Astral Projection
by Arundell Overman
Today I'm reviewing Astral Projection: Flying Lessons for Witches by Arundell Overman. The book was published in 2021, although there doesn't seem to be a copyright notice.
At first I was put off by the cover art: A Halloween-style purple crone witch flying on a broom with her Familiar cat, accompanied by flying bats. Really?
But the book started out really good. I was impressed by Overman's approach and knowledge, and he wrote from personal experience. So right away, the reader learns his level of experience and some of the things he encountered.
How many OBEs has he had? He doesn't exactly say, but he does offer this:
"For every time I did get out of body, there were at least ten failures. So, when I say that I have had a hundred out of body experiences, that means I must have tried the technique a thousand times." (pg. 27)
And actually, that sounds about right to me. My success ratio is about the same: 10 failures for every successful OBE. So if you "fall off that edge" or awareness, don't get discouraged; get back on the horse and try again.
Early on, Overman joined and started studying the techniques of the famous occult organization Golden Dawn (think "secret society"...or maybe not so secret) "20 years ago" which tells me he has considerable experience. According to Overman:
"The Golden Dawn practices so much astral projection that they have been accused of "astral tourism," just going to various planes because they can, to look and see what is there." (pg. 12)
He claims to have studied "over 1,000 pages of material" from the order, and from it, successfully astral projected many times using ritual-based techniques such as the famous occult "Body of Light" technique. He shares some of this information, despite the fact that initiates are supposedly sworn to secrecy.
The book also contains an interesting ritual in which he spent 36 hours in a coffin, only coming out to pee when he had to. This led him to an intense out-of-body experience in which he thought he was physically flying.
This OBE made such an impact that Overman later built his own coffin and tried to replicate it, with mixed success.
The use of sensory deprivation is not new to the astral projection world, and the use of social isolation is reminiscent of Native American "vision quest" rituals.
Unfortunately, the book didn't live up to its promise. Halfway through the book, Overman talks about friends who were "witches" and that led him to the books of author D.J. Conway. He includes three long excerpts of Conway's book "Flying Without a Broom" which are more or less guided meditations. But since the book is only 59 pages, they take up a large percent of the book. He tried to replicate two of Conway's experiences, with interesting results.
Overman agrees astral projection is different from ordinary (non-lucid) dreaming, but he says:
"In an astral projection however, there is no loss of consciousness. You are wide awake the whole time. This is a distinct difference between dreaming and astral projection." (pg. 50)
That disagrees with other books. For example, Robert Crookall, who studied and collected more than a thousand OBE narratives, found that out-of-body experiences were almost always accompanied by a momentary blackout both before and after the OBE.
The vast majority of my own OBEs also had a short blackout either at the beginning or at the end, but I've also had a small number of OBEs in which there was absolutely no blackout: I had no loss of consciousness from start to finish.
But what about lucid dreams? Overman says:
"Most magicians I have spoken with agree that a lucid dream, a dream where one knows they are dreaming, is the same as an astral projection." (pg. 51)
I've always maintained that OBEs are different from lucid dreams in several ways. For more information, see my blog article Are OBEs the same as Lucid Dreams?.
I give this book 2 stars out of 5.
On the good side, the writing and editing are professional quality, it's based on personal experience, and it contains some solid astral projection techniques, even if they're from Golden Dawn and DJ Conway.
On the bad side, it's way too short to be of any value: only 59 pages in a small format with lots of unnecessary white space, and some of that comes, apparently, from D.J. Conway's book. This just made me want to re-read Conway's book. So look for that next Blog Tuesday.
A quick search of the Internet shows that Arundell Overman has lots of books out there, so I guess he's just pumping out lots of short books to make money from lots of royalty sources.
Bob Peterson
20 February 2024
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