The Sovereign Archetype
What are the qualities of the Sovereign archetype, the King in his fullness? Here are some of the more obvious ones….
He’s a leader, obviously, but one with characteristics which mark him out as wise, perhaps even noble. He’s a just leader, imbued with wisdom and discernment. And he’s creative, and he welcomes creativity in others, providing a space in which others can flourish.
This is a man who’s reached a point in life where he knows that “it’s not about him”. He know it’s about his land, his kingdom, his world – which for a man in the modern world might mean his business, his family, his friends, his wider circles.
As a leadership he offers a safely held space to others where they can develop their own leadership. The King in his fullness is conscious of the need to empower and affirm others in his Kingdom. Such affirmation can come in many forms – but a large part of this is seeing them for who they really are, seeing their individuality, and understanding the reality of their lives, their suffering and their joy.
Blessing others come naturally to the Sovereign in his fullness – and blessings come in many forms: one blessing that the Sovereign offers to the people in his world is the blessing of affirmation, of sanctifying the fruits of their labours, both internal and external.
The Sovereign knows that he is secure and centred. He’s reached a place of personal development that allows him to understand the meaning of compassion and wisdom and justice. And because he’s centred in himself, he can allow others to be who they truly are.
He knows where he stops and others begin. He does not confuse his own mission, purpose, motives, values, hopes and fears with those of other people. His boundaries are clear and cleanly held. And because his boundaries are clear, he is not easily thrown off balance. He is secure in himself, so that aggressive and hostile people don’t easily upset or disturb his integrity or balance. He knows his boundaries, and he can defend them strongly, and without hostility. Yet at the same time, he well knows the values and energies of the Warrior King, and he can act aggressively and quickly in situations where a rapid and powerful response is called for.
Naturally enough, the Sovereign in his fullness has all the power he needs to run his own life, and an excess of power which he can dispense to those around him who need or deserve the affirmation, the blessing, the support that he can provide. The riches he has to offer – material, emotional, spiritual or symbolic – are bestowed freely by the mature Sovereign upon members of his family, his friends, his business associates, and others in his life and world.
Rather than belittling others to maintain his position as leader, he supports their attempts to develop themselves and their efforts to offer something of value to society.
Watch a podcast by Rod Boothroyd on the King archetype here.
And a King is wise in his evaluation of his followers’ ideas, action and performance. When they have good ideas and do well he credits them, celebrates them, and supports them. So, for example, at home he may well lavish praise upon his children when they come to him for mirroring, but he will never revoke his integrity by falsely exaggerating praise for them, or failing to provide mentoring and clear guidance when necessary. You can read more about this, and the other wholesome qualities of the generative king, here.
He speaks the truth with integrity, so that other members of his family and his wider world have a clear model of how they themselves can establish a sense of their own reality and authenticity. He deflates grandiosity with compassion, and seeks to guide others so that they can discover their true greatness.
Piers Cross and the question of the King’s Integrity
And because he is the Sovereign, he is expected to be further along in accessing his own mature masculine, and he will have explored both the depths of his ego consciousness and the depths of his unconscious, and he’ll be familiar with the ways in which ego tries to take control, and how his unconscious seeks to play out shadow.
This familiarity with his inner landscape, with both its Angels and its Demons, its dark and its light, its illusions and its truths, is the source of his greater wisdom, and his capacity to help others integrate the different parts of themselves. He has heard the voices that others hear in themselves, and he knows how he overcame them, integrated them, or healed them. Now he can help others do the same.
He never engages in wanton destruction, and he’s not indifferent to the plight of the less well off or the poor in society. In fact he’s vitally concerned about the right to safety, the material prosperity, and the well-being of all human beings, and indeed of the planet and its ecosystems as a whole. He understands the land on which he lives, and he honours both technology and the environment which might suffer from technological development.
Here’s a protector and agent of nature, and at the same time neither an enemy of science and industry nor an irresponsible dumper of toxic waste. Naturally, being a generative force, either in his family or in his wider society, the Sovereign never supports or seeks the extension of an established order by means of the forces of death and destruction.
Indeed, he knows that all destructive forces, be they drugs, prejudice, individualism, classism, nationalism, religionism, poverty, child abuse, ignorance, egotistical, power grabbing, environmental pollution, political and economic chaos, are all expressions of internal human chaos, the expression of shadow made manifest.
And because the expression of shadow made manifest can so often be a destructive force, he is concerned with the maintenance of order for the benefit of all, including the weak and dispossessed. His sense of justice and equality and opportunity for all people leads him to do what he can to support all people equally. He knows and understands the anguish and fear of the inner child, and seeks to heal it in others, and he tries to address that deeper reality when he speaks to opposing forces. Yet at the same time, the Sovereign in his fullness can act swiftly and decisively to establish order by drawing on a sense of his own integrity. And although others may complain about his severity, they will always say that he is just and fair in his decisions.
The Sovereign will never be severe out of a sense of grandiosity or tyranny. He knows his shadows well enough to act with integrity, and to help others heal subdue their own self-destructive impulses. He is indeed the blessed King who presides over a land of abundance and plenty.
Self-sacrifice is a part of world building. Be that the physical world or inner psychic world, the mature Sovereign knows that eventually he may have to give his life blood for the people and places and causes and ideas and visions entrusted to him.
Yet while he lives, he works hard and may engage with personal sacrifice to ensure the safety and generativity of his kingdom. His life energy may be spent helping others to build their own worlds. But this is not done at the expense of his welfare – he is no martyr, he is no masochist. He cares for his own welfare, and he only chooses to sacrifice himself because he has a powerful sense of an abundant and replenishable self-worth. He will, when needed, attend to his own emotional wounds by engaging in shadow work or some other appropriate therapeutic practice.
His visions, when they manifest in reality, will leave the world a better place than when he entered it. And he volunteers for causes that resonate with his compassion and his just anger. And in these ways, together with his blessing and the joy that he feels in his presence in the world, he empowers the world, both physically and psychologically.
The Sovereign is a problem solver because he has the power available to him that others use to contain or repress their shadows. The Sovereign, having done much work to set his own inner world in order, can now help others to do the same. And at the same time he is relentlessly honest with his own failings.
He is open to criticism and feedback from his court – his family, perhaps, or his business associates, or his friends. And when he receives feedback that suggests he may have made a mistake, he is open to criticism, and he will look for the truth in what is being told, the areas where his integrity seems to have been lacking, and he will work hard on his shadows to ensure that his psychological and spiritual life life becomes whole. You can see more about that here:- in this podcast by Rod Boothroyd, who is also the author of Finding the King Within.
He has loyalty to himself, and high self-esteem, and this enables him to be loyal to others without jealousy or envy. He finds satisfaction in his own vision, and in supporting the vision of organisations that he may be fostering, charities, perhaps, or his community, maybe his nation or the world at large.
And though this sometimes produces conflicts, he will always seek to be loyal to the greatest good of the greatest number, while at the same time he is guided by his own loyalty to a transpersonal “other”, a spiritual understanding of powers beyond the human.