“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There are biological families. There are also all kinds of other groups which are not necessarily family substitutes, but different kinds of families. Social organizations, clubs, and other frameworks of course to some extent apply here, and supply for many people frameworks in which certain relationships can be encountered that are specific—limited in some ways, perhaps, to certain specific interests, and yet they give a sense of belonging.

In Turkey you dealt with an order rather than a family—a tribal order, so to speak, with males predominating. It was of a religious and warlike nature, in which the sword predominated. Women had no part to play. Ruburt was the leader of such a group, and you were what could be considered his lieutenant, or closest at hand. The group was given to mystical practices, in which the dictums of Allah were followed—but also those dictums were enmeshed with some old Jewish practices and beliefs.

Only monks could afford it, and there were thousands of different groups scattered throughout Europe. There were equally as many long-forgotten communities, in which hermits of every sect imaginable squatted in caves in given areas. People of solitary nature born in medieval times had to make their own structures, and if they were not hermits or monks, they were outlaws of one kind or another, frequenting the woods, which were often full of semi-permanent but isolated communities—men and women who preyed upon travelers, for example.