Category Archives: Archetype

Any one – or all – of the major archetypes from Kabbalistic and Jungian-based Psychological Types, together with the archetypes for integration and other higher levels.

Is Your "Emperor" Ruling Your Life?

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Is Your Inner Emperor Ruling Your Life? (And If So, What Can You Do?)

A gentle tyrant.

Perhaps, sometimes, even not-so-gentle.


Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor (1557-1619), painted by Hans von Aachen (1625).

We each have an inner Emperor.

Our Emperor mode, or archetype, is our “Project Manager” self. When we deal with cognitive, rational, “get-things-done” types of tasks – tasks often involving budgets, deadlines, and deliverables – we call on our inner Emperor.

Our inner Emperor is one of our six core power archetypes, and is often dominant. He (along with is compatriot, the Magician) tends to be a “resource hog.”

We can’t blame him; not really. Any good Project Manager, CEO, or President-of-Anything will charm, co-opt, or just plain commandeer any and every resource that he (or she) can find to get the job done. That’s why they’re paid the “big bucks.” They get things done – and to hell with whose toes get stepped on in the process.

Our Emperor is all about – whatever he’s “all about.” This could be getting a law degree or a promotion at work. It could simply be getting a five-year-old’s birthday party to come off successfully. Regardless, our inner Emperor is highly task-focused. And because “his” role is to get things done, at all costs, when he’s in charge, no other archetypal mode gets much attention.

Our inner High Priestess wants to go for a walk, or even to get out of town for the weekend to simply chill? Sorry, but we’re staying late at the office until the report is done.

Our inner Hathor wants some spa time? Later.

Our inner Empress wants to connect with girlfriends, or stay at home and cuddle? Again, later. Her needs get deferred in the face of the Emperor’s overwhelming (perhaps even obsessive) task-focused nature.

Now don’t get me wrong. We need our Emperor mode. This aspect of our psyche is essential to our well-being.

The challenge is that – for too many of us – we’ve allowed our inner Emperor to really become an inner Tyrant – gobbling up all of our time, all of our resources, and all of our energies. And then we find ourselves exhausted, frustrated, and just downright depressed and angry.

So how do we deal?

That will be the subject of the next several postings.

References

Soloman, Presidential Address to the Eastern Psychological Association, NYC, April, 1963.

Hestia – Our "Rest and Recharge" Archetype – Part 2

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Why We Need Some “Hestia Time”

It Was More Than “Just Winter”

Shortly after Thanksgiving, my father died. This, of course, was the “tipping point.” But it was one event on top of several.

Within a single week, one housemate – someone with a severe medical condition – went into the hospital. Another, newly moving in, announced that she had quit her new job, would be unable to pay her security deposit, and would likely not have the next month’s rent. Then, a tooth condition flared up, and it looked as though I’d need an emergency root canal.

Within another week, a housemate (yes, the same one who couldn’t pay security or rent) lit a fire in the fireplace. The flue was open, but it was cold – and she started up a fire of magnificent proportions. Naturally, the smoke went into the room, instead of up the cold chimney flue. We had smoke throughout, as never before. I was faced with the somewhat daunting task of repainting the entire living room.

This combination – of grief over my father’s passing, of simply too much stress from external events, and the onset of winter – kicked me firmly into a combination of High Priestess and Hestia modes.

High Priestess and Hestia – Two Natural Complements

High Priestess, by Mari-Na

Our High Priestess, as we know, is our contemplative and intuitive mode. This is where we take a spiritual retreat, or even just take a long walk. We need our High Priestess to find the “calm spot” within ourselves.

Our High Priestess is a necessary complement to our visionary, creative Magician mode. Without some reflective time, we find it difficult to tap into our inspirations and creativity. This is why our High Priestess is the second major archetype we encounter in our first adult life journey. Within the Major Arcana of the Tarot, she is Card II, and immediately follows the Magician (Card I).

Since our High Priestess plays such an important role in our lives, we often miss the important corollary of our Hestia mode.

Hestia – Our “Hearth and Home” Goddess


Hestia image created by Katlyn Breene, permission requested.

She [Hestia] is the Goddess of the hearth flame and temple flame, and at every public or private ritual, the first offering was always made to her. Upon marrying, a new bride would carry fire from her mother’s home to the new, symbolizing the Goddess’s presence blessing her new family. Hestia is the symbol of the sanctity of home, of home as temple and refuge, and of the fire of life contained within each place that honors her. (Text from Lunaea.)

“Mend, Tend, Befriend”: How Women Deal with Stress

Shelley E. Taylor, Ph.D., has led breakthrough research uncovering how women’s typical stress-responses are different from men’s. In her book, The Tending Instinct, she found that “tending and befriending” behaviors – those that involve bonding – are part of women’s natural responses to stress. However, it was also Taylor who coined the phrase “mend, tend, and befriend.” The “mending” part, and also our “tending,” may refer to our physical environment as well as our emotional landscape.

Emotional bonding behaviors – whether caring for a child, a husband, a friend, or a pet – or even having lunch with girlfriends or phone call with a long-distance sibling or friend – help to produce oxytocin. Oxytocin is a “feel-good” neurohormone, and is important in many aspects of our lives. However, to “feel good,” we also need other hormones. Dopamine helps us to feel the zest and juiciness of life, and serotonin is soothing and calming.

Archetypes and Neurohormones: A Strange and Useful Relation

Although it is very simplistic, we can make an “overarching” correlation between certain of our archetypes and the brain “states” that we wish to induce with each of these archetypal modes.

  • Empress – our “tend and befriend” mode – strongly correlated with oxytocin-inducing behaviors,
  • High Priestess – intuitive and contemplative – and least well-understood in terms of neurohormonal correlates, but most likely linked to anything that is serotonin producing (and hence the strong association with the Hestia archetype)
  • Hestia – the “mend” part of our “mend, tend, and befriend” stress-coping strategies – less emotionally-connected than Empress, and much more focused on the “calming” (serotonin-producing) activities of cleaning house, mending items, and generally keeping order, and
  • Hathor (the Love Goddess) – focusing on sensual pleasure, love and romantic passion – a “dopamine-focused” (feeling exuberant and ecstatic) archetype.

Hestia and House-Cleaning: Breaking Through the Winter Doldrums

Alana Morales, writing for the online Mommie’s Magazine, shares that house-cleaning helps relieve stress. She’s not alone in this, as even the Mayo Clinic offers activity (such as house-cleaning), as a means of stress reduction.

Laura, a writer for Radiant Recovery, describes how she found that house-cleaning helped her to reduce stress . A friend and colleague pointed out the relation between cleaning, stress reduction, and seratonin.

She wrote:

That when OCD gets really bad you can not stop the need to clean that one spot on the table or keep washing your hands or organizing the silverware drawer or whatever.

And, here is the kicker, she said how do you feel after you clean or neaten the things up that bother you? I thought for a moment and said, I feel much , much better. A sense of relief…and calm.

She said that is because you just got some serotonin. The act of cleaning, or repetitively doing something calms you down which produces a small amount of serotonin.

Women, Stress, and Serotonin

For women, stress, depression, and serotonin levels are often linked.

We can, to some extent, improve our serotonin levels with certain kinds of foods, with exercise (which produces endorphins), and with sufficient sleep and even light-boxes (during winter).

Upcoming: Hestia Strategies

In the next blogpost, I’ll share how we can consciously invoke the Hestia archetype into our lives, calling upon the “sacredness” of house-cleaning – of deliberately using our “mend and tend” instincts – to help us deal with stress. This can even help us deal with more difficult situations – such as sharp emotional life-changes, including major losses and transitions.

Related Blogs

Hestia – Our “Rest and Recharge” Archetype – Part 2

Masculine vs. Feminine – Core Archetypes

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Your Masculine and Feminine Core Archetypes: How Are They Different?

yin-yang-recursive

Have you wondered yet how much you really need the archetypes of the “other gender” in your life?

That is, if you’re a man, have you wondered how much you “really need” the four core feminine archetypes?

And if you’re a woman, have you wondered how much you “really need” the masculine qualities in your life?

If so, you’re not alone.

Yin and Yang not only embody classic masculine and feminine qualities, but each carries the “seed” of one within the other

 

The Core Masculine and Feminine Archetypes: A Quick Review

There are four each of the core masculine and feminine archetypes. Three of each are the “power archetypes” – those which we must understand and incorporate during our first adult life mastery journey. And one of each is a “reserve” or “battery power backup” archetype – designed to give us a bit of extra “juice,” or to give us a little “breathing room.”

Core archetypes octant chart - each archetype (each octant) corresponds to one of Jung's Psychological Types (discounting the introversion/extroversion distinction).

Core archetypes octant chart – each archetype (each octant) corresponds to one of Jung’s Psychological Types (discounting the introversion/extroversion distinction).

Four Core Masculine Archetypes

All the masculine archetypes are on the bottom half of the core archetypes octant chart above.

Notice also: the Thinking archetypes are on the right-hand-side (for both masculine and feminine archetypes), and the Feeling archetypes are on the left-hand-side (again, for both masculine and feminine).

  • Magician: (NTJ, or Intuitive-Thinking-Judging) Being a visionary, creating reality according to your “big dream,”
  • Emperor: (STJ, or Sensing-Thinking-Judging) Bringing your desired reality into fruition; building and stabilizing your “empire,”
  • Hierophant: (NFJ, or Intuitive-Feeling-Judging) Becoming a guru/guide, and
  • Green Man (a reserve battery archetype): (SFJ, or Sensing-Feeling-Judging) Escape to the “great outdoors,” breaking out of the molds that civilization puts on us.

Four Core Feminine Archetypes

All the feminine archetypes are on the top half of the core archetypes octant chart above.

  • Hathor (The “Love Goddess”): (SFP, or Sensing-Feeling-Perceiving) Reveling in sensual beauty and pleasure,
  • Empress: (NFP, or Intuitive-Feeling-Perceiving) Connecting, loving, nurturing,
  • High Priestess: (NTJ, or Intuitive-Thinking-Perceiving) Being contemplative and intuitive, and
  • Hestia (a reserve battery archetype): (STP, or Sensing-Thinking-Perceiving) “Mending and tending.”

We Often “Bundle” the “Other Gender” Archetypes in Our Minds

Some of the very good thinkers in archetypal psychology have suggested “bundling” of the “other gender” archetypes. Here are two examples:

Women Tend to “Bundle” Their Masculine Archetypes into Their Amazon Persona

The first person to do a good “psychology of the feminine” was Antonia Wolff, protégé (and later the lover) of Carl Jung. While Jung wrote many books, Ms. Wolff wrote only one – and it was more of a “pamphlet” than a book. However, Antonia Wolff’s book was the inspiration and “launch pad” for Dr. Toni Grant’s later book, Being a Woman – a book that influenced millions of lives. Wolff’s pamphlet, the Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche, has been translated from the original German and is available to read online.

Wolff succinctly outlined the elements of feminine psychology into four different modes or dimensions:

  • The Hetaira (Companion) – corresponding to Hathor (The “Love Goddess”): In Wolff’s formulation, this Hetaira (Courtesan) archetype is defined in terms of and in relationship to men,
  • The Mother – corresponding to the Empress (Isis): Wolff describes this as “motherly cherishing and nursing, helping, charitable, teaching,”
  • The Medial Woman – corresponding to High Priestess: “The medial woman is immersed in the psychic atmosphere of her environment and the spirit of her period, but above all in the collective (impersonal) unconscious,” and
  • The Amazon – corresponding to the “bundled” masculine archetypes of Magician and Emperor: [whose] “interest is directed towards objective achievements which she wants to accomplish herself.”
Thracian Amazon woman with sword.

Thracian Amazon woman with sword.

When women simplify their inner masculine archetypes into the single Amazon, they lose valuable distinctions.

We see that Wolff’s Structural Forms include two masculine archetypes, bundled together into the Amazon.

She omits the Hierophant, which is a teaching/mentoring/coaching role. For Wolff, the Hierophant is subsumed into the nurturing aspect of the Mother archetype.

She also omits the Green Man from her “masculine archetypal bundle,” together with the Hestia archetype – which is a feminine one. None of these omissions are surprising when we look at them in more detail, which we’ll do in a later blogpost.

(Historical note: Did the Amazons Really Exist?.)

The impact for woman of a “bundled” collection of masculine archetypes?

If we were to think of our inner Amazon as just one archetype, we’d miss the significant distinction between being a creative visionary genius (Magician) and being the implementer of structure and order (Emperor) .

Yves Saint Laurent (right) and Pierre Berger (left).

Yves Saint Laurent (right) and Pierre Berger (left).

Think about this. During his most creative years, Yves St. Laurent had as his close associate Pierre Bergé. St. Laurent was the creative genius, Bergé was CEO and marketing.

Bergé and St. Laurent – the Emperor and the Magician.

When we are clear as to whether we are in “creative” (Magician) or in “sustaining” (Emperor) modes, we can better understand not only our roles and responsibilities, but also our strengths and weaknesses.

For about twenty years, I’ve been the lead creative scientist in two different companies. When I’ve been in “creative” mode, I bump into walls. It’s been vitally important for me to have others in the CEO (and COO and CFO) roles.

Similarly, creative geniuses in the performing arts – say, choreographers and conductors – need the support of an Executive Director to carry out the business responsibilities, and an effective Board of Directors to shape the organization.

Visionaries need Sustainers; Magicians need Emperors. Being clear about this distinction helps us understand how to shift gears and allocate not only our time and priorities, but our long-term attention within our professional lives.

 

Men Tend to “Bundle” Their Feminine Archetypes into Their Lover Persona

love2

When men simplify their inner feminine archetypes into the single Lover, they also lose valuable distinctions.

Just as women often “bundle” their masculine archetypes into one convenient catch-all Amazon, men similarly tend to “bundle” all of their feminine archetypes into one convenient Lover mode. In my recent blogpost, Moore and Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover – 2 1/3 Out of Four Ain’t Bad!, I analyzed the work of Moore and Gillette, whose book bundles the core feminine archetypes into the Lover.

 

“Bundling” is a Convenient Shorthand, But Doesn’t Solve the “Big Picture”

leaning-tower-of-pisa-facts

When we “bundle,” we tend to simplify too much.

An “unbalanced understanding” leads to being lopsided – like the Leaning Tower of Pisa!

For real life mastery, we need to know, understand, and cultivate each of our six core power archetypes (both masculine and feminine), and know how to use our reserve or “battery-power back-up” archetypes as well.

Each Core Archetype Comes in Both Masculine and Feminine Forms

Each archetype has its own masculine and feminine complements.

For example, the High Priestess also appears as the Sage, or Wise Man.

The Green Man appears in feminine mode as Artemis or Diana, the original “woman who ran with the wolves.”

Even those archetypes that would seem to be most gender-specific have their complementary realizations within the opposite gender. For example, the building and sustaining aspect of the Emperor is found in the Roman goddess Minerva, who sprang (fully formed) from the head of her father Zeus.

Think also that the passionate and free Hathor archetype finds her masculine complement in Dionysus, who was fond of both sex and wine. (Think of a “Dionysian feast”!)

The Best Strategy

The best strategy is to master each archetype, in order, one by one.

Casablanca.

Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca.

Ultimately, we need to combine – within ourselves – the strengths and values of each of our core archetypes.

Let’s keep in mind that we have an “end-game.” We’re shooting for a final stage (for this particular “journey”) of integration – being able to access and use each archetype at will.

If we desire to be creative, we need to have both our Magician and our High Priestess archetypes. the High Priestess gives us the opportunity to “fill our well.” (See Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.

If we desire to lead effectively within any organization, we need the ability to “treat people warmly” and “treat issues coldly.” We need both our Empress and Emperor. (See Micheal F. Andrew’s How to Think Like a CEO.

For whatever tasks and challenges lie ahead, we need to access all of our potential. This is the fist stage in the path to personal mastery.

Alay'nya - author of "Unveiling: The Inner Journey"

Alay’nya – author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey

Very best wishes as you unveil yourself to yourself in your own inner journey!

Alay’nya
(Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D.)

Author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey
You are the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus. Become the Jewel!

This Unveiling blog is the theory – archetypes, life journeys, integration. For the practicum, go to the Alay’nya Studio blog – body awareness, movement and dance, Fountain of Youth (energy circulation exercises), and more!

Resources

Connect with Alay’nya and the Unveiling Community

P.S. Learning about an authentic women’s pathway was important in my own breakthroughs.

Valerie Frankel has written several books on this subject; I’ve discovered them since writing my own book.

Check out Valerie’s works:

  • Did you grow up with Buffy? Is a sister, niece, or favorite student a Buffy fanatic? Help her learn how Buffy defines the Heroines’ Journey – and so much more! Read and give Buffy and the Heroine’s Journey: Vampire Slayer as Feminine Chosen One.
  • Ever wished that there was a book like Campbell’s “The Man with a Thousand Faces” – written for you? Your own heroine’s archetypal journey! What do myths, legends, fairy tales, and folklore from around the world have to say about you and your own journey? Valerie Frankel’s From Girl to Goddess is applicable at all stages of our lives.
  • Game of Thrones devotee? Valerie has other great books out. Check out Valerie’s Game of Thrones e-book on Amazon!

Kindle

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Valerie Frankel, Author of From Girl to Goddess, on Unveiling: The Inner Journey

What does Valerie Frankel, author of books such as From Girl to Goddess and Buffy and the Heroine’s Journey: Vampire Slayer as Feminine Chosen One, have to say about Unveiling: The Inner Journey?

Ms. Frankel notes:

“She approaches her topic with devotion but also practicality and a deep intuition of human relationships, explaining though personal experience as well as intense research how the archetypes work and how a woman can channel the lover, mother, amazon and mystic to be all she is meant to become. Teachings of Jung, Murdock, Starhawk, and more appear, from ancient myth to modern culture.

“This is not the hero’s journey but one specific to the woman, or rather, many women on many different stages of journeying.

Read this and more reviews of Unveiling: The Inner Journey.

 

Paper

Kindle

 

Copyright (c) 2013, Alay’nya (Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D.). All rights reserved.

Related Posts: Dynamics of Masculine and Feminine Archetypes

Core Archetypes Year-Long Study Guide – The "Big Picture"

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Your Master Plan for Understanding and Integrating Each of the Core Power Archetypes

Suppose that you’ve been studying – and using – the power of archetypes in your life for a while now. What will make this year the year in which you achieve personal mastery? What will make this year your breakthrough year, and launch you to a new level of personal success and victory?

You may already understand that as we grow, we go through archetypal “growth stages.” Perhaps no one explains this better than Carol Pearson, in The Hero Within. She walks us through how we go from the not-so-empowered Innocent to the fully-empowered Magician.

You may also know, from reading Caroline Myss’s Sacred Contracts, that we simultaneously access and use several different archetypes. In fact, she has us select “current” and “desired” archetypes from a roster of a few dozen possibilities.

With all these great teachings, there is still something missing when we seek to fully capture the power of archetypes in our lives – the power to be in the right frame of mind for different tasks, relationships, and intentions. This “something missing” was actually laid out for us in the first seven cards of the Tarot’s Major Arcana.

A Master Plan That Goes Back Thousands of Years

The background story tells us that this knowledge actually has a much older provenance than we may have thought. The earliest known Tarot decks are several hundred years old. However, the Major Arcana are based directly on the twenty-two “pathways” connecting “spheres” (Sephiroth) in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. The Kabbalistic written tradition goes back for hundreds of years; the oral tradition to perhaps a couple of thousand of years. And since the Tree of Life is the earliest known base for esoteric teachings in our culture, the origins may even be earlier. The Tree of Life is mentioned in the earliest known human writings.

In short, it is very likely that a certain “esoteric teaching” – based on mastering six core power archetypes – goes back at least hundreds, and possibly thousands, of years.

Three factors stand out when we undertake this “journey”:

  • The six core power archetypes (together with two reserve battery archetypes) match directly to three of the four “dimensions” used by Carl Jung in creating his Psychological Types,
  • There is a certain order for study and master, and
  • There is an “endgame” – that is, we don’t want to just master these archetypes in isolation; we desire the ability to pull on each one (or several) as needed. That is true mastery, and it is our goal as well.

 

What is Our Master Plan?

As with all big intentions, it helps us to have a “game plan.”

 

Our “game plan” is that over the course of a year, we will spend each semi-quarter on each archetype. Integration, we trust, will be something that we take up as we go along. (We may choose to repeat this study for a few years, each time gaining greater levels of insight and refinement,)

A second – yet very important – aspect of our “game plan” is that we’re tying in our intellectual and practical archetype study with our “lab work” – our daily practice of energy exercises and dance movements. We tie all of these together with the appropriate “season”, using the traditional Western esoteric approach of assigning and “element” to each “season.”

  • Winter: Season of Earth (pentacles, the physical body, a “feminine” season),
  • Spring:Season of Air (swords, the mind, a “masculine” season),
  • Summer: Season of Fire (rods, the spirit, a “masculine” season), and
  • Autumn: Season of Water (cups, the emotional realm, a “feminine” season).

 

Master Plan Overview

Each “element” has a set of qualities associated with it, and a particular focus of attention. Our archetypal study curriculum focuses on intellectual study combined with reflection and exercises that highlight each of the specific “archetypes” for the given semi-quarter. When we combine this with pathworking, we add in elements of spiritual discipline, emotional release work, energy cultivation exercises, and (of course) dance movements and techniques and choreography.

The archetypes that we will consider, are (in order):

Winter Quarter – Season of Earth (Pentacles, a “Feminine” Season)

  • High Priestess: Dec. 21 – Jan 31 Being contemplative and intuitive, a time for gazing into the fire, creating a “vision board” for the coming year, and being open to “dream-time”, and
  • Hestia (a reserve battery archetype): Feb 1 – Mar 20 Spring-cleaning – for our homes and our psyches; the classic “wax on, wax off” approach to opening our minds for insight and guidance.

 

Spring Quarter – Season of Air (Swords, a “Masculine” Season)

  • Magician: Mar. 21 – April 30 Being a visionary, creating reality according to your “big dream”, and
  • Emperor: May 1 – June 20 Bringing your desired reality into fruition; business plans, project management, process flows, stabilizing your “empire.”

 

Summer Quarter – Season of Fire (Rods, a “Masculine” Season)

  • Green Man (a reserve battery archetype): June 21 – July 31 Escape to the “great outdoors,” breaking out of the molds that civilization puts on us, and
  • Hierophant: Aug 1 – Sept. 20 Becoming a guru/guide for those younger than us – either in years or in skills and understanding.

 

Autumn Quarter – Season of Water (Cups, a “Feminine” Season)

  • Hathor (The “Love Goddess”): Sept. 21 – Oct 30 Reveling in sensual beauty and pleasure, and
  • Empress: Oct. 31 – Dec. 20 Connecting, loving, nurturing – sending out Christmas cards and gifts, holiday entertaining, time with family, friends, and loved ones.

 

Putting the Master Plan Into Action

For this coming year, each semi-quarter will be devoted to the appropriate archetype. I’ll offer resources and guidance, and as you feel led, you can follow up at will. Resources will include:

  • Guest Bloggers: Special invited guests for each different core archetype – Giving you insights from the “best of the best,” together with real-life stories from others who’ve achieved amazing results in different areas of their lives,
  • Suggested Readings: Links to books and online resources – Get greater depth, and
  • Exercises and Checklists (Strictly optional): What to do to get the most out of each archetypal focus.

From time to time, I’ll write about the integration process – how we can combine two or more archetypes to create “mastery” for ourselves in different life situations. I’ll also point the way to what happens after this level of mastery. (Yes, mastery comes in levels – and the whole work with archetypes is simply the first level. However, it’s the level where we need a good foundation before advancing to anything else.)

So here’s to you, with very best wishes for an absolutely awesome coming year!

Cultivating Our Core Power Archetypes: First Stage in Becoming a "Master of the Universe"

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Six Core Power Archetypes: First Step in Mastery

Mastering ourselves is the first step in becoming a “Master of the Universe.”

The Kabbalistic Tree of Life: A Roadmap for Personal Mastery

Several millenia ago, some very insightful mystics and seers somehow discerned that the “roadmap to God-consciousness” (and complete mastery of who they were as human beings) could be described as traversing through various “centers” or “realms of existence.” They called these “centers” Sephiroth, and organized them in a map that has been called, throughout the ages, the Tree of Life.

There are ten Sephiroth. (These are the circles on the Tree of Life to the left.) Each Sephiroth represents something very specific – not only a “plane of existence” but also an aspect, or emanation, of God.

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The Kabbalistic Tree of Life

These aspects (Sephiroth) are organized in a logical manner. The “softer, gentler, kinder” ones comprise the Pillar of Mercy (on the right), and the “harsher,” more rigorous ones comprise the Pillar of Severity (on the left).

There are, potentially, 10×9/2 different connections between them. (Each one of the ten can connect with each of the remaining nine, and then these total paths need to be divided by two, so that they aren’t counted twice.) This means that there are potentially 45 different “connection paths.” In the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, though, only half of these paths – twenty-two of them – are actually defined and used.

This means that getting from one “center” (or state of consciousness, or realm of existence) to another is not just a “random-jump” sort of thing, but more like an ordered progression. Each step in this ordered progression has a certain meaning, and that meaning corresponds to an aspect of human experience. In fact, it corresponds to a significant step in our adult life journeys.

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The Three Adult Life-Journeys

The last blogpost discussed this Tree of Life, and how the Major Arcana (from the Tarot) relate to the pathways between the Sephiroth.

We identified three sequences of seven steps (Major Arcana) each. Each of these sequences is a major adult life journey. From the previous blogpost, we recall that these are:

  • The Worldly Sequence: We access and cultivate each of six Core Power Archetypes, and integrate them – we are able to use each one as appropriate.
  • Turning Inwards: We begin to release our ego. At the end of this sequence, we start to access and cultivate intrinsic life energy, or ch’i.
  • The Great Journey: A time of destroying the last of the old “structures” that keep us imprisoned, leading to full realization of our life’s purpose and being released to do our “great work.”

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The Worldly Sequence: Cultivating and Integrating Our Six Core Power Archetypes

Our first adult life journey takes us through the Worldly Sequence. During this time, we learn to cultivate each of the six Core Power Archetypes, plus a seventh step (integration):

  • Magician (Major Arcana Card I): Power to create “something from nothing.”
  • High Priestess (Major Arcana Card II): Contemplative inner wisdom.
  • Empress (Major Arcana Card III): Nurturing and caring; runs on oxytocin, the “bonding hormone.”
  • Emperor (Major Arcana Card IV): Strength, stability, structure, and order; the perennial “Program Manager,” thrives on building and maintaining structures and things (ranging from a business process to an actual empire).
  • Hierophant (Major Arcana Card V): One of the least understood but most important archetypes, this is the mentor/teacher/guide, typified by fictional characters ranging from Albus Dumbledore (in the Harry Potter series) to Mr. Miyagi (in the Karate Kid) to (of course) Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi (in Star Wars).
  • Love-Goddess (Major Arcana Card VI): All about pleasure and play; romance, love-making, sensual pleasure in all its forms; she runs on dopamine, the “ecstatic pleasure” hormone.

Various blogposts, as well as sections in Unveiling: The Inner Journey, have described these various archetypes, as well as the seventh step, integration.

Most MOST Popular Post on the Six Core Power Archetypes and Integration:

The OTHER Most Popular Posts on the Six Core Power Archetypes and Integration:

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Becoming a "Master of the Universe": Three Essential Life-Stages

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The Three Essential Life Stages: Why You Need Each, and How They Empower You

Don’t we all harbor some secret longing to be a Master of the Universe?

Our ongoing fascination with (and often immersion in) the heroic actions of super-heroes tells us what is important to us: we desire to live a heroic life, to be much, much larger than the events and circumstances of our daily lives.

The way that we do this, in real life, is not to become a fantasy action-figure, but to go through each step of our adult life journey. This is actually a huge challenge, and one that taxes and challenges us as much as any story in myth or legend.

Low-resolution Masters of the Universe poster, from Wikipedia, under Fair Use Act, for educational and illustrative use.

Often, we have to wait until our children are grown and are careers are more-or-less stable. Then, we can begin devoting more attention to our “voyage of self-discovery.”

This is not something recent in human history. Rather, our most ancient stories and legends tell us about a Tree of Life that held the secrets of human experience.

The Kabbalistic Tree of Life Holds Guidance for Our Personal Growth

From the very earliest of human stories, we have held this “inner seeking” as finding the Tree of Life. Those of us who have done a little esoteric study know that this Tree of Life is a fundamental aspect of the Judaic Kabbalah. It represents the different “realms of existence,” through which our consciousness travels as we seek to know God.

Kabbalistic Tree of Life includes twenty-two pathways connecting the various “centers” (Sephiroth). These pathways are numbered 0 through 21. (The “zeroth” pathway gives it a total of 22 instead of 21 paths.)

There is a reason why, in some esoteric Judaic traditions, men were not allowed to study the Kabbalah until they were at least forty years old. It was not until then that they were potentially in a more balanced frame of mind.

Now, of course, Kabbalah studies are available to women as well as men, and to young as well as more mature adults.

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Knowing “Who We Are” Becomes More Possible As We Mature

Sometimes, we begin learning about “who we truly are” when we are young. More often, this is something that we start later in life. This is true for both women and men.

For women, the shift to asking more about ourselves ties into changes in our hormonal balance. As we go through peri-menopause and menopause, we are less driven by hormones that cause us to seek soul-satisfaction through nurturing and caring for others. And as our monthly cycles diminish, we have a calmer baseline for self-observation. Also, we begin to gain more testosterone, especially relative to our other hormonal levels. This often gives us renewed vigor for pursuing a new career, running for public office, or taking on a new area of interest.

On a similar note, as a man’s testosterone levels diminish, his hormonal balance shifts. He is now able to find greater satisfaction in bonding with others. This allows him to access the more humanly-connected aspects of his psyche, which previously were not as available to him, when he was driven by testosterone-fueled competition.

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Three Major Stages in Our Adult Life Journey

Throughout millenia, scholars and sages have used the Kabbalah to guide their inner journey. One derivative of the Kabbalah has been the Major Arcana, commonly associated with the Tarot. These Major Arcana comprise twenty-two cards, and each is associated with a significant human archetype: an aspect of who we are, an important step in personal growth, or a key event.

These twenty-two Major Arcana cards correspond to the twenty-two pathways connecting the Sephiroth in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, and to the twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet). However, without going deeply into Kabbalistic studies, we can see how some scholars have organized the Major Arcana to describe our “adult life journey.”

The first Major Arcana (Card 0) is called the Fool. This does not mean a “foolish person.” Nor is it like the “Fool” in medieval courts. Rather, it suggests that when we start our adult life-journey in some depth, we are open-ended, optimistic, and a little bit naive. We are willing to go wherever our journey takes us, and are light-hearted and carefree.

Once we set apart the Fool as our starting point, we are left with twenty-one Major Arcana. We can group these naturally and straightforwardly into three sets of seven cards each, as shown in the layout above.

We can see that each set of seven deals with a different kind of “life theme.” In this discussion, I use the names given by Rachel Pollack, in Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom.

  • The Worldly Sequence: We are still very involved in the world, and in our roles in the world. This is our opportunity to cultivate aspects of “who we are” that have not received much attention up until now.
  • Turning Inwards: We begin to realize that our various “roles” in the world are still not completely satisfying, and go much deeper into ourselves.
  • The Great Journey: This is a time of great discovery and transformation. If successfully concluded, we begin to create the greatest work of our lives, fully realizing our purpose for being.

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Our Experience of Our “Adult Life Stages” May Not Always Be in Linear Order

Just because our “adult life stages” have a logical order does not mean that we always have that simple, straightforward progression in our lives. This is because our lives are now very complex.

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Now, more than ever, the various aspects of our “life-journey” are brought together in a kaleidoscope-like manner; we are often experiencing aspects or fragments of each of our major life-journey aspects in new and unsettling ways.

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Our Experience of Our “Adult Life Stages” May Not Always Be in Linear Order

Just because we often seem to be having lots of different “life stage experiences” all at once, doesn’t mean that we’ve lost all sense of order and balance. There is often a sort of “local order.” This means, some of these major steps or experiences do connect with each other.

The challenge for us in these times is that just as in a hologram, there is a lot of information – many patterns – contained within each small aspect of our lives.

In a previous blog, I called this a “holographic” experience of our archetypes.

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Autostereograph – the 2D image on the bottom is recreated as a 3D representation. Work done by Fred Hsu. Used with permission.

There are still aspects of our life-journey stages that stay connected, even when the overall picture seems fractured and disordered. This is because in many cases, one life-journey aspect leads naturally to another, and then perhaps to a third. There are natural connections that make some aspects of our personal growth at least a little – if not predictable, then – meaningful.

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Resources for Understanding in Unveiling: The Inner Journey

In Unveiling: The Inner Journey, I address each of these three different life-stages.

The Worldly Sequence: Archetypes and Integration

  • The Core Power Archetypes: Chapter 7, “A Real Woman’s Path (Really Does Exist!)”
  • Shifting Between Archetypes and Integration: Chapter 11, “Shifting State”

Turning Inwards

  • Discovering Inner Strength in Quietness: Chapter 9, “The Essence of Stillness”
  • Becoming Aware of Inner Processes: Chapter 10, “In Our Bodies”
  • Becoming Aware of How Our Bodies Have Held Emotional Pain, Starting the Release Work: Part IV, Chapters 14 – 16, “Locking Our Minds,” “Softening,” and “Unsticking”
  • Reframing How We Live Our Lives: Part V, “The Ritual,” Chapters 17 – 21
  • Creating and Using Intrinsic Vital Energy, or Ch’i: Part VI, especially Chapter 26, “Unveiling: Selective Revelation,” and Chapter 29, “Pragmatic Esoterics.”

The Great Journey: Everything “Comes Apart” and Comes Back Together

  • Our “Dark Journey”: Chapters 27 & 28, “Letting Go: The Inanna Story” and “Going Deeper,” respectively.
  • Victory at Last: Chapters 30 & 31, “Releasing Passion” and “For All of Us (Spiral Pathworking),” respectively.

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You can read the Table of Contents, along with the Introduction and first chapter of Unveiling using Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature. You can obtain either a trade paper or Kindle version of Unveiling through Amazon.

 

 

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Subsequent blogposts will organize the blog material written thus far according to the “three life stages” identified here. The majority of the posts written over the past year concentrate on one or another of the six Core Power Archetypes identified in the first adult life journey, called the Worldly Sequence.

The next blogpost will overview the Worldly Sequence, identify each of the six Core Power Archetypes (along with the two “reserve” or “battery-power” archetypes), and discuss integration – the final step in this sequence.

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Dec. 21st, 2012 – And the Next 60 Years

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Beyond December 21, 2012: The Next 60 Years

For the past half-year, this blog has had a strategic direction. We are leading up to – and pointing the way beyond – the much anticipated “2012 Transition.”

And as we move towards that time, anticipation and curiosity mounts. Will we wake up on the morning of December 22nd to find that the world has irrevocably changed? Will we wake up at all? Or will we get into our cars or take our “usual” route to work, stop by our “usual” favorite place for morning coffee, and have a big laugh? The “2012 Transition?” we might say to each other. “It was all a big joke, wasn’t it? Like the Y2K ‘crisis’ – remember that? All ‘much ado about nothing.’ Life goes forward.”

Or will we say something in a similar vein, but have our words mask a fear-bordering anxiety. A sense of unease, as when horses send a blizzard coming down off the plains. We’ll feel an instinctual, primal urge to find a “safe place” in which to hide – but have nowhere to turn. We’ll continue reading the news, listening to our favorite pundits on TV, picking up the Twitter feeds and the Facebook links. And all of the news will converge into our heads to give us just one clear message: A crisis is coming.

In fact, that crisis is already here.

The question is: What sort of crisis? How big? How difficult?

Will we survive? If so, in what form? And what do we need to do now to prepare?

Now’s my time to “come clean” with you. I am proposing answers. But I’m not proposing “easy answers.” It’s not that I’m “middle-of-the-road” in terms of what I believe will happen, but I’m being very careful about what it is that we need to do about not only what is going to happen, but also what is happening right now.

These “not-so-easy answers” are based not on one specific area or another. So I’m not going to propose a “financial survival plan,” nor a “head-to-the-hills” approach. Nor am I going to be totally “New Age.” Yes, we’re having a “singularity.” (See work by early proponent Ray Kurzweil.) Yes, we are at a culminating point in human experience. And yes, there are a whole lot of “strange things” going on – in our lives, in the world around us – that are not part of our “normal” expectations and experiences.

But I’m not going to go all “woo-woo” on you either.

Where we are at – where we are precisely at – in human experience – is a Tower moment.

Take a look at these images. First, our recent past.

 Photograph by Spencer Platt, Getty Images

Perhaps no images in the last dozen years more succinctly capture the opening of this millenium than the destruction of the “twin towers” of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Now, a visual image describing a point in human evolution – both individual and species-wide.

The Tower card – Major Arcana XVI – from the Rider-Waite depiction.

The Tower image is deeply embedded in our cultural mythology. Specifically, we have a culture-wide deep-felt resonance with the “destruction of a tower” as signifying the fall of everything from a civilization to a person.

In Unveiling: The Inner Journey, I depicted the Tower role in our lives as when we suffer loss of everything that defines our ego. Most importantly, according to Tower imagery, this loss is not of just one thing. It is when we lose everything all at once. We lose our job, and the same week, the doctor diagnoses us with breast cancer. Or our husband files for divorce so that he can move in with his mistress, and our company is bought out by a mega-conglomerate – with impending re-organizations and layoffs. Or we realize that we need to move our mother into a nursing home – and take over storing and processing her “worldly goods,” while at the same time our son is diagnosed with ADD and needs extra tutoring and attention.

A Tower moment is when it all comes apart, all at once.

We have them in our lives. I’ve had multiple ones (described in Unveiling).

Now, here’s the important point: One that I didn’t make in Unveiling.

Humans have Tower moments, and so do societies. And humanity itself is now in the midst of a Tower moment.

If a Tower moment is defined as the conflux of multiple devastating challenges, all at once, we now have a Tower squarely and firmly on our hands.

Because it’s not just one thing.

It’s the conflux – the simultaneous flowing together and cresting – of our oil/energy crisis together with the population boom. We’re running out of the oil that we use for fertilizers and cheap food transport at the same time that we’re in the midst of an unprecedented population surge, anticipated to go to 9B people in the next several decades.

Oil and Population graph by Paul Chefurka, Population, The Elephant in the Room.

We have a built-up world-wide financial crisis just as we’re having increased financial challenges to deal with climate and ecological disasters. And we are certain that the horrific BP Gulf oil spill is just one of many such challenges that we’ll be facing; as we go after more and more “difficult-to-recover” oil, and rely more and more on other sources – including nuclear – we’ll have more energy-based accidents. Chernobyl and Fukushima were just the beginning. There will be more.

And the biggest point that I’m making here? It’s not just the ecological devastation. It’s that cleaning up after these massive ecological devastations will be necessary. And very, very expensive. And that will be occurring just as we need to rebuild port infrastructures and port cities, as the climate shifts and the oceans rise.

And we’re going to attempt to do this as the greatest money-generating generation of this country moves from generating money to taking money. The Baby Boomers are starting to retire. They’ll want Social Security and Medicare. Their retirement savings were largely wiped out by the 2008 financial debacle, and they’ll be needing help – instead of providing an income base to support large-scale clean-up and climate adaptation efforts.

And I haven’t even mentioned the social retooling that we’ll need as transportation costs rise, and it is more and more costly to commute to work, to take vacations, even to go to the grocery store. (Where everything is going to cost more, anyway.)

And also, I haven’t yet mentioned the near-certainty of massive plagues, unleashed with new, antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains and new viral combinations.

This is a Tower time for humanity.

Most of us keep trying to move forward with “life-as-normal,” hoping that someday soon, we’ll get back to “normal.”

My point is that there is no longer any “normal” that we can go back to.

The era of Norman-Rockwell-images – of comfortable family homes with the white picket fences and stability for everyone – is in the past. It won’t come back in our lifetime, or in the lifetime of our children. In fact, it won’t be available for our children’s children either.

We’re in the midst of a profound shift, and there’s no “normal” that we can go back to anymore.

But there is a “word of hope”; for us as a society – and as a race of human beings. And for each of us, individually, as well.

The “word of hope” is that there is something that lies beyond the Tower.

In this blog, I write about human experience – both individually and society-wide – using analogies and stories. I write using archetypes and metaphors. And fortunately (for all of us), I haven’t had to invent the storyline. (In my “sister” blog, I write from the non-linear complex systems perspective.)

The “storyline” was given to us several thousand years ago, in the form of the Kabbalah. This depicts the realms of consciousness; essentially a path towards God-realization. That’s why the Kabbalah has been studied by mystics for many centuries. (Jesus Himself very likely knew and understood the Kabbalah, together with his role in Kabbalistic terms. Another blogpost, another time.)

The Kabbalah lays it out for us. It presents the “created world” using the analogy of the Tree of Life. (See the picture to the left.)

The “centers” of this Tree are states of consciousness. The “pathways” connecting the Tree correspond to the Tarot’s Major Arcana. And also (not so coincidently) to the pre-Phoenician alphabet, which later became the Phoenician, which laid the groundwork for the 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet.

The Kaballah shows the course of evolution – both of the individual person, and of humanity overall. So people individually go through Tower moments, and survive. (I have, and you have probably done so, also.) Civilizations go through Tower moments. And now, humanity itself is in the midst of a Tower; very likely the greatest Tower time in the history of humanity.

What brings us hope is that there actually is a “step beyond.” It’s called the Star.

The Star card – Major Arcana XVII – from the Rider-Waite depiction.

Calm, lucid, clear. We get wisdom. Our life – what once was – is in shambles around our feet. But we’re still here. And without the need to preserve something that no longer serves its purpose, we are free to receive insight and wisdom. It’s as though we are naked in the world once again. However, we are naked in the midst of the flowing waters of life. We have all that we need, and more.

And beyond the Star, we have the Moon (bringing to awareness all the gifts of our intuition and subconscious awareness), and the Sun (energy, blessings, abundance). From this holy and wonderful moment, we rise in response to the Judgment call. But rather than being harshly judged, this is truly the moment when we joyfully respond to a literal “higher calling.” We “rise up” beyond ourselves. We become that which we were meant to be.

And finally, one step beyond, we are united with God, in a flowing, ecstatic dance.
This, my friends, this dance-with-God, this joyous realization of the divine spark within ourselves, is what our human experience is meant to be.

And if we have to go through a Tower moment to get there, then so be it.

We’ll do this, and we – as humanity – will survive. Not necessarily each one of us individually, but as a species, yes. We’ll survive. But we’ll survive transformed. We’ll survive as those beings that we were created to be.

Now, to specifics.

We can greatly increase our chances of survival if we do certain things.

This is NOT a prepare-for-a-financial-meltdown missive. Nor is it a prepare-for-the-rapture directive. Nor are we going to find our next evolutionary stage by forming some mental symbiosis with a world-wide network of computers, as was suggested by Ray Kurzweil. (But for a very interesting read, linking to the latest data, visit Going Beyond Moore’s Law.)

Rather, what we must do, if we’re going to get through this Tower, is to evolve ourselves. We’re going to have to let go of that which doesn’t work. (That’s a given; that’s the nature of a Tower time.) But also, we have to get ourselves completely together.

Refer, please, to my previous blogpost on the holographic nature of our archetypal experience. The lesson there (which I’ll develop more over time) is that we’re individually – and collectively – going through all of our archetypal stages all at once. Yes, sometimes one thing is much more pronounced than others. (And right now, for humanity, it’s the Tower.)

But because our lives are holographic right now – and very definitely not linear – we can go back and “fill in” what we’ve missed.

So our first big “life challenge” was archetypal integration. That was realizing and gaining mastery of the six core power archetypes about which I’ve been writing for the past half-year. (I introduced these in Unveiling: The Inner Journey. See Chapters 7 and 11; “A Real Woman’s Path (Really Does Exist!)” and “Shifting State,” respectively.) And while we’re at it, we also need to identify and access our two “reserve” or “battery-pack” archetypes – the ones that we use when we need to rest and recharge. This gives us a total of eight “power archetypes”, which we can map onto the Jungian system.

This is a starting point. And if we have to go back and do some remedial work, we can do this. In fact, as focused and mature adults, if we recognize the need to “fill in a gap,” we can probably do so very expeditiously.

We then have an “integration stage.” Actually, we have two integration stages. And the second integration step, which I’ve just gone through, is like a preamble to the Tower, only in a somewhat lower-key way. (And at that, it’s still a real toughie.) This “second integration step” precedes a sort of mini-Tower; one in which we voluntarily leave comfort, safety, and familiarity in search of wisdom.

The end result? If we go through archetypal access and integration (the First Journey), and then the re-integration and the following steps (the Second Journey), we get to a point at which we start accessing some real internal power and capability. This is the Fountain-of-Youth, or ch’i creation, which I describe in Unveiling. (See Chapter 29: “Pragmatic Esoterics,” as well as chapters leading up to that.)

Once we complete our two Journeys, we have not only “all of ourselves, altogether” (the result of integration and re-integration), but also some real vital raw energy – ch’i – with which to work.

Now unfortunately, there’s one really more scary and horrific step – even before we get to the Tower. This is where we encounter the real nasty, dark, ugly stuff inside. (Think of Debbie Ford’s Dark Side of the Light Chasers. Think of World War I, World War II, and genocidal purges around the world. Yup, been there all along – but a lot of real nasty, truly ugly has come out in the past 100 years.) This is the Devil stage, where we encounter the worst-possible. And the really worst part is that what we truly encounter is that which is inside ourselves.

It is this, of course, that unleashes the Tower. Encountering our own ego – in its worst form – is what brings about the destruction of comfort and removes the illusion of safety.

Pretty awful stuff, indeed. And the Tower time is no fun. Not for us individually, and not for humanity.

But if we can put this in context, we’ll see that it is a necessary step, and a transition to the freedom and joy that we truly desire. We move beyond the Tower, and become that which we were meant to be. And at that moment, each of us will be able to say (taking words from A Course in Miracles), “I am as God created me.”

So with that thought of love and encouragement, let’s move onward. And through.

And for those of you who live in the Northern Virginia/Metro DC area, there will be an absolutely fabulous concert on Saturday, June 2nd, at the Langley High School. Performed by The McLean Symphony under the direction of Maestro Dingwall Fleary with Special Invited Guests, it will feature Beethoven’s Ninth Chorale Finale (the “Ode to Joy”) as its closing piece.

Let’s use this to lift up our hearts and spirits, and gain encouragement for the times ahead.

We can certainly make it through the next sixty years. But a “joyful” heart will help us greatly.

Artist of the Month – Maestro Dingwall Fleary

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Maestro Dingwall Fleary – Celebrating Forty Years of Classical Music Leadership in McLean, VA

Maestro Dingwall Fleary, Founder and Music Director of both The McLean Symphony and the Reston Community Orchestra is working hard developing his Season Finale Concert for The McLean Symphony. This spectacular event will feature Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony Choral Finale, the much-loved and ever-popular magnificent Ode to Joy.

Now why should this matter to you?
There are very few genius-level leaders who combine their artistic passion with intense devotion to their people. Forty years of “making music in McLean.” This is with an all-volunteer symphonic orchestra. (Actually, two such orchestras. The McLean Symphony traces its ancestry back to Maestro Fleary’s first founding of a classical chamaber group in McLean in 1971, and the Reston Community Orchestra has been in existence for 26 years.)
Some of his players have been with him for over two decades. Others travel for miles, after a hard day at their “day jobs,” to rehearse with him.
Why? Because by working with Maestro Fleary, they achieve heights of excellence – greatness even – that they would not reach with any amount of hard work and passion on their own. Not if they are being “volunteers” in their musical efforts. (And relatively few of us can afford to do our artistic work full-time.)
The mark of “true genius” changes over time. When we are young, it is all about our own fire; our brilliance and our passion. We epitomize the Magician archetype. And bluntly, society will forgive a great deal of self-centeredness in the young artist, provided that the gift is commensurate. We cut the “emerging prodigy” a great deal of slack.
Then, the artist matures to establishing himself or herself. He or she becomes an Emperor, recognized as the “preeminent expert” in a certain area. Maestro Fleary, for example, is very likely the world’s leading interpreter of Duke Ellington’s works, such as Harlem, which he featured in a recent TMS performance.
Beyond that, there is yet another stage; the Hierophant. The Hierophant is the master teacher, the Obi-Wan Kenobi. Hierophants are one of the least-understood archetypes of our society. However, once we understand the Hierophant concept, we see Hierophants in action all around us. They’re the senior executive who mentors the up-and-comer. They’re the Youth Pastor and the Girl Scout Troup Leader. They’re the college professor who always has an open door so that a student can come by and ask questions.
And even more than that, the most-developed Hierophants among us not only help us get through the college chemistry course; they help us have real, true, honest-to-God, for-real breakthroughs. These are the teachers whose books we read, whose audio CDs we listen to, whose blogs we follow. If we’re really lucky, we get to interact with them in person.
That’s why musicians travel from around the area for the privilege of performing in his orchestra.
Maestro Fleary was featured in Unveiling: The Inner Journey as an example of an “integrated person.”

"Holographic Archetypes" – Experiencing ALL of Your Archetypal Journey At the Same Time

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The “Holographic Archetype” – Why You Seem to Be Experiencing Everything All at Once

“Life,” we sometimes think to ourselves, “is supposed to be simple.” And all too often, it isn’t. Especially for those of us who are trying to do some “personal growth work” while still carrying on some semblance of normalcy; jobs, family, school, community involvement and friends. In the midst of all of this (sometimes), we’re carrying on with the rather difficult business of discovering and accessing/integrating our various “core power archetypes.”

Our inner work is powerful. And as we dive into it, we can go through some very unsettling times. By analogy, let’s imagine what would happen if we had a company that had a succesion of CEO’s, each having a different dominant archetype.

As we know from any shakeup at the executive level in a company, when we start moving key figures around, things are (temporarily) unstable. If our company has formerly been headed by an entrepreneur/inventor (Magician archetype), and the Board of Directors decides that the time has come to put someone in whose background is in running a “tight ship,” or who is formerly a CFO, we know that everything changes. (Switching from a Magician in charge to an Emperor in charge.) And there would be even bigger shake-ups if the Board put in charge someone who is focused on mentoring and developing “leaders from within.” (Hierophants love to mentor!)

Imagine, further, the absolute chaos that would erupt if any of the other “core archetypes” were to be calling the shots for a while. If it were an Empress persona, the company would be all about “relating.” We’d be hugging our clients a lot; but the eye would not quite be on profits and deliverables. (However, our clients might start placing bigger orders and referring their friends to us. Who knows?)

And if a Hathor-type were running the show, it would be all about parties and having a good time! (The High Priestess, wisely, would recluse herself from all considerations of corporate leadership. If she had to take this role, though, the first thing she’d do would be to declare a nine-day corporate retreat in the Catskills. Lots of walking the footpaths in silent meditation. Then she’d happily foist this job off on the first qualified Emperor.)

Now that’s the simple version.

Really.

In real life, for most of us doing this kind of archetypal integration, our inner landscape is about as comfortable as frequent shifts in corporate leadership. That is to say, highly uncomfortable – especially when the various archetypes that we’ve finally accessed begin to assert themselves. Each one wants to “run the ship” – at least for a while!

And as I said, that’s the simple version. This version presumes that we’re doing our archetypal access and integration in a calm, linear, and “safe” manner. This was, in fact, the “curriculum” a few thousand years ago, when the Kabbalah was first discovered or understood. Back then, a certain sense of orderliness was assumed.

Now, however, all bets are off. Our world is highly chaotic and nonlinear. Our lives often are, as well. Instead of picking up our archetypes one at at time, and then doing our archetypal integration under the careful watch of a renowned integration master, we are often attempting this on our own. What advice and mentoring we get often comes from books, weekend workshops, and “life coaches.” (These latter may or may not have done their own integration work. They may or may not even know what you’d be talking about – that is, in a real, substantive, and useful sense.)

So here we are, many of us, attempting to do the very rough-and-tumble work of archetype access and integration, all too often on our own. And to make it much more challenging, in the REAL “real world,” we’re often dealing with several emerging archetypes all at once.

Imagine a boardroom war in which various key players are vying for control. In the morning, the Emperor takes control, sets up the goals, objectives, deliverables, and timelines. All seems straightforward and doable. The goals may be stringent, but you know how to pour on the overtime. You can work evenings and weekends; you’ve done it before. (Many times, no doubt.) So you gear up, and mentally factor in the vacation that you’ll take when bonuses are announced.

Then, around noon, Hathor seizes control. She wants that vacation now! You count up accrued vacation days, visit your favorite travel site, and figure out which weekend you can afford to extend to a three-dayer. No sooner have you made your plans and submitted a vacation request when whammo! The High Priestess emerges. And what she really wants is quiet time, because, lo and behold! She’s paving the way for the Magician to emerge with his next great invention!

This is what the archetypal integration journey is all about. It’s not all that poetic. In fact, it’s downright messy.

And now – adding in more “real world” factors – there are at least two major integration processes. The first is when you’ve accessed all your core power archetypes. Everyone is “present and/or accounted for, Sir!” You (the cognitive, dominant “you-in-charge”) can access each one as appropriate and at will. You know when to charm, and when to command. You know when to take some time off to connect with nature and your “quiet mind,” and you know when to party. And you also know when to get the “deliverables” delivered. On budget, and on time.

You’ve mastered your game.

Or so you think.

It’s the second integration process that comes up as a surprise, and is much more disorienting. It’s more than the various key executives in a company taking on leadership roles. It’s a lot more like when the Board decides that the company is going to go in a whole different direction. Instead of being a “service company,” focusing on government (or commercial) contracts, you’re going to be “product company.” And the word comes down – new divisions are created, people are laid off while the company retools and regroups, new people come into newly created power positions. This is hugely destabilizing.

And necessary.

Just as companies must reform – sometimes very radically – we also need to rework ourselves from the inside out. Sometimes very radically.

You’ve heard about this. Someone who has made a living in the banking world leaves their job – their whole career – to become a baker. A successful business leader leaves his or her company to teach in an inner city school. Huge life-changes like this do happen; they happen all the time. But they don’t just come up out of the blue; there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes before such an overt change happens.

Not all of us will switch careers, of course. But as we go through this second integration, we learn to pay much more attention to the needs, wants, and desires of core archetypes whom we may have repressed for many years. It’s similar, in a sense, to the case in which a wife finally does leave a husband who’s never really had time for her. After all the years that she’s accomodated, she’s finally decided that she can’t deny her own self anymore. What a shock that is for everyone!

Then, of course, the husband has to woo and win her back. And finally, for perhaps the first time, he starts listening, paying attention, and allocating some real time to her; to her wants, needs, and desires. And for a good long while, he won’t be putting in any overtime. In fact, what he might do is put in for a leave-of-absence or a sabbatical, in order to discover just who his wife really is. It’s that, or the divorce court.

If we’ve similarly been Emperor-dominant all of our lives, there comes a time when we need to give some “quality time” to the other core power archetyps. Otherwise, they’ll simply desert us. (Usually, this comes at a huge cost. Pay now, or pay later.)

Now, there’s a reason that all these archetypal integration processes are coming up at once for many of us. It’s not just that we’re going through “changing times.” We are, of course, but that’s not the whole story.

It’s not just that we’re in a massively accelerated world. Yes, that’s also true. And again, it’s not the whole story.

It’s much more that we – as a species – as a whole planetary species (and perhaps even as a planet) – are undergoing this kind of archetypal journey at a mega-level. We’re not just doing archetypal integration individually; we’re doing this as a society.

Moreover, steps like these are broad-ranging; they pull in all other aspects of our archetypal journeys. It’s like living inside a kaliedoscope. Or, more appropriately, experiencing our lives as a hologram.

More on this in the next blog posting.

Why Women Love Christine Feehan’s "Dark" Series

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Dark Lords, Castles, and Windswept Heights: Why Woman Love “Romance Novels”

About a month ago, I read one of Christine Feehan’s (by now incredibly popular, but brand-new to me) “Dark Series” novels. The standard yummy stuff: a “dark prince,” who is of course “a dominant male.” (How novel!)

Much more recently, I’ve come across Lynsay Sand’s novels; Scottish lairds in the highlands, more castles. (And she also does a vampire-series, just to feed our taste for blood. Haven’t read any of those yet.) And of course, the male lead is (once more) a “dominant male.”

In our fantasy lives, we’d rather have windswept moors, craggy peaks, stern dark castles – and stern, dark men! A strong counterpart to days spent in office cubicles with overhead fluorescent lighting, hmm?

We are so completely wrapped up in these novels! As blogger Bookworm Kristal put it, “I couldn’t explain it, I couldn’t understand how I … in one book, ONE book I was hooked! I poured over this book for hours…. At work, on my breaks, at red lights in my car, I even remember reading some of the book while folding a load of laundry!”

But what is it that we really want? Surely not to exchange the comfort of microwaveable meals and clean bathrooms with their white porcelain fixtures and “squeezable” toilet paper for the charms of haggis meals and smelly privies. All the “Dark Lord”-ishness in the world can’t compete with some comfort and clean sanitation.

So what is it that we really want?

Our “Dark Prince” – whether Scottish laird or vampire lord – is really just a foil for our own deepest desires. What we really want is to get out of our Amazon role (for at least a little while) and go into full-blown Hathor – our inner “Love and Pleasure Goddess.” That is, we desire to experience our full emotional range. We desire to let our emotions build up, crest, and break through our own walls, spill over the dams, and sweep us away.

That’s right. We don’t want the man to sweep us away as much as we desire to let our own emotions surge through and carry us over the edge.

Really, when we get right down to it, it’s about what is going on inside ourselves.

The masculine role, in these stories, is to provide structure and form. We provide the energy and the unleashing. It’s as though we become a great river, and the man becomes the channel through which we flow. Our desire is to let our emotions run wild, complete, and free – without having to censor, monitor ourselves, or hold ourselves back all the time. In these stories, the lead male allows us (vicariously) to experience this release.

Real life, of course, is a little different.

Most men can’t provide this kind of structure – the decisiveness, the clarity, let’s call it the leadership – against which we can relax our own boundaries. Some can, but even so, most men are afraid of our emotional cresting.

And so we find ourselves confronting – all too often – men who are lacking in leadership, inner strength, and character. Then, among those (few) who have these qualities, there is often a fear – almost a panic, even – when we do release our emotions. So we have learned to rein ourselves in.

Men wonder, then, why we don’t release to them sexually.

For them, it’s sex. It’s a tension release, and a chance to recharge.

For us, it is a much more connected experience. Sex and emotions blend and blur together. What we desire is release – both emotional and orgasmic. We all too often don’t find this with men, and wind up bottling ourselves up.

The solution? We cultivate our own inner Amazon, and create our own “structures” and “channels,” against which we can surge and flow. We carry out the release that we desire – within ourselves.

Sometimes, we use dance to reach into this realm of expression. Sometimes, we find some other creative passion that serves. We treasure and nurture our inner Hathor; we find time for her, and we shower her with the attention that she craves and deserves.

We model the kinds of behavior that we desire from others by treating ourselves the way we would love to have others treat us. And oh yes, this is scary. But it’s the only way through.

And as for men? We give them a little time and space. We reward them for good behavior. We allow them to grow into being that which they truly can be.

P.S. Enjoy learning about our inner dynamics – as expressed through the plotlines of romance novels? Read Chapter 3, “Bedtime Stories for Grown-Up Girls” in Unveiling: The Inner Journey. Order it through Amazon today!