about: The Empowerment of soul archetypes
Patterns of Power
Soul Archetypes are impersonal universal patterns guiding you toward very personal experiences. You hold within you the DNA of your Soul Contracts and it is through Soul Archetypes that you identify and embrace the prayer, “For what reason have I been born?”
When you answer the call from your interior that prompts you to move into the mystery of your Soul, you have partners. Swiss Psychiatrist, Carl Jung, named these partners archetypes. Arche means “first” or “beginning” and type means “model” or “kind.” Archetypes reveal patterns of power in your life that were firmly in place even before you were born.
Archetypes hold both cosmic truths + personal truths. They guide you to find your inner treasure, reclaim your courage, live authentically and weave your Soul into your everyday life — resulting in your experiencing more meaning, love, truth, compassion and creativity.
You Have Part of Your Soul to Reclaim
Unknown parts of you can feel wild, scary, thrilling or coveting. There is always a shift from the literal parts of your life to the mystical — energy that is deep + mysterious. You are asked to get comfortable with the unknown, paying greater attention to your emotions, sensations, dreams, imagination and symbolism — all pointing you to what you’re seeking.
The restlessness in your life, the recurring dream, the inner nudge that just won’t stop is all part of your Soul waking you up to consciously work on yourself so you can live the life you always wanted - and it may not look like what your Ego wants. Soul Archetypes ask you to grow and they follow the blueprint of your Soul’s Calling.
You Are Ripe With Potential
When first diving into this introspective work, you’ll tend to notice the “low hanging fruit” of Archetypes that are most familiar, and easiest to name + reclaim. You’ll then dive deeper to where you’ll savor your potential and stop discarding the small choices required to embrace the struggles + challenges. When this happens, you’ve stepped into freedom + expansion.
Your personal Soul Archetypes reside deep in your Soul and allow you to see your struggle + your light. Each Archetype represents a fundamental learning experience meant to guide you throughout your life.
Your Soul Archetypes can express in various ways.
Because Archetypes are impersonal, they appear to be in both the background + foreground — in both shadow + light. There is sacred movement like a dance pushing you to wake up and step into your greatness.
When you embrace opportunities to make conscious choices — expressing your Archetypes in light — you expand + empower yourself, which also has a profound effect on others. You move from feeling constricted, frustrated, past-based, rigid, aggressive, flat, hard, pushy, numb, forced, and resistant to feeling dynamic, spacious, open, powerful, alive, vibrant, focused, creative, rich, and connected.
Identifying + Naming Patterns Leads to Soul Empowerment
To engage with yourself on a Soul-level, you directly engage with your Soul Archetypes. There is an opportunity to “call back” and re-integrate personal power you unconsciously had given away previously in life. These are “aha” moments. Golden nuggets giving you more Soul sight.
“Shadow exchange” happens when you look for your power outside of yourself believing that someone else has it, or they believe you have theirs. In this dualistic, “us against them”, ego-based reality, the examples seem endless. A likely example you have experienced is a situation where you emotionally unloaded on someone else, only to discover after the fact that it had nothing to do with them .
Managing, coping, and surviving are all part of “shadow exchange” within key challenging moments + relationships. By cultivating a practice of reflection, you create space for self-compassion seeing that you were often doing the best you could at the time. These moments can be painful, powerful, unavoidable + necessary for your overall life journey.
Wisdom in Identifying “The Stories of Your Patterns”
Wisdom arrives when you attach truthful story to the patterning of your disempowered states of being, which no longer serve you.
When you don’t take responsibility for creating your experience, you’re at the mercy of whatever energy is “loudest” in the moment. Increasing your capacity to recover in those moments is key to growing and cultivating more courage for the work.
Awareness is the first step. When you realize you are in a disempowered state, it is simply a signal that you are not aligned with your Truth, and that you have the support, permission and power to make a new choice.
When you attach truthful story to the these disempowered states, you recognize them more readily in the moment and eventually before they come. What replaces them is wisdom.
The reason for learning your Soul Archetypes is to find deeper clarity around the parts of your life that matter most. This requires seeing yourself clearly. It takes energy to maintain the struggle, and it takes energy to unveil Truth.
The difference is that investing your energy in your Truth nourishes your Soul, and unlocks the power plays when you can’t seem to stop yourself from participating in the struggle.
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
The Value of Ego + Shadow
You need an ego structure to get around in life — to go to the grocery store, make dinner, organize your calendar, communicate, get to destinations on time, etc. You need ego development to increase your bandwidth so you can function, set boundaries and step into creativity.
Your ego structure keeps you inside of a box and functioning in the world. Struggle comes when you forget that you are so much more.
Shadow means the unknown part of you.
Staying inside the box with the lid shut, it can get dark, lonely, depressing, controlling, rigid, limited AND it also provides a sense of safety, certainty, and predictability so you can see why at times, your sense of survival depends on it. However, it can feel quite limited because you have been confined to these patterns that keep you small. It can feel like you are being held prisoner and there is a tendency to think: either I’m in or I’m out, which is all or nothing dualistic thinking. Your shadow pokes at you to let you know you are staying small and it’s time to grow. You are both inside the box AND outside the box. Inner conflict comes and it’s time to integrate the unknown with the known.
Accepting that you have an ego, shadow AND light leads us toward growth and healing. Survival keeps you in the box and soulful intuition guides you to explore and embrace what is outside of the box. What would be possible for your life if you had both?
Your Ego + Shadow are as much sacred parts of the you as the Light of your Soul.
“By healing and releasing negative attitudes and beliefs and traumatic memories that are pulling your energy into the past, you return that energy into present time, where it enhances the vibration of your entire system.”
Your Dark Night of the Soul
Sometimes healing requires our moving through the dark night of the soul. We may spend days or decades in darkness that is filled with suffering. We feel lost, lonely, anxious and, at times, abandoned. You are being asked to move from reason, asking “why me?” to surrender, admitting that you can’t do this on your own. You surrender your sense of identity, your ego’s agenda, your sense of self to something mystical and you allow the Divine to meet you in the unreasonable space of grace. You surrender your fear of Divine intimacy and embrace the qualities of your soul.
Your Soul’s pursuit of your life is the most loving thing you will ever experience because your Soul connects directly to Divinity.
“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
Soul Archetype Integration + Knowing Your Soul Gifts
Empowerment comes from allowing the changes you fear to bring chaos to your life. Our tendency is to make decisions that will bring you back to normal, calm and a sense of order when your life is rocky.
You begin your journey toward wholeness because you often want to feel better. You know there is more to heal. Some changes, though, are scarier than others and it is asking you to give up more than what you thought would be asked of you.
You can call upon small changes to bring smaller, bit-sized truth nuggets into your life so you can process the change you want to see at smaller levels. Your Soul Archetypes function as your inner guidance system leading you to soulful encounters in your life, your many Soul Agreements, and actively stepping into fulfilling your Sacred Contracts.
Realizing you have a choice in these moments are moments fated to show you the way to live your life’s fullest potential.
Living your highest potential includes discovering your own unique Soul Gifts and using them in service in ways you may not have thought possible. And while we as humans are here to empower each other, we must first empower ourselves. Living your highest potential leads to discovery of your Sacred Gifts toward fulfillment of your Sacred Contract.
“Fulfilling your highest potential actually means acting on your highest or deepest truth each moment of your life.”
Your 12 Personal Soul Archetypes
Every person is born with 12 Soul Archetypes that are part of their “inner guidance system.” Your personal 12 Soul Archetypes lead you to each + every soulful encounter in your life. They lead you to realization of your many Soul Gifts and ultimately fulfillment of your highest potential.
Knowing your Soul Archetypes helps you see yourself more clearly the way Divinity sees you. With such clear vision, you get to embrace the grace inside of you and joyfully unleash it into the world.
Your 4 Primary Archetypes
You, along with everyone else, have 4 Primary Archetypes that symbolize your major life challenges + how you choose to survive. In shadow, they represent personal issues, fears and vulnerabilities that cause you to negotiate away personal power. In light, they allow you to see how you sabotage creative opportunities or abort your dreams. They are intimate partners to your intuition, and through Soul Archetypal work, they become allies in fulfilling opportunities and dreams.
Your “Primary Team” of Archetypes act as guardians of your destiny, working unseen and often unknown, all the while guiding you to embrace your highest potential.
The greatest gift of our Primary Team is that they lead us to the key life moments that take the most courage. And though we crave living our Life Purpose and the intimate connection with our Soul it affords, we unconsciously make choices against our Destiny to serve an illusion of control. Our Ego wants control because we fear our light — we fear being seen for who we really are on a Soul-level. We all, at certain key soul moments in our lives, make the choice to block, sell out, doubt and deny ourselves the truth that we deserve our Destiny.
It is with our Egos humbled that our Souls can point the way, and we can navigate through the darkness into the light with self-esteem + the confidence of knowing we are in the flow of the Divine in our life.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”
Everyone has these 4 same Primary Archetypes, but while they are basically the same person-to-person, they are unique in you because of how they are “stacked,” or, where they reside in your Soul and how they interact with your other Archetypes and your unique Soul essence. These 4 Archetypes are the Saboteur, the Prostitute, the Victim and the Inner Child.
The Saboteur: Guardian of Choice
The Prostitute: Guardian of Faith
The Inner Child: Guardian of Innocence
The Victim: Guardian of Self-Esteem
Aspects of The Inner Child
The many aspects of the Inner Child include these 6 Archetypes: the Wounded Child, the Abandoned/Orphaned Child, the Magical/Innocent Child, the Nature Child, the Divine Child and the Puer/Puella Eternis (Eternal Boy/Girl) Child.
One of these Child Archetypes serves as your Primary Child Archetype, though you may in ways experience the others.
Your 8 Personal Archetypes
These 8 Archetypes define the patterns that have the greatest influence on your life. They might include ancient figures — such as the Goddess, King, Warrior and Slave — or contemporary ones, such as the Networker, Environmentalist, and Political Protestor, which are actually variations on ancient themes.
Identifying them can be both a challenging + enjoyable process because you examine personal experiences + relationships from new + extraordinary perspectives.
“Simply put, an archetype is the original or first pattern from which all others are made of. In this case when asking “What is an archetype?” we are talking about human archetypes. These human archetypes contain within them patterns or codes of behavior.”
Why Use An Archetypal Consultant?
A Certified Archetypal Consultant knows both the intricacies of each archetype and how they interact with you and each other toward Soul expression. Consultation can go a long way toward accurately identifying your Soul archetypes + how they’re “stacked” in your Soul.
The Archetypal Wheels + their Parts
The Archetypal Wheel is an intuitive tool that makes symbolic information accessible to you. Your complete Archetypal Wheel encompasses the “three wheels of life” representing 3 distinct levels of human consciousness:
The Chronos Wheel — “The Chart of Origin”: represents the physical-level in linear time. The dynamics for your 12 distinct “Support Archetypes” residing on this wheel is that they surfaced or “came online” early in life, and remain with you on a daily basis as their signature is. The Chart of Origin serves as the basic map of your life. For that reason, it’s meant to be cast only once. It can also be called a “Natal Chart.”
The Kairos Wheel: represents the present-level moment without time (without past and future). The dynamics for your 12 distinct Archetypes residing on this wheel is that they enter and exit, or “surface and leave” under certain circumstances.
The Archetypes on this wheel do not remain with you on a daily basis, but you can still recognize thier signature in your patterns of key moments in your life.
The Cosmic Wheel: representative of all 3 wheels, and the meaning + purpose-level of life.
The 12 Houses
An Archetypal Wheel is divided into 12 categories containing the aspects of human life. Each category corresponds to to the 12 houses of the Zodiac.
Your 12 archetypes become even more significant when you observe them at work in these houses. The 12 houses of an Archetypal Wheel are divided as follows:
Like other intuitive tools, including Tarot cards and the “I Ching,” the Wheel helps you decode the behind-the-scenes patterns of your life. It shows you how your experiences + relationships are spiritual dramas filled with opportunities for personal transformation.
Archetypal Wheels are intuitive tools. When evaluating whether a particular archetypal pattern is part of your intimate family of 12, pay particular attention to a continuum of the learning process in your life — not just isolated experiences.
Working Archetypal Charts
Because your Chart of Origin is like a natal astrology chart, you cast it only once. But after you’ve spent time exploring the basic relationships of your archetypes to the houses into which they fall, you’re ready to use a similar technique to obtain guidance in a variety of specific situations by casting “working charts.” You could, for example, ask for guidance with a health issue, a career decision, or a relationship.
An Invitation to Soul Archetypal Work
Soul Archetypal work is an invitation to touch and express your very Soul through the lens of your personal Soul Archetypes. In doing so, you become intimate and playful in your Soul’s unique joyful nature, thereby anchoring in the magic of your unique being.
I’m here through Soulpath Guidance™ to help guide you in your deep, personal, empowering transformational work with your Soul Archetypes. See my Soul Archetype Consultation page for an understanding of the framework basics of Soul Archetypal work.
“Each of us must walk in the desert at some point, because only we can discover the gifts of our own spirit. Like walking through shifting sands, the feelings of emptiness that you encounter during this challenge make it difficult to maintain your balance without reaching out for help.”
“Wisdom, the capacity to interpret your own intuition, and knowledge of your own sense of destiny, is the alchemy that unlocks your highest potential.”
Valuable Resources
As a Certified Archetypal Consultant under modern day Mystic, Caroline Myss’ Education Institute (CMED), I wholly recommend her many works. If you’re planning on doing Archetypal Work with me or another Certified Archetypal Consultant, I think that her book Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential is essential reading. I actually refer Clients to this book + her website at certain points of progression.
I also highly recommend a close colleague and experienced Soul Archetype Consultant, Stacey Couch’s Wild Gratitude website as another valuable resource.
Purchase Caroline Myss’ Sacred Contracts at Amazon
Visit Caroline Myss’ CMED website
Purchase Archetype Cards by Caroline Myss at Amazon
Visit Stacey Couch’s Wild Gratitude website