“The Astral Life of a Turtle” is one of the most mysterious texts by Jacob Schechter; esotericism here is intertwined with extrasensory perception, the mystery is multi-layered, the lines of the narrative are woven into a complex pattern. In The Astral Life of the Turtle, the highest Providence is completely hidden from both the protagonist and the reader. The forces of evil that take possession of the ordinary engineer Nikolai Alexandrovich seem to act independently, of their own free will. According to Kabbalah, the human soul is a multi-story building, which most of us have yet to inhabit, but for now we live in the basement, where Divine light hardly penetrates. Extrasensory “miracles”, the ability to enter the “astral” are not yet spirituality, they do not mean penetration into the “ground floor” of a building. The psychic has only lived out his “basement” better than others; his superpowers are a continuation of the functions of the physical body and the “animal soul” associated with it, the dark desires of which we sometimes experience as independent and destructive forces. In Shekhter's story, the gift of a psychic is given to a low and unworthy person. Nikolai Alexandrovich does not think about who gave him the magical gift and for what purpose. He tries to use the powers given to him for the most base purposes, imagining himself as a spiritual giant, and he himself does not notice how he turns out to be a toy in the hands of Evil. Dangerous abilities destroy the Turtle, who never became human.