Childhood stereotyping is the type that goes deep into your limbic system and is hard to shake off. Some little girls are taught subliminally that they have to be pleasing and pretty to be loveable, but my designated role within my family as a child was as ‘the smart one’. I excelled in school, got straight As, skipped grades, broke records on standardized testing. I was socially awkward, chubby, sloppy, and a rhythmless dancer, but that was okay because… Joanna’s the mad genius, the smart one.
In retrospect, the 8-year-old math whiz turning into the 26-year-old law student trembling with panic attacks at the thought of not acing her property law exam was eminently predictable. And indeed, for roughly the first 30 years of life I lived out that role exactly as you’d expect of someone who believed fundamentally that her ability to be loved hinged on her ability to be the academic superstar.
I’m not sure if it was my Saturn Return, or the relief of finally finishing law school and being sent on a prestigious scholarship year in the U.K. where it was made clear to me that I was not expected to do much substantive work, but when I turned 30 I suddenly discovered a universe of myself that had henceforth gone sacrificed under the freight train of perfectionism.
I began seriously practicing classical Kundalini Yoga, yes, but I also found spare energy for writing creative long-form pieces, dating and sensuality in a completely different realm of pleasure, and honestly, just enjoyment of my life.
I had been letting my Wounded Child projection— the painful lessons every child integrates about what she needs to do to get love and survive— direct all of my vitality and focus.
And in so doing, I was suppressing the spectrum of possibilities that were longing to find expression through me: as a Mystic, a Teacher, an Empress, Witch, Scholar, and Alchemist (to name a few of my primary personal archetypes)
Working with these archetypes has been deeply transformative for me.
Have you ever felt a lingering sense that the way your life has splayed out— the work you do, the people you spend time with, the way you are- somehow doesn’t entirely allow for a robust expression of your sense of your own potential and true essence?
And you have some sense of what greater fulfillment and possibilities might lie on the other side, but few real-life examples of a roadmap of how to allow them to unfold in your life.
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To understand what archetypes are, two thinkers’ core insights suffice.
- First, Plato’s theory of the forms, the notion that perfect prototypes exist in the universe and everything tactile one interacts with in the 5D world is cognizable insofar as it correlates to the prototype. For example: contemplating the idea of a perfect triangle, we might take pen to paper and attempt to draw one, but it would be an imperfect representation of the Form of triangle.
- The Swiss analyst Carl Jung brought the concept of Forms down into deep human behaviour and psychology with his theory of archetypes. Archetypes are like prototypes for the human experience. They are universal human patterns and symbols which derive from the collective unconscious: they pop up in myths from Polynesia to Japan, fairytales, and dreams.
- Joseph Campbell, in turn, expanded Jung’s foundational archetypes into the realms of myth, identifying the Hero’s Journey, which provides the narrative outline for more or less every popular film or book. Campbell found that similar myths, stories, and characters popped up across cultures and history, across civilizations that could not have known about what another. His explanation for this was Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’.
- And later, the spiritual teacher Caroline Myss taught her students how to identify their soul’s ‘sacred contracts‘ by dialling into their archetypes.
Studying archetypes is practical and useful in at least three ways:
1) It helps us to understand one another, as well as ourselves.
Ever said someone is “such a Scorpio” or “such a diva”? That’s your mind mapping particular personae or personality patterns onto archetypes. Expanding our awareness of the archetypes helps us to make sense of the humans we interact with by giving us an overall blueprint.
As human beings, we love patterns—they bring order to our lives. We are continually scanning our world for patterns, particularly in people, because we know intuitively that if we understand someone’s behavior patterns, we understand how she relates to herself, to her life, and to us.
A classic contemporary Queen archetype.
(BTW, it’s no surprise to me that astrology is enjoying a renaissance among millennials, as it is basically a cosmic gallery of archetypes).
All of our relationships are organized by archetypal patterns: teacher and student, supervisor and employee, parent and child, lovers, co-conspirators, adversaries.
2) It lends context and structures to our life transitions.
Besides archetypes, we all undergo archetypal journeys. The two most commonly known are the Hero’s Journey— variations of which explain the narrative structure of virtually every Hollywood film, and likewise is deeply influential in consumer marketing. Our protagonist sets out on her quest, comes up against resistance or barriers, meets a sage (like Obi-Wan) who guides her, and breaks through to success.
More specific to female-identifying people is the maiden to mother to crone journey, of moving from being a young woman in full bloom with more desires than obligations, to a grown woman with dependents, to a woman in full maturity who has come back out into her freedom and, according to the archetype, liberated herself particularly from the weight of others’ expectations.
3) It gives us a rooted and sustainable way of stretching into our infinity and owning our prismatic nature.
You are so much more than you think you are. Your life is much deeper and broader than you conceive it to be here. Our lives are but a fractional inkling of the massive genius and depth that is truly within us. As modern secular people, we need context to begin to live in terms of that depth, honouring that depth. Studying archetypes and beginning to understand ourselves in terms of millennia of human experience is very helpful.
So how to get started with relating to my archetypes?
There are infinite archetypes, and I believe that we all contain the seeds of all of them, but likely there are only 8-12 archetypes that are central to your particularly incarnational story. In order to identify them, I’d suggest for starters…
- Reading through this gallery of archetypes by Caroline Myss and noting which archetypes intuitively pull you in, and
- Journalling on the following questions:
- Who were my personal superheroes growing up?
- If I had one week left to live, what would I want the world to know and why?
- What are my non-negotiable values?
One of my core beliefs is that this modern, secular world is in deep need of re-enchantment. We are fritzed out on technology, consumerism, and information, and shrivelled away yearning for depth, connection, and a sense of transcendence.
