LESSON 17
Rulers IV and V
During the following week, study the description of the Rulers presented below while you keep practicing your journaling and magical Rites.
Ruler of the Fourth Zone
The Ruler of the Fourth Zone is an intelligence of Fortitude and Service. Its power weakens the influence of the Energy of the Fourth Zone, a power of arrogance and presumption. The Fourth Ruler is opposed by the Tormentor of Tyranny, which inspires lust for power and a desire to control events and people. However, the Virtue of the Fourth Ruler, in its orderly aspect of affinity to service, inspires a desire to be useful to others while keeping oneself within the bounds of one's current responsibilities and jurisdictions. The Fourth Ruler protects against the arrogance that oversteps bounds by being a patron of oaths and promises, duty, integrity and honor, humbleness and diligence. While also a spirit that facilitates personal ambition at the right moment, the Fourth Ruler's Virtue resists the improper impulses to seek power by interfering with other people's responsibilities. When a desire is just, however, and when the proper time for it has arrived, the Fourth Ruler will lend its power to remove all obstacles to the realization of one's goals.
In its aspect of a spirit of Fortitude, the Fourth Ruler strengthens the soul against the weakening effects of external forms of control. Being a part of social groups and organizations, with their many forms of power structures and regulations, demands a lot of psychic energy from a mortal soul. The many mental and emotional states elicited by life in the material cosmos, dealing with the responsibilities and demands of human civilization--demands for physical labor, emotional involvement, ideological commitment, obedience to laws and customs, etc.--, can drain one's psychic energy very quickly and make one vulnerable to oppression and control. The Fourth Ruler inspires patience, courage, equanimity, and perseverance so one can afford to live in the hylic cosmos without being crushed by its restraining effects.
The Ruler of the Fifth Zone
The Ruler of the Fifth Zone is an intelligence of Justice and Empathy. On the one hand, it sustains the power of discernment in the soul, the ability to evaluate and judge entities and events in terms of their qualities. This Virtue makes the Fifth Ruler a patron of social and moral order, laws and legislation, hierarchy, value systems, and spiritual authority. However, it does not merely allow one to cast a judging gaze towards collective realities; it is also a power of self-criticism, without which an individual would quickly slip into patterns of conceit, overconfidence, and a sense of moral superiority. By blessing the soul with the power to examine the whole individual and its place in the cosmos, the Fifth Ruler weakens the action of the Energy of the Fifth Zone, which is Unholy Impulsiveness. The impulse to be judgmental is ultimately unavoidable, but it needs to be tempered in order not to turn the individual over to a general and callous condemnation of the world and other beings.
Another moderating element to the power of judgment and evaluation is empathy. The ability to put oneself in another's place, the desire to find enough room and conditions for everyone to be decently happy, and the realization that the suffering of others is not irrelevant to one's own life are ideas and feelings that should be a part of everyone's psychic landscape. Indiscriminate and cruel punishment does not promote peace and order as much as it does resentment, corruption and suffering. Condemning others on a callous whim, or in a generalized way, only increases injustice. Imposing the letter of the law without looking into its spirit is detrimental to rational judgment. For all of that, the Fifth Ruler demands that the power to judge be exercised alongside the power of empathy; these two are the twin components of real Justice.