To prepare for writing this essay, I reviewed the Ra sessions related to the Card 6 archetype and found them to be of secondary importance.
“As you observe Archetype Six you may see the student of the mysteries being transformed by the need to choose betwixt the light and the dark in mind.” (79.40)
“The right-hand and left-hand transformations of the mind may be seen to differ by the attitude of the conscious mind towards its own resources as well as the resources of other-selves.” (99.8)
Yes, polarity and exploring its attraction to the Self are important for the process of spiritual evolution in third-density experience (91.18), but that exploration is not the main focus of Card 6.
Card 6 answers a fundamental question—one I kept asking myself while reading the Ra Sessions: Why? Why do we have to polarize? There’s so much emphasis on the left-hand path and the right-hand path. The cards are full of polarity symbols (pointing fingers, orbs, skewed clothing, checkerboard patterns, pillars, etc.), but there isn’t a single image explaining why this wandering Card 22 Novice (also known as the Player Character of Card 5), why we must go through the effort (all the pain and suffering of the Earth Life School) to polarize ourselves?
The answer to this question begins on this card.
We polarize because we have to. In Card 6, the archer pointing the cocked arrow is emerging from the sun. (And is aiming a weapon at us, like someone would point a gun, to force us into action.) This image primarily signifies that we must choose polarity, as it is required by our Sub-Logi Creator, also known as the Sun. Not in an “abrogation of free will” way, but as a “this is a metaphysical law of this solar system” way. We agreed to come to the Earth Life School (Card 22), and this would have been a known requirement for graduating (and escaping) from it.
The male figure in Card 6 is, once again, our shoe-wearing Higher Self. Like his pointed-toe appearance in Card 4, he is still balanced and unmoving. However, in this card’s image, he is pulled in two directions at once.
Choosing a polarity and moving forward causes the woman pulling the other way to die.
Hesitating or refusing to select either polarity is like Hotel California: you check into the Earth Life School but can never leave.
The first choice, of course, was made by your Higher Self, or You-There — that aspect of yourself that decided to come to the Earth Life School from outside. Once here, you become trapped in Sol’s gravity well unless and until you can gather enough “spiritual energy” to reach escape velocity. Spiritual energy means more light — either the bright, shining light of an STO spirit or the invisible, inward-focused self-loving light of an STS spirit. Both types of light are spiritual propellants.
I’ve described the motivation to polarize as the desire to graduate from the Earth life school, but this desire is also connected to a wish to grow, change, and evolve. It is also linked to the original Adam and Eve story, to experiencing the Self as separate from God, and exploring Good and Evil. All these motivations are valid, and they all lead to the same necessary choice of a polarity. Or, more consistent with the image on this card, the necessity of exploring both polarities and seeing which one is the right one for You.
If your Higher Self, You-There, already knew what polarity it wanted to be, we would not have two female figures on this card. We Player Characters would not have the Free Will choice between the two polarities, only the predestined choice made by the larger You-There. But we do have our own Free Will choice.
And this leads to a paradox, of sorts. You-There wants polarization too. I’m not 100% sure that You-There is as trapped in the Earth’s gravity well in the same way that we are, but “as above, so below” I infer it is probably so. But You-There’s polarity is really the sum of ours. Our polarity is gained through the earth-life experience, not by a simple mental “choice” of “I chose STO!” It’s not once-and-done, but “harvested” and slowly accumulated after every lifetime (Death Card) in a 25,000-year cycle of many lifetimes (Judgement Card).
We should expect to explore both polarities across many lifetimes. Even if we Player Characters all start choosing the same STO polarity, it’s possible there could be some “breaking bad” lifetimes. (Like those two positive 5th-dimensional Wanderers who came to Ra’s third-density Venus and quickly turned so negative that they managed to graduate negative! I wonder how depolarizing that was to their Higher Selves?)
Observe how fragile advancement can be. All the STO energy of a truly positive and generous lifetime can be erased in a selfish next. The poor Higher Self can’t enforce a mid-life correction (Free Will reigns) but can only send reminder catalysts to try and guide that rogue Player Character back onto the chosen path. How many lifetimes does the Higher Self fluctuate between two women, making two steps forward and one step back, before the “collective” You finally chooses and sticks with one path? How many thousands of years within the 25,000 cycle are spent wavering from lifetime to lifetime without true polarity progress? Can you imagine the frustration this must cause your You-There self?
To me, Card 6 explains why I, Rick Dawson, a 63-year-old Player Character, do not have to “do” this archetype or “make” this choice. For all of us souls in the final years before harvest, we have gone through so many lifetimes by now that this critical “choice” is already embedded in our DNA. We made the “choice” through the cumulative experience of all our past lives. The only duty we have now, in the present, in this lifetime, is to live our best lives and to honor the polarity choice we have already made (but a choice which we always forget that we have made, because of the veil).
For us, living here and now, that drawn arrow on the card has already been released, and only one woman remains standing. More than that, the man on the card is moving down one path arm-in-arm with the remaining woman. We are not meant to dwell on this archetype or to make “the choice” that it demands. That’s a done deal.
Additional thoughts:
Observe the position of the sun in the Transformation row of cards. In Card 6, the sun is on the left, early in the incarnational cycle. After many lifetimes, Card 13, the Death card, shows the sun at the center. Time has passed, and lifetimes have been experienced. By the time we reach the endgame and the need to walk the Stairs of Light, the sun in card 20, Judgement, is on the right side of the card, indicating the passage of even more time and the “end” of the earth-life cycle.
Because Don was never able to understand the Hierophant/Card 5 (see session 79.39), he was missing essential “intervening material” and couldn’t bring the proper observations and insights to the discussion of Card 6. As a result, Ra was unable to convey the main meaning of the card without infringing on Don’s free will. (See Sessions 77.23 and 79.40 “[I]f we were to offer information that were not a response to observations of the student we would be infringing upon the free will of the learn/teacher by being teach/learner and learn/teacher at once.”) Understanding Card 5 (and Card 22) is necessary before one can understand Cards 6 and 7.