Archetypes, Myths & Legends

The Archetypes – they make you who you are

Many people who meet with me have never thought of who they are as being made up of parts. Yet, your different needs and drives can be understood as parts of you.

Inner Parts

Understanding and compassion for this family of inner characters is key to personal growth and healing.

Have you ever experienced being pulled in different directions by your inner parts? An example could be, “One part of me wants to be free, but another part wants to stay in my relationship!”

Psychologically, we function like an ecosystem, with our family of inner characters dependent on each other for overall health and well-being. Helping you discover your inner parts, and live them better, is the work that I do.

Your birth chart

Exploring your birth chart is a fast track way of discovering the dynamics of your inner life. The astrological pattern at your moment of birth is a snapshot of the heavens, but it also describes themes and characteristics true of that moment and of you.

Your birth chart is like a road map, and it can guide you toward an encounter with powerful parts of you.

Astrology reveals the energy characteristics of any cycle of time. Like right now, as the gathering together of Saturn, Pluto and Jupiter in Capricorn shapes life on earth (see Reality Bites! the astrology of 2020 or any later post). Astrology helps us figure out the gifts, the challenges and what we need to learn.

Today’s astrology chart

Knowing this information, I believe, allows us to work with these demanding energies more helpfully and constructively.

As the rigours of 2020 roll on, let’s freshen our thinking about what creates an energy pattern like the one alive in the zeitgeist right now, and how our own pattern lives in us through a variety of inner characters.

First we need to explore how each of our inner parts is fueled at its core by an archetype.

What are Archetypes?

Deep within who you are lies a unique pattern that determines your essential nature and conditions your life experiences. This pattern, that I call the Heart’s Plan, is made up of archetypes.

Each archetype is an energy pattern that has a central theme. Your archetypes determine the basic design and raw materials of your personal heart’s plan.

There are numerous models or systems for categorising archetypes. And the name of each archetype depends on the model you use. But here are a few examples that would belong to many systems:

The Wise Old Man/Woman
The Child
The Warrior
The Hero
The Shadow
The Lover

Symbols, like the planets of an astrology chart, images of tarot cards, or stories of myth and legend, are very old, and tell us about the archetypes of life that we humans have long recognised.

Templates

Archetypes were understood by the ancient Greeks to be underlying all existence. For them, archetypes were like templates, through which the rich diversity of life is channelled into being.

This may be a little like how the colours of the rainbow materialise when white light is refracted through a prism.

And Life Forces

But the Greeks also imagined archetypes as dynamic, energised, life-forces. They were the gods and goddesses; concerning themselves with all human affairs.

The dramatic encounters of these gods, told in ancient myth and story, can vividly describe archetypal encounters within ourselves, and in our lives, even today.

Like Inner Gods

Psychiatrist Carl Jung and mythologist Joseph Campbell believed archetypes to be like inner gods, and to be fundamental to human psychology. In this way they understood archetypes as having a sacred quality.

They also discovered that the same archetypes are expressed throughout many different cultures.

Plato’s Idea

It was Plato’s idea that archetypes are imprinted upon the soul at the time of birth. He believed that your archetypal imprint is at the root of your character and your life’s destiny.

Archetypal psychologist James Hillman took this as the basis of his idea of the ‘soul’s code’. That each life has a blueprint, a pattern that is the essence of that life, and calls it to a destiny.

I describe this blueprint as your Heart’s Plan.

Why Explore Your Archetypes?

Taking the time to get to know your own archetypal energies can help you get a better understanding of who you are and why you are here.

A Heart’s Plan session can accelerate the process of connecting you with the inner wisdom of your very own archetypes, and guide you toward growth, healing, and change.

A Heart’s Plan session can explore:

who are your archetypes?
how do they motivate you?
how are they expressed in your thoughts and feelings, your appearance, your relationships, your beliefs and values, your career?
how are they expressed in your life story?
how might you rise to their potentials, and better meet the demands of their challenges?
what is the gift you bring to life?
what is trying to happen deep inside you, right now, and how does this relate to what is happening in your life?
how could you better co-operate with this deeper intention?
how might old patterns now be transformed?

You will learn information about some of your key archetypes in our first session. Of special value is the attention we can pay to how your heart’s plan is currently unfolding.

It’s a journey

But learning to see your life in an archetypal way is a journey. It involves learning to see in a new way, opening your intuition, noticing the guiding synchronicity or coincidences in your life, and actively exploring your inner world and life story for recognition of your archetypes at work.

I believe, and you can discover, that your life is truly rich with meaning, and that you have a unique potential.

By tuning in to your own heart’s plan for guidance and wisdom it becomes more possible to create your life like a work of art.