“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[The Borledim] are the stock that so far has always seen to it that your species continues despite catastrophes, and they are more or less equally distributed about the planet and in all nationalities. They are most like the Sumari. They have the same love of the arts, the same general attitudes. They will usually seek fairly stable political situations in which to bear their children, as the Sumari will to produce their art. They demand a certain amount of freedom for their children, however, and while they are not political activists, like the Sumari their ideas often spring to prominence before large social changes, and help initiate them. The one big difference is that the Sumari deal primarily with creativity and the arts, and often subordinate family life (as Jane and I have done), while this family thinks of offspring in the terms of living art; everything else is subordinated to that “ideal.”

The next family (Ilda) is composed of the “exchangers.” They deal primarily in the great play of exchange and interchange of ideas, products, social and political concepts. They are travelers, carrying with them the ideas of one country to another, mixing cultures, religions, attitudes, political structures. They are explorers, merchants, soldiers, missionaries, sailors. They are often members of crusades.

(10:01.) Throughout the ages they have served as the spreaders of ideas, the assimilators. They (the Ilda) turn up everywhere. They were pirates and slaves as well, historically speaking. They are often primarily involved in social changes. In your time they may be diplomats, as they were also in the past. Their characteristics are usually those of the adventuresome. Very seldom do they live in one place for long, although they may if their occupation deals with products from another land. Individually they may seem highly diverse in nature, one from the other, but you will not find them as a rule in universities as teachers. You might find them as archaeologists in the field, however.

A good many salesmen belong in this (Ilda) category. In your terms they may be cosmopolitan, and often wealthy, so that frequent travel is possible. On the other hand, however, in certain frameworks, a humble merchant in a small country who travels through nearby provinces might also belong to this family. These are a lively, talkative, imaginative, usually likable group of people. They are interested in the outsides of things, social mores, the marketplace, current popular religious or political ideas. They spread these from place to place. They are the seed-carriers, both literally and figuratively.

They can be “con men,” selling products supposed to have miraculous values, blinding the local populace with their city airs. Yet even then they will be bringing with them the aura of other ideas, often inserting into closed areas concepts with which others are already familiar.

(Pause at 10:24.) Many of the courtesans who ruled the salons of Europe belonged in the (Ilda) category, then. The Crusades⁴ involved great movement of this family, in which trade and commerce, and the exchange of political ideas, were far more important than the religious aspects. Some members of this family served as initiators of new orders in the (Catholic) church in the past — the worldly Jesuits, for example, and some of the more sophisticated popes⁵ (amused), who had a fine eye out for commerce and wealth. These people may be appreciators of fine art, but usually for its commercial value.

Neither house expresses your own particular individualistic ways of life, of course, but each one comes close enough to intrigue you, and either one could be made to suit your purposes quite easily. You were attracted also because the people who put their greatest imprint upon those houses so shared some of your tendencies. In the second house your ideas of privacy were shown to you, carried to an extreme, where the windows would not even open. In the first house the stairs to the second floor were purposely steep, and never altered, because no one was invited to view the private family bedrooms. The stairs were meant to be formidable.

As mentioned much earlier, the real estate couple who showed you the first house, in Sayre (see Note 11), have definite artistic leanings. The woman particularly likes the house, and thought you would. She identified with your ideas of art and work, and saw a probable variation of herself happily ensconced in such surroundings.

The present owner, even, of the Foster house thinks of it as “work,” since she herself is a … working [real estate] person. Ruburt finds the rugs there out of place, however, because they do not fit in with his ideas of work areas. The owner, however, is quite proud of them. Her work in that respect is to decorate, and the rugs represent her idea of what belongs in the house.

To spread and exchange ideas

As Jane wrote at about this time in her manuscript for Psychic Politics: “So in house hunting I can almost feel the shape of my ideas and beliefs looking for their proper house.” My opening notes for sessions 714–15 each include material on Jane’s psychic library, and Seth himself discussed it in the latter session. Politics, of course, contains extensive material on the same subject (as well as on our house-hunting adventures).

Seth’s material on Mr. Markle’s feeling for his art, however, is his (Seth’s) own. I couldn’t help here; as a boy of less than 12, I hadn’t been that consciously aware of subjective states other than my own. Although I remember my parents talking about Mr. Markle, I have little idea of how much they may have understood — or misunderstood — his basic life-style.