An Archetype Workbook

[Sacred Fool]

For instance, I find the concept of courting vs plundering immensely valuable. I also think it's important to know that "both the virginal and prostituted deep mind invite and await the reaching" - that you will have synchronicities and confirmations that will lead you down either path. So having a frame of reference for which deep mind I am courting I have found helpful.

I certainly agree that the conceptual teaching Ra offers verbally about the cards is way cool, but beyond the little bit which that encompasses, the cards themselves I find not especially helpful.  In other words, absent that teaching, I doubt I would have come to that conclusion on my own simply by viewing the cards.  And I think there's a reason for that.  (below)

I'm on record as not finding a great deal of value in talking about the archetypes much. However, I think if we were to make a dedicated study of the archetypes and involve Q'uo as a teacher (who, after all, includes Ra as a component of their complex), we would be able to have dialogues that would shed light on the subject, however narrowly subjective and personal the study may be. I often keep in mind that the Ra contact only affords us an understanding of archetypes in terms of what three people were able to see, grok, and explore. There is likely much, much, much more.

Here's another perspective.  Around the same time Ra was schooling the Egyptians, Indian masters were writing sutras on various topics, one of the most notable being The Yoga Sutras, attributed to Patangali.  These documents were NOT meant to be disquisitions so much as "Cliff Notes" for the purpose of reminding students what they had been taught over the course of years.  They were meant merely as memory aids.  I suspect the Tarot deck was intended the same way, as a pictorial summation of detailed teachings given over many years.  The problem for us is that we're getting the information in a backwards manner where Don Elkins was guessing about the symbols and trying to unscramble the codes, rather than receiving direct teaching.  I'm suggesting that this is the opposite of how the pictographs were intended to work.  And I'm suggesting that this accounts for the frustration some of us feel.  Of course, on the other hand, we can only work with what we have.