“Birth is not only about making babies.”

Barbara Katz Rothman

Symbols and Color

• Background Image: It is the dank hollow of a tree trunk. It reminded me of a womb; a place of birth where new life emerges for the first time. Like a Void (Card 0 – TAO) is has a depth that seems almost indistinguishable from endless space itself.
• Border Color: Tan – like the Good Red Road of Life in Native American Mythology
• Leaf (Beginning): The Server Level Soul Age is of Inspiration
• Spiral Nautilus Shell: Soul Age Set – Symbolized the eternal recurrence of lessons at various levels
• Spider Monkey: Base Evolutionary Stage of Lowest Intellectual Complexity of Simeon Apes
• Infant: Stages of Maturity

Implications of the Upright Position or Positive Pole

Artist Ardis Bow adorned this photo of a baby she knows. The wings reminded me that an infant, like an Infant Soul, has no “story” about being human, so in her choice to characterize our pre-human existence as angelic, I felt a joyful satisfaction in thinking that we come from “the better angels of our nature.” An Essence at this primary stage of development is uncoordinated and its coping skills rudimentary. Tribal life, often nomadic and hunter-gatherer, with rigid social hierarchies based on strength and prowess pervade, much like the order of lower life forms from which they were recently a part. Freud’s concept of the Id, that atavistic aspect of the human animal that reacts from the ancient part of the brain, possesses no rational thought, only instinctual drives. These drives are what the Infant Soul is concerned with investigating.

Card messages in the Illuminated position.

+ Innocence

(Initiation, primal, authentic, unstructured, atavistic, attuned, simple, basic, subsistence, foundational)

1. Every infant is afforded the status of innocence.  Mistakes are part of the initiation of a new task or cycle. Have the same guilelessness you would afford a child. Give some wiggle room and don’t condemn anyone. One must crawl before they can walk, let alone run.
2. Initiation – At the birth of anything new, the blank slate (tabula rasa) is exciting and inviting. Everything is pure and open. Begin with no limitation. Just find a place to begin.
3. In infancy you must learn to walk before you can run. You are just getting your footing.
4. You are just learning! Give yourself plenty of room to fall and get back up. Plenty of opportunities are still to come.
5. The Infant Soul is raw, real and new. Be that way! It might be refreshing!
6. This is a beginning. Have not expectations. Let things develop organically.
7. Mistakes are part of any initiation. Trial and error are a teacher. Allow for some wiggle room and don’t punish anyone, they’ll improve.
8. At the birth of anything new, it is a blank slate, a tabula rasa, upon which to create. Just begin. 

Quotation Illustrating this concept…

Card messages in the Shadow position.

– Helpless,

(raw, indiscreet, indiscriminate, superstitious, rudimentary, confounded, amoral, reactive, ruthless, savage)

1. No boogie man is hiding under the bed. A child may wet itself with thoughts of danger where there is none but be perfectly at ease when about to pet a dog growling at it. See clearly what is in front of you not what is missing.
2. Superstition clouds your mind with fear and leaves one helpless in the face of the unknown. Danger and opportunity are two sides of the same coin? Act accordingly.
3. Fear is a constant concern when one is totally helpless. The inception point is always the most tenuous and prone to damage. Easy does it now.
4. Innocent mistakes will be common. You will cry but no harm done.
5. Take a hint from native peoples, be in sync with your environment. Right now you are failing to do so.

Quotation Illustrating this concept…

Relevance in the Michael Teaching

Based on the idea that sentient life progresses, making the analogy to a newborn is both metaphorically and experientially accurate.

Lacking any “history”  (i.e. past life memory) the Infant Soul is confronted with its first foray’s into living life as a human animal.  Instinct is still active having come freshly from the Devic cycle of evolution which precede the graduation into a state of sentience (self consciousness). Hence, the Infant Soul is most likely to be found in places where they exist close to nature and remote from populated areas with social complexity: jungles in Africa, New Guinea, and  South America, plains in Australian and Mongolian , or northern cold extremes like Inuit and Klinkit (Eskimos) peoples or Siberian or LapLander herders. But doing so of course, exposes them to immediate threat of the elements, and thus are constantly facing challenges of survival.

An Essence at this primary stage of development is uncoordinated and its coping skills rudimentary. Tribal life, often nomadic and hunter-gatherer, with rigid social hierarchies based on strength and prowess pervade, much like the order of lower life forms from which they were recently a part. Freud’s concept of the ID, that atavistic aspect of the human animal that reacts from the ancient part of the brain, possesses no rational thought only instinctual drives. These drives are what the Infant Soul is concerned with investigating.

Identity is no more than “me and not me”. There is no depth greater than that. This does not mean that people of this Soul Age cannot love. but more likely the bonds will be much more familial and tribal rather than romantic. Still, like an infant, reactions are immediate, authentic, and unrestrained.

Everyone begins as an Infant Soul and will advance as their soul lessons. Infant souls grow is motivated by fear and curiosity. It is the truest and most basic arena of trial and error learning.  And since Soul Age evolution is cumulative, all the experiences learned are stored in ones Instinctive Center of both the personal and collective unconscious.

Famous Examples

Ishi, Mogli of the Jungle Book, Richard Spec, Richard Rodriquez,

Cultural Meaning

Innocence, as stated by the injunction, the noble savage, captures not a statement about some implied natural civility, but rather an authenticity of being which is unencumbered by socialization.

Sometimes glamorized, it is important to remember that living at such a primal level of existence, what is called the Hobbsian State of Nature; a brilliant reference to human existence prior to the formation of civilization (a Baby Soul invention).

“In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

— Leviathan XIII “Chapter XIII.: Of the Natural Condition of Mankind As Concerning Their Felicity, and Misery.”

Perhaps this level of subsistence living is glorified because it seems interesting to those who believe man has become so separate from the natural environment that there is an inherent honestly and virtue living in such rarefied environments with sparse encumbrances to distract us.  But it is not useful to throw the baby of civilization out with the bathwater of human arrogance.  Regressing to a previous state and forgetting the lessons we have individually and collectively learned will not serve us to progress toward states of expanded awareness or furthering human justice and knowledge.

Preservation of our wild spaces is essential for both biological diversity and for stimulation and exploration of race memory. Although remembering our roots can be helpful when beginning a new exploration, returning to them in lifestyle only serves to prune our intelligence and contract our growth. Glorified romanticism of what life was in “wild times” is for the most part an illusion which never existed in the first place.

Nonetheless, a lack of anything but the simplest tools, required these people to live in harmony with natural cycles and processes. A knowledge we are sorely in need of remembering.

In the last several hundred years, the assault on the remaining vestiges of our primal ancestry moved from conquest to extermination. A reflection of the disdain many people have for ways that seem distant or alien to their own. In  the America’s, Africa and Australia, the systematic taking of land through treaty or eradication shows an inhumanity residing with the “civilized” rather that with the savage. Like remembering natural cycles, being aware of the right of all life to exist on its own without we playing God, is a warning for every generation. Patterns persist when they are not heeded. The lesson we can draw from the Infant Soul is to take only what you need, but do not destroy the ground that you count on for survival.

You might be at this Soul Age if….

1. You like to stalk animals.
2. Being in Nature makes you want to be naked.
3. Cities scare the crap out of you.
4. You find signs and omens in the weather and appearance of animals.

by Stephen Cocconi © 2023

For a Tarot Session or Channeled Consultation call: 209.768-4956 or email Stephen at channeling@themichaelteaching.com