Two very different people ask this question, and they are not asking the same thing.
One is a Christian who has read that astral projection is occult and wants to know whether trying it would be a sin. The other is a witch or pagan practitioner who wants to know whether astral travel is part of their tradition and how it is used.
The first is asking a moral question. The second is asking a factual one. They need different answers, so here are both.
The short answer
Astral projection is not inherently witchcraft. It is a reported experience - people describe leaving the body - and experiences are not practices.
But it is used within witchcraft, extensively and openly, and has been for well over a century. It is also used in ceremonial magic, in Theosophy, in shamanic traditions, in yogic practice, and by a large number of people with no spiritual framework at all who simply find it interesting.
So: not the same thing, but a genuine overlap. Which of those facts matters more depends entirely on why you are asking.
What “witchcraft” actually means here
The word carries at least three meanings, and most arguments come from mixing them.
The biblical sense. In scripture, the terms translated “witchcraft” (Hebrew kashaph, Greek pharmakeia) refer to sorcery, spell-casting for effect, and dealings with spirits - the practices listed in Deuteronomy 18. Astral projection is not among them, because it did not exist as a named practice in that world.
The modern religious sense. Wicca, traditional witchcraft and related paths, mostly emerging from the mid-twentieth century onward. These are religions and craft traditions with their own ethics and cosmology.
The colloquial sense. “Anything spooky or occult”, which is how the word is often used in practice and which explains why so many people arrive at this question in the first place.
Astral projection sits outside the first sense, sits comfortably inside the second, and gets swept up in the third.
How witchcraft traditions actually use it
Among practitioners, astral travel is ordinary rather than exotic. It typically appears as:
- Journeying to meet guides, ancestors, or figures within a working
- Visiting the astral temple, a constructed inner location used repeatedly as a stable working space
- Ritual done on the astral rather than physically, where circumstances prevent the physical version
- Divination and sensing, gathering impressions to be interpreted afterwards
- Skill development, since sustained visualisation and trance underpin most other practice
The historical thread runs through the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the late nineteenth century, which formalised “travelling in the spirit vision” and the use of symbols as gateways. Much of what appears in modern witchcraft books descends from that material, often without attribution.
Worth noting: many traditions distinguish sharply between this - a deliberate, prepared, ethically bounded practice - and casual experimentation. The traditions themselves are frequently stricter about it than outsiders assume.
If you are asking as a Christian
The honest answer is that no verse settles it, and the classification is the whole argument.
Astral projection is not named in scripture. Critics place it under the Deuteronomy 18 prohibitions on divination and consulting spirits, reasoning that seeking supernatural experience by technique belongs to that category. Others reply that the state itself is not the occult apparatus, and that Paul describes being caught up to the third heaven without condemning the possibility - though he also says he does not know whether he was in his body or out of it.
The distinction most Christian traditions actually rest on is not what happened but who initiated it. Every biblical vision or out-of-body episode is given by God and received by the person, not induced. That, rather than any verse naming the practice, is the substance of the objection.
We go through the relevant passages in detail in astral projection in the Bible.
If your tradition teaches that this is forbidden, that is a real answer from a real authority and it deserves weight. What no one can honestly tell you is that scripture names it.
If you are asking as a practitioner
Then the answer is straightforward: yes, astral travel is part of the toolkit, it appears across most traditions in some form, and there is a substantial body of practical material on it.
You will find the same techniques in secular OBE literature, because the mechanics are the same regardless of framework. Robert Monroe was a broadcasting executive with no occult affiliation. The methods that work - sleep timing, sustained awareness at the threshold, holding attention without waking - do not care what you believe.
The thing both groups get wrong
That the experience proves the cosmology.
It does not. Having an out-of-body experience does not demonstrate that the astral plane is a real location, and it does not demonstrate that you have contacted anything external. Laboratory work has shown that the sensation of being outside the body can be induced directly - Olaf Blanke’s team produced it by stimulating the right angular gyrus, reported in Nature in 2002 - which establishes that the brain can generate the experience on its own.
That finding does not disprove the spiritual interpretations either. It shows the experience is real and reproducible, and leaves the question of what it means exactly where it was.
Both the practitioner who treats a vivid journey as verified contact, and the critic who treats the same journey as proof of demonic access, are making the same error: reading certainty into an experience that does not supply it.
What can reasonably be concluded
- Documented: astral projection is used within modern witchcraft and ceremonial magic traditions, with a traceable history through the Golden Dawn. The word “witchcraft” carries several distinct meanings.
- Not established: that the experience requires any occult framework, that it constitutes contact with external entities, or that it is inherently harmful.
- A matter of belief: whether pursuing it is permitted. This is a question your tradition answers, not one evidence can settle.
- Misleading: claims in either direction that present certainty. Nobody has demonstrated what these experiences are.
Common questions
Is astral projection a sin?
No verse names it. Christian traditions differ, with evangelical and Pentecostal teaching generally opposed and Catholic teaching addressing divination and magic broadly without naming the practice. It is a question of classification and conscience.
Do you need to be a witch to astral project?
No. The techniques are unrelated to any belief system, and many people who report it have no spiritual framework at all.
Is astral projection the same as spellwork?
No. Spellwork is intentional action aimed at an outcome. Astral projection is a state. Some practitioners work while in that state; the state itself does nothing.
Can something follow you back or attach to you?
There are no documented cases. The traditions that teach protective practice do so as a precaution within their own framework rather than in response to demonstrated harm. If fear is the reason you are asking, sleep paralysis explains most of the frightening experiences attributed to it.
Is Wicca the same as witchcraft?
No. Wicca is one modern religion among several traditions often grouped under the broader word. Not all witches are Wiccan.
Sources and further reading
- Blanke, O., Ortigue, S., Landis, T., & Seeck, M. (2002). Stimulating illusory own-body perceptions. Nature, 419, 269-270.
- Deuteronomy 18:10-12; 2 Corinthians 12:1-4 (King James Version).
- Monroe, R. (1971). Journeys Out of the Body. Doubleday.
