“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

When man identified with nature, as given in Psyche, he did not imagine that the gods disapproved of him when storms lashed across the landscape. He did not at that time, as is supposed, do sacrifice then to win the gods’ approval. Instead, identifying with nature, man identified also with all of its manifestations.

With that loss of identification storms for the first time became truly threatening, capricious, for man’s mind could not intellectually understand the intimate and yet vast connections that the intuitions and emotions had once comprehended. It was then, and in the terms of this discussion, that men felt a division between themselves and “the gods,” for it was then that man began to personify the elements of nature.

Once this was done, nature it seemed could be dealt with, could be cajoled, tricked, or reasoned with as circumstances warranted. If a large area was besieged by stormy weather of any kind, then obviously a god must have somehow disapproved of human action. It was vital that the person so disapproved of be cast out. If any doubt was present then another person would be cast out or sacrificed. Acts were scrutinized so that those offending to the gods could be clearly categorized so that men would not unknowingly offend. Tribal life became a series of ritualized activities. If certain patterns of behavior were followed and the weather was pleasant, then those patterns of behavior must be ones that were safe. If the weather turned disastrous, the people were in a quandary, reexamining the patterns of behavior, finding perhaps minute differences, suspicious variations, that seemed to occur just before the storm—so these became the new sins.