The Male Archetypes
We look like separate individuals, each of us walking around in our own body. Despite this appearance of separation we have more in common than we realize, including some primal genetic patterns known as “archetypes”, which are laid down deep in our unconscious minds. Take an example: if I say the word Warrior, you instantly know what I mean. And the same is true if I speak of a Magician or a King, or a Father or a Mother. These are all human archetypes, and while they can vary in detail, the basic values and qualities they embody are similar.
And no wonder. We are all human, and we share the same genetic inheritance. Sure, we differ in physical appearance, but essentially our genetic inheritance is one and the same: human. So no wonder that we all instinctively understand the idea of human archetypes. Whether these archetypes are male and female, young or old, we intuitively know what they are, how they operate, and what role they play in our lives.
Nowadays most people see archetypes as being stored in the unconscious mind rather like permanent programs etched into the memory of a computer chip. The unconscious seems to have unlimited storage capacity, holding not just our archetypal programming but perhaps also a memory of every event that’s ever happened to us. It also holds all the basic biological “programs” we need to stay alive including those which control digestion, respiration, circulation of the blood, and the chemical balance in our tissues, among many others.
So what do archetypes actually do for us? Perhaps it’s most useful to think of them as genetically determined programs which can control various aspects of our personality and shape the way we express ourselves in the world. The exact way in which a particular archetype will be expressed in each of us will be influenced by our individual experience of life and the culture in which we live.
Over the years, different psychologists have come up with different names for human archetypes. Some of them we would all recognize: to take another example, we all intuitively know what is meant when we hear of the female archetype of the Mother. If you pause for a moment to consider what the word “Mother” means to you, you’ll most likely have conjured up your version of the Mother archetype in your mind.
Equally, you probably also have a sense of what the Wise Elder archetype might mean in a man or a woman. And you will certainly know how a King or Queen archetype might look.
The important point about these archetypes is that they’re common to all humanity. They’re like an internal foundation upon which every man and every woman builds their own particular experience of life. To make the point again, the way in which each archetype finds its expression in an individual man or woman will be shaped by what they learn for themselves, what they learned about life from their parents, and influences from their cultural background.
Although there are many different archetypes which describe aspects of human experience, there are four fundamental archetypes which embody the most important parts of our personalities with extraordinary precision.
These four archetypes are the Sovereign (the King or Queen), the Warrior, the Magician, and the Lover. Many writers have adapted those names and come up with words they believe are more representative of the energy in each archetype. For example:
Sovereign = Heart-centred Leader, Chieftain, Chairman, Elder
Warrior = Action Taker, Worker
Magician = Transformer, Thinker, Wise Man or Woman, Sage
Lover = Lover, Sensor, Feeler, Connector
All of these names are useful to represent the main areas of our personality. But whatever you call them, these archetypes exist within each one of us almost like different individuals. Certainly they are separate and distinct areas of your personality and each of them carries a particular energy.
And this is where the concept of archetypes becomes very useful in working with the behaviours that you want to change. In my work with men and women, the most common questions I’m asked, one way or another, are “Why am I behaving this way?” “Why do I feel like this?” and “What can I do to change the way I think, feel, and behave?”
The answer is – start by looking at how you express each of these archetypes. When you do this it becomes easy to see why you’re behaving in a certain way and, more importantly, it’s much easier to change unhelpful or unwanted behaviours into something that really supports you in your life and in the world.
Here’s a brief introduction to each of them. Later we’ll look at them in more detail.
The Sovereign Or King Archetype In Men
The Sovereign archetype within you is a King. This is the part of you responsible for leadership in your life, creating a vision for your life, and knowing your purpose.
Your Sovereign has responsibility for finding your vision, giving you a sense of purpose and direction in the world, and running your life in the best possible way. This is the part of you that makes (or at least should make) the important decisions about how to live your life, what career to follow, where to live, and how to manage your Kingdom, your particular realm.
Your Kingdom might be your family, your business, your circle of friends, your own life, and more. Your Sovereign is the rightful leader in all of them. When his energy is expressed fully your Sovereign makes you a mature, decisive, powerful and potent leader. This means you can – and do – run your life effectively. From that standpoint you can love and bless others, accept them just as they are, and offer compassionate wisdom and guidance to help them achieve their own maturity and fullness of expression.
Every Sovereign throughout history has been responsible for protecting his Kingdom against threats and supporting his people through troubled times. Hopefully he has done this in a way that focuses on the betterment of his people rather than his own self-interest. This is why we often think of the King archetype as the “Heart-centred Leader”. In the same way, your own internal Sovereign is responsible for holding your emotional wounds and finding ways for you to grow into your full potential.
(We all have emotional wounds which limit us in one way or another. These wounds are a result of the negative life experiences that inevitably happen to each of us from the moment we are born. They prevent us experiencing all our feelings freely, in a natural way. They inhibit the expression of our full potential. In short, they make us less than we really are, less than we have the potential to be.)
The Sovereign is the archetype which produces powerful and respected leaders. Yet where are the powerful and respected leaders in the world today? I see very few true leaders worthy of our respect, while we seem to have plenty of immature leaders who haven’t grown into the full expression of their Sovereign archetype.
In fact I believe the most deficient archetype in our world today, and certainly the least expressed, is the Sovereign. Quite why there is such a deficiency of sovereign energy isn’t completely clear, but it’s certainly a problem for humanity. It’s also beginning to look like a problem for the planet on which we live. We’ll look in much more detail at sovereign qualities later in the book, along with all the other archetypes.
The Warrior Archetype In Men
The Warrior is an archetype which is all about taking action in the world, getting things done, and setting boundaries. He also protects and defends what we value, and gives us our sense of power, or agency, in the world, and our own separate identity.
Some people object to the word Warrior because it has such negative connotations in modern society. And any examination of history shows very clearly that Warriors of one kind or another have indeed been active in war and creating chaos all around the world for as long as the human race has been in existence.
Yet the Warrior has often been depicted as a noble archetype. The Japanese Samurai and the Knights Templar, for example, are often regarded as Noble Orders of Warriors. The myths and legends of the Chivalrous Knights in medieval Europe is another example of what I call “warrior worship”. But when you examine the historical records, what appears to be more accurate is the view that these warrior castes were usually acting as paid servants or mercenaries, and the legends of nobility linked to them were being used to disguise their true motivation: power, territorial conquest, military glory, religious zealotry, or the acquisition of money or status.
The best we can do, really, in looking for nobility in this area is to look for Warriors who fought for a cause that seemed morally right – the Allied troops fighting Hitler’s armies in WW2, for example. You could argue that such examples are few and far between, however. One thing’s for sure: the world we now live in, and the people who live in it, could well do without the warlike quality of the Warrior.
This is why I prefer simply to think of the Warrior in terms of male energy, an energy which is all about taking action in the world, about getting things done. Some people call this archetype the “Action Taker” or “Worker”. Whatever you call it, warrior energy is all about setting boundaries, accomplishing tasks, and achieving objectives.
However, to operate at the highest level any Warrior needs a strong Sovereign to control him and send him out on missions which serve the King’s moral purpose. This might be a mission to protect people in the kingdom, to defend the boundaries of the kingdom, or simply to get things done.
The Male Magician Archetype
The Magician within you is your internal problem solver, your creative power. He is the one who finds answers to problems and works out how the needs of the Kingdom may be fulfilled. He is the one who kept you safe when you were a child, and he may continue to work as your safeguarder and protector even when you are an adult.
Many names have been used for the Magician archetype including the Witch, the Wizard, and a whole lot of other things – Wise Woman, Mystic, Sage, and so on. They all come down to the same thing: the Magician’s main motivation is problem solving and coming up with solutions. This is an archetype concerned with thinking in all its forms – rational thinking, logical thinking, and creative thinking.
This is the archetype which serves the Sovereign as an adviser or counsellor. The Magician finds solutions to problems and creates ways around difficulties; he likes an intellectual challenge. It’s an archetype that’s abundantly present in the world today, particularly in the world of hi-tech industry and technological development.
As we shall see there are both advantages and disadvantages to the abundance of Magician energy in the world today: in some ways it helps us but in other ways it can be quite destructive. This is because Magicians aren’t so much concerned with the emotional consequences of their actions as simply meeting the challenges presented to them. The Magician is, in short, a Transformer. He can take one thing and make it into something new, something different.
The Magician is also the part of us which comes up with strategies to keep us safe when we’re children. For kids who are raised in less than perfect environments or in downright abusive environments, the part of the Magician we call the Safety Officer is vital: he creates strategies which keep the child as safe as possible even in circumstances that can’t really be controlled. One of the challenges we all face in life, though, is that the Safety Officer continues to play out those strategies for the rest of our lives, even when the need for them has long since passed. This can be unhelpful and limiting, as we’ll see when we look at the Magician in more detail later in the book.
The Lover Archetype In Men
The Lover is all about the glorious experience of deep emotional connection to another human being – as well as the world beyond another person.. He cares not one whit for boundaries; for him, life is all about unity, connection, flow, and of course finding ways to express those qualities. He values sensuous experience over anything else.
You may think of sex and romantic love when we refer to the Lover archetype but that isn’t really what the Lover is all about. The archetypal energy of the Lover is much more primal than the expression of sexuality: it’s about establishing connection with other human beings. We are social animals, and when we don’t have the opportunity to meet others and connect with them on a social level we may descend into mental disorder and even madness. You see this in prisoners who are kept in solitary confinement.
The Lover is a primal archetype, probably the first one to appear after birth. Our first and most urgent need as a helpless baby is to bond with mother. Our very survival depends on it. Our Lover archetype helps us to do this: it’s programmed to connect with other people from the moment we appear in the world. In fact, the power of this drive is immense, yet it’s not consciously felt by most people even though it controls much of what we do and how we are in the world as adults. And because so much of this energy is based in the body, an alternative name for this archetype is the Feeling Body.
One of the unavoidable problems with such a powerful urge to bond is that it can never be fully satisfied – in fact it’s impossible for any child to have all of his or her needs met perfectly. That would require a perfect parent, and as far as I’m aware there’s no such thing. So every one of us is inevitably hurt or wounded to some extent in our Lover archetype.
Unfortunately many children are born into an environment where their needs are barely acknowledged, let alone adequately met. Their lives are subsequently blighted by the pain of connections never made, or made and broken. We’ll see how this can affect a person’s entire life later in the book. Addictions, dependency and neediness are some of the most common outcomes of emotional wounds in this archetype.