The Experience of the Spirit

[Ankh]

Archetype Eighteen:



Although Ra said that the stars could be removed from all Tarot cards, in this case I believe that they are more or less necessary as to illustrate the night and the body in the sky being the moon and not the sun.

The moon symbolizes to me the magic of the spirit. It represents also the top of an ankh, which is part of the concept complexes of Archetypical Mind.

The moon is obscured by the clouds, which to me speaks of workings in the shadow where missteps are oh! so easy, but seen from the viewpoint of the spirit, even the most darkest experiences may be worked with until the light is equaled the light of brightest noon and positive illumination of the spirit has occured.

The contast between black and white in this image is, as it also is in the Archetype Four, the experience of the mind, sharp. That more profound contrast between black and white in the Archetype Four was indicating the present polarity, and although many of the images of Archetypes of the Spirit do have this sharp distinction present, I believe that in this card, this contrast is about, as in Archetype Four, the polarity of the adept.

Then we have two pyramids, the white one and the black one. These too speak to me of the polarity of an adept and two paths that are to be chosen. The spiritual power then can be used for either radiating to others, or absorbing it for the self. As Ra said in 80:15 - due to the Catalyst of each adept the adept may begin to pick and choose that into which it shall look further. The Experience of the Spirit is the more manifest of influences upon the polarity of the adept.

I am unsure of the last sentence of this quote in regards to the english language and how and exactly what Ra meant by: "The Experience of the Spirit, that which you have called the Moon, is then, by far, the more manifest of influences upon the polarity of the adept." Can anyone offer an interpretation/explanation of this particular sentence?

The pyramids are the place of healing and initiation. If choosing the positive path, the healing for instance needs to be done firstly of the self by the self before it can be offered to others, using the spirit as that shuttle which contacts the intelligent infinity directly. But before that, there needs to be an initiation of that spirit. And this initiation is what these pyramids represent to me in this card of this Archetype. As the mind has been initiated, and in Archetype Four the adept begins its flight towards the great Logos, the spirit needs to be initiated in order to contact this great Logos.

In front of the pyramids there are dogs who seem to guard the entrance of the pyramids. These dogs are of opposite colors compared to the pyramids themselves. To me it symbolizes that before the initiation of the spirit, each adept needs to face its oppositely polarized aspect of the spirit. For instance, in 80:15 Ra says that the negative adept when grasping the light of day still laughs preferring the darkness, while the positively polarized adept in quote 80:8 is said to misstep easy, because embracing the falsity, to know it, to seek it and to use it gives power that is most great!!

But I also want to explore what the dogs in ancient Egypt mean. As Ra pointed the focus towards the cultural meaning of the cat in ancient Egypt in the Archetype Four, I would like to seek the cultural meaning of the dogs in ancient Egypt in Archetype Eighteen.

Tour Egypt: The ancient Egyptian word for dog was "iwiw", which referred to the dog's bark. They served a roll in hunting, as guard and police dogs, in military actions and as household pets...//...Anubis is often referred to as the jackal headed god, but Egyptians seem to have identified other dogs with this god, and at times domestic dogs were buried as sacred animals in the Anubieion catacombs at Saqqara. Anubis (Inpew, Yinepu, Anpu) was an ancient Egyptian god of the underworld who guided and protected the spirits of the dead.

Then there are different articles about these dogs, but most of them pointing into the dogs being guardians, pets and helpers in hunting. If thinking about the God which is most closely associated with a dog, i.e. Anubis, then we have a guardian of the spirit of the dead.

I believe that the image of the dog in this card represent a guardian of the entrance of the initiation of the spirit. Before entering that pyramid of initiation and healing, the spirit must first face the oppositely polarized aspect of itself.

And at the bottom of this card we have a scorpion, which in my interpretation of this Archetype, faces the white pyramid, which to me symbolizes the positive experience of the spirit, and it is on this path where the missteps in the night are oh! so easy. The bite of a scorpion is poisonous and could even be fatal (reminds me of the story Jim McCarty told once about the negative wisdom and the bite of a spider). When an adept has chosen the positive path, it has to watch for these missteps, as the poison of the bite of a scorpion could be fatal, which to me speaks of what Ra said about the power of embracing the falsity which is most great. And as an adept gains more polarity, it gains more power, and it is due this power the reversing of the polarity becomes more and more easy.

As plenum mentioned in one of his posts, the information about this Archetype on which one can ground its interpretation isn't voluminous. I grasp the Archetype about experience of the mind, but what is exactly experience of the spirit?

In 94:7 Ra gives an example of it:

Therefore, each of the support group also experiences a weariness of the spirit which is indistinguishable from physical energy deficit except that if each experiments with this weariness each shall discover the physical energy in its usual distortion.

This is how an experience of the spirit *may* be detected; if one has learned to distinguish between experiences of the mind and the body, and the experience is not of these two, then it is of the spirit.

In 52:11 Ra tells us the heart of evolution of the spirit:

Unity, love, light, and joy; this is the heart of evolution of the spirit.

My take that the experience of the spirit are more profound, more deep. It hasn't much to do with interpretation anymore, as it was in the experience of the mind. The mind and the body are already known by the adept when it starts its workings with the spirit. The path is cleared all the way to this shuttle. And the power of it can be used either to radiate it to others or absorb it for itself.