“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Saturday, Feb. 1, while doing some other art work, I had a vision. This was of my present younger brother Dick during his life in England in 1671. I saw very clearly the front upstairs bedroom in which he slept, and the bed in which he died as a boy of 9. I made a very quick sketch of this mental picture with a ballpoint pen. Jane and I both liked it, so I matted it. When this session began I had the drawing propped up on the bookcase so Jane could see it easily as she paced back and forth.

(At the start of the session our cat Willy became very frisky. As we sat at the board preparatory to greeting Seth, Willy jumped up on it; from there he vaulted up on the bookcase, knocking the sketch to the floor. As I retrieved it Jane began to receive Seth within. After Seth spelled out his greeting, Jane rose and began to dictate. She exhibited no voice or hand phenomena this evening, merely the darkening of the eyes.

The drawing is very good. There were three beds in that room. Dick slept in one, the bed that you have pictured. His eldest sister slept in another, and a young brother in the third. There was also a smaller bed in which a maid slept. The family was not rich by any means. The maid was a relative of Throckmorton’s. In the beginning she worked for the family to save a decent dowry. However she was no beauty, and Throckmorton never really managed to pay her much above food and lodging.

These windows were not open however, except in periods of stifling heat which came seldom in England. This room was the front room and not as spacious as your sketch would make it appear. The mattress was straw but the bed itself was the best bed in the family, handed down from Throckmorton’s father. Throckmorton and his wife, Lessie, usually slept in it. It was given over to Dick because of his illness.

Behind the shop was another room that served as a kitchen and, you might say, parlor. In any case it was the family’s social room. Behind this was a storeroom with earthen floor, and a shed. An imbecilic boy sometimes did errands for Throckmorton about the shop. He slept in the shed. Lessie had already had and lost 4 children. One actually lived to be 18 and was born when Lessie was very young. The others died in childbirth or in the first year. Throckmorton had wanted a son to carry on his shop. The child who died at 18 would have been such a boy, and Throckmorton never really recovered from the lad’s death. He died incidentally of pneumonia: took sick and died within three days.

Throckmorton resented the fact that his eldest was a daughter, and it was for this reason that she was allowed to make the journey to France. She was 23 and unmarried. Since her parents had not married her off, and as she was somewhat of a strain on the family income, Throckmorton gave her a cash settlement. Lessie gave her goods, garments, material and some jewelry, and the parents bid the eldest good-bye.

Much love was bestowed upon the boy, Dick, and at his death Throckmorton was all the more bitter against this eldest child. Nor was there any love lost on the young woman’s part. She was temperamentally different from the other members of the family. The house was filled with mourning when Dick died. The 3-year-old boy lived into old age, turning into a prosperous tradesman dealing in wools and textiles. I am unable at present to tell you what Throckmorton’s shop actually dealt with.

The son who did survive, you do not know in your present existence. Throckmorton however is your present father. One of the side chores he has taken upon himself is to do reparation to the eldest daughter, obviously, taking her as his wife in this existence. However she holds strong resentment against him from that earlier treatment.

They were drawn to each other because of those previous ties, and yet in that past life this daughter was extremely cruel, particularly in speech, to Throckmorton. Sensing of course the bitterness that he felt because she was not a boy—incidentally this is a strong subconscious motive—this caused her to bear him three sons to help allay his bitterness. She gave him these three sons as a gift or sacrifice; and when it seemed he would not accept them as such she turned against him, made too much of the sons to pay him back. The relative who is now your mother’s niece contributed to some degree to the unrest in the previous family as it existed in England. The young relative was very jealous of the older daughter for her position in the family, and for the dowry which was hers.

Her clothes were hand-me-downs from the daughter of the family, and since the maid was quite a few years younger than the daughter the clothes fit her poorly. She was glad to see the dissension between the father and the daughter. This time the present personality of the maid tries to make up for the jealousy, and for many quarrels that she initiated secretly between Throckmorton and his daughter, by malicious tattling and playing one member of the family against the other. I suggest you take a brief break, if this material hasn’t already broken you up.

I may add here that they chose to renew this relationship, that is, free will operating in this case as in all others. There are always varieties of personal problems to be worked out, but the time, place and relationship is left to choice. For that matter, a personality can choose to ignore the problems completely, though this is at best a cowardly solution and simply holds the personality back. There is very much detail involved here. Needless to say, Throckmorton could have tried to make reparation to his daughter in a variety of ways, and not necessarily by being her husband.

Your eager, bungling friend was an acquaintance in your immediately past lives, making late contact with you now. He was a sort of educated medicine man in those days, peddling many potions supposed to arouse erotic passions in weak and fainting Victorian ladies. He had seven children, a wife of almost obscene girth, and a child called Stephen who was a pharmacist or doctor. His name was Cronton the Third.

He knew you both slightly. You came in contact with him at various times. His wife Geneva—that is not Geneva the city, G-e-n-e-v-e-v-a (spelled out)—came to Ruburt to contact a dead brother. Geneveva was wealthy, upright and homely. Your friend was four years younger than she, five times poorer, and ten times more ambitious.

He died in 1863, fat, widowed, and fairly prosperous. He choked to death on a prune pit. Since he was short of breath and fairly portly and filled with gout, this isn’t as silly as it sounds. He was 82 or 83. He should watch his drinking habits closely in this life as he has a predisposition toward gout, and drinking to excess can lead in this direction. And I don’t care what your doctors say.

Frank Watts, dear inquisitive Joseph, is resting, and he needs it. You are right in supposing that I ran after him, grabbing his shirttail so to speak, in our beginning sessions. And yet, you see, it was easier for him to make contact for me in the beginning than it was for me to do it myself. He was simply more open to your plane. There are many things, naturally, that I have not explained to you simply because of the time involved on your part. Needless to say there is great fluidity and variety and challenge on the part of personalities and fragments and personality fragments.

Do you want to take a break? I mention this for Joseph, because his fingers seemed cramped. In any case I believe we will close tonight’s session. I am tempted to carry you further along the lines which we have just begun. However I do not feel it would be a good idea so late in the session. You will see that we have covered a good bit of material here. And I certainly hope I have set Joseph right as far as Frank is concerned.