There are many names for the Astral Body. Here are a few: _Linga Sarira_, Sanscrit, meaning design body, and the best one of all; ethereal double; phantom; wraith; apparition; doppelgänger; personal man; perisprit; irrational soul; animal soul; _Bhuta_; elementary; spook; devil; demon. Some of these apply only to the astral body when devoid of the corpus after death. _Bhuta_, devil, and elementary are nearly synonymous; the first Sanscrit, the other English. With the Hindus the _Bhuta_ is the Astral Body when it is by death released from the body and the mind; and being thus separated from conscience, is a devil in their estimation. They are not far wrong, if we abolish the old notion that a devil is an angel fallen from heaven, for this bodily devil is something which rises from the earth. It may be objected that the term Astral Body is not the right one for this purpose. The objection is one which arises from the nature and genesis of the English language, for as that has grown up in a struggle with nature and among a commercial people it has not as yet coined the words needed for designating the great range of faculties and organs of the unseen man. And as its philosophers have not admitted the existence of these inner organs, the right terms do not exist in the language. So in looking for words to describe the inner body the only ones found in English were the “astral body”. This term comes near to the real fact, since the substance of this form is derived from cosmic matter or star matter, roughly speaking. But the old Sanscrit word describes it exactly—_Linga Sarira_, the design body—because it is the design or model for the physical body. This is better than “ethereal body”, as the latter might be said to be subsequent to the physical, whereas in fact the astral body precedes the material one. The astral body is made of matter of very fine texture as compared with the visible body, and has a great tensile strength, so that it changes but little during a lifetime, while the physical alters every moment. And not only has it this immense strength, but at the same time possesses an elasticity permitting its extension to a considerable distance. It is flexible, plastic, extensible, and strong. The matter of which it is composed is electrical and magnetic in its essence, and is just what the whole world was composed of in the dim past when the processes of evolution had not yet arrived at the point of producing the material body for man. But it is not raw or crude matter. Having been through a vast period of evolution and undergone purifying processes of an incalculable number, its nature has been refined to a degree far beyond the gross physical elements we see and touch with the physical eye and hand.