“The soul is not astral fluid, but is manifest by astral fluid. For the soul itself is, like the idea, invisible and intangible. This may be best seen by following out the genesis of any particular action. For instance, the stroke of the pen on paper is the phenomenon, that is, the outer body. The action which produces the stroke, is the astral body; and, though physical, it is not a thing, but a transition or medium between the result and its cause, — between, that is, the stroke and the idea. The idea, manifested in the act, is not physical, but mental, and is the soul of the act. But even this is not the first cause. For the idea is put forth by the will, and this is the spirit. Thus, we will an idea, as God wills the Macrocosm. The potential body, its immediate result, is the astral body; and the phenomenal body, or ultimate form, is the effect of motion and heat. If we could arrest motion, we should have as the result, fire. But fire itself also is material, since, like the earth or body, it is visible to the outer sense. It has, however, many degrees of subtlety. The astral, or odic, substance, therefore, is not the soul itself, but is the medium or manifestor of the soul, as the act is of the idea.”
“Material body, astral fluid or sidereal body, soul, and spirit, all these are one in their essence. And the first three are differentialities of polarisation. The fourth is God's Self. When the Gods, — the Elohim or Powers of the Hebrews, — put forth the world, they put forth substance with its three potentialities, but all in the condition of ‘odic’ light. This substantial light is called sometimes the sidereal or astral body, sometimes the perisoul, and this because it is both. It is that which makes, and that which becomes. It is fire, or the anima bruta (as distinguished from the Divine), out of and by means of which body and soul are generated. It is the fiery manifestation of the soul, the magnetic factor of the body. It is space, it is substance, it is foundation; so that from it proceed the gases and the minerals, which are un-individualised, and from it also the organic world which is individualised. But man it could not make; for man is fourfold, and of the divine ether, the province assigned by the Greeks to Zeus, the father of Gods and men.”
