Building Community with Your Archetype Allies

 

We have been focusing on one archetype Ally per month with this year’s blog theme, introducing one after another of 12 universal persona or character archetypes that are part of the makeup of the human psyche for everyone though in different proportions situationally and culturally. Let’s not lose sight of the fact, however,  that the goal of recognizing and exploring all 12 of these primordial parts of Self is ultimately in order to integrate their unconscious potentials and to align them within the Psyche as an interactive Assembly or as a Council of Allies. You want to be able to call upon all of your archetypal perspectives and Strengths, together as a combined force of holistic energy, as you go forward to Live Your Dream, Now!

I know that many of you readers are, like myself, also writers or artists of varied backgrounds and media. Consider the EDITOR in You. Archetypally one might at first assume that the Editor will draw upon either Communicator or Elder Leader strengths; or Artist or Idealist or even Teacher… but actually ANY of the Twelve might be associated with your artistic process and goals. If you limit your energetic focus to only one or another of these deep  unconscious energy reservoirs, you may limit and unduly constrain your creative, productive output considerably.

For example, sometimes in the past (less so recently) when I would be writing an academic paper for a conference presentation or for a journal, I used to every once in a while hear this strong, sudden inner voice that stated emphatically, “Heil Hitler!” Whenever I would hear this, I would know it was time for me to step back, take a break, and re-read what I had been writing with an eye to seeing that I was being too forceful or didactic with my writing style and voice. I would need to simplify, add some humor or use less academic jargon in order to SOFTEN the message and to broaden the appeal of the article or presentation. Maybe I was in that moment channeling (as it were) my Elder Leader’s authoritarian traits but then my Nurturer or Artist intervened to call my attention to this unbalanced, overly strict or controlled focus. I always found the message amusing but it was also instructive; I learned to listen when this happened so as to know when to ease up and shift my approach to be more inclusive of a wider set of INTERNAL voices and values.

The more integrated you become through attending to the multiplicity of perspectives within your REPERTOIRE of archetypal Ally orientations, the more holistic and integrative your creative and day-today work output—or parenting, or travel enjoyment, or whatever you are doing—will become. So I invite you to PLAY and to ENGAGE personally with the material I am presenting with this blog from day to day, week to week, and month to month. We are building here a COMMUNITY OF ALLIES that you can draw upon, always.

I invite your insights and stories about your own archetypal creative experiences!

The Good King or Queen

Anna and the King is a fine fictional example of the alchemical pairing of Elder Leader with the metaphor of Life Is What You Make It. Here we find an historical King of Siam (Thailand) who is a central figure in the lives of all his subjects. Anna herself–Teacher to the King’s many children as the progeny from his required monarchic polygyny–circles in the King’s orbit in this story, as a friend and as a close personal advisor to the King during a transitional historic moment as Siam is beset by both internal and external political forces trying to dismantle the monarchy.

The Good King–and his country–survive the onslaught through the King’s exercise of strong leadership qualities: decisiveness, love of his children, compassion for his subjects, and his willingness to act with force and even with clever deception in order to win the day at the final confrontation with his foes.

As I teach cultural anthropology I often point out how ironic it might appear that chiefdom and state societies–like Siam as an example of a state–have just one central leader within their highly populous societies. In fact the more populous and complex a society becomes over time, the fewer the number of paramount leaders there are! This makes sense when you consider that the Elder Leader universal archetype figure is an overarching, organizing principle. The Good King or Queen unifies their subjects around–at their best–the highest interests of all concerned.

Just as a complex society benefits from the permeating, integrating character of a central Leader persona, so does your own complex Psyche. Calling upon your inherent Elder Leader energy allows you to act decisively and to develop better clarity with respect to challenging life situations. You can step into the image of the Good King or Queen whenever you feel the need to adopt a wise perspective.

As a personal development tool, I invite you to try this:

Close your eyes and actively picture the various strands of a difficult or sensitive situation you face. Now assume the ROLE of the GOOD KING or QUEEN and peruse the situation from your Wise Elder Leader perspective. What do you perceive as the King or Queen that adds to your understanding of the situation? Declare an EDICT as the Good King or Queen, and later then, Make It So!

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For next week’s blog posts, I invite your stories or comments about times in YOUR life when you found yourself able to Make Things Happen by drawing upon your inner Leader abilities more than usually for you. What kinds of situations bring out the ELDER LEADER in you? What have been the benefits of allowing your Elder Leader ALLY to express itself in a difficult situation? ALL stories and comments are welcome!

Take Me to Your Leader

This week we are pairing—or aligning—the Elder Leader archetype with the monthly life metaphor of Life is What You Make It. This is an especially fruitful alignment because it is a very natural, common combination culturally.  Leaders “make things happen” by their inherent character, so long as they are manifesting archetypal leadership qualities more in Strength than in Shadow mode. Villains (Shadow leaders), on the other hand, interfere with positive growth or survival potentials, requiring a protagonist’s leadership potentials to be ‘stepped up’ in order to meet the challenge.

Consider the prototypical science fiction line, then: “Take me to your leader!”…what’s that about? First, this line recognizes the archetypal nature of a Leader; we expect to find a leader of some sort in any society, on any planet. The Leader is conceived of as a single, central persona figure, representing an organizing principle for that society.  The Leader’s own character permeates all of the alien or subordinate ‘others’ by virtue of her or his influence over their world and lives.

Second, the visitors want to talk with the Leader because presumably it is s/he who makes the important decisions and gets things done. If the visiting astronauts are ever to get Home, they know it is only the alien Leader who can facilitate their Return and implement the necessary process to make it so. The visitors’ main concern is that the Leader might be in Shadow, a villain; then they will need to count upon their own intrinsic leadership strengths in order to overcome that opposition and find a solution that can get them Home under their own steam, as it were.  Either way, it is archetypal qualities of the Leader that must be appealed to in order to achieve the protagonists’ goal.

To be clear then for those fairly new to this blog or to the concept of archetypal character modes, archetypes can be defined and understood in two interconnected ways. Archetypal characters in one sense are simply character MODES; that is, they are typical forms that are found in fictional, mythical and everyday situations around the world. The Leader is found everywhere with fairly normative character traits, albeit each society may attribute to the Leader archetype some culturally relevant traits.

In another aspect, archetype character modes–according to archetypal or depth psychologists such as Hillman and Jung—are also found in each of our personal unconscious makeup, so that the Leader is a complex of potential character traits inherent in all of us.  The fact that universal archetype modes show up in the day to day SOCIAL ROLES we occupy as well as in our nightly (or daytime, waking) DREAMS simply shows that as we grow up in and are socialized within any given cultural milieu, we internalize facets of these archetypal character modes as a matter of adapting to our social personas in life.  These sorts of archetypal layerings of our psyche may be more or less conscious to us, and their positive and/or Shadow traits may become embedded in our general personality orientations.

So then, a useful active imagination or creative visualization technique we can try this week is to contemplate a sticky situation or a difficult decision in your life right now. Imagine you are a member—the leader—of a visiting astronaut crew, shipwrecked on some alien planet. Inwardly imagine a group of aliens approaching and surrounding you. Step up and address the one who appears to head up this alien delegation, and ask: “Take me to your Leader!” Imagine what transpires after that on your own, focusing on the situation about which you are seeking greater clarity.

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I invite and welcome all of your comments and stories!