Mystical systems
Body of Light
Direct answer
Body of Light: The Body of Light is the name used in the Golden Dawn tradition and by Aleister Crowley for a second body, built in the imagination, in which a magician travels in vision.
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At a glance
- Also called
- rising on the planes, astral double magic
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Astral Body, Astral Projection, Ceremonial Magic, Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
The Body of Light is the name used in the Golden Dawn tradition and by Aleister Crowley for a second body, built in the imagination, in which a magician travels in vision.
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What is the Body of Light?
In ceremonial magic the Body of Light is something made by practice. The student sits still, pictures a figure like themselves standing in front of them, and works at transferring the point of view into it until they seem to see through its eyes. The figure is then made to rise, pass through a symbol used as a door, and explore whatever scene appears. On return it is drawn back and deliberately merged with the physical body.
The method is one of trained imagination carried out awake, and the tradition insists on testing what is seen against the symbol used, on the view that a vision which does not fit is fantasy. It differs from the sleep-based methods of most astral projection manuals, which wait for a spontaneous separation. The phrase is also used in Neoplatonism for the soul's luminous vehicle.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Astral projection.
What sets Body of Light apart
The Body of Light is built, not found. Where Theosophy says everyone already has an astral body that slips out in sleep, the magical tradition treats the vehicle as a product of repeated visualisation that grows firmer with use. Its second mark is discipline. The traveller goes out through a chosen symbol, challenges whatever is met with signs and names, and returns by the same road, and Crowley required a written record of every journey.
- Tradition: Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded 1888
- Order's phrase: travelling in the spirit vision
- Instructions: Aleister Crowley, Liber O, in The Equinox, 1909
- Later chapter: Magick in Theory and Practice, 1929, chapter 18
- Doorways: tattva cards, tarot trumps and other symbols
Often mistaken for something else: The rainbow body of Tibetan Buddhism is a claim about the physical body dissolving into light at death; the Body of Light is an imagined vehicle used by the living.
The story behind Body of Light
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888, taught travelling in the spirit vision, using coloured tattva cards as doorways. Aleister Crowley gave step by step instructions in Liber O (1909) and returned to the subject in Magick in Theory and Practice (1929), in a chapter on clairvoyance and the Body of Light. G. R. S. Mead surveyed the ancient ideas behind it in The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tradition (1919).
Why Body of Light matters
Body of Light shows that one major school treated astral travel as a skill of directed imagination, with rules for checking results.
How to read Body of Light
Ceremonial magicians practise it for pathworking on the Tree of Life and for scrying; the first stages serve anyone as a visualisation exercise.
Body of Light in practice: an example
A student following Liber O might spend ten minutes each evening picturing their own figure across the room before attempting to look out from it.
Where readings of Body of Light go wrong
The tradition itself warns against mistaking vivid imagery for fact, and long sessions can leave a person unsettled or detached.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- body of light meaning, body of light golden dawn, body of light crowley, rising on the planes, astral double magic
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is the Body of Light?
In Western ceremonial magic it is an imagined double of oneself that is trained by visualisation to act as a vehicle for visionary travel. The term is especially associated with Aleister Crowley.
Is the Body of Light the same as the astral body?
Writers often use the two loosely as equals. In the strict sense the astral body is a part of human nature in Theosophy, while the Body of Light is a form the magician builds and strengthens by practice.
What is rising on the planes?
It is an exercise from the same tradition in which the practitioner, in the Body of Light, imagines travelling straight upward through successive levels, noting what is met at each.
