Seth Material

The Seth Material is a collection of writing dictated by Jane Roberts to her husband from late 1963 until her death in 1984. Roberts claimed the words were spoken by a discarnate entity named Seth. The material is regarded as one of the cornerstones of New Age philosophy, and the most influential channelled text of the post-World War II "New Age" movement, other than the Edgar Cayce books and A Course in Miracles. Jon Klimo writes that the Seth books were instrumental in bringing the idea of channeling to a broad public audience.

Catherine L. Albanese said in the 1970s that the Seth Material launched an era of nationwide awareness of the channeling trend and contributed to the self-identity of an emergent New Age movement. Study groups formed in the United States to work with the Seth Material. and now are found around the world, as well as numerous websites and online groups, including in other languages as various titles have been translated into Chinese, Spanish, German, French, Dutch and Arabic.

John P. Newport, in his study of the impact of New Age beliefs, described the central focus of the Seth Material as the idea that each individual creates his or her own reality, a foundational concept of the New Age movement first articulated in the Seth Material.

In late 1963, Jane Roberts and her husband, Robert Butts, experimented with a Ouija board as part of Roberts' research for a book on extra-sensory perception. Roberts and Butts claimed that they began to receive coherent messages from a male personality on December 2, 1963, who later identified himself as Seth. Soon after, Roberts reported that she was hearing the messages in her head. She began to dictate the messages instead of using the Ouija board, and the board was eventually abandoned. For 21 years until Roberts' death in 1984 (with a one-year hiatus due to her final illness), Roberts held regular sessions in which she went into a trance and purportedly spoke on behalf of Seth.

According to Roberts, Seth described himself as an "energy personality essence no longer focused in physical matter" who was independent of Roberts' subconscious, although Roberts expressed skepticism as to Seth's origins, frequently referring to Seth's statements as "theories". Roberts claimed that Seth indicated he had completed his earthly reincarnations and was speaking from an adjacent plane of existence. The Seth personality described himself as a "teacher", and said: "this material has been given by himself and others in other times and places, but that it is given again, in new ways, for each succeeding generation through the centuries."

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