Book Review: The Subtle Body
I’ve been intending for a while to do some writing on the various tantric presentations of the ‘subtle body’. Before doing so, however, I’m going to review Simon Cox’s recent book, The Subtle Body: A Genealogy (Oxford University Press, 2022, Hbk). This is an important work that sheds much light on how the concept of the subtle body took off in the English language, and the many twists and turns taken in developing a concept that has become a staple of contemporary esoteric practice and thought.
The Subtle Body traces the genealogy of the concept of the subtle body, beginning in late antiquity, romping through the Renaissance, the contributions of both orientalists and Theosophists, and into twentieth-century developments – Crowley, Jung, and 60s-70s countercultures. Cox writes that he first became intrigued by the idea of the subtle body at the age of six, after watching an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, which featured a scroll showing the points of esoteric anatomy. This fascination has taken him to Japan, across China, and into Tibet in the search for a definitive presentation of the subtle body.
After Jeff Kripal’s foreword and the introduction, chapter 1 explores the ‘prehistory’ of the subtle body in the works of Aristotle, Galen, Plato, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, and Philoponus. Chapter 2 moves on to Renaissance England, where the term ‘subtle body’ first appears in English, in the correspondence between Thomas Hobbes and Rene Descartes. Then onwards to the Neoplatonic visions of Ralph Cudworth, whose writings, as Cox eloquently explores, were to cast a long shadow over the development of the concept of the subtle body. Then the story moves on to the other Cambridge Platonists; Henry More, Joseph Glanvill, and the monistic vision of Anne Conway. Cox shows how the Cambridge Platonists and their fellow travelers resisted the encroachment of Hobbes’ materialism and Descartes’ dualism.
Chapter 3 takes us to the Orient, beginning with the Chevalier de Ramsay, who took up Cudworth’s presentation of the subtle vehicle, and widened the scope to encompass Egypt, China, Persia, and India. Next up is linguist and Sanskritist, Thomas Henry Colebrook. It was Colebrook who introduced the Sanskrit liṅga śarīra into English (a term later taken up by the Theosophists) to denote the subtle body. Colebrook, in his analysis of the dualistic Sāṃkhya philosophy, suggested that, given the similarity between its view of the body and that of the later Greeks, concluded that the doctrine had originated in India. Cox shows how Colebrook explicitly draws on Ralph Cudworth in order to build his case. After a brief examination of J. Cockburn Thomson’s 1855 translation of the Bhagavad Gītā, Cox moves on to a more significant milestone in the story of the subtle body, the Dream of Ravan (see this post for some related discussion of Ravan).
Not only did Ravan present a fourfold schema of the subtle body – a departure from both Sāṃkhya and Cudworth, but the text also had a strong influence on Theosophical ideas about the subtle body (more about that in my next book, Wheels within Wheels: Chakras and Western Esotericism). Ravan aside though, Cox shows how Colebrook’s fusion of Sāṃkhya and Cudworth’s Platonic Body caught on in a wide variety of nineteenth-century contexts, until along came Max Müller, who, in his 1899 Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, shows up the important differences between Sāṃkhya and the Platonists (see this post for some background on Müller).
Chapter 4 leads us into the labyrinthine world of H.P. Blavatsky. Cox opens with a brief examination of the birth of Tibetology; in particular, S.K. Csoma’s investigations of Tibetan Tantra and Medicine, then moves to examine the importance of Blavatsky. After a biographical sketch and a brief account of the foundation of the Theosophical Society, Cox turns first to ‘Subtle Embodiment’ in Blavatsky’s first book, Isis Unveiled. In attempting to unpack and unpick how Blavatsky treats the astral body, Cox comments that Blavatsky, for all her “unique genius, was not graced with a systematic mind.” Following Isis, Blavatsky, as is well known, turned eastwards (Blavatsky’s move to India is discussed here). Her contact with the Tibetan Masters inspired her magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine. Possibly this shift in emphasis from Egypt to Tibet reflected, as Peter Washington discusses in his Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon, a waning of interest in Egypt, now accessible to travel, with the more exotic and less accessible Tibet. It is in The Secret Doctrine that we see, for the first time, the sevenfold emanations of the subtle body that came to dominate Blavatsky’s thought. Cox analyses this model as a ‘creolizing fusion’ of Indo-Tibetan syntax with Neoplatonism. He also points out the influence of Blavatsky on Walter Evans-Wentz’s translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Chapter 5, “Theosophical Gnosis and Astral Hermeneutics” continues Cox’s deep dive into Theosophy. He begins with a look at how Blavatsky uses gnosis as a universal category, placing the source of divine revelation in India, as opposed to the Cambridge Neoplatonist’s Egypt. He then goes on to examine how Blavatsky’s sevenfold subtle body schema is developed by both Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, both of whom were more sympathetic to Christianity than Blavatsky. Then it’s on to G.R.S. Mead, who brings a historical-scientific eye to the subtle body. Mead was to be a major influence on Jung’s thoughts on Gnosticism.
Chapter 6 is mostly devoted to Aleister Crowley’s innovative approach to the subtle body. After a biographical outline of Crowley’s life and his engagements with yoga, Chinese texts such as the Daodejing, plus his forays into Islam; Cox explores how Crowley’s subtle body is rooted in a disavowal of metaphysics (“there is no such thing as truth in the perceptible universe”) and a thorough and unflinching skepticism. What Crowley brings to the table is a thorough emphasis on practice in order to first create a subtle body, then to use it to explore the subtle realms of the astral (he was also the first Western occultist to come up with chakra-based practices). Drawing on Homi Bhaba’s analytical concept of hybridity, Cox shows how Crowley’s concept of the subtle body, whilst drawing on various Eastern sources, emerges as something new, rooted as it is in his skeptical epistemology and empirical approach.
Chapter 7 turns the focus of inquiry to C.G. Jung. Cox writes: “Jung’s use of the subtle body functions in the interstices of his psychology. In good Neoplatonic form, his subtle body is an intermediary vehicle that traverses the troubled waters separating mind from body and conscious from unconscious; a liminal structure possessed of a different kind of “knowing.”” (p165). Cox explores how Jung was influenced by Mead, Richard Wilhelm’s translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower, and by Sir John Woodroffe’s The Serpent Power.
Chapter 8, ‘From Eranos to Esalen’ moves us further into the twentieth century, beginning with Frederic Spiegelberg, a close friend and associate of Jung, and his book, The Religion of No-Religion. Cox shows how Spiegelberg brought a phenomenological perspective to the subtle body. Spiegelberg was critical of the way that the subtle body had been understood using Neoplatonism together with yoga metaphysics, pointing out that “The Suksma sasira to be shown as the feeling body”. Cox turns next to Spiegelberg’s student, Michael Murphy, and the foundation of the Esalen Institute. Murphy was influenced by the writings of Sri Aurobindo and Shivas Irons, a ‘mystical golf pro’. Murphy had a strong interest in the development of superpowers – yogic siddhis, at a time when scientific studies of yoga were loudly proclaiming that these were merely inner experiences. The attendees of the Esalen Institute were a major influence on American counterculture and the New Age movement. They helped shape the dominant Western chakra system. Murphy’s interest in the development of superhuman powers and Joseph Campbell’s lectures became a major influence on George Lucas.
So to the Conclusion, ‘What is the Subtle Body?’ Looking back at the historical genealogy, together with his own experiences and encounters with the subtle body (from the six years he spent in China studying Daoism and performing Daoist subtle body practices, to martial arts culture and cartoons) Cox points out that it is one thing to perform the work of history and quite another to actually live it: “to occupy a given spiritual universe is to occupy a given aesthetic regime, to have the conditions of the possible determined in a particular way” (p215). He suggests that we understand the subtle body in terms of “radical somatic mutability” rather than the New Age version, where different terms and schemas are all taken as slices of a universal entity. This somatic mutability also challenges “the reductive, dreamless, biomedical body”. Cox admits that he began his search for an origin for the subtle body, but of course what he found was a multitude of subtle bodies, each contextualized by its surrounding space. He provocatively suggests, in closing that “if we take the body not as a given object within particular predetermined ontological parameters, but as the very plane on which the parameters of the ontological are negotiated, then perhaps, after the energy and madness, we can hypothesize that all these subtle bodies may be gateways to other worlds.” Wow!
The Subtle Body is simply one of the best books I have read for a long time. Anyone with an interest in occult history, in Theosophy, or how occultural ideas develop will, I am sure, find it fascinating and indispensable.
