Hi, Miss Winthrop, yes, I am familiar with the Judge Dee series. The author, Robert van Gulik, was a Chinese scholar, and he used a Ming Dynasty novel that was based on folk legends about a Tang Dynasty judge as the springboard for his series. There was an interesting attempt at a film version (meant to be a pilot for a TV series) with an all Chinese-American cast done in the 1970s and eventually shown on the ABC Movie of the Week, if memory serves.
For those interested in the topic, my source for the material about the I Ching as an aide to astral projection is this book: Astral Projection, Ritual Magic and Alchemy, by S. MacGregor Mathers and others... edited... by Francis King, published in NYC by Samuel Weiser in 1972. This was a reprint of a 1971 Neville Spearman (London) edition dated 1971. Note that Samuel Weiser was a successful occult and "metaphysical" oriented bookshop in NYC back in the Sixties. I visited the shop myself a few times in the 1970s.
King's material on the I Ching (which he spells Yi King,same as Ezra Pound--this is the spelling found in the old Victorian publications by Max Muller, which continued to be relied upon by Sixties occultists, much the way the outdated publications of Wallis Budge continue to by heavily leant upon by Egyptian cultists today) is derived from notes he found in an uncited work by W. B. Seabrook, described as "the Amerian journalist and traveller." Seabrook comes across in the notes as something of a Quentin Collins figure.
Although the notes refer to the use of the I Ching in "astral travel," this could well have led to time travel as well. In fact, time travel through the use of astral rituals (classically involving an elaborate visualization of the Qabalistic Tree of Life, building up Deities and related symbols at each Sphere or Sephira of the Tree) is extensively documented by the published magical records of two disciples of Dion Fortune, "Colonel" Seymour and Christine Hartley, published in volumes edited by contemporary English occultist Alan Richardson.
In the passage cited by Francis King, three experiences with I Ching astral projection are referenced. The first resulted in a "staid Professor of Greek"'s transformation into a "wanton female Corybant" (that is, ancient Temple dancer and sexual Priestess). In the second, the person projected back into a life as "a mediaeval Benedictine monk." The detailed account presents the experience of "an ex-singer named Nastatia Filipovna, a White Russian refugee." Miss Filipovna, a woman of strong clairvoyant abilities, was able to travel through the hexagram-inscribed door back into an existence as a wolf.
These experiments occurred in the early 1920s. Francis King speculates that Seabrook learned how to use the I Ching this way from Aleister Crowley, but gives no support for this theory. In the case of Nastatia, the tortoise-shell sticks fall in the pattern of Ko, the 49th hexagram, which was the hexagram used on DS.
My own theory is that Seabrook's material had been made available in an earlier publication, and that one of the DS writers (perhaps Violet Welles, who seems to have had a taste for occult research) stumbled upon this and suggested it in a story conference session.
Cheers,
G.
