Ra gives the whole spirit cycle a fraction of the exchanges spent on the mind's; this card gets one clean naming and a line or two on what its illumination does, nothing more.

The concept

The spirit cycle occupies the tarot's last seven, cards fifteen through twenty-one, following the mind and body cycles as the third stage of the tarot's architecture (77.12). Its Matrix is the Night of the Soul, or Primeval Darkness — like the mind's Matrix, incapable of movement or work (78.11). It is harder to characterize even than that: spirit's energies and movements, by far the most profound of the three complexes, associate more closely with time/space and so lack the characteristics of dynamic motion (79.20). Ra reads the pair against that darkness: the Matrix of the Spirit is the deepest darkness, and its Potentiator is the most sudden awakening, illuminating, and generative influence there is (79.20). Set against so receptive and dark a Matrix, that potential could only be seen as Lightning — the original Potentiator was light in its sudden and fiery form, later refined by the tarot's makers into the Lightning Struck Tower (78.11).

What that lightning does, Ra addresses directly. The Catalyst of the Spirit, called Faith, begins to cause changes in the adept's viewpoint precisely because of the illuminations the Potentiator of the Spirit has already struck (80.13) — the lightning comes first, and only then does catalyst have new ground to work. The reach it opens is not metaphorical: Ra corrects a questioner's phrasing to say the adept is calling directly through the spirit to the universe for its power, for the spirit is a shuttle (80.14) — a channel already open, not one to be built.

Working with the archetype

Ra's general counsel applies here without amendment: take the concept complex singly, then paired with its Matrix, attending to the polarity each carries (89.19). Little else is offered for this station, but the shuttle image carries its own instruction — the power called upon is not generated by effort within the spirit; it passes through it, already there to be reached for.

In Ra's words

The naming: the Potentiator of the Spirit as Lightning, refined into the Lightning Struck Tower:

The Matrix of the Spirit is what you may call the Night of the Soul, or Primeval Darkness. Again we have that which is not capable of movement or work. The potential power of this extremely receptive Matrix is such that the Potentiator may be seen as Lightning. In your archetypical system called the tarot this has been refined into the concept complex of the Lightning Struck Tower. However, the original Potentiator was light in its sudden and fiery form; that is, the lightning itself.

78.11.10-14

The illuminations of the Potentiator of the Spirit, and what they begin to cause in the adept:

The excursion of which you speak and the process of disassociation is most usually linked with that archetype you call Hope—which we would prefer to call Faith. This archetype is the Catalyst of the Spirit and, because of the illuminations of the Potentiator of the Spirit, will begin to cause these changes in the adept’s viewpoint.

80.13.2-3

The spirit as a shuttle, and the power the adept calls through it:

I am Ra. It would be more proper to say that the adept is calling directly through the spirit to the universe for its power, for the spirit is a shuttle.

80.14.1-2