“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(4:35. At break Linda brought in Jane’s aspirin and Darvoset; my wife has still been uncomfortable while lying on her back. At the same time there was a great clangor outside: Three firetrucks and another vehicle, all with sirens, turned the corner just outside our third-story window, evidently heading toward the temporary entrance to the emergency room. Then a moment later there came a “Doctor Blue” emergency summons over the hospital’s loudspeaker system. Resume at 4:44.)

When my father, Robert Sr., photographed Jane and me on our wedding day, December 27, 1954, and then in 1957, did any of us know that his work would be published almost half a century later?

Jane at less than 2 years old; at 7; and at 12 in 1941 — all in Saratoga Springs, New York. Her childhood was difficult.

Jane’s mother, Marie, died in 1972.

Jane’s parents divorced when she was 3, and she and her angry, bedridden mother lived on welfare. Jane also spent a year in an orphanage when her mother was hospitalized.

Jane’s father, Del, photographed her in 1951, when she was 22. I met her three years later.

Jane and I had been married for three months when my father photographed her in March 1955.

With much humor, Jane as Seth made a point during a session in 1969. She was 40 years old. Photo by Rich Conz.

My friend, Laurel Lee Davies, photographed me in 1986, two years after Jane’s death.

My parents, Robert Sr. and Estelle, supported the choices their three children made — and so they wholeheartedly welcomed Jane into the family. She in turn came to love them deeply. They died in the early 1970s.

Jane felt psychically connected to her “Little Daddy” — Joseph Burdo, her maternal grandfather. She was 20 when he died in 1949, at 68.

Delmer and Marie Roberts married in March 1928. They were each 23. Jane was born on May 8, 1929.

Jane liked this trance shot: In a quiet moment during a hilarious session in 1969, Seth contemplates Rich Conz, a photographer for the Elmira Star-Gazette. Rich had many questions.

Over the years I helped Jane while marvelling at her great creativity and trying to understand its source. Why was she doing the sessions? They were her way of contributing to understanding ourselves, and to peer into the great mystery of All That Is.

Robert F. Butts (1919 -): Jane Roberts. 1987. Oil on panel, 13 x 17 in.

The same year I painted my self-portrait, I painted Jane as I saw her in my dream of March 10, 1987. She had died in 1984. I knew that in the dream Jane was reassuring me that she still lived.

I painted Seth, that ageless “energy personality essence,” from a vision I had of him five years after Jane began speaking for him in 1963. Their very creative relationship lasted for 21 years.

In 1965, at the age of 36, Jane had posed for the two conventional portraits shown here.