Katherine Pauline Seabrook (née Edmondson)

Born: Unknown.

Died: Unknown.

Katherine Seabrook was the daughter of a Coca-Cola executive and the first of William Seabrook's three wives. After they were married in 1912 they settled in on a large farm outside of Atlanta, Georgia, which was a gift to them from Katherine's father. Later they moved to New York and Katherine opened a coffee house on Waverly Place that soon became popular with Greenwich Village artists and writers. They later rented a house in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and filled it with servants.

As William Seabrook tells it, he and Katie realized early in their marriage that they weren’t suited for each other romantically—she had no interest in his fantasies—but they had stayed together as affectionate companions. She ignored his sexual exploits with other women, he wrote, and she enjoyed coming along on his adventures. When the arrangement finally came to an end, neither was surprised. They finally divorced in 1934.

She published a book Gao of the Ivory Coast, a first person account of Katie and William Seabrook's visit to west Africa in the 1920s, and the young Ivory Coast boy that briefly lived with them there.

Aleister Crowley:

Aleister Crowley was acquainted with both William and Katherine Seabrook and visited them on their farm in October 1919.

"In the autumn I accepted an invitation to visit my friends William and Kate Seabrook on their farm in Georgia to which they had retired."

The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, p. 794

William Seabrook remembers Crowley's visit in one of his books:

     "One following summer—it was around 1920 [this date is incorrect]—I invited A.C. to spend July and August with me on a farm near Atlanta.  We got to talking one night about the Trappist monks, about their vows of silence, etc., and he suggested that we try an interesting variant. He proposed that for a week we limit all verbal communication and all conversation to one prearranged monosyllable. We experimented with several, tried various animal monosyllables, including urr, woof, moo, baa, and finally decided upon "wow.

     We stuck to this for the whole week. Katie was amused and tolerant, visitors wondered whether we'd gone crazy, while Shep and Vonie, our two Negro servants, were convinced we'd either joined or were founding a branch of some new religion. We learned in the first couple of days, or believed we did, a good deal about the manner in which animals communicate with one another. We were both surprised now much, by mere change in intonation, volume, etc., we could communicate. After we'd become pretty good, or thought we had, in "Pass the butter," "I don't care for any more," "Would you like to take a walk?", "That's a pretty girl!", "It's a fine morning," "yes," "no," "maybe," "I like it," "I don't like it," "the hell with it," "Isn't it wonderful?" and elementary things of that sort—it chanced that one night Shep brought me a gallon of moonshine corn.

     A.C. and I sat up that night, drank most of it, and held a long, deep, philosophic conversation, in terms of "wow," until the wee small hours, when Katie finally made us shut up and go to bed. She still insists that we simply got drunk and sat and barked at each other all night, but A.C. and I felt the talk had been profound and illuminating.

     It was at any rate profitable, for I later wrote a fantasy on what might happen if human language were abolished, and sold it to H. L. Mencken. It is entitled "Wow," and had appeared in a number of anthologies."

Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today, William Seabrook, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1940. p. 223.

In Syria in 1925

circa 1934