Potentiator

An archetype of the archetypal mind: the unconscious faculty that gives the conscious self something to reach toward and potentiates all experience, offering both positive and negative potential to the Matrix.

What Ra means

Ra calls the Potentiator one of the two pieces of beginning knowledge of this Logos — the fundamental starting pair, Matrix and Potentiator (78.34). The same pairing then recurs for the body and the spirit, each with its own potentiator. For the mind, the Potentiator is the unconscious: an immense reservoir of potential that the conscious Matrix dips into ever more deeply in order to create, ideate, and become more self-conscious (79.20). The body's Potentiator is wisdom — the judgment that regulates the body's otherwise ceaseless activities. The spirit's Potentiator is lightning: sudden, fiery, illuminating (78.11).

The principle that potentiates all experience is near at hand in all manifestation but does not itself enter manifestation; it is immanent and available, a wellspring rather than an actor (92.27). What the Matrix reaches for is recorded in the Matrix and experienced by the Significator — but the reaching itself is made possible because the Potentiator stands there, offering the depth of its sea (92.34, 79.20). The deep mind's architecture — including the potential for the incarnation's catalog of experience — is carried in what the Potentiator archetype describes, and evoking it deliberately can serve the student's understanding of its own evolution (92.11).

After the veiling process, the Potentiator of the Mind was associated with the female polarity, as the Matrix was associated with the male (87.28). In the tarot the Potentiator of the Mind is rendered, poetically, as the High Priestess — the unconscious that potentiates all experience (78.34).

In Ra's words

Matrix and Potentiator as the beginning knowledge — the High Priestess as the principle that potentiates all:

This is correct. You see here the recapitulation of the beginning knowledge of this Logos; that is, Matrix and Potentiator. The unconscious is, indeed, what may be poetically described as High Priestess, for it is the Potentiator of the Mind, and as potentiator for the mind is that principle which potentiates all experience.

78.34.2-4

Mind's Potentiator as the sea of potential; the spirit's Potentiator as lightning:

In the mind complex the Matrix may be described as consciousness. It has been called the Magician. It is to be noted that, of itself, consciousness is unmoved. The Potentiator of consciousness is the unconscious. This encompasses a vast realm of potential in the mind.

78.11.2-6

The Potentiator as immanent, near at hand, yet not entering manifestation:

Let us say, rather, that this figure is immanent, near at hand, shall we say, within all manifestation. The opportunities for the reaching to the Potentiator are numerous. However, of itself the Potentiator does not enter manifestation.

92.27.2-4

After the veil — polarity attracted to Matrix and Potentiator:

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.

87.28.2