X
The Catalyst of the Body
The Wheel of Fortune · The Body
Archetype X · Catalyst · The Body
Whatever the body meets from outside, indifferent to preference — a wheel that offers both fortune and its opposite.
“The most carefully noted addition would be that the outside stimulus of the Wheel of Fortune is that which offers both positive and negative experience.”
Ra · 81.11 · read in context ›
Ra gives this archetype exactly one exchange by name. The questioner asks for a confirmation, Ra allows it with a single added sentence, and the corpus never returns to the Wheel of Fortune directly again.
The concept
The Catalyst of the Body sits third in the body cycle — Matrix, Potentiator, Catalyst, then Experience, Significator, Transformation, Great Way () — the same position the Catalyst of the Mind holds in the cycle before it, but without that archetype's extended, image-by-image treatment. Asked to confirm that the tenth archetype represents interaction with other-selves, Ra allows the description as roughly correct, then narrows it: the stimulus reaching the body from outside offers both positive and negative experience (). Nothing in the offering itself favors one over the other.
That neutrality fits Ra's general law of catalyst. Whatever event presents itself is processed separately by each complex it reaches — what the body meets becomes catalyst for the body, what the mind meets becomes catalyst for the mind, what the spirit meets becomes catalyst for the spirit — each complex working the same occurrence into an experience shaped by its own biases (). The Wheel supplies the raw material; nothing about the supply decides how it lands.
How it lands is bias's business, and Ra works that mechanism out at length for the mind cycle rather than the body. As an entity gains experience, it increasingly interprets catalyst positively if its path is service-to-others, negatively if service-to-self () — and a bias already settled toward one polarity tends to draw out more catalyst along that same chosen path (). Nothing in the corpus develops an equivalent passage for the body specifically; 's one sentence is as far as the point gets made for it directly.
In Ra's words
The general law behind the Wheel's neutrality — each complex processing its own catalyst from what it meets:
Catalyst being processed by the body is catalyst for the body. Catalyst being processed by the mind is catalyst for the mind. Catalyst being processed by the spirit is catalyst for the spirit. An individual mind/body/spirit complex may use any catalyst which comes before its notice—be it through the body and its senses, or through mentation, or through any other more highly developed source—and use this catalyst in its unique way to form an experience unique to it, with its biases.
The mechanism Ra spells out for bias and interpretation, developed for the mind cycle but naming the pattern the body's own catalyst is left to illustrate on its own:
This is not only correct but there is a further ramification. As the entity increases in experience it shall, more and more, choose positive interpretations of catalyst if it is upon the service-to-others path, and negative interpretations of catalyst if its experience has been along the service-to-self path.
The Catalyst elsewhere: the Catalyst of the Mind · the Catalyst of the Spirit
Study passages
Going back to the previous session, picking up on the tenth archetype, which is the Catalyst of the Body or the Wheel of Fortune, which represents interaction with other-selves. Is this a correct statement?
Then presently we receive catalyst of the mind as we are aware of Ra’s communication, and we receive catalyst of the body as our body senses all of the inputs to the body, as I understand it. But could Ra then describe catalyst of the spirit, and are we at this time receiving that catalyst also? And if not, could Ra give an example of that?
Would the Hierophant then be somewhat of a governor or sorter of these effects so as to create the proper assimilation by the unconscious of that which comes through the conscious?