Publications:
- Religio-Philosophical Journal, December 24, 1887
- Echoes of the Orient: The Writings of William Quan Judge, comp. Dara Eklund, 2nd ed. (Pasadena, California: Theosophical University Press, 2011), vol. III, p. 135
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CTD entry in Russian: Джадж У.К. - Скрытый путь и теософы
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Title for references: Judge W.Q. - The Hidden Way and Theosophists
Short description: On the Astral Light as the true basis behind spiritualistic phenomena, drawing on American Spiritual...
In the records of forty years of American Spiritualism the Astral Light is not unknown; it has been referred to by many mediums while under what is called “control,” and spirits in speaking of it have at times detailed some of its properties. Its place in nature and the part it plays at séances, mind reading and tests, demand for it more attention than it has hitherto received from those who believe in the Summerland.
The real witnesses produced for the majority of spiritistic phenomena are these spirits, and their word must be taken by their followers wherever possible; especially must this be so whenever the spirits agree with a large body of evidence found in ancient and medieval writings.
Some years ago Mrs. M. J. Hollis-Billing gave the editor of the Journal several sittings with the spirit Jim Nolan, who delivered replies to queries prepared, and which were published. Mrs. Billing has never been accused of fraud, and by turning to the files of the Journal the report can be found. This spirit’s utterances are entitled to weight. He said, in substance, that there is a plastic medium existing in nature called the Astral Light, in which are pictures of persons, dead and living, and of all their thoughts, actions, and circumstances; and that in producing what is called a materialization of a deceased one, a magnetic mirror was constructed by the control, onto which was reflected out of the Astral Light the face or form desired to be seen, and that as each change was made a new picture was drawn from the Astral Light.
Although as a body — whether in published works or in private discussion — Spiritualists have ignored the Astral Light, it has long been recognized by Theosophists of both the present Theosophical Society and those of two hundred years ago, while the Hindus have, for ages, known of it and called it the Ākāśa.
What, then, is this Astral Light? It is what is called by Éliphas Lévi, the “plastic medium” that interpenetrates each thing and every point of space; a medium, plane, place, state, or condition of the other, wherein is recorded an image of every object that comes before it, an echo of every word ever spoken, an unbroken chain of continuous pictures of all that happens here below.
As well also are to be found in it the shades or lemures of the departed — not their spirits but their reliquiae, existing there until they shall pass away in natural course, and there, floating, darting, wavering, swimming to and fro, like fishes in the sea, are the other class of spirits, called “elementals” by the old Kabbalists, nature spirits by others, Gnomes, Sylphs and Salamanders.
In this Astral medium is a vast babel of sounds — the undying reverberations of uttered speech, the utterers of which have long ago passed away; noble sentiments clothed in faultless rhetoric; horrible discords produced by the senseless and vicious talk of all times and persons; sweet music, the din of war, and the solemn chant from out cathedral aisles. Every odor man ever smelled, and every sound, divine or diabolical, are there. It is a burial ground for mummies, as it were. The fluidic envelope passed off by every one at death, is caught in it and there leaves its impression, even after that envelope has itself dissipated into the various elements. Just as the long ago dead trilobite impacted in the earliest fossiliferous strata, leaves behind it when removed, a [1]
- ↑ See Echoes I:198-200, 354, 404-8.