Prefatory Note

Prefatory Note

I feel it advisable to preface the following material with a short note on the Golden Dawn technique of using symbols as a means of obtaining controlled astral visions; that is to say, meaningful, extremely vivid, and completely coherent daydreams in which the dreamer retains all his normal powers of choice, will-power and judgment. In these dreams, so it is believed, the seer is enabled to come into contact with deepest levels of what Jungian depth-analysts call the Collective Unconscious and the mediaeval Hermetic philosophers called Anima Mundi-the Soul of the World. The process used is best described as auto-hypnosis by means of a symbol. The seer begins by holding before his mind a symbol-it may be physically present, painted on a card, or, more difficult, formulated in the imagination only-an.1 persists in this until no other factor is consciously present in his thinking. He then, in his mind's eye, deliberately transforms the symbol into a vast door (or sometimes a curtain, ornamented with the symbol), wills the door to swing open, passes through it in imagination, and allows the day-dream to commence. It is perhaps worth saying that most experimenters with this technique have found that the dream experienced bears a real relationship to the symbol used. Thus if the seer uses a symbol equating with Elemental Fire he may find himself near a volcano or observing the self-immolation of a Phoenix, but never will he find himself bathing in a lake or flying through the air.1 The symbols normally used by the beginner in this practice were, and are, the Tattvas and sub-Tattvas, coloured symbols of the Elements and sub-Elements. These simple geometic forms, which Mathers and his fellow Chiefs seem to have derived from an early Theosophical treatise, Nature's Finer Forces, by Rama 1 This congruence between symbol used and vision experienced was described by W. B. Yeats in The Trembling of the Veil, Book III, Section II-VI inclusive. Yeats claimed that he had made York Powell talk of a burning house at a dinner party by imagining Tejas, the Fire Tattva.

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A S T R A L P R O J E C T I O N Prasad, are five in number and from them are obtained a further twenty sub-symbols. The five mother-symbols are Tejas, a red equilateral triangle representing Elemental Fire, Prithivi, a yellow square representing Elemental Earth, Apas, a silver horizontal lunar crescent representing Elemental Water, Vayu, a blue circle representing Elemental Water, and Akas, a violet-black egg shape representing Elemental Spirit. The twenty sub-Tattvas are formed by taking a mother-symbol and placing in the midst of it a small-scale representation of any of the four symbols. The various sub-symbols must not be confused with one another. For example Tejas of Prithivi, Fire of Earth, represented by a small red triangle on a yellow square, is a very different thing from Prithivi of Tejas, Earth of Fire, represented by a small yellow square on a red triangle.

After Tattva-vision had been thoroughly mastered the Golden Dawn initiate went on to the use of more complex symbols, for example the Tarot trumps and the strange sigils of Phaleg, Ophiel and the other Olympic Planetary Spirits. The really advanced students used the so-called Enochian Pyramids2 as their doors to the Unseen.

It may be that some of my readers may wish to undertake personal experimentation with this method of astral exploration. If so, they should bear in mind that any traditional symbol may be used to induce the required state of auto-hypnosis. Thus some contemporary occultists use the sixty-four Hexagrams of the Chinese Yi King, simple black and white symbols, made up of whole and broken lines, which are held much more easily in the imagination than more complex glyphs such as the Tarot trumps. If the Yi King is used in this way there seems to be, once again, a real causative link between the symbol used and the visions experienced. This connection is splendidly illustrated by an experience undergone by W. B. Seabrook, the American journalist and traveller. 2 The last Flying Roll printed in this section is concerned with visions obtained in this way. I have therefore felt it advisable to give a brief explanation of the Enochian magical system, its lettersquares, and the Sphinxes and Pyramids derived from these lettersquares, in Appendix B of this book.

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Seabrook had been experimenting for a year or so with 'travelng through the door'-he had probably learnt the technique rom Aleister Crowley, with whom he had at one time been riendly, using a Yi King Hexagram, chosen at random by hrowing tortoise-shell sticks in the air, as the symbol on the oor. Seabrook himself does not seem to have had any partiularly interesting experiences beyond the door, and he usually )und himself looking for a mysterious lost object, the exact ature of which he remained unaware. His friends seem to have een more fortunate; one was transformed from a staid Profes)r of Greek into a wanton female Corybant, another found him�lf in the body of a mediaeval Benedictine monk. The really x:citing and significant experience was undergone by an exlnger named Nastatia Filipovna, a White Russian refugee.

Nastatia had been experimenting with astral projection for )me time, obtaining the required disassociation of consciousess by gazing fixedly into a crystal ball. No symbol was used, nd the experiences she underwent were unpleasant, monomous, and completely outside her conscious control; almost !ways she found herself in a primitive nomadic camp, engaged i skinning and gutting a dead bear with a stone knife.

In the summer of 1923 Nastatia re-met Seabrook, an old cquaintance whom she had not seen for some years, and told im of her crystal gazing and its unsatisfactory results. In re1rn Seabrook told her of the use of the Yi King Hexagrams in �tral travel; inevitably Nastatia wanted to try the experiment nd asked her friend to arrange it. Seabrook agreed and took er along to the scarlet draped studio of John Bannister, a realthy occult dilettante, where they were joined by a y.:iung nglishman, the British vice-consul in New York, who was nxious to witness anything that might happen. The experiment began with the tortoise-shell sticks-notched n one side, smooth on the other-being thrown into the air. hey fell in a pattern which formed Ko, the forty-ninth Hexaram. Nastatia knelt in the centre of the semi-dark studio, her eyes !osed, formulating the Hexagram in her imagination. For three ours there was silence, save for a complaint from Nastatia 67

A S T R A L P R O J E C T I O N about her aching knees. Then she spoke : 'The door is moving. The door is opening. But it's opening into the outdoors ! I supposed it would open into another room. Its beautiful out there . . . and yes . . . I'm going. 'Snow . . . everything's white . . . everywhere snow, and the moon . . . the moon on the white snow . . . and black trees there against the sky. Yes, I'm outside now, I am lying in the snow . . . pressed against the snow . . . I am not cold . . . I am wearing a fur coat . . . and I am warm in the snow . . . flat with my belly and chin on the snow I lie. It is good to lie warm in the snow. I am moving now . . . but I am not walking I am crawling on my hands and knees . . . why am I crawling ? I'm not crawling now, I'm running, on my hands and feet, lightly . . . now ! now ! now ! . . . I'm running lightly like the wind . . . how good the snow smells ! I have never smelled the snow before. And there's another good smell. Ah ! Ah ! Faster . . . faster . . . .'

Seabrook said that by this time Nastatia 'was breathing heavily, panting. Her big handsome mouth was open, drooling. And 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.'

All three observers were alarmed by the girl's condition and the Englishman attempted to bring her round by slapping her cheeks. Nastatia's reaction was astonishing; she snarled and leapt, fortunately unsuccessfully, at the vice-consul's throat. Falling back to the ground she crawled, snarling, into a corner of the studio. Seabrook described how he and his companions dealt with the crisis : 'We had the lights on, snared her in big blankets, wrapped her tight as she struggled like a maniac, put ammonia under her nose, and she came out of it. 'We helped her to a couch. We brought a towel and a basin. We didn't talk much. 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 and said "What time is i t ? " '

It might be thought that Nastatia's experience was simply a

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A S T R A L P R O J E C T I O N rather nasty case of wish fulfilment, that beneath her placid Slav exterior she nursed a bestial desire to rip, tear, kill and revel in blood-such unpleasant fantasies are not uncommon. I think that this was probably so, and I have no doubt that the particular form the girl's animal transformation took was conditioned by her own unconscious desires; but the really interesting thing is that there was an animal transformation. For Ko, the name of the Hexagram used, literally means skin, hide, fur, an animal pelt, moulting. Even more significant are the traditional Chinese commentaries on the lines of this Hexagram. One of them reads 'wrapped in the hide of a yellow cow', another reads 'the great man changes like a tiger', still another reads 'the superior man is transformed into a panther'. All of them express the idea of transformation in one form or another-so there was a link between Nastatia's experience and the symbol she used; a link of which she herseli was unaware, for her personal knowledge of the Yi King was limited to what little Seabrook had told her of the subject.

I do not think that the average astral experimenter is likely to undergo such odd experiences as the one I have related--even if he or she is using the forty-ninth Hexagram of the Yi Kingbut I would advise those who are worried by the possibility to confine themselves to the Golden Dawn symbols and their use as taught in the Flying Rolls printed in the following section.

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