By Shepherd Hoodwin
INTRODUCTION
According to Michael, each of us at the core is what they like to call a spark of the Tao or, you could say, a unit of consciousness in the All That Is.
As this spark, we each decided a long time ago to begin a great journey or adventure that might be called planetary sentience. To be sentient, as Michael defines it, is to have consciousness that is complex enough to be capable of purely intellectual function, such as self-awareness and long-range planning. To be a planetary sentient is to play a particular game the universe offers that involves coming to the physical plane of a planet such as earth, inhabiting a life form such as the human form, and experiencing what that planet and life form have to offer. When we’re done, we ascend through the higher planes until we’re fully reabsorbed back into the Tao. That whole loop, from the Tao, through the physical plane and each of the six higher planes, and back to the Tao is called a grand cycle.
In order to do a grand cycle, we need a vehicle, something that will anchor us into the seven-plane dimensional universe and carry us along this journey. That vehicle is called the essence, or soul.
If you were going to take a road trip, you might first go to a car dealership to get a vehicle. The first thing the salesperson would probably ask you is, “What kind do you want? A sedan, a hatchback, a minivan, or an SUV?” Once you narrow that down, you choose your options, accessories, and colors. It’s rather like that with the soul.
When you decide to undertake this journey, you go to the “soul dealership” and decide what basic model you want. The seven models, or types of souls, are called the role. The seven roles consist of three pairs: server and priest, artisan and sage, and warrior and king, plus the single role of scholar. Certain role combinations are “classic” and are often found in mates. In addition to the pairs mentioned, scholars often mate with priests and warriors, and servers often mate with kings. However, every soul will eventually experience most, if not all, combinations.
Once you decide your essence role, you pick the equivalent of options. For example, you choose your ratio of male to female energy, and your frequency, which is how fast the soul vibrates, giving it its texture. You also choose your unique location within larger groupings of souls, which gives you particular resonances. And so forth, until you’ve ready to “drive it off the lot” and begin your journey.
Now you have another set of choices. On a road trip, you’d decide where to spend the first night and what you’d do there. With the journey of your soul, you decide where you want to have your first lifetime, who your parents will be, and what you wish to experience. Then, you choose what Michael calls overleaves, personality traits that overlay your soul and help you accomplish your goals.
Note that the chart is divided into two sections, Essence and Overleaves, or soul and personality. Traits on the top (essence) half of your chart are true of you in all your human lifetimes on Earth—they don’t change from lifetime to lifetime. Traits on the bottom (overleaves) half characterize you in this combination for this lifetime only—you can change them from lifetime to lifetime to give you the specific experiences you need.
At the top of each section are four headings, the four axes: Inspiration, Expression, Action, andAssimilation. Many chart traits are on one of these axes. A trait on the inspiration axis has an inspirational quality; it’s about the inner world, and it’s associated with the fire element. The expression axis is the bridge—it’s about bringing what’s in the inner world into the outer through communication or creativity; it’s associated with air. The action axis concerns accomplishment or results in the outer world—the bottom line; its element is earth. The assimilation axis is about collecting and distilling information—it provides a neutral observation point and resource for the other three axes; it’s associated with water.
The first three axes are divided into ordinal and cardinal. The ordinal side is concrete; it has to do with the details of life, the nitty-gritty. The cardinal side is opposite: it’s abstract; it has to do with the overview of life, the big picture. The ordinal is contracted, the cardinal, expanded. The ordinal is like a zoom lens, the cardinal, like a wide-angle lens. Ordinal is private; cardinal is public. Cardinal has a positive pole of lucidity, and a negative pole of activity. Ordinal has a positive pole of responsiveness and a negative pole of passivity. The more cardinal, the more influential the trait is on the larger world; the more ordinal, the more internally focused it is. The assimilation axis is neutral, neither ordinal nor cardinal.
The roles and overleaves each have a particular position on the axes. Knowing a trait’s position helps you understand it. For example, the first pair of roles, server and priest, are ordinal and cardinal, respectively, on the inspiration axis. This immediately tells you that servers like to inspire in a concrete way, and priests, in a big-picture way. (The unpaired scholar role is on the assimilation axis.)
Parallel roles and overleaves—those that are on the same side of the same axis—have similarities and, when they occur together on a chart, reinforce each other, making them stronger. For example, the role of sage and the goal of acceptance are both on the cardinal side of the expression axis, and both involve a need to be liked (sages need their audience to pay attention to them, and the goal of acceptance motivates one to behave in an acceptable manner). All sages have acceptance as a natural goal, so they have some of that flavor even when it is not their actual goal. When it is, acceptance manifests particularly strongly. Likewise, if a person has both a goal of acceptance and an attitude of idealist, those traits amplify each other. On the other hand, opposite traits, such as discrimination and idealist, counterbalance one another.
Many of the traits on the chart have a positive and negative pole. In the positive pole, the trait manifests cleanly, with a loving intent; in the negative, it distorts due to immaturity and fear in some form. One of the benefits of having your chart is having words for your pitfalls—these are tools for avoiding them and having a more conscious and peaceful life. The poles are listed on your chart.
Overleaves can slide, or temporarily move, from one to another, either across the same axis, or, from the neutral assimilation-axis, to any other. If you are in a negative pole of an overleaf, deliberately sliding to another’s positive pole can help you get out of it. This is called hands across on the same axis, and hands through from the assimilation axis.
Childhood imprinting is how we were taught to be, or conclusions we drew about what we needed to do to get along in our family and community. It can override our true personality and prevent us from manifesting who we really are, especially earlier in life. If it does not fade away as we grow up, we will likely confront it during our fourth internal monad, which is typically during our mid-thirties, when essence seeks to overthrow anything standing in the way of our accomplishing our life task. We examine our imprinting to see whether it still serves us, and attempt to let our true nature emerge. Many people do not successfully accomplish this, and therefore do not completely look the way their Michael reading chart indicates. For example, suppressed sages may not be able to express themselves freely, which is an especially big deal for sages. Warriors and kings who were beaten down as children may be afraid to let their natural power flow, a key issue for anyone in that situation but especially for them. Childhood imprinting may continue themes from past lives. For example, warriors and kings who were beaten down may have abused their power in past lives.
Personality is not the same as soul, and we don’t look and act the same way in every lifetime. Other factors can inhibit or highlight our traits, such as physical and mental health challenges. I find that in the Michael teachings, the stereotypes are apropos about sixty percent of the time. I have known a few quiet sages, for example, and several gregarious scholars. None the Michael teachings traits are about behaviors per se, but about underlying energies. Perhaps you can validate your chart by considering more your motivations and the forces acting in your nature, if not your outer behaviors.
Sometimes our charts become more obvious as we get older; we tend to play around with different ways of being when we are younger, trying them on for size. It’s always possible that channeling (or any information) is incorrect. However, someone who is consciously on a path of inner awakening who receives an accurate Michael chart should be able to validate it over time.
Let’s take a look at your role and see what axis it sits on, and whether it’s ordinal, cardinal, or neutral.
ROLE
First of all, what is a role? Your role is the kind of soul you are, one of seven. Their proportions of the planet’s population are multiples of one out of twenty-eight. The roles, from most populous (and ordinal) to least, are:
Your role is your primary way of being, your inner style, and therefore, how you contribute to life. Every role can do any profession, but there are proclivities, and your role indicates how you are likely to approach anything you do. For example, although many artists are artisans, there are people of each role who are successful artists. It’s not so much what you do but how you do it. Priest artists, for instance, might emphasize how they might inspire others through their craft, rather than focusing so much on the craft itself, as an artisan might.
The seven roles are not merely archetypes; they are actually constructed differently, with anywhere from one to five psychic inputs. Each role has an input for current reality. The three solid roles, warrior, king, and scholar, have only that one input, allowing a focus that is well suited for action and assimilation. The inspiration roles each have two inputs; that is appropriate for inspiration, which involves merging a higher or greater awareness with our immediate awareness. The roles of the expression axis have the highest number of inputs, three and five. Integrating diverse awareness is fundamental to expression and creativity.
The solid roles are basically dealing with what is. The inspiration roles want to add something higher or greater to what is. To do this, they have to simultaneously see what is and something more. The expression roles, with three or five inputs, want to change what is.
The cardinal roles tend to interact with larger groups and more people in general than the ordinal roles. Still, we all need our space. A surprising number of outwardly gregarious sages have expressed a need for alone “down time” in order to regroup—with three inputs, they’re more sensitive than they may appear. Priests need time alone to commune with the universe. Even kings need chances to review and reflect.
Your role, Mary, is priest.
Priest is on the inspiration axis, so we know that your primary way of being is inspirational. In order to be yourself, you need to inspire and be inspired; without inspiration, you languish. Nature, music, art, and anything beautiful can be sources of inspiration, along with spiritual, religious, or self-help texts and practices. Priest is on the cardinal side of the axis, so you need to experience inspiration in an exalted, or expanded, way. You need to feel that you are on your mission and helping others to do the same. Priests inspire to the “higher good,” however they perceive that, as opposed to servers, who are ordinal and inspire to the “common good” through focusing more on the concrete aspects of life, nurturing others through taking care of things like food and shelter. Inspiration is harder to come by for priests than for servers. Priests like to help others unblock themselves and gain a vision for their lives; in order to do that, people have to be open to that aid.
Mission is a key word for priests. Priests almost always ask Michael through me about their mission during channeling sessions; the other roles don’t. It’s interesting that your mother referred to you as “Mary the Missionary”! The highest mission is carrying the vibration of unconditional love in all that we do, something we can do anywhere, under any circumstances. When our doing springs from that quality of being, it helps uplift humanity. Doing itself is important, too—we have to do something, and it may as well be useful—but it doesn’t necessarily have to be flashy, big, or an obvious mission. All it needs to be is a suitable vehicle for unconditional love.
The positive pole of priest is compassion. Priests are the most compassionate of souls, and it manifests as a hot, penetrating quality in their eyes. In compassion, you both feel for and feel withothers, which make priests the most adept healers of all stripes (medical and holistic doctors, nurses, therapists, religious and spiritual leaders, etc.) They are also natural empaths. In their positive pole, priests have deep dignity.
The negative pole is zeal. In zeal, you get carried away with your ideas about the higher good, fail to fully evaluate them, and perhaps try to ram them down other people’s throats. Priests are the most susceptible to guilt, both feeling guilty for not living up to their ideal of the higher good (“I really should be perfect and save the world! I’m such a failure.”) and inflicting guilt on others (“You knowthat smoking is bad for you! Why don’t you listen to me?”) Priests can carry the world on their shoulders, and can benefit from more laughter. They easily take on negative energies from others out of a desire to heal them, and need to learn that that is not the best way to help them. In the positive pole, priests have compassion for our human shortcomings.
Both priests and servers are caretaker roles: they feel strong and capable of taking care of others. They love to do it, but if they take it too far and forget to take care of themselves, too, they can become burned out.
All your volunteer work, including your hospice work, reflects your priest essence.
Both roles have two inputs, or psychic receivers through which they receive information. With priests, one is for consensus reality (which all souls have) and the other is to monitor (and serve) the higher good; priests are always trying to put the two together.
Priests are the sixth most ordinal and populous role (the second most cardinal and second least populous), so six is the priest number. The number six has a positive pole of harmony, and a negative pole of connection. That doesn’t mean that connection is a “bad” thing, only that, in this context, it is less than harmony. With numbers, the negative pole isn’t destructive, just more limited: Harmony is three-dimensional, and connection, two-dimensional.
Priests are typically most attracted (not just romantically) to servers and scholars, then warriors: servers, because they are the complementary roles on the inspiration axis; scholars, because scholar neutrality absorbs and is excited by priest intensity; and warriors, because they are so grounded that they balance priests, and priests remind warriors of the reality above the physical—they are an example of opposites attracting. Other priests are also simpatico for you.
Well-known priests include Julie Andrews, Joan Baez, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Edgar Cayce, Benedict Cumberbatch, Yogi Amrit Desai, Bob Dylan, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Pope Francis, Francis of Assisi, Sigmund Freud, Mohandas Gandhi, Jerry Garcia, Richard Gere, Alexander Hamilton, Woody Harrelson, Carl Jung, Helen Keller, Gene Kelly, Martin Luther King, Jr., Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, John Lennon, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Mary (Jesus’ mother), Robert Monroe, Barack Obama, Norman Vincent Peale, Mike Pence, Plato, Jane Roberts, Martin Sheen, Yogiraj Siddanath, Bruce Springsteen, Rudolph Steiner, Sting, Nikola Tesla, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, Christopher Walken, and Emma Watson.
ESSENCE TWIN (ET)
Your essence twin is another soul you team up with in the beginning to help you with your lessons by being vibrationally similar to you, and thereby reflecting you back to yourself. When your ET is discarnate (not in a physical body), it’s almost as if it is living in your vest pocket, and some of its traits blend into yours if its role is different. (I write “it” because the discarnate soul has no gender.) There is less bleedthrough if the soul is incarnate and knows you, and even less if you don’t know each other.
It’s possible that your ET’s status has changed during your life. If, for example, your chart says that your ET is a male whom you don’t plan to meet, it’s possible that he was born during your lifetime. You may have started life with a discarnate ET, with higher bleedthrough that imprinted you when you were young. Or vice versa: You might now have greater bleedthrough than you did in your formative years.
In addition to the natural attractions each role has, we also tend to be attracted to people who have the same role as our ET.
About five percent of us have no essence twin. A lesson of a cycle without an essence twin may be self-sufficiency, finding balance and completeness within, experiencing our reflection within ourselves rather than externally. We might choose a fairly balanced male/female energy ratio to facilitate this. People with no essence twin sometimes tell me, when they learn of it, that they aren’t surprised; they always had a sense of doing this planet “solo.” They may need to be especially deliberate about drawing in support from others. Sometimes they team up with someone who functions like an essence twin for a lifetime or a series of lifetimes. I refer to them as surrogate essence twins. When people have no ET, their casting becomes their only source for secondary role influences and therefore is especially important.
Even when we have an essence twin, we only know him or her in the flesh in ten to thirty percent of our lifetimes, and when we do, we’re not necessarily close on a personality level. Also, it is not unusual for both our essence twin and task companion (discussed below), the two key relationships defined in the Michael teachings, to be discarnate.
The ET relationship can be a very involving, anywhere from richly rewarding to very unpleasant. Many Michael students make the mistake of romanticizing this relationship. There are many other reasons a soul may be close to you, such as being in the same entity or having powerful shared past live experiences, and your ET is not necessarily a soul mate. However, no matter who or where your essence twin is, your soul connection is always there.
When you are both incarnate but don’t plan to meet, it is because you have different agendas for this lifetime. Your ET could be a ninety-year-old man in Shanghai or a toddler in Tierra del Fuego.
Your essence twin is a discarnate scholar, so there’s a good deal of bleedthrough, making it a significant secondary influence.
The scholar flavor, being neutral, is like a neutral paint color—it doesn’t stand out as obviously as the stronger colors do—because scholar is on the assimilation axis. In order for scholars to be themselves, they need something to assimilate and the opportunity to do so; without that, they languish.
Due to their neutrality, scholars are the most versatile role. They love to learn and are interested in a wide range of subjects. They can excel at any field, but tend to approach everything by learning as much as possible about it first, rather than jumping into things more intuitively. They can be as passionate and intense as any other role, but they more often have a quality of dispassionate objectivity as the detached observer.
Scholars not only have knowledge (the positive pole) about things, they also tend to know how to doa lot of things. In the positive pole, they have living, real knowledge, that fits in the real world. In the negative pole, they have false or untested knowledge, theory, that sounds good “on paper” but doesn’t pan out when tested. They can be excessively dry and vicarious, rather than participating and living life.
Since scholars provide a resource for the other roles—a library, if you will—as well as a source of unbiased viewpoints (hopefully), most tend to be packrats. They have a sense of needing to save things that might be of benefit to someone in the future. This most often manifests relative to media, especially books. Scholars have always prized books, and now that they’re so relatively cheap, it’s hard for them to resist hoarding them. Other media, such as magazines, CDs, DVDs, and digital media also qualify, but anything useful tends to be saved, and maybe organized, catalogued, etc.
Scholars tend to have an encyclopedic memory for facts. There are many different types of intelligence (creative, for one); a scholar’s intelligence tends to be more stereotypical. They can show off in class with the right answers. They tend to like all institutions of learning (including museums) and like to get advanced degrees. As a priest, you especially love to learn things that inspire you and help you on your path. Most scholars love to travel, a way of learning through the body; you might particularly enjoy traveling to sacred sites.
Scholars and priests are often ETs, and you are especially attracted to scholars since your ET is one. Scholars are the most neutral of the roles, and they are naturally attracted to the two most intense roles, priest (on a higher frequency) and warrior (on an earthier frequency). Scholars find their intensity to be stimulating, and priests and warriors find scholars to be calming.
Being a paralegal made good use of your scholar energies. Being passionate about books largely derives from them, too. Having owned a travel bookstore is an obvious reflection of both your ET bleedthrough and your warrior primary casting (next), which gives you a flair for business, in addition to your being in the moving part of the intellectual center, since you tend to move (travel) based on your thoughts.
CASTING
Casting is the order in which you were cast from the Tao. The two rows of numbers on your chart detail your casting; they are like your address. Your role and primary casting are the most important items on your chart, along with your essence twin role when discarnate.
When your essence twin role and the role that your primary casting resonates with are the same (but different from your own role), you are an “honorary” member of that role because both of your most important secondary influences are from that role, reinforcing each other. For example, if you are a scholar with a sage essence twin and sage primary casting, you are an “honorary sage.” This indicates that sage is a very strong influence, especially when your ET is discarnate, and people who know the teachings might mistake you for a sage.
Each number, one through seven, resonates with a particular role (and its corresponding overleaves). For example, the priest role is in the sixth position and it corresponds with the sixth chakra (third eye). It is the sixth most ordinal (or second most cardinal), and also the sixth most populous (or second least populous). It corresponds with all the cardinal inspiration-axis overleaves. Artisan is the number two role, corresponding with the second chakra, which is known for creativity and sexuality. It corresponds with all the ordinal expression-axis overleaves. However, cardinality/ordinality is reversed for numbers and roles, so seven casting, for instance, is the most ordinal position, despite resonating with the most cardinal role, king, because it is the last of the seven numbers.
Priest is also a cardinal role, so priest casting is ordinal, because the number six is in the second half of the numbers one through seven—the second half of anything is ordinal. Likewise, artisan casting is cardinal, because two is in the first half. The fact that the casting numbers are opposite the roles in this regard allows souls to experience every energy in both ordinal and cardinal ways. All the complexities of casting allow for much more variety than the seven roles alone would permit.
Essence twin bleedthrough allows some of the actual energy of your ET’s role to be mixed with your own, if it’s different, whereas casting is more a direction, how and where your role energies tend to be invested. For example, a warrior-cast scholar may not feel like a warrior, but tends to act like one.
PRIMARY CASTING
A cadence is a group of seven souls, usually all of the same role. Your position in that is your primary casting and reveals how you express your priest (and scholar) energies. You are third in your cadence. Three is the warrior number, so you are a warrior-cast priest. In addition to all the stereotypical priest things you do, you express your priest energy particularly into the warrior domain, which is that of business, the military, law enforcement, and anything practical that brings efficiency to society. Three has a positive pole of enterprise; you are able to bring your inspiration down to earth and make things happen. The negative pole is versatility, meaning that there’s the potential for enterprise but not its accomplishment. Although warriors are ordinal, three is cardinal, since it is in the first half of the numbers one through seven, allowing you to do warrior things in an exalted way, such as changing the rules of society on a large scale (warriors are about order). Your degree in criminal justice reflects your casting, as does having been a recruiter and headhunter for corporations, and owning a travel agency.
Your casting gives you more grounding than that of a typical priest, so you like to work in the practical realms, or it may allow you to be better at the practical aspects of inspiration, such as selling it (warriors are persuasive salespeople), or giving people tangible things they can do to better themselves. Action-axis influences might make you seem a bit tougher or feistier, although all priests have a basic fluidity and warmth to them.
SECONDARY CASTING
The middle number is your cadence’s position in its greater cadence, which is seven cadences, or forty-nine souls. It is what stands out about you to friends and family. We are each like multifaceted gems, with different facets standing out at different angles and distances. Your cadence is sixth in its greater cadence, which is, again, the priest number, so it just reinforces what you already are. Still, since six is in the second half of the numbers one through seven, its position is ordinal, although being a priest is cardinal. Having priest secondary casting also allows you to do priestly things in a more nitty-gritty, down-to-earth way, in addition to being able to work with large groups and concepts as a priest essence. It helps you to run the gamut from highly cardinal to highly ordinal, giving you more flexibility in how you express your priestliness.
Six has a positive pole of harmony and a negative pole of connection. Connection is not negative per se, but is more limited than harmony. Your being a bridge between people reflects this. Connecting people with ideas also demonstrates your idealist attitude (discussed later), since idealists are idea people.
TERTIARY CASTING
Your greater cadence is seventh in its string of greater cadences. Seven is the king number, since kings are the seventh most ordinal and populous role (most cardinal and least populous), so you have king tertiary casting. Seven has a positive pole of inculcation (to teach, lead, and bring the lessons entirely home) and a negative pole of eclecticism (in which diverse threads aren’t integrated and inculcated). This is a relatively minor flavor in the “stew,” but it underlines your warrior primary casting, since kings and warriors share the action axis. So you can do king tasks ordinally, such as organizing and finding excellence on a small scale, in the details of life.
Seven casting gives you an organic, direct link to the causal (intellectual) plane, from where Michael hails. Six casting (your secondary) connects you directly to the astral (emotional) plane, where our essence, guides, and angels reside. So intuitive abilities, perhaps channeling, may come naturally to you.
RAW NUMBER CASTING
In the “Chart Reference Material” folder, you’ll find another folder, “Raw Numbers.” In that is an article comparing the two kinds of casting, “Initial and Raw Number Casting,” along with four other handouts. You can also find it here:
https://shepherdhoodwin.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Initial-and-Raw-Number-Casting.pdf
and here:
With your raw number of 541, you have a community responsibility of comfort and a global job of celebration. You can read about them in the handouts.
You are in the artisan casting column, server bonding row, and sage communication block, or 2/1/5, on the love side of your entity.
Your community responsibility has a position in its row of a number from one to seven. Die Quelle channel Varda Hasselmann calls those positions “the Seven Paths of the Soul” (See handout):
1 – Path of Touch
2 – Path of Knowledge
3 – Path of Strength
4 – Path of Form
5 – Path of Longing
6 – Path of Silence
7 – Path of Search
Yours is the path of knowledge.
CADRE/ENTITY
Several greater cadences of your role combined with greater cadences of some or all the other roles makes up an entity, your spiritual family of about one thousand souls. Seven entities make a cadre. Twelve cadres make up a cadre group, or “energy ring.” Most essence twins are in the same cadre, but some help join together the whole cadre group by being in different cadres.
The cadre number (which is first) is unique for each one, so it has no casting influence. However, the second number, which is the entity, is out of seven, so it does have a numerical meaning. Since it characterizes everyone in a large group, it tends to more stand out about you from a distance, in what strangers and acquaintances will notice about you from afar. In addition, every entity has its own personality based on its unique makeup.
Members of your entity often feel like your immediate family. Members of other entities of your cadre are like your first cousins. (Those of other cadres in your cadre group are like second cousins.) People most often mate with members of entities that neighbor their own, although there are no rules about this. In addition, there is a special resonance between every other entity and cadre. So, for example, a member of a second entity may feel a particular complementarity with members of her cadre’s fourth entity. In addition, if you are a member of, say, the third entity of your cadre, you have a similar number three feeling as members of number three entities of other cadres: on one level, you’re the same, even though on another, the particulars are different, so you may feel a connection with another soul simply for this reason.
A soul’s most intimate bonds are with other members of his primary cadence, along with his essence twin and task companion. However, there are many possible reasons you might feel connected to someone; for example, bonding past-life experiences can make two souls very close even without sharing one of these “structural” connections.
Twelve cadres make up a cadre group or “energy ring.” The cadre group that includes Cadres 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 13, as Michael through me numbers them, has an agreement to study with the Michael entity, although, of course, not every member decides to study the Michael teachings in each lifetime, and individuals from other cadre groups can also choose to study with Michael.
You are in Cadre Four/Entity Four, or 4/4 (called 2/4 through some channels), in the system Michael uses through me. Your whole cadre has “exacting, specific high standards.” It “brings things into clear focus and helps manifest their full potential.” Cadre Four is in the second or “knowledge” position of Cadre Group Two.
Being in a number four entity adds a generalized bit of scholar casting that stands out most at a distance. Strangers, particularly, will notice a slight yet pervasive scholarliness about you, perhaps a neutral, objective, and knowledgeable quality. This characterizes everyone in a number four entity, in addition to whatever specific personality an entity might have.
Your particular entity has been characterized thusly: “Expands perimeters of understanding.” It is “still largely incarnate, metropolitan, unusually far-flung.” It has a “strong interest in international relations.”
I have channeled these celebrities as being in your entity: John Cage, Frances Farmer, John Gotti, JZ Knight, Lea Michele, Sergei Prokofiev, Patrick Stewart, Quentin Tarantino, and Melvin van Peebles. There are, no doubt, many more who haven’t yet been asked about through me.
ORIENTATION
You orient in truth, reinforcing your scholar ET bleedthrough.
There are three universal forces behind everything: love, truth, and beauty. These correspond with emotions, intellect, and body; or inspiration, expression, and action axes. Beauty is also known as energy or pure energy, life, or vitality. Souls orient in one of them, or work with balancing two of these qualities. Someone with a truth orientation is more likely to be blunt about the truth she perceives, whereas someone oriented in love is more likely to forgive and let go of the trespasses of others, for example. Someone with a beauty orientation is more likely to cultivate his body and enjoy nature; it aligns with the action-axis affinity for physicality.
Although love aligns with the inspiration axis, and truth, with the expression axis, a priest can orient in the truth or beauty force rather than love, just as a sage can orient in love or beauty rather than truth. If a priest has a love orientation or a sage has a truth orientation, that reinforces her basic nature. Although scholars are neutral, interested in all experiences, a truth orientation underlines the scholarly love of knowledge. A beauty orientation supports endeavors such as energy work.
Someone with a combination love/truth orientation is constantly working to integrate these two forces: for instance, trying to speak both truthfully and kindly. Someone with a love/beauty orientation is about the intersection of love and beauty: the love of beauty and the beauty of love. With the combination of truth and beauty, one seeks the truth in beauty and vice versa.
This information is provided after the cadre/entity numbers because each soul must tie into a universal force in order to maintain the existence of the entity. Entities do not necessarily have equal numbers of each orientation, but cadres are likely to.
Orientation is different from the three entity sides in raw number casting.
TASK COMPANION (TC)
Your task companion is your second closest soul bond structurally, after your essence twin. Your relationship with your ET pulls you into each other, and since your ET reflects you, into yourself; conversely, your TC draws you both outward into the world. When you are both on the physical plane, your life tasks tend to complement one another and you ignite each other to do them, whether or not you know one another. You help each other with your life tasks either on the physical plane in real time, or in the dreamtime, on higher levels.
When your TC is discarnate, it shows up as a spirit guide particularly devoted to helping you with your life task, the biggest lessons and accomplishments you seek (rather than, say, a guide focused on your day-to-day course corrections). It doesn’t give you the kind of bleedthrough that you have with your ET, which can show up strikingly in your demeanor—it comes in more subtly under certain circumstances, when you’re doing your big-picture tasks.
If your task companion is incarnate but you don’t plan to meet in person, it’s likely that you meet in the dream state when you’re sleeping. Sometimes your dreams are how you remember meetings on the astral plane.
Yours is a discarnate priest, meaning that you are able to pull in more priest inspiration and healing energy.
MALE/FEMALE ENERGY RATIO
There are many chart items that imply masculinity or femininity as they are usually thought of, but what we call “male/female energy” has a narrower definition: the ratio refers to how goal-oriented the soul is. Those higher in male energy tend to be more career-oriented; they may be workaholics or at least like to do a lot, especially when in a male body. Souls higher in female energy may work hard, too, but tend to do a lot of things, as opposed to focusing on goals in a major way. The ratio could be said to determine how much of a specialist or generalist one is. High male energy channels a person’s energy into a narrow tube, so to speak, and he has a large impact wherever he directs it. However, the nature of high focus is that more things are left out. Male energy is simple and linear; female energy is complex and nonlinear. Female energy is creative and integrative because it is free to roam in many directions at the same time and make new associations.
The majority of souls are in the middle range, between 40 and 60. Whatever one’s ratio, the soul’s male energy is “forward” in a male body, and its female energy, in a female body.
Largely due to cultural expectations, the solid roles of king, warrior, and scholar generally prefer the male body in our society, and those roles have more to do with our archetypes of masculinity than male/female energy. High male energy makes a person a highly focused doer, which is reminiscent of the action axis. However, the linear, laser-like focus of male energy is different from the single input of warriors and kings, which receives one piece of information about current reality at a time, and the earthy density of the action traits in general. A female warrior with high female energy is still action-oriented, probably a workhorse, but she may tend to do more varied tasks and be less career-oriented. A male artisan with high male energy still experiences the airiness of high frequency and the creative chaos of five psychic inputs, but he directs his output more toward big projects and/or career.
Servers and artisans tend to be more comfortable as females, and they are more archetypically feminine in our society.
Priests and sages are agnostic. Priests are both fluid and powerful; they enjoy both the fluidity of the female body and the power of the male, so they tend to do fine in either. Sages can communicate and perform equally well in female and male bodies, but may prefer the male body in societies that repress female expression.
Overleaves such as power, aggression, impatience and dominance have also tended to be more associated with masculinity in our culture. There have been more feminine associations with acceptance, submission, and spiritualist, for example. In this era, many souls who have been more comfortable as males are incarnating as females, and vice versa, in order to achieve greater internal balance and also to take advantage of opportunities to create a more equal society, so the archetypes are changing.
However, with any role or overleaf, higher male energy tilts one more often toward the male body, and higher female, to the female body, although souls can acquire a personal preference along the way regardless of these factors—it is an individual matter. Almost every soul will choose both male and female lifetimes in order to have a complete “education” on the physical plane. It’s “good work” when the soul can be comfortable as both. I’ve never seen anyone at exactly 50/50, but a lot of charts come out as having 49/51, 51/49, or thereabouts; souls in that range are clearly going for a more balanced experience of Earth.
It’s common for partners to have opposites. When both have higher male energy, it suggests that they’re good at working together toward goals if they can harmonize them; otherwise, they may clash. When both have higher female energy, their relationship tends to be more laid back, all else being equal. There are many things on the Michael chart that can predict attraction; if two people don’t have opposite male/female ratios, they probably have other complements. There are many possible factors in attraction.
Your ratio is 64/36. Again, priests tend to be comfortable both as males and females: they are innately powerful people, but also have the fluidity and lighter density of the feminine. However, with this ratio, you as a soul probably favor the male body. Your lifelong lack of interest in makeup, lace, more girly clothes, and people thinking that you were a tomboy growing up may reflect your higher male energy.
Since we are attracted to our opposite, someone at 36/64 would most attract you, but anyone in that range would work well for you in this regard.
FREQUENCY
Our frequency is the rate of vibration of our essence on a scale of one to a hundred. Slow frequencies feel steady, stable, or substantial. Fast frequencies feel effervescent, ethereal, or airy. Frequency ranges could be compared to solids, liquids, and gases such as ice, water, and steam. People with high frequencies can be dreamy or bubbly, have more intense and rapid experiences, and perhaps burn out more quickly. Low frequency souls vibrate more slowly and gradually. Frequency does not change throughout our lifetimes, and no frequency is good or bad.
We are most comfortable living with people whose frequency is within about twenty points of our own. Less than half of all souls incarnating have frequencies higher than 50, because higher frequencies are harder to manage on the physical plane, but many are between 40 and 50. If you were living with someone whose frequency was substantially higher or lower than your own, it would subtly pull on you, trying to speed you up or slow you down, it might seem.
Roles and overleaves also have a frequency. Priests and artisans are high-frequency roles; warriors, kings, and scholars are low frequency; and servers and sages are middle frequency. Your role’s frequency has a stronger impact on how you are perceived than your individual one (for example, all warriors seem earthy). Some channels get this number as an amalgam of your individual and role frequency.
Your individual frequency is 64, which is in the upper part of the middle range. Being a higher-frequency priest, it might be a challenge for you to ground your energy, but it puts you on a faster track to growth and experience. Faster isn’t better—it’s just the nature of the priest and of high frequency in general. However, 64 is still low enough that you can feel comfortable with the majority of people frequency-wise. Your scholar ET bleedthrough and warrior casting also help ground you.
PREVIOUS CYCLES
You have had eleven previous grand cycles. Each one was probably on a different planet in a different life form, from infant soul through old, and through all the higher planes back to the Tao. You’ve probably done each of the roles, in combination with various ET roles and casting. Every time you as a spark do a planetary cycle, you gain experience and therefore complexity. You might compare it to this year’s computers vs. last year’s: last year’s works fine, but this year’s computers are a bit more complex. The average Earthling has had four previous cycles. Nineteen is the highest number any of us have had (for example, the man Jesus). The most common number on my charts is eleven, followed by twelve, ten, and thirteen; the numbers thin out a lot after thirteen. Like all things, complexity can be either positive or negative, and is relative.
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So far, everything we’ve discussed has concerned your essence, making it true for all your lifetimes. Now, we’re going to discuss your personality traits, which can be different in each lifetime.
NEEDS
There are nine “needs.” This material largely originated with Jose Stevens. You can find articles about them at:
http://www.michaelteachings.com/nine_needs_index.html, and
http://www.michaelteaching.com/jun97.htm.
Incidentally, there is a lot of other material relative to the charts online, as well as in my book, Journey of Your Soul. Michael books by other authors are listed at
https://shepherdhoodwin.com/michael-teaching/bibliography/.
http://www.michaelteachings.com/mresources.html
links to a variety of other Michael teaching sites, groups, and lists.
Your needs are based on your life task. We all have all nine, but their priority can change from lifetime to lifetime. They are good to keep in mind relative to possible careers. Meeting your top three needs is also a key to happiness, along with getting enough of what Michael calls your true rest, play, study, and work. Your “trues” are specific to you and can be channeled.
The nine needs, with their poles, are:
You can remember these through the acronym SAFEPEACE.
Your top three are security, adventure, and exchange.
Security is the need to have a safe platform for life’s experiences. The fact that you’ve been financially fortunate in this lifetime has helped fulfil this need.
Adventure is the need to take risks and have excitement, however you define that. Exploring the inner/spiritual world can be the greatest adventure, but this also refers to your outer life. For some, sports (especially extreme sports) fills this need. Travel is a form of adventure for you, as are your varied and interesting volunteer experiences. Working with death and dying could also serve a priest’s adventure need.
Security and adventure pull in opposite directions; they need to be balanced so that you find a happy medium. You need to know that your basic security need is fulfilled before going too far out on a limb. It sounds like you’ve had that foundation.
Exchange is the need to share one-on-one, to have meaningful relationships with others. With a high exchange need, you might enjoy intimate dinners and discussions.
LIFE QUADRANT
Life quadrant is a simple concept that states when in a group, either for work or play, we tend to take one of the following positions:
Love: Initiate, as in, “Let’s go to a movie.”
Knowledge: Provide information for the group, as in “I read a review that said that such-and-such is a good movie.”
Power: Move the group, as in “Let’s get in the car; I’ll drive.” And
Support: Serve and unify group, as in “I’ll get popcorn.”
Our position is flexible, depending on the group’s needs, and we will do all positions in our lifetimes.
You tend to do the knowledge position, which also makes use of your scholar ET bleedthrough.
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Next we have the seven overleaves, which overlay your essence, ordered from most internal to most external. They are the foundation of your personality.
GOAL
The goal may be the most significant overleaf but it’s not usually the most obvious. It’s the motivator, what pulls you through your lifetime, what you ultimately seek from each circumstance.
Yours is called acceptance. It’s the second most common goal; thirty percent of us have it at any given time. It is among the softest of overleaves, making one a “nice guy.” Those in acceptance are mediators, the “glue” that helps hold societies together. In its more exalted form, people with this goal work to have acceptance for all things, including not being accepted by others. It is called the highest goal because we are all ultimately learning agape (unconditional love), its positive pole, but tolerance and greater inner peace are excellent steps along the way. The negative pole of acceptance is ingratiation—at its worst, it’s brownnosing. In seeking the acceptance of others, there can be fear about not being liked and then trying too hard.
To get out of any overleaf’s negative pole, slide temporarily to its opposite. In this case, it’s discrimination—become clearer on what you don’t want in your life and strengthen your boundaries and willingness to say no. Acceptance is about learning to say yes and being adaptable, but without a good no to balance it, yes has no power.
Acceptance creates a lifetime of more “like it or lump it” experiences, as opposed to, say, growth, which draws more challenges that one can overcome if you work hard, or “flow,” which often rewards letting go and allowing things to happen as they will.
Acceptance is the sage goal—sages naturally want their audience to accept them.
Acceptance can be a starting point for change. Your challenge is to totally make peace with what is at the moment, and then, after evaluating your options, change those things that may be in your power to do something about in a peaceful way, if you wish to.
The AA credo best encapsulates it:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.
—Reinhold Niebuhr
ATTITUDE
Your attitude is how you look at the world, the sorts of things that tend to jump out at you.
Yours is idealist (+ coalescence, – abstraction). Idealists tend to see everything in terms of how it can be improved, as compared to, say, the realist, who just takes things at face value. They dream “the impossible dream,” complementing your visionary, high-frequency priest nature. They are the people who most change the world because they optimistically believe that they can, and will work hard to do so. On the downside, they are often disappointed; however, idealists have a basic cheerfulness and tend to bounce back.
Since I am also an idealist, I devoted an entire subchapter to that attitude in my book, Journey of Your Soul.
MODE
The mode is how you run your energy and operate in the world. It determines how you achieve your goal.
You are in caution mode, which is about learning to “look before you leap.” It’s the second most common mode, accounting for thirty percent of us. Caution puts on the brakes and is risk averse—it would rather play by the rules. It can be a party-pooper in the negative pole, phobia, in which the person is afraid to make any choice out of fear that it will be the wrong one. In the positive pole, deliberation, the person does make choices, but carefully, with due consideration.
CENTER
We all have all seven centers: emotional (everyday feelings) and higher emotional (exalted feelings), intellectual (day-to-day thoughts) and higher intellectual (philosophical/conceptual/big picture thoughts), physical (bodily excitations) and moving (whole-body actions or higher energetic states), and instinctive (automatic survival operations). One of four is chosen by the soul as our primary center, the front door of the personality that opens when someone or something knocks: either intellectual (most common in the U.S. and Western Europe), emotional, physical or moving.
Your primary centering refers specifically to how you react to stimuli. Your thinking when it is not a reaction to externals uses your intellectual center but is not a manifestation of your primary centering, although intellectually centered people tend to think more often. Similarly, you can have an emotional nature in general without being emotionally centered. The emotional center is on the inspiration axis, and the inspiration-axis roles, priest and server, tend to have a particularly emotional nature regardless of centering. However, if they don’t have an emotional center, they don’t tend to react first or second from their emotions, even if they feel a great deal. The feelings may be just there, not necessarily displayed, so they may not come into conscious awareness as easily. Sages and artisans, being expressive, also tend to be at least fairly emotional, since they are constructed to bring out what is within (communication and creativity). Scholars tend to be the least emotional of the roles, followed by kings and warriors; for them, being emotionally centered may be the only way they’ll develop their emotions, and having that centering can be a big deal and a challenge for them. On the other hand, they tend to be more comfortable with their physicality than the other roles, even without an action-axis center. Of course, everything else on the chart has an impact, too, as well as imprinting, astrology, and so forth.
The three fundamental areas of centering are body, intellect, and emotions. Your primary center uses one, and your secondary (part of center) usually uses another, leaving a third that is used least for reactions, therefore being one’s weak link. It takes more conscious work to include it. One of the aims of the Michael teachings is to help us balance our centers, so that we have free access to whichever one is most appropriate. When both partners have the same centering, it makes for better understanding of the other, but then neither is filling in the weak spot.
In the rare instances in which people’s primary and secondary centers are the same, e.g. emotional part of emotional center, they react almost entirely from one center and finding balance is even more of a challenge.
You are intellectually centered, in the moving part (secondary), meaning that your first reaction is to analyze, and then you more-or-less automatically act on your thoughts once they are crystallized in reaction to something that occurred. You put your ideas into action. You also move based on your thoughts, which along with having one hundred percent active body types and scholar ET bleedthrough, makes travel especially appealing to you.
The positive pole of the intellectual center is thought, the negative, reason, which, in this context, means mechanical thinking that’s asleep, not seeing with fresh eyes and engaging in original thought. Those who are intellectually centered might be especially drawn to reading and analyzing.
The weak link when your primary center is intellectual and your secondary is one of the body centers is the emotional center. Priests tend to be emotional, since priest aligns with the higher emotional center; still, you don’t react from your emotions first or usually second. Therefore, you and others may not necessarily know what you’re really feeling; your intellectual reaction may, for example, be anger, but your real emotion might be one of hurt.
If you fall into the trap of acting on negative thoughts, leading to still more negative thoughts, forming a vicious circle, the way out is to feel and maybe express your true feelings. This is accomplished by distracting your moving part: instead of acting automatically on your negative thoughts, move your body in a neutral way, as in exercise. Then allow your true feelings to arise.
OBSTACLES
Our chief obstacle is our primary stumbling block, the focus of our fears and illusions, something we deeply believe on a gut level to be true, but isn’t. The positive pole of an obstacle is the lesser of the two evils, since it is still based on fear—it is just less extreme and more easily rationalized as being a good thing.
The chief obstacle was originally called the “chief feature” in the Michael books by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro; that term was drawn from the Gurdjieff teachings. I think “chief obstacle” is more descriptive.
Obstacles can be blatant or subtle, strong or weak. They may be visible only when we are experiencing high stress and fear. However, they still may be working in the background to thwart our growth, so “photographing” them in action and working to reduce their influence is a priority if we wish to grow. For each of us, overcoming our chief obstacle is a linchpin of personal growth.
Since there can be at least a little bit of each of the obstacles in us (who, for example, is never stubborn?), it would be reasonable to list all seven in priority order, and many channels give a secondary or even tertiary obstacle. The chief obstacle, however, is the most relevant to daily life, the issue that comes up the most often. Until we face it, we’re not able to do much with our secondary. It is the strongest dark cloud hanging over our personality, the one we need to work on the most in order to grow.
Some channels say that the chief obstacle blocks our goal (our innermost overleaf), whereas our secondary blocks our attitude (our second innermost), etc. It is also said that our chief obstacle most affects our general worldview; our secondary, our relationships. That can be the case, or the chief obstacle may simply be our biggest block in general; our secondary, our second biggest; etc. (Through channels who dictate the secondary obstacle as the one that blocks the attitude, there are rare cases in which it is stronger or more prominent than the chief obstacle.)
In addition to possibly blocking our goal, attitude, etc., each obstacle can block all the traits on the same side of its axis, even those that aren’t our own role or overleaves. For example, impatience is the king-position obstacle and blocks our ability to be in mastery, which is the positive pole of king. Arrogance blocks priestly compassion. And so forth.
The cardinal obstacles artificially expand the self, while the ordinal ones artificially contract it. Each pair of obstacles, like the other overleaves, is composed of opposites. The inspiration-axis (inner world) obstacles are arrogance, which perceives self in an inflated way, and self-deprecation, which perceives self in a deflated way. The expression-axis (bridging the inner and outer worlds) obstacles are greed, which attempts to add to the self from the world, and self-destruction, which attempts to subtract from it. The action-axis (outer world) obstacles are impatience, which audaciously tries to act on the environment, and martyrdom, which experiences the environment as acting on itself. The neutral assimilation-axis obstacle is stubbornness, which tries to stop the world.
Secondary, tertiary, etc. obstacles can coexist with our chief obstacle. In addition, we can also slide from one obstacle to another. Sliding means that we temporarily move from one to another, and generally don’t do them both at the same time. For example, someone in stubbornness can slide to impatience; a fear of change can trigger a fear of missing out, which then takes over. On the other hand, someone in stubbornness with a secondary of impatience can be stubborn and impatient at the same time, perhaps stubbornly impatient or impatiently stubborn. Or each obstacle can act independently, in different aspects of life, perhaps at different times.
Here is a channeling I did on the subject:
http://www.michaelteachings.com/michael-on-chief-obstacles.html
Your chief obstacle is called self-deprecation. It is defined as a fear of being inadequate, not measuring up. The positive pole is humility, but because it is fear-based, it is false humility, based on an erroneous premise, so in this context, it’s not a good thing. The negative pole is even worse, abasement, which means humiliation or degradation.
It is the server-position obstacle, so it resonates with the negative pole of server, bondage (being a doormat).
Affirmation: “I believe in myself. I have everything it takes.”
If your chief obstacle is blocking your goal, your fear of inadequacy prevents you from accepting. It can distort your worldview in general as well.
Your secondary obstacle is martyrdom (+ selflessness, – mortification). It is defined as a fear of unworthiness.
Martyrdom brings up images of loudly proclaimed suffering or silent manipulation. However, like all obstacles, martyrdom can be subtle. It can manifest, for instance, as chronic back pain in people who don’t complain or otherwise act like martyrs; they unconsciously put into their body their belief in their unworthiness and need to suffer in order to earn worth. Those in martyrdom believe that the outer world is more powerful in their life than they are.
It’s true for all of us that there are negative influences in our lives beyond our control. However, if we are not in martyrdom, we tend to take them in stride. Those in martyrdom might instead see them as confirmation that they are a victim of outside forces that are conspiring against them. They may rail against them, yet feel that they must somehow deserve their treatment.
Affirmation: “I deserve the blessings of life. I am worthy of them just for being who I am.”
If your secondary obstacle is blocking your idealist attitude, your fear of unworthiness prevents you from acting on your ideas for making the world a better place. It can also cause problems with your relationships.
BODY TYPES
Body types are the influences of the celestial bodies on our physical bodies. The concepts come from ancient esoteric teachings re-revealed by a student of Gurdjieff and incorporated by the first Michael channels and students, who were also students of Gurdjieff.
There are seven main body types: