“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We began by sitting at a small table in our living room. We had covered the table with a dark material. Our kitchen opens off the living room, so we closed the blinds in both rooms, and pulled the curtains over them. Not knowing just how to go about a seance, we had a small red electric Christmas candle on. Our rooms have white walls also, so we could still see fairly well once our eyes became adjusted.

(With considerable relish Seth described in detail each phenomena that followed—so that, as he said, there would be no doubt as to what took place. He began by telling us to watch Jane’s thumb. The tip of it began to glow. It seemed to be an internal suffusing of the flesh with a cold white light; there was no radiant effect, merely the changing color of the flesh itself.

(“And now the wrist—see how it thickens and turns white?” Jane’s wrist did thicken. She sat with the wrist of her left hand pressed to the table top. She wore a black sweater with the sleeves pushed halfway up her forearms. The cold white light spread up over the thickening wrist, up the forearm to the sweater. Seth was smug and sardonic at the same time. “You didn’t think I could do it, did you my lovelies? But you have no idea of what you’re asking, of how difficult it is…”

(Jane’s hand slowly regained its normal shape. She still sat with it turned palm up. Now Seth extended himself. The fingers began to elongate noticeably, and to whiten. Then, a second set of fingers began to rise up, over Jane’s own fingers. Now, it would have been easy enough for Jane to bend her own fingers up into this position. But here the three of us saw now a second set of five fingers rising up, long and white. And moreover, this set of fingers had the fingernails on top. The nails were to be easily seen. Had they been Jane’s own fingers, the nails would have been on the undersides, and invisible.)

(Now, while Jane still sat with her left wrist pressed to the table, her hand, turning white in part again, rose several inches [perhaps three by my estimate] up from the table. My hands were held by Jane on my left and Bill on my right, but Bill passed his free right hand beneath Jane’s hand to see that it was actually rising and was not an illusion. [Was Jane’s elbow dropping, so the hand rose up? I do not know.] But laughing, Seth told us plainly that when we had attained more proficiency, he would materialize a fully independent hand for us. He explained that he drew on all three of us for the psychic energy necessary to do this.

(We had turned no lights on during break. Now Seth rather imperiously commanded us to move our little table over a few feet so that it faced the doorway to our bathroom. Looking back, Jane, Bill, and I recall with some humor that we docilely followed Seth’s every order. The three of us sat shoulder to shoulder, staring into the bath, which is large and tiled with white. We were hoping to see a materialization of some kind in the open doorway, since we had discussed this at break.

(“This isn’t a lunch meeting,” Seth snapped at me through Jane, for I was still finishing a piece of candy. “Nor is it a circus session. Your bathroom is much too light for what you desire. White is a very poor color for what you are asking.” When I asked if he required total darkness to be at his best, he replied, “We make light from darkness.”