astral body

plural astral bodies

1. fantasyA ghost-like replica of one's physical body which supposedly inhabits or is somehow associated with the physical body, conceived as a subtle body composed of some sort of ethereal material or as being non-physical and capable of sometimes separating from the physical body to travel to other places or to other realms of existence.

   "I kept the Jewel within my great safe, whence none could extract it; not even Queen Tera herself with her astral body."

   1903, Bram Stoker, chapter 15, in The Jewel of Seven Stars

   4 more examples

   "I suppose I am not talking to you at all. You are in Thibet with Shere Ali. This is your astral body, and if I were near enough, I could poke my fingers right through you, as you sit there, telling me you are an Edinburgh doctor, forsooth." "Quite right, Mr. Griggs. At the present moment my body is quietly asleep in a lamastery in Thibet, and this is my astral shape.

   1882, F. Marion Crawford, chapter 13, in Mr. Isaacs

   "You fool, have I no means of searching other than in the physical?" cried the man wrathfully. "I have been looking for him from the other side. It is as easy for me to use my astral body as this physical one."

   1912, Fergus Hume, chapter 20, in A Son of Perdition: An Occult Romance

   I am not ready to ridicule the claim of the Yogi adepts, that they are able to project some kind of astral body, and to communicate with one another from distant places.

   1917, Upton Sinclair, The Profits of Religion […] , book 6

   The voice in this case belongs to a lovely lady who has been most foully stabbed and while her body remains in a thug-infested old manse her astral body goes to ask Topper's assistance—probably the first instance on record in which the murdered victim was the first to inform the public.

   1941 March 28, T. S., “Movie Review: Topper Returns (1941)”, in New York Times, retrieved 09 Apr 2014