Question About the Male/Female Polarities in the Matrix and Potentiator of the Body

[JustLikeYou]

I guess I say that brain work is card 9, even if the topic is all mental or the brain is thinking about mind. But information gathered from the subconscious, that is all card #2, even if it is about your physical body. So, if I am "warned" in a meditation session to go see a doctor, and a tumor is found, that warning is all card #2, even though the topic of the warning was about the body.

It is the source of the information that determines which card (#2 or #9) is at play, not the topic or nature of the information obtained.

Now that is an excellent point. I'll have to reflect on it.

Edit: I've reflected.

But if the philosophy comes from empirical observation of society, from book learning, from induction, deduction or logic, then I think of all those activities as properly being part of the "wisdom" or activities of card 9. Scientists studying consciousness, unless they are using intution or exploring the inner senses (meditation, astral projection, etc.) are still using the brain, not the deep mind intuition intelligence of card #2....

...It is the source of the information that determines which card (#2 or #9) is at play, not the topic or nature of the information obtained.

This makes a lot of sense. I think what you're driving at is that the archetypes describe the faculties we are born into by virtue of being human, and each archetype depicts a different faculty or ability that human beings have. In the case of #2, the archetype is zeroing in on the faculty of intuition -- direct contact with the unconscious. I think you're definitely right that which faculty is being used is much more indicative of archetypal resonance than what the specified faculty is being used for.

However, I do still disagree with your assignment of rational faculties to #9. I will use an example from tonight to elucidate. My girlfriend's son appears to be constipated, but he won't drink the magnesium cocktail I gave him (a laxative) because he doesn't like that it's fizzy. I found myself infuriated that he wouldn't suffer such a small discomfort for the sake of relieving the "belly ache" he's been complaining about.

But I immediately realized that fury is unwarranted. He's a child and children are picky like that. I knew that there must be some facet of myself that was rising to the surface in the guise of fury (that is, I recognized that this was Catalyst of the Mind). I set about exploring the emotion, analyzing its components and synthesizing the various data points that were turning up in an effort to poke at the foundational knot of emotion and false belief.

This act of processing (the Emperor) was cut short, though. (Yep, I'm still not exactly sure why I was so irritated about it.) I realized at that moment that it is the Emperor whose domain is the rational, the intellectual. What is so commonly unappreciated is that the analytic and synthetic capabilities are meant for knowing and accepting self and other, but that these faculties are put to a great many evolutionarily irrelevant uses.

And, in fact, this scheme matches Ra's description of the functions of the rational and intuitive minds:

49.4

The function of intuition is to inform intelligence. In your illusion the unbridled predominance of intuition will tend to keep an entity from the greater polarizations due to the vagaries of intuitive perception. As you may see, these two types of brain structure need to be balanced in order that the net sum of experiential catalyst will be polarization and illumination, for without the acceptance by the rational mind of the worth of the intuitive faculty the creative aspects which aid in illumination will be stifled.

So we have: Will to know (#1) leads to inspiration through intuition (#2). Intuition gives raw material (#3) which the intellectual mind (#4) then takes hold of and analyzes.

Conversely, if the purpose of wisdom is to be effective, then rationality and intellectualism are quite peripheral. It must be that #9 really doesn't care about it unless it's useful, unless it works. So the Emperor then would be the more intellectual intelligence while the Sage would be practical intelligence or "street smarts" as they call it.