th century. Muldoon was remarkably adept as separating his consciousness from his physical body, a trick he had learned as a child, and Carrington was a keen investigator of all things paranormal. Their collaboration fixed the way astral projection is understood in the public mind to this day.

This was unfortunate, since Muldoon's view of astral projection is only a tiny part of its reality. It has been practiced in numerous ways throughout human history, voluntarily and involuntarily, and both the phenomenon itself and the astral worlds it opens to human consciousness are infinitely more varied than Muldoon ever imagined. Muldoon's imagination was prosaic, which is perhaps why he perceived only a prosaic astral world.

I have preferred to use the umbrella term "soul flight" to describe the full scope of the phenomenon. The term derives from shamanism, but is general enough that it can cover the many forms of astral travel that have been described throughout history. Once we free our minds from the shackles of the Edwardian spiritualists, we can range across the entire landscape of astral travel.

Soul flight was employed by shamans as a central part of their profession, to travel to the spirit world and rescue the souls of the sick from impending death, or to learn secret matters, or to interact with spirits. Witches used soul flight to travel to their great festival gatherings, known as sabbats, employing a herbal ointment known as the witches' flying ointment to facilitate the separation of consciousness from the body.

Less well recognized is that soul flight took place when human beings visited the fairies beneath their hills. Celtic lore records numerous incidents of travel to fairyland. It was also common among the religious orders of the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages, so much so that it received the name bilocation to describe it - bilocation was when a saint separated from his or her physical body and was seen to be in two places at once. This was usually involuntary, brought about by restricted diet and austerities.

However, it was only with the rise of the Spiritualist movement that soul flight became a kind of recreational hobby, thanks in large part to the writings of Sylvan Muldoon and also the work of the Theosophist Oliver Fox. The methods of these two contemporaries were completely different, and their perceptions of the experience of soul flight were also unlike each other - for example, Muldoon's mantra was the silver cord that connected the separated soul with the physical body, but Fox did not see the silver cord at all when he traveled astrally. Neither man was truly understanding the phenomenon.

In more modern times, soul flight has been practiced (involuntarily) by those abducted by UFOs, and by the remote viewers of the CIA's secret Project Stargate, although neither group realized that they were engaged in a type of astral travel. The remote viewers even went so far as to staunchly deny that they were doing astral projection, which merely illustrates the continuing ignorance about this subject.

In my book, I demonstrate that all these seemingly different phenomena are at root the same. Astral projection is not the projection of anything through space, and never has been. Those engaged in astral travel never travel anywhere. On the contrary, all soul flight is a transition in states of consciousness. When a person who believes himself engaged in astral projection walks from his bedroom and down the street in front of his house, he is not actually moving through the physical world, but through the lowest astral plane, which resembles the physical world so closely, it is almost impossible to tell them apart. The astral planes are constructs of the human mind.

All astral travel is travel through the astral world. There is no such thing as astral projection of consciousness across the physical world and never has been. Consciousness is a function of mind, and it stays in mind, where it belongs.

This is the reason for all the confusion about soul flight. During what is known as astral projection, the consciousness shifts from the material plane to the astral planes. The astral planes are as innumerable and as infinitely varied as dreamworlds. Indeed, dreams are a type of astral travel. Those who project consciousness onto the lowest astral plane see a world that almost exactly matches the physical world, and they naturally believe that they are actually walking through space in some form of invisible body that has divided itself off from their physical body. However, those who lift their consciousness to higher astral states perceive astral landscapes that are completely different from the common material world - the land of fairy, for example, which is one of the astral worlds that can be visited during soul flight.

The first half of this book sorts out the confusion between different forms of soul flight throughout human history, and explains their common essential nature. The second half of the book is devoted to practical instruction within a ritual context. Historically, deliberate soul flight was always practiced within ritual boundaries, up until the time of the Spiritualists such as Muldoon, who decided that a ritual framework was unnecessary for the practice.

I make the case that there were solid reasons to use a ritual structure when engaging in soul flight in past centuries, and those reasons have not gone away in modern times. Ritual not only aids in shifting consciousness to the astral levels, but also protects the traveler from malicious spiritual creatures. The dangers of astral travel have been greatly over-stated by Spiritualists and Theosophists of the early 20th century. Death is not to be feared. Yet there are malicious spirits who will attack the traveler in various ways if given the opportunity. A ritual framework for soul flight prevents these attacks.

Projection of the consciousness into the astral planes is not a rare event, but is common and is happening to innumerable individuals around the world right this instant, sometimes voluntarily, but more often spontaneously. It can be understood and controlled. I wrote this book to gather all the forms of soul flight that have existed down through history under a single theory that explains and unites them, and also to return the practice to its ritual and magical roots, from which it was derailed by the Spiritualists.

This is the first book in which the entire spectrum of soul flight has been presented in a rational and unified way. With knowledge comes power - once the mechanism is understood, control follows. I hope this book proves helpful to serious practitioners of this ancient art.

ISBN: 978-0-7387-1087-7. Price: $18.95 US. Llewellyn, 2007.