VIII
The Matrix of the Body
Justice · The Body
Archetype VIII · Matrix · The Body
The body's ceaseless, unchoosable activity — balanced working with no capacity to rest.
“In the body the Matrix may be seen as Balanced Working or Even Functioning. Note that here the Matrix is always active with no means of being inactive.”
Ra · 78.11 · read in context ›
The contact ended before Ra walked the body cycle through the card-by-card image work given the mind; what follows draws only on the run-throughs Ra actually completed.
The concept
The body cycle — Ra's physical complex cycle — takes the tarot's second seven, cards eight through fourteen (). Its stations run Matrix, Potentiator, Catalyst, Experience, Significator, Transformation, and Great Way, as the mind's do, and its Matrix is the card the tarot calls Justice. Ra names it Balanced Working or Even Functioning, always active with no means of being inactive (). Where the mind's Matrix is unmoving until the Potentiator is reached into, the body's Matrix is the reverse: unrestricted motion in itself, a reflection in opposites of the mind, with the body's Potentiator serving only to regulate that motion once informed by it (). Ra elsewhere calls the body's Potentiator Wisdom, since it is only through judgment that the body's unceasing activity is turned to useful ends ().
That inversion carries through the rest of the cycle. Confirming a questioner's run-through of the later body cards, Ra affirms that each archetype of the body is a mirror image of the thrust of the mind's activity — body as the creature of mind, the vessel in which mind's and spirit's fruits are manifested rather than generated (). In the same exchanges Ra confirms the Catalyst of the Body as offering both positive and negative outside experience (), and the Transformation of the Body as Death — not only at incarnation's end but as the death and rebirth every day's catalyst offers to one working with it ().
After the veiling, gender polarity attached to this pair: the Potentiator of the Body was attracted to the male polarity and the Matrix of the Body to the female () — the reverse of the mind cycle's arrangement, described in the same exchange.
In Ra's words
The body's Matrix as motion itself, and its Potentiator's regulating role:
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.
How gender polarity attached to the body pair after the veil, inverted from the mind's:
When the veiling process was accomplished, to the male polarity was attracted the Matrix of the Mind and to the female, the Potentiator of the Mind; to the male the Potentiator of the Body, to the female the Matrix of the Body.
The body cycle as a mirror of the mind's, and the Great Way of the Body as the alchemist's vessel:
This is less than completely correct as the Great Way of the Body must be seen, as are all the archetypes of the body, to be a mirror image of the thrust of the activity of the mind.
The body is the creature of the mind and is the instrument of manifestation for the fruits of mind and spirit. Therefore, you may see the body as providing the athanor through which the alchemist manifests gold.
The Matrix elsewhere: the Matrix of the Mind · the Matrix of the Spirit
Study passages
Could you elaborate please on the nature and quality of the Matrix and the Potentiator?
I would like to try and understand the archetypes of the mind of this Logos prior to the extension of the First Distortion. In order to better understand that which we experience now I believe that this is a logical approach. We have, as you have stated, the Matrix, Potentiator, and the Significator. I understand the Matrix as being that which is the conscious, what we call the conscious mind, but since it is also that from which the mind is made, I am at a loss to fully understand these three terms, especially with respect to the time before there was a division between conscious and unconscious. I think it is important to get a good understanding of these three things. Could you expand even more upon the Matrix of the Mind, the Potentiator, and the Significator, how they differ, and what their relationships are, please?
Why is the male and the female nature different?