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"That was from the I Ching. There was someone around who was very into that. Most of the words came straight off that."
– Syd Barrett, Terrapin 9
Another popular hangout for the Cambridge set was the home of Seamus O'Connell, whose mother was quasi-bohemian and also tolerant of youngsters running amok in her house. … Seamus' mother was deeply interested in the occult, and had amassed countless books on tarot cards, astrology and esoteric books on Chinese oracles such as the *I-Ching*. There was a part of Syd's nature that erred towards the mystic, and he would often leaf through the books on visits, always keen to find something new, asking Mrs. O'Connell endless questions.
– Palacios, Lost in the Woods, p. 22.
In the summer of 1964, Barrett had moved down to London to study painting at Camberwell Art School in Peckham, sharing a flat with David Gale in a building owned by Seamus O'Connell's mother. Others in the Cambridge set would drift in and out…. 'Syd was staying with us in Tottenham Court Road,' says Seamus O'Connell. 'He had a bedsit there. My mother had set up house in this place, and various friends had gotten bedsits there. An appalling place, but it had an atmosphere to it. And Syd was getting interested in the occult, which my mother was also into. She would do tarot card readings for him.' Indeed. Barrett was very keen on the occult and many a night would sit up talking to Seamus' mother about astrology, tarot cards and the like. She introduced him to the *I-Ching*, the Chinese oracle based on readings drawn from random numbers thrown with coins, probably the most interesting of occult fortune telling devices, as it has as much to do with probability and mathematics as divination and mysticism. Syd was suitably intrigued.
…
Lyrically the song was lifted nearly verbatim from Richard Wilhelm's 1924 translation of the Chinese oracle *The I-Ching* – *The Book of Changes*. Barrett had been given a copy by Seamus O'Connell's mother when he was living in the flat on Tottenham Street and his interest in Eastern mysticism had only grown in Earlham Street's sanctuary of creativity.
– Palacios, Lost in the Woods, pp. 35, 155.
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