Very interesting idea. I love worlds where ordinary technology interacts with magical techniques. In this scenario, would the esoteric abilities have developed recently during the PoD, or are they a full part of human history?
In this scenario, esoteric abilities were always part of human history, and they were indeed key parts of ancient civilizations such as Egypt, China, India, and others. There were a lot of mages, shamans, medicine men, and various occultists in ancient times, who wielded powers that could be considered as "supernatural" by people who didn't know the very logical and quantifiable methods behind the madness.
However starting from the Middle Ages, these esoteric practitioners had been under severe persecution first by the doctrinal monotheistic religions, and then later endured similar persecution, prejudice, and ridicule by secular atheistic materialists. As a result, the various esoteric and occult movements were forced to go underground, living on the edges of society. During the 20th century the entire world was divided between two secular atheistic materialist blocks, the Communist world and the Western world. So it seemed that humanity would take the atheistic technocratic route of development either way. But history took a sideways turn.
The Soviet Union started disintegrating in the 1980s, and by the 1990s fully fell apart. With restrictions on religion and magic lifted, a bunch of various cults and pseudo-religious organizations popped up. Some were merely nationalists and historical reenactors, others were real esoterics who knew real magic. They brought back the ancient Russian pre-Christian pagan religion, filling in the gaps with Hinduism and other Asian religions. The collapse of the Soviet Union began the "domino effect", the collapse of the rest of the Communist world. The "tank man" was over run, and the Tianmen protests spiraled out of control. In China similarly to Russia, a bunch of Taoists, Confucianists, Qigong practitioners, and various shamans and mystics created various cults and mass religious teachings.
Falun Dafa, created by Li Hongzhi, took over China. At around the same time in Russia, the Golden Age, an organization created by Nikolai Levashov, took power. For those of you who are not familiar with Levashov, he is basically Russia's equivalent of Li Hongzhi. Both Li and Levashov then took on the tasks of de-Communization of their respective countries, and revival of their respective ancient cultures, or rather the esoteric interpretations of them. As a result, everyone wears brightly colored industrial made Shen Yun esque costumes, and the embroidered pagan Russian equivalent in their neighbor to the north. Levashov also changed the Russian culture to be more Asian rather than European. Traditional architecture make a comeback, using modern building materials and methods this time, to become even larger, more monumental and elaborate. So at the start of the 21st century both Russia and China emerged as modified versions of their ancient cultures, based on esoteric paganism. They also helped Hindutva come to power in India via combination of military coup and popular revolution.
Whereas previously magical powers or psychic powers were known only to a tiny fraction of the population, Li and Levashov propagated their teachings throughout the general public in their respective countries. They developed their magical abilities further. Their magic is based on Qigong, astral projection, bilocation, telepathy, telekinesis, elemental bending, energy bending, conjuring spirits, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
They used astral projection to visit other planets. A more advanced form of astral projection enables the practitioner to take his physical body with him, thus facilitating a teleportation. Then they learned how to create these magical portals, which enable non psychics to cross through the portal to other planets. No technology is needed, the portal is created in the astral realm, and then the two ends are pushed through into the physical, creating a portal, the frame of the portal is made of wood.
They found vimanas buried underground in Tibet, the Himalayas, and the Siberian permafrost. These are simple enclosed capsules made of monolithic stone, lined with modified alloys of bronze and cast iron that have special properties. The middle part contains a crystal, which enhances the psychic powers of the operator, enabling him to move the entire "craft" via his mind alone, enabling levitation, and also astral projection and teleportation of the entire "craft" to other planets even. Anyone inside the craft gets a free ride, only the operator has to be a psychic. Once again, it's just a dumb capsule, with a magical crystal which is controlled by the mind and grants you a limited set of powers. No moving parts or otherwise super advanced technological stuff. Thus they were able to create more of the crystals and create more similar "crafts", allowing them to tunnel through the astral realm to other planets, thus leapfrogging over the United Alliance in "space travel", by not actually traveling through the space in between planets.
If anyone is familiar with Turtledove's story "The Road Not Taken", I am using the same idea here.
In addition, the Traditional Order have worked on their magical powers a lot, so the breakaway civilizations that they founded have powers as in Avatar the Last Airbender, Naruto, or Dragon Ball, that they use for combat, and for other more constructive purposes. And a lot of their technology is based on harnessing this chi energy, to enhance psychic powers or modify them in some ways.
So the Traditional Order have a head start over the United Allies in establishing colonies on other planets. All their colonies are on planets habitable to Earth life however, since they lack the technology to live on non habitable planets. And due to the nature of astral projection, they tend to be scattered all over the galaxy, and sometimes in other galaxies too. Thousands of years into the future, various successor civilizations came to be, which were originally colonies founded by the Traditional Order. They tend to be culturally Asian and religious, even the Russian ones since Russia turned towards Asia away from Europe. In the future, these various breakaway civilizations form their own colonies, while others have forgotten how to travel between the planets and have reverted back to pre-industrial societies. The various civilizations founded by the Traditional Order range from at the utopian level egalitarian Buddhist monk theocracies, to at the dystopian level caste system where overpowered individuals are at the top and slavery for everyone else, and bloody cults run by individuals possesed by actual demons.
The United Alliance meanwhile colonized space using "conventional" technologies. They are a typical science fiction civilization, with advanced spaceships, robots, artificial intelligence, the trope has been dissected to death in "Star Trek" and other mainstream science fiction shows, so I won't go into as much details. The settlements tend to be geographically close together, instead of being scattered all over the galaxy, since they actually have to fly through all the space between the stars. Thousands of years into the future, the breakaway civilizations founded by the United Alliance range from at the utopian level societies like Jacque Fresco's with technology living in harmony with nature, to at the dystopian level barely liveable polluted factory worlds, planets with total social credit system surveilance police states, and transhumanist soulless hive minds.
The Traditional Order and the United Alliance have established two kinds of completely different human civilizations, to the extent that they may as well be aliens in relation to each other. Because the patterns of settlement are different, it will take quite some time before they will find each other again. The scenario that gets created, is that there are multiple "human" civilizations in the galaxy, who are different enough to be aliens. And these different breakaway civilizations are interacting with each other, and sometimes fighting. So the "aliens" are just humans with completely different culture and social organization, and thousands of years of separate development.
