Question About the Male/Female Polarities in the Matrix and Potentiator of the Body

[ricdaw]

Can I offer conscious/subconscious as a refinement?

I believe Ra uses these terms interchangeably. If "subconscious" means "beneath the conscious awareness" and "unconscious" means "apart from the conscious awareness," then the two are synonymous, so long is it is recognized that the only place to go is down.

With that definition, I agree. I was thinking colloqually, like "not conscious" or "the boy was beaten unconscious."

I believe there are four kinds of intelligence displayed in the four cards: Card 1 = conscious will. Card 2 = subconscious knowledge/intuition. Card 8 = subconscious body intelligence. Card 9 = Ego intelligence, or all the stuff that you learned in school and know right now (memory).

I agree with all of this except the last. #9, being a body archetype, must refer to the body.

I'm not sure sure that the row label, in this case "body" means that the archetype is of/about "a body." The wheel of fortune is about physical events that happen to you, but not only about the physical events that happen to your body, per se. I can be just as traumatized (catalyst) by an event that happens half a world away to someone else, or even to another species.

So I take this archetype as practical intelligence: the knowledge you have about how to do stuff in the world. If this is what you mean by your statement, then I agree.

That is, indeed, what I meant.

However, I think we learn lots of stuff about the mind in school, too. Philosophy is a good example of an academic kind of intelligence oriented toward mind rather than body. This kind of intelligence is won through the union of #1 and #2.

I have the same concern with extending the label of the "mind" row to always be associated with purely mental activity. This may make no practical difference to anyone, but I offer it up for your consideration. Using your philosophy example, if the content of that philosophy came from inspiration or a dream, I would agree that it is a card #1 and #2 creature. It's source would be the subconscious and that's the realm of High Priestess.

But if the philosophy comes from empirical observation of society, from book learning, from induction, deduction or logic, then I think of all those activities as properly being part of the "wisdom" or activities of card 9. Scientists studying consciousness, unless they are using intution or exploring the inner senses (meditation, astral projection, etc.) are still using the brain, not the deep mind intuition intelligence of card #2.

I guess I say that brain work is card 9, even if the topic is all mental or the brain is thinking about mind. But information gathered from the subconscious, that is all card #2, even if it is about your physical body. So, if I am "warned" in a meditation session to go see a doctor, and a tumor is found, that warning is all card #2, even though the topic of the warning was about the body.

It is the source of the information that determines which card (#2 or #9) is at play, not the topic or nature of the information obtained.

Assuming this subtle distinction makes a difference at all.