Strengthening your astral body ♍︎-♓︎

The double in modern spirituality is known as the astral body and linga/sukshma sharira in Hinduism. It is said that the structure of the astral sheath, mental sheath, and wisdom constitute this astral body. It can be understood as the feeling of pleasure and pain, in hibernation and escapism. It relates directly to the 12th house of subconscious wisdom and what energies we often soak up from the environment. The 12th house can be hard to understand due to the ascendant and the 2nd house (eyes) being completely blind to it and there is a strong feeling element attached to it which is why if one wants to feel the presence of the divine and have yogic extra-sensorial experiences it is important to do regular practices and be in environments that energize you (for magickal purposes) or destimulate you (for samadhi) which relates to the 6th house.

The astral body doesn't have a specific form, it might or might not look like our physical bodies and can be quite the shapeshifter depending on the levels of our spiritual practice. Peter J. Carroll, author of Liber Null also says that sometimes the astral body can appear in the form of an animal or an ancestor and both of these significations relate very strongly to the 6th-12th axis.

It is essential to have a strong astral body for it can inform you of any enemies trying to attack you, serve as a vehicle for the consciousness to travel to different states, and can bring change in the immediate future based on what you want to project out to the astral field. The seeds planted in the subconscious bring results in real life and when you live consciously (not on auto-pilot as many of us do in the modern world) you find yourself invoking the divine within you.

The virginal 6th house is associated with the Vishuddha chakra that sits at the bottom of the throat which means 'one that is pure' due to the 6th house's ability to destroy enemies, speak out and cause quarrels and clear any diseases from the society (also associated with clinics, healthy routines). When worked with daily through practices such as jalandhara bandha, bhramari pranayama or simply humming (the very mantra associated with this chakra is 'Ham') it gives the ability to express our truths and integrity and establishes the self which relates to the 12th house. The 12th house is associated with the svadhishtana chakra which sits below the navel and represents the flow of creative energy, and sexual desire and is known as the establishment of self. The 12th house represents the loss of vital energy for one completely burns up their gross body due to engaging in practices such as sex, sleeping excessively, engaging in gossip, and being extremely anxious about what is to come and what has happened in the past. When the astral body is strengthened through 6th house activities (celibacy, exercise, taking care of pets, and working on gut health through fasting), it begins to remove anxieties around the future, past, and present, and helps you harness your will. This will can be used to conquer spiritual tests and trials and help attain higher states and from a non-spiritual perspective can alchemize your life in a way you get to achieve all of your material needs because our ability to communicate our truths helps in defining the experiences we have.

The spiritual double; when we're working from the 'auto-pilot' mode of living, begins to act like the unintegrated shadow and starts to delude us further into believing that the body isn't 'real' or that 'it is all an illusion. The vision of reality (6th house) can be sanity for those who live consciously but feels like madness for those who don't which pushes them further into either a hedonistic life or monkhood both of which can be seen as an abandoning of the dharma (duty) and eventually leads to misfortune.

There are two types of dreams: dreams of clarity and karmic dreams. The former is related to 'good' dreams or predictions of the future and the latter are troubling heavier dreams that can be an indication of our past lives and karmas in addition to our current karmas. The more we begin to work on our Vishuddha chakra, it starts to purify our astral field (filling it with wisdom) and fructify our will. In Tantric initiation, the initiation of the word is the transfer of the teacher's life force into the student so it can awaken the natural mind that grounds you and unites you with your true self, the practices recommended above for the 6th house are a type of self-initiation where you take your higher-self as the guru and begin fixing your limitations and living more truthfully. You must do at least 8 rounds of bhramari pranayama, jalandhara bandha, or left-nostril breathing (the left nostril corresponds to the Ida nadi with whose blessings one can begin to have dreams of clarity) before bed every night for you to see results in the astral realm. Doing these practices will also help in transforming dream elements (for example, if you see an animal you fear within the dream, you can transform it into any object and transmute your fear into pleasure or wisdom) and removing any need to judge or feel fear because of ominous dreams which is the end goal of spiritual practice for you will be able to recognize everything as one. All tantric methods work with the principle of transforming deluded thought into pure perception.

Public reality—the arising, abiding, and perishing of events—neither exists nor non-exists: it is “like an illusion, a dream, a fairy city in the sky” . . . . Thus public reality and the divine image, a magical illusion and a dream, have no real existence, but they all occur and have real effects, and hence have no real nonexistence. -Nagarjuna