This page groups realms by their basic character. Wikipedia notes that heaven "is often described as a 'highest place,' the holiest place, a paradise, in contrast to Hell or the Underworld." Browsing by kind-of-realm lets a visitor tell a rewarding realm from a punishing or a simply neutral one.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingNon-physical levels of being. The heading is modern and Theosophical rather than traditional: the astral plane and the akashic records are late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century constructions, and material from other traditions is grouped with them by that modern scheme rather than by its own. 2 Peoples and Traditions CoveredModern Western esotericism, together with Tibetan and Indian Buddhist material read through it. The bardo and Shambhala belong to Buddhist traditions that do not call them planes. 2 Origins
Whose Classification This IsThe grouping of these under one heading of planes is Theosophical, from H. P. Blavatsky and her successors in the late nineteenth century, and passed from there into most later Western esoteric writing. 3Tradition: Modern Theosophy Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryUsed, but its validity as a comparative category is disputed 2 Learn More
The Planes
This group holds the planes, the levels of existence described especially in esoteric and Theosophical cosmology, where reality is understood as a graded series of planes (physical, astral, mental and higher) through which consciousness ascends. The scheme is largely a modern esoteric development.
The browser will find the planes the atlas gathers. The entries describe each plane's character and place in its system, noting the chiefly modern, esoteric provenance of the plane cosmology.
Kind of realm
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age
Olav Hammer, Brill, 2001chs. 3 and 5, on the Theosophical cosmology and its borrowingsView the Source 3. The Theosophical Enlightenment
Joscelyn Godwin, State University of New York Press, 1994on Blavatsky and the Theosophical cosmologyView the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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