“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(With many pauses to start:) Dictation. Your established fields of knowledge do not grant any subjective reality to c-e-l-l-s (spelled).

(9:19.) Remember that cells have consciousness, so while I say these leanings are biologically entwined, they are also mental properties. Drawing in its simplest form is, again, an extension of those inclinations, and in a fashion serves two purposes. Particularly on the part of children, it allows them to express forms and shapes that they see mentally first of all. When they draw circles or squares, they are trying to reproduce those inner shapes, transposing those images outward into the environment—a creative act, highly significant, for it gives children experience in translating inner perceived events of a personal nature into a shared physical reality apparent to all.

This was an entirely different kind of art than you have now. It was an attempt to objectify inner reality as it was perceived through a certain belief system. Whether the artist disagreed with certain issues or not, the belief system was there as an invisible framework. That intense focus that united belief systems, that tension between a sensed subjective world and the physical one, and the rarity of images to be found elsewhere, brought art into that great flowering.

2. For a brief description of Jane’s encounter with Mrs. Steffans, see Note 13 for Session 744, in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality. Seth, and Jane and I, described a number of our house-hunting adventures in the two volumes of that work. Those complicated, interrelated happenings are just as fascinating to us now as they were when they were unfolding; we have yet to publish their full story. We think that the events surrounding our purchase of the hill house furnish many clues to the spontaneous and creative workings of individual consciousnesses in our chosen physical reality.

Woodcuts and wood blocks were used for a variety of purposes by the ancient Chinese and Egyptians, for example, and even by the Romans. Many of the early prints created in Europe illustrate religious subjects. One of the first dated European woodcuts, showing a religious figure, appeared in 1423; a book bearing woodcut illustrations was produced circa 1460; the first Roman book containing woodcuts was made in 1467. Bibles were illustrated with woodcuts in the late 15th century. The earliest known engravings, printed on paper, date from around 1450; pictorial engraving and etching were evidently developed in Germany in the early 1500s. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) experimented with his own method of copper engraving. But all of these efforts were beginnings: There couldn’t have been any mass circulation of printed material in those days.