The Spellcaster's Source Hoodoo and Voodoo Witchcraft Blog of Talia Felix

A while back on an occult books group, someone was looking for books in Latin about astral projection. Not any books that mentioned it, mind — books in Latin , presumably older than 18th century, on the topic. And I knew right away: they weren’t going to find it. That’s not because the concept doesn’t exist in older magical literature. You can certainly find accounts of soul flight, dream visions, bilocation, remote spirit-walking, or being “carried forth in ecstasy” — from the Pythagoreans all the way to 19th-century spiritualists. But you’re not going to find the phrase astral projection in Latin. You’re not even going to find it in English until fairly late in the game. That’s because astral projection isn’t an ancient concept. It’s an old idea in a new hat. And the hat, in this case, seems to date from somewhere around the 1880s. Using Google Books’ advanced search, you’ll find that the term barely shows up in print before the 1890s. The earliest reference I’ve been able to confi...