Significator

An archetype of the archetypal mind representing the actor or experiencing self — the Significator of Mind, Body, or Spirit — that lives out what the Matrix reaches for and the Potentiator offers.

What Ra means

Before the development of free will in the full sense, the mind, body, and spirit were each governed by a Matrix and a Potentiator alone. The breakthrough that set the evolutionary architecture in motion was the introduction of the Significator as a third element: the Logos conceived of mind, body, and spirit not merely as passive ground and unconscious reservoir but as something that could be complex — a genuine actor possessed of its own will (78.19, 79.42). What the conscious Matrix reaches for is recorded in the Matrix but experienced by the Significator; the quality of that experience depends on the acuity of the Significator's own catalytic and experiential processes (92.34).

Ra draws a careful distinction between the archetypical Significator and the everyday experiencing self: the Significator of mind, body, and spirit is not the same as the Significator of the mind/body/spirit complex (79.17). The former is the pure archetypal principle; the latter is the veiled, incarnate entity whose Significator carries the accumulated biases of all prior incarnations into new experience (92.18). The relationship between these two is one of the subtler considerations in the archetypal system.

In the tarot training sequence Ra taught to initiates, the Significator was the one archetype deliberately left unpaired in the early stages — it awaits pairing with the twenty-second arcanum, the Choice, at the end of the study (88.24). Its veil-shaped nature is made visible in the Great Way archetype, which contrasts explicitly with the Significator: the Great Way is steeped in the time/space current, while the Significator remains the significant self, shaped but not dissolved by the veiling process (103.11).

In Ra's words

The free-will breakthrough — why the Significator had to become complex:

The first Logos to instill what you now see as free will in the full sense in its sub-Logoi came to this creation due to contemplation in-depth of the concepts, or possibilities of conceptualizations, of what we have called the significators. The Logos posited the possibility of the mind, the body, and the spirit as being complex. In order for the significator to be what it is not, it then must be granted the free will of the Creator. This set in motion a quite lengthy, in your terms, series of Logoi improving or distilling this seed thought. The key was the significator becoming a complex.

78.19.5-9

The Significator of mind as actor, seeker, and the one who uses knowledge — its potential manifold:

You have been most interested in the Significator which must needs become complex. The Hierophant is the original archetype of mind which has been made complex through the subtile movements of the conscious and unconscious. The complexities of mind were evolved rather than the simple melding of experience from Potentiator to Matrix.

The mind itself became an actor possessed of free will and, more especially, will. As the Significator of the mind, the Hierophant has the will to know, but what shall it do with its knowledge, and for what reasons does it seek?

79.42.2-6

Experience recorded by the Matrix, lived by the Significator:

Firstly, again may we distinguish between the archetypical mind and the process of incarnational experience of the mind/body/spirit complex.

Secondly, each potentiation which has been reached for by the Matrix is recorded by the Matrix but experienced by the Significator.

The experience of the Significator of this potentiated activity is, of course, dependent upon the acuity of its processes of Catalyst and Experience.

92.34.2-4

The Significator and the Great Way contrasted — veil-shaped self vs. time/space current:

The entire mood, shall we say, of the Great Way is, indeed, dependent upon its notable difference from the Significator. The Significator is the significant self, to a great extent but not entirely, influenced by the lowering of the veil.

The Great Way of the Mind, the Body, or the Spirit draws the environment which has been the new architecture caused by the veiling process and, thusly, dipped in the great, limitless current of time/space.

103.11.4-6