“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We have known several people who were monks in a previous existence. Now. (To Ron): In a life in the east before the time of Christ, 1200 B.C., you were a member of a body of men who belonged to an esoteric heritage. You were wanderers and traveled also through Asia Minor.

(The Essenes were one of the four known Jewish sects active in the Holy Land at the time of Christ. They were a peaceful, contemplative group. They aren’t mentioned in the Bible. If Seth means that the Essenes were promulgating the Speakers’ codes of ethics in, say, the first century A.D., then this of course is a time many centuries later than Ron’s life in 1200 B.C.

(Seth-Jane spelled the god’s name Bael. Most sources spell it Baal, possibly pronounced as Bael. The Akkadian form, Bel, was used in ancient Mesopotamia. Baal — lord — was the name or title of a number of local deities of ancient Semitic peoples. Baal worship appeared in Syria and Israel many centuries before the birth of Christ — as early as 1400 B.C., according to Syrian cuneiform texts. This date is very interesting, in light of the 1200 B.C. Seth mentions for Ron, and the conflict within his group over Baal. Baal was most often a god of fertility, its image of stone probably a phallic one. According to orthodox Israelite belief, Baal or nature worship was idolatrous, a denial of any moral values.