“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The envelope object was a bill I had received this afternoon for art supplies, and which Jane had never seen. Jane does know the proprietor of the Art Shop, Marjorie Buck, who made out the bill. The object is printed in dark blue ink on yellow paper, with the writing in carbon blue. The large number at the bottom is in red; the back of the bill is blank. I placed the object, folded once, as indicated, between the usual two pieces of Bristol, then sealed it in double envelopes.

(Jane began speaking in trance in a quiet voice with many brief pauses. Her eyes soon began to open.)

(On October 15, 10 days ago, I dreamed Jane and I moved closer to New York City so I could sell my paintings—or so I wrote, rather than comics for instance. In the dream I saw a big city skyline in the distance, beyond the small town we moved to. Bill Ward—not in the dream—lives in Ridgewood, NJ, a commuter town for New York City.)

(Break at 9:17. Jane was dissociated as usual. Her pace had picked up considerably; her eyes opened often. She resumed in the same manner at 9:23.)

(At 9:35 Jane took the envelope for the 74th experiment from me without opening her eyes. She held it to her forehead in a horizontal position.)

(Jane gestured with the fingers of her right hand spread and pointed downward; she made vertical motions with the hand. She still held the envelope to her forehead with the other hand, as usual in a horizontal position, or nearly so.

The vague impression that it is a boy rather than a girl, and an initial R or B. Or, this is an image of someone, male, as a youngster who was born in 1936, or who is now 36 years old. A review, you see. (Jane lowered the envelope to her lap.)

(Break at 9:54. Jane was out as usual. Her eyes had remained closed through the envelope experiment, and had opened little during the Gallagher material. She said she didn’t know if she had any mental images; as we went through the material she recalled a few.

(See the copy of the envelope object on page 115 and the notes on the next page. As stated the object was a bill for art supplies from The Art Shop. Jane had never seen the object; I obtained it today, October 24, from Marjorie Buck, the proprietor, when I bought pencils and paper stumps with which to do the job my old friend, Bill Ward, mailed to me over the weekend. The job arrived yesterday. See the notes on page 116 for an explanation here, since these facts enter into the envelope data, we believe.

(The object is printed on bright yellow paper in dark blue ink, with the large serial number at the bottom in red. The back is blank. The bill was folded once for insertion into the double envelopes. The bill is not dated by Marjorie; when I obtained it I had no notion of using it as the object. I did want something that Jane had never seen however.

(This data was not as wholly precise as we would like, but we made the connections we could. Seth did not go over it after break, mentioning distortions and telepathic static instead. But we feel that more than enough points were made to establish that Seth/Jane had picked up the correct scent. Again, see the 286th session for an explanation of the way Seth receives envelope data.

(“A hole or grave or something deep.” Marjorie Buck is the proprietor of The Art Shop, where I obtained the bill used as object. Jane knows her fairly well. Marjorie’s husband died—we do not know when—and Marjorie bought The Art Shop earlier this year. Jane has used the hole/grave nomenclature several times in the past to refer to deaths; it is a regular association of hers.

(“A mistake or error.” Jane said this stems from the last time she personally saw Marjorie; this was perhaps five weeks ago when Jane was job hunting; this activity of Jane crops up later in the data also. Jane stopped at The Art Shop to buy me a pint can of gesso. Marjorie told Jane to help herself because she was not too familiar with the location of all the stock.

(Jane went to the usual place in the stockroom where the gesso was kept, and found only quart cans. She took this, then found pint cans on another shelf and took one of those instead. There are no errors on the object itself, for instance.

(“Connection with an old house; with another location; with two women and a man in particular.” Jane says Marjorie Buck lives in an old house, at 655 Logan Street. I personally am not familiar with it. The house of course obviously is at another location than our apartment, The Art Shop, etc. Later Note by RFB: Also, The Art Shop moves next year to an old house.

(We believe this data is an example of the distortions Seth refers to. In my second question an attempt is made to get more specific data. Possibly the above data refers to Marjorie as proprietor of The Art Shop, and her two helpers, my first cousin Ruth Gridley, and the framemaker Roy Fox. All of these people are friends of ours, bespeaking emotional involvement. But in answer to the second question, Seth cites Jane’s difficulty, and the thought of my mother, her cousin Vivian, and Vivian’s husband Bill. Vivian and Bill, from Virginia, visited my parents last weekend, and Jane and I saw much of them.

(“A connection with a particular event that was social. And perhaps had a connection with a school or sports.” This is good data, and is related to the object through Marjorie Buck. As stated on page 120 after the “mistake” data, the last time Jane saw Marjorie was when job hunting. Before stopping in at The Art Shop to buy the gesso for me, Jane had applied at the local YWCA for a job. The job involved teaching children various games, for the school or sports connection.

(Jane was also quite amused when the management of the YWCA asked her if she wanted to volunteer her services, when they learned of my family connections here in Elmira; for the social connections.

(“A rather airy design, with cubes predominating, and thin lines. These reminding Ruburt of a child’s Jungle Gym.” See the copy of the bill used as object on page 115. This also is good data. It could be said the bill is of airy design; Jane also said that to her way of thinking it contains cubes and rectangles. The thin line data is accurate, since on the original the lines are very thin and straight.

(The Jungle Gym reference is another example of one of Jane’s favorite associations, since she was much attached to playground jungle gyms as a child. The abstract idea of a Jungle Gym is apparent enough in the object.

(“Some distant connection with a child.” No connections. Extra notation by Jane: Bill Ward, while asking Rob to do the job over phone, told him of death of Wendell’s child, a school boy. [Jane wrote boy but a girl died.]

(“Blacks that speak loudly.” Again see page 115. The heavy type for The Art Shop on the bill is prominent; when Jane opened the double envelopes and saw this she said it was black printing. Actually it is in dark blue ink against yellow paper, appearing almost black.

(“Some connection with, is it—ablutions or washings, and with some kind of festival-type thing.” This is good data, we believe, and refers again to the artwork Bill Ward mailed me over the weekend. Again, see the notes about this on page 116. Jane of course saw this artwork when I opened it up today, and when I began work on the backgrounds today.

(“A rectangular package, covered with white tissue paper, and divided in fours by a slim blue ribbon.” Jane had an image here. She saw mentally the four divisions, and had the feeling of blue—of a white package with blue lines or ribbons dividing it.

(Distortion probably operates here. Note that the bill used as the object has blue lines upon it. Bill Ward’s artwork arrived in a large rectangular package, but contained no tissue paper and bore no ribbons or string; it was instead sealed with tape. Nor did it contain any blue. Jane thinks she may have received accurate-enough data from Seth about a package, and constructed perhaps the ribbons herself because that is symbolic of packages. She used blue ribbons perhaps through a distortion of the blue pertaining to the envelope object.

(“Some orange or red perhaps.” In light of the data obtained in answer to the second question, it is quite possible that the red reference here concerns my mother. Red is very definitely her favorite color, a fact of which Jane is well aware. Seth has also commented upon this quite a few times.

(2nd Question: Who are the two women you mentioned? Initials? “We are having difficulty with Ruburt here, for he thinks of Vivian and your mother.” See the interpretation of the “two women and a man” data at the bottom of page 120. I tried to clarify that data here. My thought was that the two women and a man Seth referred to were Marjorie Buck, Ruth Gridley, and Roy Fox, all connected directly to The Art Shop, which furnished the bill used as envelope object. Jane evidently had in mind my mother, and Vivian and Bill Crowder, relatives from Virginia whom we saw this weekend. Seth apparently wanted to lead Jane away from the relative connection; but still volunteered no more specific information.

(3rd Question: Can you give me some more on that design with the cubes? “Airy and open. Connection with the outdoors, or green. The image also, hard to describe, of thin lines, coming down you see this way, almost in a flowerlike movement.” Jane’s gesture, indicating vertical lines.

(See the Jungle Gym data, interpreted on page 121. Here I sought to get more information. As stated, and seen on page 115, the bill used as object contains vertical lines as well as horizontal, and these are quite thin on the actual object. The outdoors reference above stems from Jane’s original mention of a Jungle Gym on page 121, and this would lead to the green data.

(There is another possible green connection, one obvious to anyone familiar with printing or commercial art, although I do not think it applies here. But the paper the object is manufactured from is a bright yellow, and the yellow is printed upon with blue ink. Blue and yellow ordinarily would print green. But in this case the blue ink is so dense and strong that it prints as blue on the object. No hint of green is to be seen. Jane is not aware of these mechanical points.

(6th Question: What shape is the object? “I am confused between a metallic image, or the feeling of metal. The cube shapes, and the impression of a rectangular shape also. The metal image or feeling seems to predominate with the cubes. These of course could be on a rectangular object.” Interpretations have already been given for the cubes, Jungle Gyms, metallic data, and the rectangular package, and Jane still cannot quite sort them out here.

(All are apparently linked with the envelope object in some fashion. The Art Shop bill used as object is rectangular in shape, but Jane mentioned a rectangular package earlier so we are not sure of what interpretation to assign here.

(Jane resumed at 10:48, sitting across the table from me.)

(End at 10:51. Jane was out as usual.)