“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“A violet. Red, and a grading to yellow.” This is very interesting to me personally; Jane also recalls these details. After spending a couple of hours trying to make a good handprint, I gave up and began cleaning the ink from my hand. This proved to be a job. As I applied scouring powder I was surprised to see the black ink on the palm turn what might be termed a red with violet undertones. This effect at once reminded me of reading that the quality of a black ink can be judged by its behavior when diluted: If a red color develops it means the ink is of inferior quality. The ink I had used was stamp-pad ink purchased at a 5-and-10 downtown.

(The 37th envelope experiment was held during the session. See the tracing of the envelope object on page 327. It is a print of my right hand, made with black stamping ink on paper. I made it on February 27,1966. Jane had picked up a book on hands at the library recently, and this got us interested in making such prints.

(Jane of course saw this particular print, along with perhaps twenty others I made at the same time. There is nothing about this one to distinguish it from many of the others. Following the instructions in the book, I traced the outline of my hand in pencil while pressing the inked surface against the white paper. The print was sealed in the usual double envelope between the usual two pieces of Bristol.

(The ink might have been of poor quality but it was difficult to remove. The red color was pronounced and I called Jane’s attention to it. She too had had the experience, since she had tried prints of her own a few days earlier. A lot of scrubbing reduced the red stain to a yellowish cast finally, but here I had to let it wear off. This took several days. Thus we have a progression here from black to violet to red to yellow.

[...] But the paper the object is manufactured from is a bright yellow, and the yellow is printed upon with blue ink. [...] But in this case the blue ink is so dense and strong that it prints as blue on the object. [...]

[...] The object is printed in dark blue ink on yellow paper, with the writing in carbon blue. [...]

[...] The work, involving inking, arrived Sunday. [...]

(The object is printed on bright yellow paper in dark blue ink, with the large serial number at the bottom in red. [...]

[...] Printing or black ink, I do not know.” The black ink connection is interesting to me. As I worked with the materials on the newspapers, I wondered whether it was such a good idea, fearing that perhaps the acrylic glue I was using might dissolve the black printing ink enough to cause it to dirty the white burlap I was handling. [...] I do not know if Seth referred to this, or merely black ink being connected with newspapers.

[...] Printing or black ink, I do not know. [...]

No writing: 1 acrylic—2 ink sketches.

Wednesday—late morning; situation more or less the same; am having some trouble concentrating on writing though as I did yesterday; yesterday I did two fairly nice ink sketches by the way. [...]

[...] The letters upon the page have the reality only of ink and paper. [...] As an object, this book itself is only paper and ink. [...]

[...] The cotton to be saturated with ink. The ink will draw certain alloids from the atmosphere of the house. [...]

[...] The ink arrangement takes care of these.

When you mentioned his ink sketches, he instantly wanted to play at painting again, but felt, guiltily, that he should not. [...]

[...] In the dream I was drawing foot-high oval letters in black ink, but was worried about doing a good job because my hand was shaky. Then I realized I could cut out the letters from cardboard or some such, and ink them in that way. [...]

[...] The test object is simply a drawing in black ink of the same symbol used in the first envelope test, of August 18,1965, in the 179th session. [...] I made the drawing for this evening’s test on white paper; the paper was thin and the heavy black ink struck through the paper rather clearly. [...]

(As stated on page 95, the black ink drawing struck through the thin test paper so that it was visible on both sides of the paper. [...]

[...] On a sheet of white paper torn from a pad, same color ink as the tracing on page 189, folded as indicated, placed between two pieces of Bristol and then sealed in double envelopes. [...]

I do have the impression of dark color and white, small handwriting perhaps on the back, in ink. [...]

(“I do have the impression of dark color and white, small handwriting perhaps on the back, in ink.” [...]

(Seth here refers to a large painting I have planned and made a pen-and-ink drawing for in small scale. [...]

[...] I made the pen-and-ink drawing then. [...]

Let your preliminary sketches be as spontaneous as your ink sketches. [...] You can sometimes forget this in your painting sketches, while you are quite aware of it in your ink sketches.

(“Blue green, written with a pen, or the color of blue ink.” I wrote the date at the top of the object with a ballpoint pen containing blue ink—the same pen used to duplicate this series of numbers on the copy of the object included with this session. [...]

[...] Blue green, written with a pen, or the color of blue ink. [...]

[...] The envelope object is white, with both the printing and typing on it in black ink. Wendell’s letter is also black and white, though his signature is in blue ink.

The i-n-c was a distortion or misrepresentation of ink, i-n-k, for inking comic strips.

[...] I wrote these notes on the morning of January 8; they came to mind while I was working on an ink drawing of a complicated tree bearing within it two birds’ nests. [...]

(The ink sketch I did more than a year ago represents man bound by his senses, yet peering out through the wires trying to see more.

[...] This particular session was witnessed by Bill Macdonnel, and during it he made two pen and ink drawings of an apparition he claimed to see in a doorway of our apartment. [...]

The address was in ink, and printed. [...]

[...] It is printed entirely in dark blue ink on glossy white heavy paper. [...]

[...] This was done with thin ink and we could read the old address, 382 W. Church Street. [...]

[...] The ink has a symbolic association for you personally, a healing one you see, and its presence, according to my recommendation, has the effect of a mood tonic.

[...] The announcement was printed in black ink on white, as is usual. [...]

[...] Jane wrote the poem with a dark colored pen; the ink is actually a gray-blue, but hardly aquamarine.

(Seth’s reference to a tree concerns one I had drawn directly on the kitchen wall, in India ink on the yellow paint. [...]

[...] I wonder if I could work with small ink sketches at all now. [...]