Identifying our Archetypes

We all have roles to play—roles that are connected to our souls.

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” (Gospel of Thomas, 70)

“Untitled #571,” Cindy Sherman, The Broad, Postcards @ $2

I think about the above lines all the time. They’re from the Gospel of Thomas, one of the Gnostic texts recovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945, and they underline a psychological and spiritual truth: Not only are we all called to be our selves in the world, but we must bring our full selves to bear—shadow material, too—or we experience a sort of spiritual death, or failure.

And who are we exactly? The archetypes might offer some clues. The word archetype is Greek: arkhe (primitive) + tupos (a model), or arkhetupon (something molded first as a model)—and archetypes are essential to Carl Jung’s understanding and articulation of our existence and our world: Archetypes give shape and form to the collective unconscious. We channel these archetypes through our identities. The way I’ve come to understand it is that these archetypal energies are so intense that to touch or see them directly would be distorting or corrupting—and so they are refracted into our world and consciousness and materialized through the way we show up in the world.

We will identify with many archetypes throughout our lives depending on the phases and stages of our evolution and growth—and what the world calls to us to express. I do believe that we’re all patterned for different roles, and that part of our life’s purpose is to bring our highly specific gifts to bear. We are certainly not all cut from the same cloth and while there’s cultural pressure to be one thing—or all things—this can feel like ill-fitting clothing. Last year, I was talking to my friend Kiki about how I felt I should be more outspoken about certain issues. “But you’re not an activist,” she reminded me. “You’re a writer. Your job is to synthesize information and help people better understand themselves and the world—it’s not your job to tell people how to feel or what actions to take.” This was relieving.

At moments like this, where it feels chaotic, it’s important to remember what chaos really means: Its etymology is Greek, khaos for “vast chasm, void.” It is the space after all endings and all new beginnings; it’s the tomb but also the cosmic womb. This stretch of darkness feels vacuum-like and terrifying, but it is as fertile as the richest soil. Many of us are being formed and shaped for the years to come, years that feel awfully important. We are preparing to birth our gifts—even if we’re not conscious of our own transformation. It reminds me of the couplet by Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulus:

                                             what didn’t you do to bury me

                                             but you forgot that I was a seed

Kim Krans made a beautiful deck of Archetypes that she divides into “The Selves” (the Poet, the Orphan, the Mentor, the Judge, the Healer, the Comic, etc.), “The Places” (the Ocean, the Village, the Bardo, the Temple, etc.), “The Tools” (the Gem, the Stone, the Mirror, etc.) and “The Initiations” (Agape, Apocolypsis, Kairos, etc.). As I was writing this newsletter, I pulled a card from Krans’s deck for inspiration—naturally, I pulled “The Shadow,” which is the subject of my next book.

My friend, Jungian therapist

Satya Doyle Byock

wrote a recent newsletter about the “Archetypes of Resistance” that are being called forward in this moment. I love this newsletter because Satya answers a deep need that many of us have to serve in a tumultuous time, despite feeling overwhelmed, stretched thin, and confused about what’s ahead or where we can be most useful. She delineates 20 useful archetypes, including The Musician, The Healer, The Neighbor, The Civil Servant, The Keeper of Law, The Prophet, The Wisdom Keeper, The Benefactor, and more—all consequential and essential in their own ways. If you’re a cook, cook; if you’re a poet, write.

So what is this life calling you to be? And what archetypes can we observe around us?

I recently went back to my notes on Sharon Blackie’s Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life and had to stop at this particular section.

“Trickster can also be thought of as an archetype of the apocalypse—in the original sense of that ancient Greek word, which means revelation: ‘an unveiing or unfolding of things not previously known and which could not be known apart from the unveiling.’ When civilizations start to become moribund; when social, economic, and political systems stagnate, and empires become degenerate and unresponsive to the needs of the people, in walks Trickster to shake it all up—embodying that disruptive intelligence which all cultures need if they are to remain lively, flexible, and open to change.

“What follows after Trickster’s intervention, of course, depends on many things—among them, the specific qualities of the Trickster who happens along in the story we are living through. And although we don’t always get the Trickster we imagine we might want, we mostly get the Trickster we deserve—because Trickster is often, in Jungian terms, the one who also reveals the cultural Shadow. In the same way that the personal Shadow is the dark, unacknowledged complement of an individual’s persona, a culture will cast its own collective Shadow, which includes all the things we imagine that other cultures are, but categorically believe that ours is not—racist, sexist, xenophobic, or undemocratic, for example. Whenever a society believes strongly in its own moral righteousness, superiority, or entitlement, the collective Shadow is likely to be present in spades—and it’s then that we most need Trickster. Trickster holds up a mirror to us and helps us to see what we have become.”

Woah. Trickster is afoot.

Many of us are familiar with the archetypes of the feminine and the masculine (again, as archetypal energies that don’t belong to each gender, though in our culture we struggle not to reduce them). For the feminine, there’s the traditional triptychs (maiden, mother, crone—or creator, preserver, destroyer). There’s also the four-part set that Jung’s lover Toni Wolff put forward, which Satya feels needs to be updated (it’s from 1956, you can read her essay Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche here). Wolff creates an axis of objective and subjective (relational) pairs. There’s the Mother and the Heteira on one axis, and the Amazon and Medial woman on the other.

Here’s Blackie on the Medial Woman:

“Wolff argued that although every woman has the potential to embody all of these four archetypes at various stages of her life, one or more of them tends to be of primary importance to each of us. The woman who is most identified with the Mother, for example, finds her primary identity and fulfillment in nourishing life—usually, but not necessarily, in bearing and raising children. The word heteira refers to a class of highly educated women in ancient Greece who were trained not only to provide sexual services to men, but also to provide them with long-term companionship. And so the Hetaira woman, according to Wolff, finds her primary identity and fulfillment in relationships; in some senses, she might be thought of as a muse. The Amazon is a capable, resourceful woman who finds her primary identity and fulfillment in the outer world; she excels in work and skills that are usually perceived to be the domain of men.

“The Medial Woman, unlike the other three archetypes, doesn’t define herself in relation to others. Instead, she finds her primary identity and fulfillment in cultivating relationship with Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’—which is similar in many ways to the place that in many older European traditions might be called the Otherworld—and acting as a bridge between it and the human community. Medial Women are visionaries, psychics, healers, and poets. In some cultures, they might be priestesses or prophetesses, shamans or oracles. If the Medial Woman archetype is active within us, then, it launches us on a search for the kind of knowledge which we might think of as mystical. Medial women are seekers and keepers of esoteric knowledge and wisdom, and they value gnosis—direct, personal mystical experience—over that which is passed down in the form of dogma and doctrine by existing religious hierarchies.”

For men, Father Richard Rohr focuses on a set of four as well, ones put forward by Jungian therapists Robert Moore and Douglas Gilette—these must be brought into balance through life. They are the (Brave) Warrior, the (Wise) Magician, the (Good) King, and the (Tender) Lover. As he writes in From Wild Man to Wise Man, “The important thing is that we stay on the path and let the four parts of our soul mutually regulate and balance one another. If you over-identify with one for too long, you will normally move toward the dark side. In other words, if you are only a king, unbalanced by warrior, lover and magician, you will soon be a bad king. If you are only a lover, with no sense of king or warrior boundaries, you will soon be an addict. If you are only a warrior, without the nuancing of the magician, or a good leader, you will probably end up a terrorist or a fanatic.”

Rohr expands his glossary of archetypal terms in The Quest for the Grail:

Prophet: That part of a man that deconstructs and drops out of the conventional wisdom. He directs and legitimates the “path of the fall.”

Priest: That part of a man which believes and affirms ultimate meaning, transcendence, and union. He directs and legitimates “the path of the return."

King: That part of a man that holds all the other parts together in unity and wholeness. He directs and legitimates the bigger picture, the real, the "realm." (One must participate in some "King energy” to be an adequate or good father.)

Warrior: That part of a man that can say no to himself, and to others, for the sake of a more important goal. He directs and legitimates an appropriate sense of boundaries and a needed sense of "enemies" (Essentially dependent on the wisdom of a good king/father)

Magician: That part of a man which understands the inner world of mystery, metaphor, paradox, and growth. He directs and legitimates the work of the soul, issues of darkness, light, and shadow.

Lover: That part of a man which tastes, enjoys, appreciates, and creates beauty and connectedness. He legitimates ultimate joy by participating in it now.

Hero: Either (1) the early-stage warrior who is "building his tower" or (2) one who stays on the whole path through all its stages until the end, his wounds becoming "sacred" and transformative.

Tragic hero: Either (1) one who fails to see his wound as a "sacred wound" or (2) one who does not know who he is, but merely who he is supposed to be. The modern celebrity who is well-known merely for the sake of being well-known.

Tower: The early heroic instinct that drives a young man to be generous, disciplined, earnest. Sometimes an even fanatical or rigid need for order, morality, black-and-white worlds — so he can rise above hedonism and selfishness. Good and necessary up to a point, until a wise king is allowed to broaden him, a magician to deepen him, a lover to soften him.

Faith: The gift that encourages one to build the tower, and then later to descend the very tower that he has built. Looks different in each stage. First is "ego-morality" and second is "soul-morality," preparing one for the takeover of Spirit.

Satya and I like to collaborate on Substack workshops, and we are working on the theme for our next one—would you all be interested in diving into the archetypes of the masculine and the feminine? Or archetypes in general? What are you needing? (Drop your thoughts into the comments below.)

Meanwhile, may we all figure out who we’re supposed to be in this strange deck of cards we call life. AND, speaking of Father Richard, he’s up on Pulling the Thread tomorrow—I can’t wait to share this episode with all of you.

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