The Power of Archetypes

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.” ~Walker Percy

Archetypes are like doorways into behavioral change. They are doorways to knowing the self. They get to the source of what ails us. They lead us down into the unconscious forces hidden beneath the surface.

Walking through the doorway of the Hero, for example, gives us courage. It plants the seed of a heroic bent. It gives us the ears needed to hear the call to adventure. It gives us the heart needed to take on arduous tasks. Most amazingly of all, it opens the doors into other archetypes.

When we walk through the doorway of the Shadow, we discover a major part of our inner state. It is a culmination of our deepest fears, shames, regrets, and judgments, but it’s also the source of our greatest power, our hidden beauty, and our sacred self.

Where the hero teaches us courage, the shadow teaches us how to be fierce. One of the most powerful actions we can take to intervene in a stormy world is to face our own storm.

Walking through the door of the Trickster archetype teaches us how to have a sense of humor. It teaches us how to stare into the eye of the category five hurricane of our life and to have a good laugh. Sure, it sucks. Sure, there’s debris everywhere. But it’s all laughable. It’s all a cosmic joke and we’re the butt end of it. And that’s okay.

The Trickster archetype leverages a humorous bent into our overall perspective, ushering in humility, which refines the courage and fierceness we gained from the Hero and the Shadow. Now, we are wide open for further archetypal unveiling.

Image: Renaissance by Gabriel Isak