Has anyone else noticed that Ra’s creation story has a powerful correspondence with the first four Mind cards?
Humor me for a moment and see if you agree.
To make this easier, let’s replace the traditional names on the cards (Magician, High Priestess, Empress, and Emperor) with “Ra Speak.”
So, step one: let’s rename “Magician” to “Intelligent Infinity.”
In Ra’s creation story, Intelligent Infinity’s very first action is “becoming aware." (13.6) (Much like Card 1’s open-eyed figure).
Step two: this Intelligent Infinity focuses on Infinite Energy. (13.7) So let’s change “High Priestess” to “Infinite Energy.”
(Side note: our colloquial All Knowing + All Powerful God seems to align nicely with these two cards in tandem: Infinite Intelligence + Infinite Energy.) And despite there being two cards, they are one Unity.
What happens next in Ra’s cosmology, with this intense focus and concentration of Infinite Intelligence on Infinite Energy? The Three Distortions: Love, Light, and Free Will.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that the next two cards (Empress and Emperor) have three main design elements.
“Empress” or Card 3 has two of them: the sitting woman (which we can call “Love”) and the huge glowing Sun (which we can call “Light”). So, let’s rename the card “Love/Light.” (Love is also, in Ra Speak, “the Creative Principle.” You could call this card that, if you prefer.)
That leaves Card 4 to represent Free Will, and let’s call it that. Since Free Will is a complex concept (see what I did there, slipping into some Ra Speak of my own?), Card 4 could also reasonably be called “Sub-Logis,” “Manyness,” or “Co-creators,” because in Ra’s creation story, it’s all the zillions of Sub-Logi that are given Free Will.
Free Will and multiple Sub-Logis are just two sides of the same coin.
I wish Don had the insight to see the correspondence between the Creation Story and the first four cards when he started asking about the tarot, because it would have provided us with an easy way, based on the information conveyed in the earlier sessions, to understand how those same concepts were turned into pictures in the tarot.
I do not see any clarity at all with Ra’s renaming “Magician” to “Matrix of the Mind.” Yuk! And “Potentiator,” “Catalyst,” and “Experience” of the Mind are all just as obscure.
But I would have gained a better grasp of the concepts, along with a hint of context and understanding, if Don or Ra had told the creation story we already read: “Intelligent Infinity” does a little courtship with “Infinite Energy” to create “Love,” “Light,” and “Free Will.” Yes!
We’d also understand how a figure on one card could be an entity (e.g., God), while on another card it might be a personification of an energy (Love or Light) or a concept (Free Will).
But more importantly, once you “see” the creation story in the first four cards, it becomes so much easier to grok what those cards are intended to mean as Earth Archetypes.
God’s “intense focus” on Infinite Energy “in the Beginning” is the genesis of our paired Cards 1 and 2 archetypes: Consciousness’s exploration of the Unconscious. We step down from the macrocosmic creation story, to the smaller Earth-related archetype. Infinite Godness (Intelligence and Energy) contracts to the smaller Consciousness and The Unconscious depicted on the first two cards.
Cards 3 and 4 (always the hardest tarot cards for me as a tarot reader to understand) also “step down” from the creation story. “Love/Light” has done its thing and those energies have condensed to form the physical universe. What we see in Card 3, The Empress, is our tiny portion of the condensed universe. And I’m talking about the planet Earth. (I prefer “Mother Earth” because we know the Earth is a Sub-Logi that is co-creating with us.)
Card 3’s imagery validates this interpretation. It has a female figure sitting on the “cube” of Earth (Cubes are third-density environments.) There is a sun overhead, literally shining on the earth.
That leaves Card 4, Emperor. Applying the same stepping down principles, from macro to micro, we leave behind the First Distortion of Free Will, and the figure in Card 4 represents a single sub-sub-sub-sub-Logi who is exercising free will locally here.
Who is this sub-sub-sub-sub-Logi?
Well, this guy is in time/space (astral planes, heaven). He is depicted either standing next to the earth cube or leaning against it. But he is not sitting on it, like the woman in Card 3. He wears the shoes of a time/space entity or concept, not the bare feet of the woman in Card 3, or the bare feet shown in all the “experience” cards elsewhere in the tarot.
I’m pretty sure that this guy, standing next to, but not in, the physical cube, is intended to represent our Mind/Body/Spirit Complex Totality. Also known as our Higher Self.
This guy balances on one pointed leg, suggesting he is unable to move. But he is a grand figure, with open eyes, so he is aware of how he would like to move (progress, evolve), and he shows this desire by that crossed leg. As Ra reports:
“The advantage of time/space is that of the fluidity of the grand overview.” (71.7)
So, how does the Higher Self gain the momentum to actually evolve and move? By incarnating a part of itself in the cube of Earth. And this picture shows the Higher Self dipping his toe into third-dimensional physical existence. See how his pointy foot probes below the border line of the card? He is “penetrating” 3D existence with that probing pointy foot. (So many “penetrations” in these cards! LOL!)
And what, pray tell, is the Higher Self sending into 3D existence? You and me.
Imagine zooming in on the penetrating pointy foot. What you will see is…Card 5, The Hierophant, being injected into the Earth (Life School).
Card 5 is where you and I get to enter this grand story. We get a card too.
The Hierophant is like an astronaut launched from the time/space-resident Higher Self and sent “down” into third density for lived experience. Think of his fancy four-pillared booth as a kind of spacesuit.
If you’re not into science fiction, you can think of the Hierophant as a Player Character in a video game. Basically, you are a smaller “player character” of your Higher Self. (I have a lot to say about this concept, but it’s a topic that will need a separate essay.)
It might seem strange for me to write essays about tarot imagery. I suspect that most readers of the Ra Material, who weren’t already into tarot, found the tarot sessions in Book Four quite difficult to understand. But for me, it wasn’t until Book Four that the Ra Material felt real. Don wasn’t able to finish his exploration of the tarot images, so I see these cards as the last of Ra’s unexplored wisdom. The sessions may be over, but these cards still hold jewels of new information to share.
Summary:
Ra’s creation story from the Law of One also maps directly onto the first four tarot cards of the Mind:
1. Card 1 (Magician → Intelligent Infinity): Represents Intelligent Infinity’s first act of becoming aware.
2. Card 2 (High Priestess → Infinite Energy): Represents Intelligent Infinity focusing on Infinite Energy. Together, Cards 1 and 2 symbolize the unified All-Knowing, All-Powerful Creator.
3. Card 3 (Empress → Love/Light): Depicts the Creative Principle as Love and Light, with imagery suggesting Earth as a small, fertile portion of the condensed universe.
4. Card 4 (Emperor → Free Will / Sub-Logos): Represents Free Will as expressed by many Sub-Logoi. As a tarot archetype, I think Card 4 is the Higher Self (Mind/Body/Spirit Complex Totality) existing in time/space, poised to incarnate a small portion of itself into third-density Earth.
5. Card 5 (Hierophant → Player Character) represents the part of the Higher Self that “descends” or incarnates into the Earth Life School. We are all Player Characters of our Higher Selves entering the 3D “Earth Life School” to gain experience.