“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause.) The Roman Catholic Church seized upon art, inserted its own strong symbolism, provided art with a recognizable religious, social, and political value. (Pause.) It became, however, a supercharged symbol itself of churchly opulence, and this applies also, for example, in the past to architecture. What good were ornate cathedrals, replete with carved angels, saints, and gargoyles, gleaming with glazed colorful windows, when the people lived in hovels and labored in the fields? So the buildings in America were to be prim and proper, undecorated, when the country was established. Even clothes began to become less colorful, as for example in the Puritan’s straight garb.

When all that was changed, as indeed it should have been (pause), the world underwent great changes. It may not have been much, but a yeoman’s son in the past would always be a yeoman’s son. He would follow in his father’s footsteps. He was not of equal value with a prince, either of church or state. His position was a poor one, yet its freedoms and limitations were known, and his value, whatever it was, was accepted as his station in life. He might be a good yeoman or a poor one, but a yeoman he was.

(10:12.) If men were considered equal, however, the ideas of Darwin and Freud came along to alter the meaning of equality, for men were not equal in honor and integrity and creativity—or heroism: —they were equal in dishonor (louder), selfishness, greed, and equally endowed with a killer instinct that now was seen to be a natural characteristic from man’s biological past.

In many past societies, soothsayers, dream experts, poets and artists were the most revered members, for they constantly replenished man’s creative abilities, allowed him to see his position within society and in the natural world with fresh eyes. He, or she, helped form the pattern for the society’s future developments, for its growth, for its give-and-take with nature.

I do not know if I am expressing this clearly. Ruburt tried in the family to express independence, to show that he was (underlined) a writer, and at the same time he tried to express dependence, to show that he was a good wife, and this applied to many social relationships as well. If he succeeded as a writer, it seemed he was less the loyal wife, and sometimes in the past—the distant past—you felt the same when you tried to be “the male provider,” and take a job to satisfy that narrow role.