Theosophy — Seven Subtle Bodies

The dense physical body — the visible vehicle of action on the earthly plane. In Blavatsky's scheme it is the lowest of the seven principles, transient and subject to dissolution at death. Leadbeater repeatedly cautions that the physical body, though the most familiar to ordinary perception, is the least informative of the constitution: 'the man himself is not the body but uses it as an instrument' (Man Visible and Invisible, ch. I).

The etheric double — a violet-grey energetic counterpart of the physical body, said to interpenetrate it and extend slightly beyond its surface. It is the conduit of prāṇa and the substrate of physical vitality; at death it gradually dissolves alongside the physical. Blavatsky distinguishes the liṅga śarīra sharply from the higher astral, noting that confusion between the two has been the source of much spiritualist error (Secret Doctrine, vol. II). Powell's The Etheric Double (1925) is the dedicated late-Theosophical study.

The astral body, the vehicle of desire and emotion. Leadbeater's Man Visible and Invisible illustrates the kāma rūpa with vivid colour plates: clear hues for refined emotion, muddy clouds for coarse desire. Kāma rūpa survives the death of the physical and persists in the astral plane (Theosophy's kāmaloka) until its emotional content is exhausted, after which it too dissolves and the consciousness withdraws to the higher principles.

Lower manas — the mental body of concrete thought, calculation, and reasoning about the sense-world. In the Besant-Leadbeater scheme the mental body has a 'lower' (rūpa, form-bound) and 'higher' (arūpa, formless) division; this principle is the lower. Powell's The Mental Body (1927) treats this principle in the Theosophical convention as a vehicle of bright yellow tone, the colour deepening with the focus and clarity of thought.

Higher manas — the causal body (kāraṇa śarīra in Theosophical usage), the abstract / formless mind. It is the vehicle that persists across incarnations and stores the karmic record; for Blavatsky and Besant it is the true 'individuality' of the human being, distinct from the transient personality of the lower four principles. Powell's The Causal Body (1928) treats the colour as a luminous gold-yellow sphere whose density and refinement are built up over the course of many incarnations.

Buddhi — the intuitional principle, the seat of unitive wisdom and direct apprehension. Above the discursive mind (manas) and below the pure spirit (ātman). Besant calls it the 'spiritual soul', the principle through which the human is consciously at one with all life. In Leadbeater's clairvoyant report the buddhic plane is rendered in iridescent blue; the shift from causal to buddhic marks the threshold between the human and the divine in the Theosophical hierarchy.

Ātman — the seventh and highest principle, the divine spark identified with the universal Self. For Blavatsky it is not strictly an individual possession but a ray of the One Life, present in every human being as the source of consciousness itself. The Theosophical doctrine of the upper triad (ātman–buddhi–manas) groups the highest three principles as the immortal individuality, in contrast to the four lower principles of the transient personality (Besant, The Ancient Wisdom, ch. V).