“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“When Seth listed the families of consciousness last January,³ but didn’t include the Grunaargh, Rob asked him about it in the 738th session. In Jane’s final class, Rob read Seth’s explanation having to do with family ‘mergings.’ Right away, right there in class, I knew what was behind the feeling I’d had about this family: Members of the Grunaargh, and I personally, were involved in the invention of movable type. I write ‘were’ out of habit, because I have this delightful feeling that my printing, writing, and newspaper interests now are what led me to be drawn to the same things back then, even as my work there caused me to be interested in the same things now — an exchange across the board.

“It seems so hilariously logical that the Sumari, who are creators, would want to ‘merge’ with a family more prone to organization,⁴ to come up with what they would need to spread ideas: movable type. Otherwise, how would they ever get up the gumption to sit around and carve out all those damn little characters? Too exasperating!

“My heavyset friend was filled with the thrill of knowing that now words would spread faster. This is hard to specify, but he had the same feeling I have now about newspapers — the daily spreading out of ideas, and the kind of tremendous power behind that ability … I can see that corner of his shop/work area clearly in a half-light, illuminated by a candle in an enclosed mesh lantern sitting on a tabletop. This man had several apprentices, and he was a real artisan, putting ideas across in the form of movable type. I know that Gutenberg is credited with this invention, and probably rightly so; but I also feel this as one of those discoveries that appeared in several places at once, and that my beefy fellow’s shop was in the general vicinity of Gutenberg’s — in Germany? I can’t recall. This idea was ‘shared’ in many places at once, then.⁶

6. Sue could well be correct here. It’s believed that Johann Gutenberg (1400?–1468) was experimenting with movable metal type in Strasbourg, Germany, before 1448 — but there’s also possible evidence of printing from such type in Holland by 1430, for instance. (And typography itself was known, but not much used, in China and Korea in the 11th century.) In about 1448 Gutenberg became a citizen of Mainz, Germany, where he continued his work. By then, of course, the news about printing was spreading throughout Europe.