Greetings and Well Wishes to All

[Louisabell]

The archetypes especially I just couldn't seem to get a foothold in. Though it has been exciting to make some progress on the first seven.

Well, on this forum you will find a lot of approaches to studying the archetypes.  My only advice is to do everything you can to balance thinking and talking about them with a personal, intimate experience of them as well.  This could include meditation, contemplation, visualization, using them to inspire artwork, etc.  Just do yourself a favor and don't allow yourself to look at them solely as a puzzle to be "figured out".  I've found in my study I've had to constantly pull back from an intellectual, symbolic approach that just seeks to explain everything, to put each archetype in a box and have it be "that".  More and more my study allows the images to haunt me, as those of Ra describe, and looks for the resonance of the archetypes in basic patterns of experience.  This yields no appreciable "progress" in understanding them, but it does allow for them to dance with my consciousness a bit.  Concepts come out of the study, but those harvested concepts are not themselves the study.

I totally agree with this sentiment. Trying to solve the archetypes as though they are a puzzle was the way I approached them at first. I lost interest quickly, as I never really saw the point of it. After all, archetypes are good for writing stories and analysing literature, but isn't the point of spirituality to let go of old paradigms of thinking?

That was until I had a huge insight. I was having some female health problems. I tried many things to overcome it, but still it persisted. I am quite an objective person, so it took quite a bit of time to decide to see if I could find a metaphysical reason for this. Fast forward and I discovered that I was blocking a lot of feminine energy in my being, causing me to over-express masculine personality traits. This was due to a belief that this type of energy was not valuable, weak and would lead to excessive vulnerability. This also caused quite a bit of fatigue, as I was blocking a potent source of energy.

Well, anyways, once I started to accept and express feminine energy more, the High Priestess and Empress archetypes starting to make a lot more sense to me, especially their domain of power. I am not as fatigued, irritable, and can meditate for longer, as I connect to that power which yields, supports, honors and sanctifies. I am looking forward to see how this will progress.