# Astral travel vs. possession *The Whorl list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 18 Feb 2001* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Adam Stephanides *18 Feb 2001, 20:30* > on 2/18/01 12:32 PM, Endymion9 at endymion9 at mindspring.com wrote: > I'm assuming the Neighbors could astral travel without any assistance, human > or inhumi. My next assumption is that the inhumi have learned to astral > travel but only with the assistance of a Neighbor or human. IIRC, it is Silkhorn specifically who has the power to astral travel, although only in the company of an inhumu/a. Since the Neighbors probably gave him this ability, presumably they can do it too, but I don't recall it being explicitly stated. I don't think the inhumi have the ability apart from Silkhorn. On the other hand, apparently the inhumi do have the power of possession, although I don't recall this being mentioned before RTTW. > And I'm not sure if I'm confusing astral travel with possession. What > exactly is the difference. Is possession just astral traveling into someone > else? In possession, the possessor's mind takes over someone else's body temporarily. In astral travel, the travellers appear in a faraway place in a separate "astral" body. (At least, that's how it is in TBOTSS.) --Adam *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ---