Leslie McQuade

Most people imagine astral projection as an act of departure—leaving the physical body to travel somewhere else. This image is deeply ingrained in popular culture, yet it is not how the phenomenon is understood within the Hermetic tradition.

Astral projection does not begin with movement.
It begins with awakening.

Every night, consciousness already enters the dream world. This is not a theory, nor a special attainment—it is a simple fact of human experience. The problem is not access. The problem is awareness. Almost no one is awake once they arrive.

From the Hermetic perspective, the astral plane is not a distant realm but the interior world disclosed in dreams. What distinguishes ordinary dreaming from astral projection is not the environment, but the state of consciousness within it.

When awareness ignites inside the dream, perception changes immediately. Cause and effect operate differently. Intention no longer waits on physical mediation.

This is why ancient texts describe the astral as the realm of illusion. Not because it is unreal, but because it reflects without resistance. Like the surface of a lake, the astral mirrors whatever state is brought into it.

When the inner vehicle is disturbed, the reflection is distorted.

When it is calm and clarified, the reflection becomes precise.

Lucid dreaming touches this threshold, but it is only a partial expression. Many who become lucid quickly discover instability: awareness flickers, control collapses, the dream dissolves. The issue is not lucidity itself, but the condition of the subtle vehicle that must sustain consciousness in that realm.

Within Hermetic doctrine, both alchemy and ritual serve this purpose. They do not aim at fantasy or escapism, but at preparing the inner instrument that allows awareness to remain present.

Ritual employs posture, movement, sound, and rhythm to charge and order the subtle body.

Alchemy works through the secret fire, transmuting and purifying the same vehicle by another method.

The goal is identical: a stable, reflective astral form.

When this preparation is absent, the dream dominates the dreamer.
When it is present, the relationship reverses.

The practitioner does not impose force, but awakens into a realm where intention and form are already linked. This is why astral projection has nothing to do with belief, visualization, or imagination.

It is a question of where consciousness is located and whether it is awake.

Most people dream.
Very few ever awaken inside that state.

To understand astral projection correctly, one must discard the fantasy of departure and replace it with a simpler, more demanding truth:

You are already there.
You are simply asleep.