The method of lycanthropy I discussed there involves etheric rather than astral projection, via the creation of an etheric body of transformation. That's not simply an illusion; it's a fairly robust form, on the verge of material manifestation, and the practitioner can either leave his material body in a coma somewhere and place his consciousness in the etheric body, or he can wear the etheric body over his physical body.

Interesting... it seems that I have a category error, then, where the difference should be wearing the projection over the physical body versus sending the projection apart from the physical body, rather than "magic illusion" versus "astral projection". Thank you for the clue.

This also supports the possibilty of a "fey curse" scenario, assuming that fey could conjure an etheric form and attach it to a human's body... we probably can't do that but that doesn't mean they can't. Or perhaps not the fey but some other non-human entities... hopefully not the really grubby ones...

Thank you for pointing a way here. This looks like good material for more meditation practice.

silver disrupts etheric energy very effectively [...] while iron doesn't disrupt etheric forces to anything like the same extent

Iron is also a relatively poor electrical conductor. Is silver unique in this way or do electrically conductive materials generally disrupt etheric forms?

I suppose I'm asking how closely etheric energy is related to electricity, or if that is not known, the Western esoteric tradition having been developed before electricity was understood and not yet expanded to include that understanding. (I was using lycanthropy for meditation practice but this is way more interesting...)

As for the rest, seems to me you've got a good research project ahead of you...

Indeed I have a few projects... but many of those questions were simply products of meditation. I certainly have no desire to research casting curses! :-)

Thank you for the answer and thanks for hosting this forum.