IX
The Potentiator of the Body
The Hermit · The Body
Archetype IX · Potentiator · The Body
Wisdom as the body knows it — the judgment that turns constant activity into something useful.
“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.”
Ra · 87.28 · read in context ›
Ra never took up this card's picture; what survives the body cycle's opening is a pair of terse definitions and one line on polarity, not the sustained image-work given to the mind.
The concept
The body cycle occupies the tarot's second seven, cards eight through fourteen, following directly on the mind cycle's foundation (). Its Matrix is a reflection in opposites of the mind's Matrix: where consciousness is unmoving, the body's Matrix is unrestricted motion (). It is always active, with no means of being inactive (). The Potentiator of the Body is what meets that restlessness: informed, it regulates the activity the Matrix supplies without pause ().
Ra gives this station a name that doubles as its function: the Potentiator of the body complex may be called Wisdom, since it is only through judgment that the body's unceasing activities and proclivities can be experienced in useful modes (). Where the mind's Potentiator is a resource waited upon, the body's Potentiator acts on what it is given — the difference between a sea to dip into and a governor set upon a wheel already turning ().
The veiling gives the pair its polarity. Once the veil was in place, the Potentiator of the Body was attracted to the male polarity and the Matrix of the Body to the female (). That is the mirror image of the mind cycle, where the same exchange assigns the Matrix to the male and the Potentiator to the female ().
Working with the archetype
Ra's general instruction still governs a station this thinly described: take up the concept complex on its own first, then paired with its Matrix, attending to the polarity each carries (). What there is to work with is the pairing itself — ceaseless motion set against the judgment that renders it useful, a relationship Ra elsewhere generalizes to the whole body cycle by calling the body the creature of the mind, the instrument through which the fruits of mind and spirit are manifested ().
In Ra's words
Wisdom, named as the Potentiator of the body complex:
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. The Potentiator of the body complex, then, may be called Wisdom, for it is only through judgment that the unceasing activities and proclivities of the body complex may be experienced in useful modes.
The body's Matrix as unrestricted motion, its Potentiator as what regulates activity once informed:
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 veiling's polarity, reversed from the mind cycle: Potentiator of the Body to the male, Matrix of the Body to the female:
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 Potentiator elsewhere: the Potentiator of the Mind · the Potentiator 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?