“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane talked with Peggy Gallagher briefly on the telephone this morning and learned that the Gallaghers returned to Elmira yesterday, Tuesday, from vacation in Puerto Rico. Jane learned little about their trip other than that the Gallaghers took many notes to use in checking against Seth’s notes; and that Bill found himself involved in a “strange experience” with a piano player and what he thought was telepathy. The four of us get together this weekend to hash over all the notes.

(For the envelope test I used a pair of name cards made by our friend Bill Macdonnel for his art studio, the Cameron Gallery. Bill gave us these cards perhaps a year or so ago, shortly after he opened his gallery. Each card is handmade and thus somewhat unique. More than anything else, I was interested in seeing if Jane could distinguish that the test involved two objects. I placed the cards between two pieces of Bristol board, then sealed them in the usual double envelopes.

(The design on Bill Macdonnel’s handmade name cards can be “The shape of a star” as far as conventional symbols go. At least it can to me, as an artist; Bill is also an artist. Jane and I drew a blank on “a particular event, with some unpleasant connotations” at the moment.

(We could make many interpretations of “The number two.” My personal idea is that “The number two” refers to the fact that two items comprise the test object. We did not know what to make of the color green impression. Any painting in Bill’s gallery could be “A representation.” “Two people” is also open to many interpretations. “Yourself a year ago” I regarded as valid, since I had paintings of my own on exhibit at Bill’s gallery on the occasion for which he made these cards; and the event took place around a year ago, although I do not know the exact date offhand.

(“A connection with music” can result from the fact that Bill played jazz on a phonograph at his gallery during the exhibition in which I participated last winter; he plays music also at each exhibition he presents.

(The “impression of a seesaw... as a children’s game,” is quite interesting to us, and we believe a good example of the way associative memory can work while also being accurate. At the time of the exhibition I participated in at Bill’s gallery last winter, he had not had the gallery open very long. Building was still going on; in the back room were sawhorses he had borrowed from a carpenter, plus many other tools, scraps of wood, etc. Note that the sawhorse shape and the support for a child’s seesaw would be practically the same. Jane is very attached to playground accoutrements; she has especially fond memories of children’s seesaws and swings. Indeed, playgrounds have an almost mystical significance for her and she uses them often in her paintings.

(“Four, six” did not ring a bell with us. Bill’s gallery, which takes up the entire ground floor of a downtown store location, is certainly “a location with much space.” We are not sure of the “steeple shape,” unless it may apply to some of the modern sculpture also on exhibit in the gallery last winter.

(The unpleasant event referred to by Seth made several pieces of information given in the test data fall into place for us. The errors in introduction made by Jane at the gallery reception were humorous, but also so obvious that their significance could be hardly missed. One involved a cousin of mine whom we hardly see; the other involved the director of the other gallery in town, the Arnot, for whom Jane had worked until a couple of months before the reception at Bill’s gallery, which we now believe did take place in February.

(Jane and I encountered her ex-employer at the reception at Bill’s gallery last winter. Jane was acting as an unofficial hostess. In introducing this man to another couple, or trying to rather, Jane discovered in mid-sentence that she had forgotten his name.)