“More Input”

Johnny 5. From the movie Short Circuit

Implications of the Upright Position or Positive Pole 

The Scholar collects information. Though not all are academics, librarians or readers, they immerse themselves into whatever they are studying. It is a hallmark of who they are. Like the many books in front of the man (above), they can draw many sources together and cross reference them to gain optimal quality and quantity of information. Like Minerva’s Owl, the totem animal of the Scholar represents knowledge and erudite learning, with the aim of wisdom. Whenever this card flies into your hands, just remember if you are asking the question “who, who?” Only when understanding is paired with knowledge is it completely assimilated and evolution of being can proceed.

Card messages in the Illuminated position.

+ Knowledge

(Adventurous, Curious, Easy-Going, Grounded, Knowledgeable, Logical, Mediating, Methodical, Neutral, Observing, Studied, Understanding, Apprehension)

1. Immersion into learning is the motivation of this card. Awareness is the ground for true knowledge to be gathered and the basis of wisdom. Neutrality is required for gathering information untainted by judgment. It is time to look at all sides with neutrality and see what you can learn.
2. Time to engage an expert or at least someone who has the knowledge you need. Perhaps you need to go back to school.
3. By drawing this card the message is about knowledge: acquiring it, learning it, or paying attention for someone who possesses it. In any case, it is the person who most observant and able to synthesize who will have the advantage.
4. Get morally neutral and it will produce objective knowledge. Your credibility is on trial.
5. Learn all you can before you decide; let alone act! Deep immersion is called for. Study hard!
6. Hegel espoused, “The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees the positive merit in everything.” Knowledge comes in many guises, be grateful when a mishap may expose some useful insight!
7. Acquire and dissect information. Assimilate everything! Be studious and observe a situation from all sides.

Quotations Illustrating this Overleaf pole

• “If all the dreams that men had dreamed during a particular period were written down, they would give an accurate notion of the spirit which prevailed at that time.” Hegel
• “And let a scholar all earth’s volumes carry, he will be but a walking dictionary: a mere articulate clock.” George Chapman
• “The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees the positive merit in everything.” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• “Truth, which is important to a scholar, has got to be concrete. And there is nothing more concrete than dealing with babies, burps and bottles, frogs and mud.” Jeane Kirkpatrick
• “The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr” – Prophet Muhammed
• “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.” (Madam) Marie Curie, Scientist

Implications of the Reversed Position or Negative Pole 

Theories, religionists like to claim, are simply conjecture, and just a guess or an approximation of reality, but not all of it! To say that Darwin’s Theory is dismissible because ‘it’s just a theory’ is to embrace ignorance and enshrine it in dogma. Theories can explain many phenomena so thoroughly as to have evidence found ‘in the real world’, time and again. But whenever we segment a whole into parts, those parts may be expose us to dangerous by-products.

The mushroom cloud is a symbol of the greatest manmade destructive power ever unleashed: the atomic bomb. The theory of relativity was the basis for its construction. It revealed to us the way to split the atom. The head of the Manhattan project which created the Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer – an early Old Scholar, looked upon the test explosion in horror and famously recited a line from the Bhagavad Gita, “Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Death is the ultimate assimilation of living things (Card 76). The compulsion to destroy is born from the fear of being destroyed. It lies in the belief that one cannot trust life, so one must concoct a thesis to rationalize why it is, how it is. In a perverse way, Einstein gave us a way to justify Darwin’s “survival of the fittest”, i.e. those capable of destroying others live longer. In this pole, the wise owl has mutated into the robots. The narrow seeing machine weighing data with no sense of context and abstracted from a larger interconnected whole. These precision assimilating agents we now seek to govern us is AI: artificial intelligence. The Scholar and Artisan will
create them for the Warrior and Kings to use. But will the AI realize that humans are the ultimate examples of illogic? Consume until you self-destruct? It is the same definition as a cancer. Only the programmers can shape the intelligence of the AI. We can only hope that our Scholarly nature, the drive for truth in knowledge, will shape us into a more wise being.

Card messages in the Shadow position.

– Theory

(Abstract, Arrogant, Boring, Dusty, Intellectualizing, Overbearing, Passive, Pontificating, Reclusive, Slow, Theoretical)

1. Hiding away in books or study builds alienation. Let go of the fear that “no one understands me.” You might be getting stale.
2. Our ideas do not always match up to actual life. Living life through the prism of a theory takes an incomplete set of ideas and assembles them like a connect the dots puzzle, only in whatever way suits it. Study does not replace living for learning the lessons of reality. Is what you believe about life bringing you pain or pleasure? How is it working for you?
3. Time to stop studying. Take the test.
4. Facts support the truth but they are not the same. If you are claiming a truth, have facts to support your point. Demand to see some results.
5. You may need some new information or skills. Perhaps it is time to go back to school?
6. All technology either automates tasks or it automates you. Be concerned that you are becoming an automaton for some technology or system that is using you as the tool, instead of you using the tool.
7. The Borg assimilate mindlessly. Just because you can acquire facts and data does not mean you are making a wise decision. When neutrality becomes disconnected from your humanity it leaves one as an automaton. Where have you given into being a drone?

Quotations Illustrating this Overleaf pole

• “We make trifles of our terrors, ensconcing ourselves into a seasickness is a musical problem, every cure is a musical solution.” Novalis
• “A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.” Lao Tzu
• “I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Archetype – Exalted Arcana

Ivory Towers may be thought of as the preferred location of the Scholar, but only when they are stitching the threads of events, facts, and ideas into a workable theory of the fabric of reality. The nerd is the modern version of a long tradition of the ardent learner, researcher, and archeologist of knowledge. The Scholar is who we turn to for credible information. We hold erudite and lettered expertise in high esteem though usually disconnected from the workings of daily life. Usually preferring to go it alone, seldom is anything more stimulating to the true scientist at the heart of all scholars as a collegial debate or a dive into a research or exploration project. For any person who has ever turned their attention toward the deep understanding, investigation and perhaps even dissection of a topic they hold dear, then you have touched your inner Scholar.

As with every Archetype of this system, an aspect commonly ascribed to the Judeo-Christian deity is that of “all knowing” or Omniscient God. Implying the command of all knowledge but also the capacity to see all possible viewpoints. One of the more clever cinematic explorations of this thesis is that of the Adjustment Bureau. Portraying the TAO as Chairman of the Universe, the architect of all that is, capable and sometimes willing to change the “PLAN” in response to human choice, is a comparison that this teaching would embrace as part of the dynamic, not static or absolute, nature of the supreme intelligence.

Scholar Role Overleaf Energy in The Michael Teaching

All that is available to learn, acquire, collect, archive, organize, study and observe has been willingly engaged by the Scholar. Able to adapt to the immediate situation, the practical Scholar will always look for the best vantage point, attitude, or goal to maximize the all the knowledge that can be learned. In his glory, the Scholar will radiate the glow essence it essence, having grasped and assimilated all that the Universe is and the realization of unity. Can anything be more practical than to know and realize your own divinity? No but only when the Scholar maintains his flow and willingness to allow in and move with now information. Problems can arise for the Scholar, like the ivory tower theoretician who is more interested in preserving his sense of being in alignment with his dogma than his dedication to what is new. The obstinacy causes stagnation of thought to occur. What was once an organic flexible and clear process of knowledge gathering and understanding is reduced to stubborn machinations. The strength of a scholar is in the neutrality and non-attached clarity of Observation. A Scholar who embodied many of these traits was Galilee Galileo.

Life Metaphor or Implied Motto

Life is a library. Life is for learning. Life is exploration.

Famous Examples of this Archetype

1. People: Carl Jung (Freud’s ET), Galileo, Isaac Newton, Stanley (of Stanley & Livingston fame), Aristotle, Margaret Thatcher, Jane Goodall, Howard Hughes, Elizabeth Taylor, Chief Seattle, Jane Austen, Anthony Hopkins, Truman Capote, Tilda Swinton, President George H. Bush, Emma Thompson, Kenneth Branaugh, J. Robert Oppenheimer (developer of the A-Bomb). Helen Hunt, Marie Curry, Emma Watson (of Harry Potter fame), Jennifer Lawrence, Jeff Bridges, David Attenborough, Hugh Lorrie, Jon Stewart, Richard Nixon, Colin Furth, Alanis Morrisette, Ben Affleck,
2. Mythical or Cartoon characters: Mr. Peabody (Wayback Machine), Bullwinkle Moose,
3. Institutions: University, NASA, Internet,
4. Familiar Occupations: scientist, technical writer, college professor, historian, philosopher. computer scientist, information architects like database designers and artificial intelligence, and the information highway via the Internet is something I soak up like a sponge.
5. Animals: Owl, Whales, Cranes, Mouse, (actually can possess any role as individuals)
6. Inventions or works of art: Telescope, mathematics, Eiffel Tower, Brooklyn Bridge, aqueducts
7. Cities and Nationalities Switzerland, Cambridge MA, Ancient Alexandria Egypt, Baun, Germany, Ancient Baghdad, Seattle WA,

Identify Statements of the Scholar Role Energy

(Not every aspect may be in play.)

1. I love knowledge and I tend to record data unconsciously, a least somewhat, in just about every situation.
2. My curiosity about the world lends itself to me noticing details whether useful or quirky.
3. Some people comment that I can neutral or at worst detached.
4. My emotions can be deep, but I keep tend to keep them in check until I have digested the situation.
5. My favorite times are investigating or studying whatever it is I find interesting.
6. It is fun for me to be a storehouse of information, although I tend to take more in than am concerned about letting out.
7. I am excited by the objects my of study.
8. I often times regard life as one great learning or classroom.
9. Books are a particular interest to me because they are my resource and place to explore.
10. Some say, if I am honest with myself, that I am a pack-rat; but I can’t through much away because I know it is useful.
11. I love to accumulate knowledge and make it available for the benefit of others. Not surprisingly I’m often surrounded by a pile of books, articles, or objects knowing I have my own catalog of specimens.
12. People say they value my opinion because I am willing to see an issue from many perspectives and weight them fairly.
13. Being a librarian might be a good job for me since I am interested in so many things.
14. In meetings, I want to make sure that no important information to slip away unrecorded
15. I can get obsessed and sidetracked with trivialities or subordinate facts and lose sight of the goal or the main point.
16. Words or phrases like a vigilant observer, scribe (note-taker) recorder, and chronicler of important information, or historian are ones that I relate to.
17. My attention is most absorbed when I am doing research.
18. When hooked on some idea or course of studies, I want to relentlessly pursue knowledge even if it means tasting the “forbidden fruits” or going metaphorically “out-of-bounds” to explore the subject fully.
19. My need to find the order in things causes me to create theories, but I might stop their and not actually test them from first hand experience.
20. In my desire for knowledge and experience, I will try almost anything at least once. This may lead to unpleasant circumstances, but gaining experience is my modus operandi. Regardless of the outcome, there’s always something new to learn, and just having the experience is considered mission accomplished.
21. Knowledge games like puzzles, Q & A quiz games, computer strategy games, or solve the mystery, really engage me.
22. Whether good a actual math or not, my mind tends to organize things an keep track of them.
23. I’d make a good referee or mediator because I can fair and impartial.
24. With a mind that’s sponge-like in absorbing facts, figures, and pertinent information, I can be an invaluable resource for others.
25. I’m at my worst when I tend to speculate and make up hypotheses to cover gaps in my knowledge.

The Scholar Set

The Scholar Set comprises the fundamental energies listed below. These subordinate Overleaves are second-nature to that Role. They are embedded in, and native to, the construction of this Role as design defaults. Visually displayed under the Scholar column on the Card Color Chart in Section 1, realize that if no other Overleaves were chosen from other categories by a person of that Role, they would
be automatically orient to these nested qualities.

The Scholar Cards are all Neutral, or malleable, Assimilation-oriented. Scholars regard themselves with aplomb to witness and record experience at large. Believing themselves to be directed, they look the Goal of Relaxation/Suspension (Card 14) to allow for the greatest and most diverse audience it can acquire. Sensing that their direction is guided from on-high, the Attitude of Pragmatist (Card 21) facilitates their intuition being open, receptive and informed. Demonstrating their authoritative command over a subject, the Mode of Observation(Card 35) projects an air of certainty and assurance that you are in the presence of the one true expert. Wanting to present the most wise and thoughtful of ideas, the Instinctive Center (Card 42) is accessed so that the Scholar perceives themselves as pontificating the truth of the ages. The Solar Body Type (Card 49) contains all the elements of life. When vibrant and alive, it compliments all others with a vitality and brightness which highlights many other of their innate qualities. A task that the Scholar itself does when dissembling anything it encounters.

It can be difficult for the Scholar to alter its perception or its focus, getting stuck in patterns or beliefs it has come to rely upon to define its reality. Thus the Chief Feature of Stubbornness says, “No wait, let me think”, stalling, it is moved not to move. Such obstinacy is embedded in someone who is challenged to let go of a dependable set of data that may challenge their understanding of reality. Ironically, it is this Role that loves learning the most, and yet can get stuck not wanting to try something new.

When a person has chosen any of the Scholar characteristics, in some fashion you are facing elements of adaptation, modification, letting go, or absorbing something. Involvement or exposure to any of these motivations in the subtext of your card reading can best be ferreted out, a Scholar animal by the way, by looking at which type it is: a Goal which is an objective, an Attitude which is a mindset, a
Mode which is a way of doing something, and if you see the CF, notice how it is trying to potentially resist the whole process.

From One Archetype to the Next…

The Scholar has collected the data and the research has been compiled. What needs to happen next is the information to be shared and made clear to listeners of all levels of comprehension. So TAO manufactures the vehicle to spread the word. One who can speak with eloquence, humor or just plain volume! To carry out the function of communications, the next aspect to emerge is the Sage Role – Card 5.

by Stephen Cocconi © 2011, Updated, 2024

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