VI
The Transformation of the Mind
The Lovers · The Mind
Archetype VI · Transformation · The Mind
The forced choice between light and dark that transforms the mind — what Ra calls Archetype Six, standing in for the traditional Lovers.
“As you observe Archetype Six you may see the student of the mysteries being transformed by the need to choose betwixt the light and the dark in mind.”
Ra · 79.40 · read in context ›
The concept
Asked directly whether this card shows the conscious and unconscious merging, or some communication opening up between them, Ra rejects the framing outright — the questioner has missed the heart of the archetype, which Ra names the Transformation of the Mind (). Pressed further on what the mind transforms into, Ra's answer is structural rather than mystical: it is the mind itself, forced by its own architecture to decide which of two directions — light or dark — it will take ().
The mind cycle fills the tarot's first seven cards (). Its stations run Matrix through Great Way, and Transformation stands sixth — after the mind has become capable of purposeful seeking, before the Great Way, the framework within which all of this operates. Each of the three cycles builds its own foundation of transformation, and the whole architecture of mind, body, and spirit converges only afterward, on the fixed and single Archetype Twenty-Two, the Choice (, ). At the level of mind, this card is the local instance of that larger pattern: not the final choice itself, but the point where choosing becomes unavoidable.
Ra keeps a tight boundary around what the card is for. Asked whether this transformation gets invoked more often as an entity's energy centers activate and balance, Ra declines the premise: the archetypal mind is a structural map, and equating it with an incarnation's actual, lived progression is a misperception (). The card describes a shape of choosing built into the mind's architecture, not a milestone that lights up as personal development proceeds.
The image
Ra opens discussion of the card with a caution against reading it as a literal diagram: its images are meant to work on the seeker obliquely rather than lay out an explanation ().
A male figure, standing for consciousness, is flanked by two female figures standing for the unconscious. Asked whether the pair simply divides into physical concerns on one side and mental concerns on the other, Ra allows only a limited truth in that reading, pointing instead to something less tidy: the relationship between the vast unconscious sea and the conscious mind that draws on it (). Neither female moves — each merely indicates a direction and then waits, at rest, while the conscious figure holds both and rocks between them, first one way and then the other, without yet resolving anything; some standing rule for how the deep mind is used has to be given up before the transformation can actually take place, Ra adds, without saying what that rule is (). One detail Ra does confirm without qualification: the triangle traced by the raised shoulders and crossed arms of the conscious figure carries meaning bound up with transformation itself, and the same triangular form appears twice more elsewhere in the card ().
Above the pair, a creature takes aim with an arrow toward the leftward figure. The questioner read this as leaving that path exposed and unguarded; Ra turns the reading around. The arrow's function is protective, not lethal — it shields whoever chooses separation, with a force that grows in step with how far the mind has carried that choice, while the rightward path carries no comparable shield and instead meets its tests in the many other-selves it encounters along the way ().
Working with the archetype
Ra's general instruction for the archetypes — study each singly, then in pairs, watching how male and female polarity plays out between them () — fits this card unusually well, since it is already built as such a pair: one conscious figure set against two aspects of the unconscious. Approached this way, the card is less a riddle to solve than a picture of something ordinary and recurring: a mind meeting its own depths and deciding, through its bearing toward them, what kind of use it will make of what it finds.
Ra's language for that bearing is unsparing. The deep mind can be treated as spent and degraded material to be taken from without care, or it can be approached patiently and without seizing, a courtship rather than a raid, yielding far more to whoever is willing to wait for it (). The difference between the two transformations of mind, right-hand and left-hand, is exactly this attitude — how the conscious mind regards its own resources, and how it regards the resources of others (). No amount of looking at the image settles which way a given mind will turn; the rocking continues until something in the mind's own habitual approach is actually let go ().
In Ra's words
Ra corrects the premise — not a merging of conscious and unconscious, but a forced transformation:
Again, without being at all unperceptive, you miss the heart of this particular archetype which may be more properly called the Transformation of the Mind.
The arrow above the figures is protective rather than lethal, and only one path receives its shelter:
We now speak of that genie, or elemental, or mythic figure, culturally determined, which sends the arrow to the left-hand transformation. This arrow is not the arrow which kills but, rather, that which, in its own way, protects. Those who choose separation, that being the quality most indicative of the left-hand path, are protected from other-selves by a strength and sharpness equivalent to the degree of transformation which the mind has experienced in the negative sense.
Those upon the right-hand path have no such protection against other-selves, for upon that path the doughty seeker shall find many mirrors for reflection in each other-self it encounters.
The two figures of the unconscious wait at rest; the conscious figure rocks between them without resolving:
In this image of Transformation of Mind, then, each of the females points the way it would go but is not able to move; nor are the two female entities striving to do so. They are at rest.
The conscious entity holds both and will turn itself one way or the other, or potentially backwards and forwards, rocking first one way, then the other, and not achieving the Transformation. In order for the Transformation of Mind to occur, one principle governing the use of the deep mind must be abandoned.
It is to be noted that the triangular shape formed by the shoulders and crossed elbows of consciousness is a shape to be associated with transformation.
Ra's general method: each archetype studied alone, then in pairs, attentive to the play of male and female:
The clothing one’s self within the archetype is an advanced practice of the adept which has long studied this archetypical system.
The concept complexes which together are intended to represent the architecture of a significant and rich portion of the mind are intended to be studied as individual concept complexes—as Matrix, Potentiator, etc.—in viewing mind/body/spirit connections; and in pairs with some concentration upon the polarity of the male and the female.
If these are studied there comes the moment when the deep threnodies and joyful ditties of the deep mind can successfully be brought forward to intensify, articulate, and heighten some aspect of the magical personality.
The Transformation elsewhere: the Transformation of the Body · the Transformation of the Spirit
Study passages
Let me skip over the Hierophant for a minute because I’m really not understanding that at all, and just ask you if the Lovers represent the merging of the conscious and the unconscious, or a communication between conscious and unconscious?
Transformation of the mind into what?
Thank you. Card Number Six I see as the Transformation of the Mind; the male’s crossed arms representing transformation, transformation being possible either toward the left- or the right-hand path; the path being beckoned or led by the female, the Potentiator. The one on the right having the serpent of wisdom at the brow and being fully clothed; the one on the left having less clothing and indicating that the Matrix or Potentiator would be more concerned and attracted to the physical illusion as the left-hand path is chosen, and more concerned and attracted to the mental as the right-hand path is chosen. The creature above points an arrow at the left-hand path indicating that if this path is chosen, the chips, shall we say, will fall where they may—the path being unprotected as far as the random activity of catalyst. And the intellectual abilities of the chooser of that path would be the main guardian rather than a designed or built-in protection by the Logos for the right-hand path. The entity firing the arrow, being what seems to be a second density entity, would indicate that this catalyst could be produced by a lesser-evolved source, you might say. Would Ra comment on these observations of Card Six, the Transformation of the Mind?
Thank you. To continue with the tarot, I would like to make the additional observation with respect to Card Six that the male’s arms being crossed, if the female to his right pulls on his left hand it would cant, in effect turn him, his entire body, toward the right. And the same is true for the female on the left: pulling on his right hand she will turn his entire body to her side. Which is my interpretation of what’s meant by the tangle of the arms—that the transformation occurs by pull which attempts to turn the entity toward the left- or the right-hand path. Would Ra comment on that observation?