XI
The Experience of the Body
Strength · The Body
Archetype XI · Experience · The Body
Catalyst taken up by the body and made into something unique to it — called the Enchantress in the sessions, standing in for Strength, seed cast for further growth.
“Catalyst being processed by the body is catalyst for the body. … 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.”
Ra · 93.12 · read in context ›
One of the briefest exchanges in the whole archetypes material: the questioner offers a complete reading in a single sentence, and Ra confirms it without adding a word.
The concept
The physical complex cycle runs cards eight through fourteen (). The Experience of the Body is its fourth station — the tarot's Strength. Asked directly whether the card represents catalyst that has been processed by the mind/body/spirit complex, and whether it is rightly called the Enchantress because it produces further seed for growth, Ra answers only that this is correct (). The name is the questioner's own coinage, not Ra's, in the same manner as the Alchemist proposed two cards later for the Great Way of the Body () — but here Ra accepts the reading outright, with none of the qualification given to its neighbors in the same run-through: the Catalyst of the Body just before it is called only "roughly correct" (), and the Great Way of the Body just after is called "less than completely correct" ().
Set against the body cycle's own foundations — a Matrix of unrestricted motion, answered by a Potentiator that regulates only once informed () — the Experience of the Body reads as the station where that regulated activity, once catalyst has passed through it, becomes something the body itself carries forward: seed already planted for what comes next.
In Ra's words
The confirmation itself, given without qualification:
This is correct.
The body cycle's Matrix and Potentiator, against which this station sits:
The Matrix of the Body may be seen to be a reflection in opposites of the mind; that is, unrestricted motion. The Potentiator of the Body then is that which, being informed, regulates activity.
The tarot's three sevens, the physical complex cycle among them:
The philosophy was to create a foundation, first of mind, then of body, and then of spiritual complex. Those concept complexes you call the tarot lie, then, in three groups of seven: the mind cycle, one through seven; the physical complex cycle, eight through fourteen; the spiritual complex cycle, fifteen through twenty-one. The last concept complex may best be termed The Choice.
The Experience elsewhere: the Experience of the Mind · the Experience of the Spirit
Study passages
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?
The eleventh archetype, the Experience of the Body, represents the catalyst that has been processed by the mind/body/spirit complex and is called the Enchantress because it produces further seed for growth. Is this correct?
I would like, if possible, an example of the activity we call Catalyst of the Mind in a particular individual undergoing this process. Could Ra give an example of that?