“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Much of this we’ve gone over before, at various times. Jane began by talking about how her mother, Marie, told her at puberty that she had bad blood in her from her father [Delmer], that he had syphilis. Jane was frightened at having her periods and talked to a nun about all of it — and the nun would have her own hangups, probably; Jane didn’t say, or perhaps remember.

(She also recounted how she didn’t have to take gym in school because of her periods, and how Marie said Del had bad eyes because of the syphilis and couldn’t read. Jane remembers all of those feelings, yet doesn’t feel them, she said. She was very afraid to get pregnant, and never fooled around. After our marriage she was afraid of being pregnant, thinking it would wreck our careers. I reminded her that when she did get pregnant, I hadn’t been terribly upset, and accepted it. She felt the men didn’t pay her serious attention at the science-fiction conference 27 years ago because she was a woman. The same with the psychic stuff: a hysterical woman. She felt that men were superior to women.

(She identified with writing poetry very early in life. “I believed what I wrote, but people said I’d grow out of it and have kids, and I was determined not to.” Had trouble sharing poetry with most boyfriends; smarter to play dumb, she discovered. Marie had always encouraged her poetry, and the two women shared it for a number of years. Jane used to write poems to get back in Marie’s good grace: “At the same time I felt like I was betraying myself for doing it. I remember that quite well.” I didn’t remember Jane telling me this before, though she might have.

(I asked her about Seth, a male, speaking through a woman. She said she suspected that as a woman she’d have more authority if she spoke as a male. She “sensed a feeling of duplicity” in the beginning of the sessions. I don’t remember this either. Again she was getting nervous, her voice almost teary. She recalled that once Seth said that if he’d come through as a woman she wouldn’t have stood for it. All of this male business is related to the male priests in her childhood years.

(We talked a lot about the priests in her life, and the conflicts her work set up with their early teachings, and their personal behavior, good and bad. Jane remembered no reaction from her mother when her poetry came into conflict with the church, or when Father Rakin burned her books. I thought this strange.

(3:35. She was again nervous and edgy, and had another smoke. She talked about having a session to put it all together. She described again all those visits from Father Trenton. She talked about how the one priest who put her to bed when she was but 3 or 4 years old would “play” with her sexually, and how Marie finally figured that out. This was the one who called her up while we lived together; he was old and living in a retirement home south of Pennsylvania, I believe. She described how Father Trenton sat with his back to Marie when he was mad at the mother, and how Father Rakin made advances to her. She grew up in a male-dominated world. The first time they met, Jane said Father Rakin said to her when she was but 13: “You’re just too forward.” A nice greeting, and one Jane obviously still remembers. She realized today, while talking, that her grandfather had no love for women either. And Marie said to her: “You were a nice kid until you turned about sixteen — then you turned into a bitch.” Several times in Florida she thought I was going to leave her. I wasn’t.

(Jane was frightened when her mother read cards or tea leaves. She remembers her mother making predictions that came true — but how many did she make, I asked, that didn’t pan out? Probably hundreds.