Origins of I Ching Storyline

For years, I've wondered just where the DS writers got the idea of using the I Ching hexagrams for astral/time travel on the show.  I've read a lot of books on occult theory and practice over the years, and have read much of the I Ching itself in Chinese. Although in the Great Preface it states that the I Ching hexagrams are, in a sense, the keys to unlocking cosmic processes in which our universe originates and through which it is shaped, hence their ability to give clues to affairs of human destiny, I have never read of any description in Chinese magical lore using the hexagrams in the way they were employed on DS.

Last night I was looking at a collection of Golden Dawn materials collected and edited by English occultist Francis King in 1971.  There's quite a bit in there on astral travel.  Anyhow, in a preface King composed to one section, he quotes from some notes W. S. Seabrook published about a Working in the 1920s using the I Ching hexagrams in just the way they were used on DS.  The text implies that Seabrook got the technique from Aleister Crowley, who paved the way for the current Neo-Pagan practice of mixing and matching practically any technique from any culture into a general matrix of magical methodology. 

What's even more significant in terms of DS is that the woman in Seabrook's account threw the 49th Hexagram, KO, the Hexagram of Change or Transformation.  In the course of the Working, the woman went into a trance and had a shapeshifting experience in which she shifted into a wolf (there was no physical transformation, but she behaved and even howled like a wolf).  Before she was brought out of her trance, the woman attacked and injured a British consul officer who was present to observe the Working.

I can supply more detailed references, if anyone cares.  It was a big surprise to me to discover that there was a factual basis for all of this.  I always regarded it as one of DS' wildest ideas!  After reflecting, I'm not surprised to learn that the ultimate origin for this way-out notion is the Great Beast himself, Ali Crowley!  (Grayson staggers and moans, "YOU BEAST!")

G.

Gothick,

Thanks for posting this. I took a lot of courses in Eastern religion as an undergrad, some of them as I was seeing 1897 for the first time, and, like you, I never came across anything that showed a connection between the hexagrams and time travel. I always just assumed that the writers plucked it out of, well, you know. 

C.

Fascinating!!!

I can supply more detailed references, if anyone cares.

I'm interested...

It was a big surprise to me to discover that there was a factual basis for all of this.  I always regarded it as one of DS' wildest ideas!  After reflecting, I'm not surprised to learn that the ultimate origin for this way-out notion is the Great Beast himself, Ali Crowley!  (Grayson staggers and moans, "YOU BEAST!")

LOL!  I was surprised by that too - I could never figure out how they crossed the time traveling idea with the I Ching. Interesting. Thanks for the info!  

hmm, thanks for that, Gothick. Fascinating!

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit, I didn't think the writers did a whole lot of research, and just cribbed plots and situations from well known stories.  I am chasened, but glad, that the writers seem much more well-read than I thought.

I can supply more detailed references, if anyone cares.

I'm interested...

Definitely - I'd love to learn more.

Bravo on uncovering a possible source behind the I-Ching time traveling!  It would great to find out more detail, if that's what you were meant as far as references.  I'm not sure I quite get the time travel part from what you describe in the sources you've found.

I wonder if the writers picked up this information from a book in one of the used bookstores that were said to be in the vicinity of the ABC studio.

It's exciting to realize that more research may be done on DS that could yield new information even after all these years.  (Finding the sources behind works -- whether it's DS or old Icelandic legends behind "Hamlet" -- is one of my major interests.)

I happened to find myself in the "occult" section of a university library today where I spent more time than I should have ... it occurs to me that had DS continued, there would have been a wealth of historic information it could have drawn on (for example, I was reading about a medieval manuscript of ritual magic).

Has anyone read any of the Judge Dee books? There is a reference to I Ching in at least one of them (I think). Judge Dee was a judge  who went about solving crimes with the help of a team of reformed criminals. He lived in about 800AD if I remember correctly. It's been more than 30 yrs since I've read perhaps 5 or 6 out of the 35 penned by Robert Von Eulik(sp).  He started writing them in 1949.  I did find an interesting web-site that has a wealth of information about the I Ching.  It is http://www.zhouyi.com. 

I can supply more detailed references, if anyone cares.

I'm interested...

Yes Steve, I'm interested too.  Funny -- when they started with the I Ching stuff on DS I remember going and buying a book on I Ching.  For the life of me, I couldn't draw any parallels or figure out where they were getting the time travel stuff from.  LOL
If possible, could you elaborate on the astral projection aspect?  I've never associated it with time travel in the way it was used on the show -- actually going back and effecting a change in history.  (effecting?  affecting?)  (Ya know, I don't think that Eng. class is doing me a damned bit of good)

-CLC
Scratching my head
& bogged down in essays


---------------------------
PS  And you're quite right.  The teacher is not terribly competent.  I can't wait for the class to end.  More later. 

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.

A footnote:   W. B. Seabrook is better known to readers on the occult as William Seabrook, author of The Magic Isle, an account of the Vodoun religion of Haiti, and the 1940 volume Witchcraft: its power in the world today.

Seabrook also published an autobiography, No hiding place, in 1942.  He was born in 1887.

G.

W. B. Seabrook is better known to readers on the occult as William Seabrook, author of The Magic Isle, an account of the Vodoun religion of Haiti, and the 1940 volume Witchcraft: its power in the world today.

I actually own Witchcraft: it's power in the world today. I bought it in paperback when DS was still on the air because it looked like it had some interesting chapters about vampires & werewolves and pentagrams & magic circles (I think it even has something in it about the astral body). I haven't looked at the book in years - but maybe I should check it out again. 

I actually own Witchcraft: it's power in the world today. I bought it in paperback when DS was still on the air....

Your home town must have had some interesting book stores, MB....

Your home town must have had some interesting book stores, MB....

Believe it or not, I bought it up at one of the variety stores in my neighborhood. It was sitting on one of those four-sided metal paperback stands that you turn around to check out all the books. The title intrigued me, I started flipping through, it looked interesting, so I picked it up (no doubt with whatever magazines had DS articles in them that day  ).

I dug it off of one of my bookshelves and here's the cover (in case anyone else is interested):

The publishing date says 1940, so it might still look the same for all we know.

The chapters that hooked me that day in the store have titles like: "World Champion Lady Vampire of All Time" (which is about the Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the central character in John Karlen's film Daughters of Darkness  ), "Vampire 1932 from Brooklyn, N.Y.," "The Caged White Werewolf of the Saraban," "Magic Pentagrams and Circles," and "'Astral Body' on a Boat". All things DS-related.    And there's even a chapter that makes reference to the I Ching, with all 64 hexagrams diagramed and the 49th hexagram circled. I'll defintely have to check that out again because, in part, the chapter says: "No. 49, the ko hexagram, is the one that got us into trouble."

Bingo!  MB, I'd say you just pegged the specific source for the DS writers' use of the I Ching.

Way to go!

G.