Stone Riley's Blog: Stone Riley's Shoebox - Posts Tagged "seth"
The Seth Material
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This is from unfinished story book "Surprising Book And Film Reviews"... www.stoneriley.com/GDRDS/Gdrds_Surpri...
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................
The Seth Material
{ first-posted on 03-18-2018 by hiredwriter loop-now 03-18-2018 }
Great!
So this is provisionally number eight in our series of essays called “Surprising Book And Film Reviews”.
I must report a slight disruption. The number designations of these essays are undergoing reconsideration and have – in fact – become entirely provisional. I realize I could apologize for that, but on the other hand it does logically follow that you can consider this episode to be an advance copy.
So, what is Seth?
Not a day goes by but somebody comes up to me on the street and says, “Hey you, person on the street, what is the Seth Material?” And I will always say to them, “It's science fiction! That's what it is, science fiction!” Except it has a plot twist claiming it is true. So is this advertisement a “cult” like some others that also make the same old tired claim? I could frame up a brief argument pointing either way on that and even quote a variety of Testaments for you. But actually I'm saying the Seth Material is a science fiction literary cult.
“We live in a science fiction universe.” “Science fiction tells the truth.” If I may sum it up in one or two representative phrases, and of course using popular culture terminology, that is the central message at the core of this voluminous science fiction material penned in upstate New York, with much desiderata, and people take it seriously. I mean, compare it to the dreary options in this category. The Seth Material; it is a popular culture literary cult with websites and fans and free downloads by the ton, including free videos – mostly of the fandom type but also free rare original videos – all of it fan driven, probably up to and including fan conventions with fan-made fun costumes now and then. I would not be surprised by that at all. But it is a popular culture science fiction literary cult which embraces mystery in the sense of the Ancient Greek Mysteries which also claimed to be true. That is my carefully considered opinion and I am an expert in this field.
I am also, specifically, a student, and maybe a junior scholar, of the Seth Material, a set of unusual books and much supporting bulk that has reached us through American popular culture in the 1970's and 1980's.
The Seth Material. Among its treasure heap of supporting bulk (which is perhaps metaphorically heaped behind some treasury bulkhead, with the treasury imagined as lying prone as though perhaps a sleeping god or a robot dragon) there lies a kind of anthropology field observation film, if you piece it together, a few scant fragments of paleo-tech original video with a kind of fine grained significance for the history of modern ideas, something in advance of Muybridge in my considered opinion, and a separate heap of expertly scribed unique voluminous notes observed first hand, notes from a very lengthy psychic phenomenon intersecting with ours, a heap of rigorous notes which may rival even the famous Library of Paracelsus – a great anti-fascist pharmacist suspected of Pythagoreanism – if that famous collection of working notes is ever found. Their original archive and temple was open Wednesday evenings, a cheap apartment in the small city of Elmira, New York.
The Seth Material. Books and supporting bulk produced by Lady Jane Roberts {pagan-title} and a small group of friends in the 1970's and 80's, with one friend named Seth – a non-god teacher – working from its home in a distant sector of the continuum. They had no particular god. They saw, instead, Creativity as titanic beyond all gods. And they were optimists. We Sethians are supposed to be optimists.
The Seth Material. That was Upstate New York, Lady Jane Roberts was previously a science fiction writer, therefore they are Spiritualist books for a new generation. And you can cite me as your authority on this syllogism.
The Seth Material. Let me try a metaphor. In this metaphor let's say Ursula K. Le Guin and Albert Einstein, between them, will symbolize all of the world's most intelligent science fiction writers. Einstein because we recognize his famous thought experiment of riding on a light beam to be a very excellent fiction and it won a major prize. Le Guin for her understanding of our human lives. Then let's say together they have a love child. From there we want to devise some denouement where our two symbols of the world's most intelligent science fiction writers (we are dragging in communicative scientists too) somehow debouch a universe that turns out to be the universe which us human beings actually live in, and also is the universe of the Seth Material. Let's say it is a one volume novel. Here's a promising thought: There are many ancient Chinese stories were the infant – always a product of some transcendent love – leaps from the womb spouting pro-human philosophy and becomes a hero. But this won't do. The Seth Material is a story about a titan – a being worthy of poet Blake! – the titan Creativity in all its infinite forms, so it is not a tale of deities and heroes really, to any large extent. That stuff all spreads around instead. So this metaphor will not do. Ignore this paragraph.
But please let me try again. I think we need something familiar to the reader that can symbolize titanic Creativity. Are you with me? Metaphor #2: Ursula K. Le Guin and Albert Einstein making love, somewhere in a jungle cave perhaps, or in a rude stone cabin high among high mountains, or lying in each other's human arms in a breezy canvas tent on a rocky ocean shore with clouds billowing above, where that high mountain range comes down to water. Albert Einstein and Ursula K. Le Guin making love, sharing their human bodies, maybe on the canvas cot in that breezy canvas tent, or where the wind outside moans around their mountain cabin, or else in that jungle cave where there has to be an ancient bed of blooming parts from some famous herbal plant of immortality, or else a grassy woven bed that has been waiting there in that jungle cave since first used in the intercourse of ancient peoples. Ursula K. Le Guin and Albert Einstein making love, gasping lips to gasping lips and pressing thighs, wild in passion, young together in strength yet somehow old in soul and mind alike, the wisest of the wise, a Couple Creating human love. And for discussion let's suppose their mutual climactic frenzy is somehow the universe which us human beings actually live in, and also is the universe of the Seth Material.
There is lots of good source material available for research. Re the ancient Chinese stories mentioned above, for which I suggest Professor Joseph Campbell's fine book “Creative Mythology: The Masks of God” which I have in its 1970's popular Penguin edition from New York, a popular edition which went through 8 reprintings in 7 years, a paperback book which is quite compact and yet still, admirably, a quarter of a foot thick. It is a must for aspiring Pagan intellectuals just as the title would suggest. This paperback's front cover has a fantastic Southwestern Native American design motif but then also, somehow, a wonderful Chagall painting that has always looked beautiful to me. Now you can find it conveniently located in many third-hand miscellany stores. A popular book.
The Seth Material. Here's a funny story. I once portrayed the Roberts-Seth party in a novel as a lightly comic trans-time travel party of Pythagoreans in Ancient Greece, attending the Great Rites of Eleusis in a certain selected year, the year selected by their calculation, and with the two portrayed as married lovers, and she their party's mathematician / navigator. (They were supporting characters in that novel, with a fantasy version of myself playing lead.) How did this come about? You see, I have a poor excuse.
Puck did it. Puck made me put the Seth-Roberts party in that novel, and as a time-traveling troupe of Pythagoreans. Puck, being Shakespeare's supreme Ancient Greek god of wild mischief, and always in a jolly mood – and therefore previously called by me for help with planning the novel's story – Puck put that ridiculous idea in my brain, and also me as male romantic lead. But there was more to it.
You see, a decade or more before that novel, my plan to study the mysticism of the Ancient Greeks had been diverted by Joseph Campbell toward an intervening period instead, diverted especially by some of the drawings in those thick 1970's popular paperbacks of his mentioned above. I even left off studying Campbell for this lead he gave me into the intervening period of European classic Occult literature. I even set aside my itching curiosity about the Seth books, which were coming out new in that time, in order to broach an entry into European classic Occult literature, lured by some of Campbell's pictures, and on that rich ground I would meet again with one of my all time favorite thinkers Carl Jung. However, I had at least cast long glances into the Seth Material before I turned away, making the lame excuse that the Seth Material might not be interesting after all. Each succeeding Seth book, each publishing, lit my attention dimly like a far off street light outside a door.
The European classic Occult thinkers kept busy reconciling several sources in their time, but mainly they were Greek descendants and largely Pythagorean. I think the European classic Occult literature provides the best extant fragmentary and suggestive evidence for what Pythagoreanism probably was, it being – in its own preceding time – the most mysterious of the Greek Mystery doctrines. And it must be added that Campbell provides examples leading to this opinion, and states this opinion explicitly from a different viewpoint.
And my novel was planned to be a post-modern science fiction story set in Ancient Greece, a romance, a complicated love affair, set amid a great festival parade on a pilgrim road to a very famous temple, with sexual intercourse, with one of my favorite deities scheduled to appear, supposedly set in a year that is conjunct with our own continuum sub-sector now somehow, through an astronomical or numerological or geographic phenomenon that is vaguely sketched somehow, and with the writer as the guy who gets the girl. “It needs some gravitas,” I thought.
Just then, in our continuum sector, I married a lady who treasured the Roberts-Seth books as a portable guide to life, the universe and everything. So with the lady's tutelage, I rediscovered mystery and found delight. Because it turns out that the Seth-Roberts books (while framing everything with the current body of popular metaphor and terminology) somehow – by way of unknown logic – closely recapitulate the European classic Occult literature but all neatly summed up. Thus probably I think, Pythagoreans! Arrived in popular culture! A big success! I was delighted with this startling trans-time magic trick! Plus, Puck said it was a good idea, so that's how they went into my novel.
The Seth Material. What were we talking about? Quantum physics! (Einstein finally agreed with quantum physics after leading a valiant resistance to it, earning several new degrees.) Was it data structures for the Seth Material? Or did I just now make that up?
But isn't this whole effort at analytical apologia only like after you eat an apple from the mythic Tree Of Knowledge? Like that myth says, isn't Knowledge (maybe same as Information?) a titanic force beyond the power – thus maybe behind the viewpoint – of any god or me? Like the Roberts-Seth party say Creativity is? Or like those same two, fictionalized, in my Greek novel, where they're on an amazing ten year honeymoon and busy making the logical case for titanic Love.
What am I talking about? You may well ask. Have I said enough?
This is from unfinished story book "Surprising Book And Film Reviews"... www.stoneriley.com/GDRDS/Gdrds_Surpri...
This item printer friendly... www.stoneriley.com/thesethmaterial_ou...
................
The Seth Material
{ first-posted on 03-18-2018 by hiredwriter loop-now 03-18-2018 }
Great!
So this is provisionally number eight in our series of essays called “Surprising Book And Film Reviews”.
I must report a slight disruption. The number designations of these essays are undergoing reconsideration and have – in fact – become entirely provisional. I realize I could apologize for that, but on the other hand it does logically follow that you can consider this episode to be an advance copy.
So, what is Seth?
Not a day goes by but somebody comes up to me on the street and says, “Hey you, person on the street, what is the Seth Material?” And I will always say to them, “It's science fiction! That's what it is, science fiction!” Except it has a plot twist claiming it is true. So is this advertisement a “cult” like some others that also make the same old tired claim? I could frame up a brief argument pointing either way on that and even quote a variety of Testaments for you. But actually I'm saying the Seth Material is a science fiction literary cult.
“We live in a science fiction universe.” “Science fiction tells the truth.” If I may sum it up in one or two representative phrases, and of course using popular culture terminology, that is the central message at the core of this voluminous science fiction material penned in upstate New York, with much desiderata, and people take it seriously. I mean, compare it to the dreary options in this category. The Seth Material; it is a popular culture literary cult with websites and fans and free downloads by the ton, including free videos – mostly of the fandom type but also free rare original videos – all of it fan driven, probably up to and including fan conventions with fan-made fun costumes now and then. I would not be surprised by that at all. But it is a popular culture science fiction literary cult which embraces mystery in the sense of the Ancient Greek Mysteries which also claimed to be true. That is my carefully considered opinion and I am an expert in this field.
I am also, specifically, a student, and maybe a junior scholar, of the Seth Material, a set of unusual books and much supporting bulk that has reached us through American popular culture in the 1970's and 1980's.
The Seth Material. Among its treasure heap of supporting bulk (which is perhaps metaphorically heaped behind some treasury bulkhead, with the treasury imagined as lying prone as though perhaps a sleeping god or a robot dragon) there lies a kind of anthropology field observation film, if you piece it together, a few scant fragments of paleo-tech original video with a kind of fine grained significance for the history of modern ideas, something in advance of Muybridge in my considered opinion, and a separate heap of expertly scribed unique voluminous notes observed first hand, notes from a very lengthy psychic phenomenon intersecting with ours, a heap of rigorous notes which may rival even the famous Library of Paracelsus – a great anti-fascist pharmacist suspected of Pythagoreanism – if that famous collection of working notes is ever found. Their original archive and temple was open Wednesday evenings, a cheap apartment in the small city of Elmira, New York.
The Seth Material. Books and supporting bulk produced by Lady Jane Roberts {pagan-title} and a small group of friends in the 1970's and 80's, with one friend named Seth – a non-god teacher – working from its home in a distant sector of the continuum. They had no particular god. They saw, instead, Creativity as titanic beyond all gods. And they were optimists. We Sethians are supposed to be optimists.
The Seth Material. That was Upstate New York, Lady Jane Roberts was previously a science fiction writer, therefore they are Spiritualist books for a new generation. And you can cite me as your authority on this syllogism.
The Seth Material. Let me try a metaphor. In this metaphor let's say Ursula K. Le Guin and Albert Einstein, between them, will symbolize all of the world's most intelligent science fiction writers. Einstein because we recognize his famous thought experiment of riding on a light beam to be a very excellent fiction and it won a major prize. Le Guin for her understanding of our human lives. Then let's say together they have a love child. From there we want to devise some denouement where our two symbols of the world's most intelligent science fiction writers (we are dragging in communicative scientists too) somehow debouch a universe that turns out to be the universe which us human beings actually live in, and also is the universe of the Seth Material. Let's say it is a one volume novel. Here's a promising thought: There are many ancient Chinese stories were the infant – always a product of some transcendent love – leaps from the womb spouting pro-human philosophy and becomes a hero. But this won't do. The Seth Material is a story about a titan – a being worthy of poet Blake! – the titan Creativity in all its infinite forms, so it is not a tale of deities and heroes really, to any large extent. That stuff all spreads around instead. So this metaphor will not do. Ignore this paragraph.
But please let me try again. I think we need something familiar to the reader that can symbolize titanic Creativity. Are you with me? Metaphor #2: Ursula K. Le Guin and Albert Einstein making love, somewhere in a jungle cave perhaps, or in a rude stone cabin high among high mountains, or lying in each other's human arms in a breezy canvas tent on a rocky ocean shore with clouds billowing above, where that high mountain range comes down to water. Albert Einstein and Ursula K. Le Guin making love, sharing their human bodies, maybe on the canvas cot in that breezy canvas tent, or where the wind outside moans around their mountain cabin, or else in that jungle cave where there has to be an ancient bed of blooming parts from some famous herbal plant of immortality, or else a grassy woven bed that has been waiting there in that jungle cave since first used in the intercourse of ancient peoples. Ursula K. Le Guin and Albert Einstein making love, gasping lips to gasping lips and pressing thighs, wild in passion, young together in strength yet somehow old in soul and mind alike, the wisest of the wise, a Couple Creating human love. And for discussion let's suppose their mutual climactic frenzy is somehow the universe which us human beings actually live in, and also is the universe of the Seth Material.
There is lots of good source material available for research. Re the ancient Chinese stories mentioned above, for which I suggest Professor Joseph Campbell's fine book “Creative Mythology: The Masks of God” which I have in its 1970's popular Penguin edition from New York, a popular edition which went through 8 reprintings in 7 years, a paperback book which is quite compact and yet still, admirably, a quarter of a foot thick. It is a must for aspiring Pagan intellectuals just as the title would suggest. This paperback's front cover has a fantastic Southwestern Native American design motif but then also, somehow, a wonderful Chagall painting that has always looked beautiful to me. Now you can find it conveniently located in many third-hand miscellany stores. A popular book.
The Seth Material. Here's a funny story. I once portrayed the Roberts-Seth party in a novel as a lightly comic trans-time travel party of Pythagoreans in Ancient Greece, attending the Great Rites of Eleusis in a certain selected year, the year selected by their calculation, and with the two portrayed as married lovers, and she their party's mathematician / navigator. (They were supporting characters in that novel, with a fantasy version of myself playing lead.) How did this come about? You see, I have a poor excuse.
Puck did it. Puck made me put the Seth-Roberts party in that novel, and as a time-traveling troupe of Pythagoreans. Puck, being Shakespeare's supreme Ancient Greek god of wild mischief, and always in a jolly mood – and therefore previously called by me for help with planning the novel's story – Puck put that ridiculous idea in my brain, and also me as male romantic lead. But there was more to it.
You see, a decade or more before that novel, my plan to study the mysticism of the Ancient Greeks had been diverted by Joseph Campbell toward an intervening period instead, diverted especially by some of the drawings in those thick 1970's popular paperbacks of his mentioned above. I even left off studying Campbell for this lead he gave me into the intervening period of European classic Occult literature. I even set aside my itching curiosity about the Seth books, which were coming out new in that time, in order to broach an entry into European classic Occult literature, lured by some of Campbell's pictures, and on that rich ground I would meet again with one of my all time favorite thinkers Carl Jung. However, I had at least cast long glances into the Seth Material before I turned away, making the lame excuse that the Seth Material might not be interesting after all. Each succeeding Seth book, each publishing, lit my attention dimly like a far off street light outside a door.
The European classic Occult thinkers kept busy reconciling several sources in their time, but mainly they were Greek descendants and largely Pythagorean. I think the European classic Occult literature provides the best extant fragmentary and suggestive evidence for what Pythagoreanism probably was, it being – in its own preceding time – the most mysterious of the Greek Mystery doctrines. And it must be added that Campbell provides examples leading to this opinion, and states this opinion explicitly from a different viewpoint.
And my novel was planned to be a post-modern science fiction story set in Ancient Greece, a romance, a complicated love affair, set amid a great festival parade on a pilgrim road to a very famous temple, with sexual intercourse, with one of my favorite deities scheduled to appear, supposedly set in a year that is conjunct with our own continuum sub-sector now somehow, through an astronomical or numerological or geographic phenomenon that is vaguely sketched somehow, and with the writer as the guy who gets the girl. “It needs some gravitas,” I thought.
Just then, in our continuum sector, I married a lady who treasured the Roberts-Seth books as a portable guide to life, the universe and everything. So with the lady's tutelage, I rediscovered mystery and found delight. Because it turns out that the Seth-Roberts books (while framing everything with the current body of popular metaphor and terminology) somehow – by way of unknown logic – closely recapitulate the European classic Occult literature but all neatly summed up. Thus probably I think, Pythagoreans! Arrived in popular culture! A big success! I was delighted with this startling trans-time magic trick! Plus, Puck said it was a good idea, so that's how they went into my novel.
The Seth Material. What were we talking about? Quantum physics! (Einstein finally agreed with quantum physics after leading a valiant resistance to it, earning several new degrees.) Was it data structures for the Seth Material? Or did I just now make that up?
But isn't this whole effort at analytical apologia only like after you eat an apple from the mythic Tree Of Knowledge? Like that myth says, isn't Knowledge (maybe same as Information?) a titanic force beyond the power – thus maybe behind the viewpoint – of any god or me? Like the Roberts-Seth party say Creativity is? Or like those same two, fictionalized, in my Greek novel, where they're on an amazing ten year honeymoon and busy making the logical case for titanic Love.
What am I talking about? You may well ask. Have I said enough?
Stone Riley's Shoebox
A poet writing essays. Why the title? You know you keep a large size shoe box with all those creative ideas and suchlike stuff scribbled on the back of electric bill envelopes?
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