“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The 54th envelope experiment was held tonight. The object was a homemade pattern made on light-colored paper, with hand-ground gray brown earth color for pigment and polymer medium for binder. It was folded once as indicated in the making. The effect is like an inkblot, except that the quality and texture of the paint is much superior as far as charm goes; this particular hand-ground pigment, which I make myself by heating a certain Italian earth color, has a texture like fine cement or roughened stone. Since it is a heavy-bodied pigment, it was built up in spots on the object as much as 1/32 of an inch thick. The whole pattern was made up of lines and white spots which do not show very well in my tracing. I placed the object, folded once, between the usual two pieces of Bristol and sealed it in the double envelopes.

(Jane of course had never seen this object, or any others like it, because I have never made them before. I made two of them on May 10,1966; I dated one of them and used the other in the envelope. The pigment color is quite dark, but not black. The stonelike or rough surface and the dark color enter into the experimental results.

Do you have an envelope for me?

(Jane paused at 10:16 without opening her eyes. She took the envelope for our 54th experiment, pressed it to her forehead for a moment and then lowered it to her lap. Her left hand remained raised to her face.)

(As soon as she opened the double envelopes, Jane said the object looked like a man to her, with either horizontal edge uppermost, and that she thought this impression had given rise to the photograph data. See the tracing on page 162, and the description of the object on page 163. This marked the end of the session for all practical purposes as far as Seth was concerned. Jane and I made the connections we could and did not ask Seth to elaborate.

(“A square object, perhaps a small square shape at the top center of the object, balanced by another shape at the bottom center.” Throughout the data Seth keeps attempting to refine this shape or block image, with some success. Although none of the shapes on the original object are square, they do give the impression of being balanced one upon another. Any object produced like the envelope object will give a feeling of balance, no matter what the design, as long as both halves are printed or impressed in full. On the original many small white interstices show that are not visible on the quick tracing. It seems Seth had a correct impression.

(“Perhaps J B and a date.” Jane, or Seth, getting at the idea of photograph again. As stated earlier, I made two similar objects with the same pigment on May 10,1966. I dated and initialed the one not used in the envelope experiment; this gives an RB and a date, but I doubt if this is what Seth is getting at here.

(Tracings of the matchbook cover used as the object in the 55th envelope experiment, in the 260th session for May 18,1966.)