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Seabrook re-met Nastatia, an old friend with whom he had lost touch, in the summer of 1923, and told
her of the use of the I Ching as an aid to astral travel. She wanted to try the method, Seabrook agreed
to help her to do so and took her along to his friend John Bannister, a wealthy occultist who filled his
Studio with every variety of 'esoteric' junk from Tibetan tankas to South Seas devil masks.
The hexagram to be used was selected by throwing notched tortoiseshell sticks into the air. They fell
in a pattern which indicated the forty-ninth hexagram, Ko, meaning an animal pelt, moulting or, by
analogy, revolution.
Nastatia knelt in the centre of the darkened room, formulating mentally a door marked with the chosen
hexagram. For three hours there was silence, interrupted only by a complaint from Nastatia that her
knees were aching. Then she spoke:
'The door is moving. The door is opening. But it's opening into the outdoors ...
'Snow ... everywhere snow ... the moon on the white snow ... and black trees there against the sky. I
am lying in the snow ... wearing a fur coat ... I am warm in the snow ... It is good to lie warm in the
snow ... I am moving now ... I am crawling on my hands and knees ... I'm not crawling now, I'm
running on my hands and feet, lightly ... now! now! ... I'm running like the wind ... how good the snow
smells ... And there's another good smell. Ah! Ah! Faster ... Faster ...'
By now Nastatia was, in Seabrook's words, 'breathing heavily, panting'. He went on to say that when
she next broke silence 'it was with sounds that were not human. There were yelps, slaverings, panting
and then a deep baying such as only two sorts of animals on earth emit when they are running -
hounds and wolves.'
Seabrook and the other two observers - Bannister and a young vice-consul - became alarmed by
Nastatia's extraordinary behaviour and attempted to 'bring her round' by slapping her face. Her
reactions were, firstly, to attempt to tear at the vice-consul's throat with her teeth and, secondly, to
retire snarling into a corner of the room. Eventually all three approached her, forcibly smothered her
struggles in blankets and thrust ammonia under her nose. Slowly she reverted to her normal state of
consciousness.
'We didn't talk much,' wrote Seabrook, 'We brought her brandy. In a few minutes she made us find her
handbag with powder and makeup. She went into the bathroom. She came out and sank into an
armchair and lighted a cigarette ...'
At least some element of wish-fulfilment must have accounted for the form of Nastatia's animal
transformation but the really interesting thing is this: that not only does Ko mean animal pelt but that
several of the texts referring to this hexagram are connected with the idea of transformation.
This form of astral projection, using a symbol as a doorway has already been described in detail in the
chapter on tattwa vision, and is further elaborated in Chapter Eleven, in connection with the Tarot
Trumps and the Paths of the Tree of Life. At this stage, especially as you will have worked with the I
Ching, in its divinatory capacity, it is useful to select a hexagram at random and skry it without first
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