Queen, Mother, Wise Woman and Lover - Rediscovering The Archetypes of The Mature Feminine
Queen, Mother, Wise Woman and Lover - Rediscovering The Archetypes of The Mature Feminine
This article complements the concepts explored in my article “Archetypes of the Mature Masculine”
and applies them to the other half of humanity—women. In doing so I apply the same principles, not
in a mechanistic way, but in the spirit of Jung’s archetypes and their rationale. Let’s start with a few
words of C. G. Jung (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m12soJiCPcc) himself, when he talks about
the Anima.
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Male Shadow Triangle Source: King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes
of the Mature Masculine by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette
Thomas Moore and Douglas Gillette adopted and extended Jung’s approach in their exploration of
the masculine psyche by using the collective archetypes of the King, the Warrior, the Magician, and
the Love (http://wp.me/p2bcCT-2U)r. Obviously those four male archetypes can be translated and
mapped in female clusters of virtues, specific attributes associated with four major female archetypes:
the Queen, the Mother, the Wise Woman and the (female) Lover found in history and myths. This
has been done before.
Jean Shinoda Bolen, a Jungian psychiatrist, published in 1984 “Goddesses in Every Women: A New
Psychology of Women”. She came up with seven feminine archetypes, based on ancient Greek
mythology. Each Goddess represents a primordial image for women’s personality; they are: Hestia,
Athena, Demeter, Aphrodite, Hera, Artemis, Persephone. Jennifer Baker and Roger J., Woolger in
1989 included only six of the Goddesses taking away Hestia. I think that is still a bit inflated, narrow
and not powerful enough. I get lost on the many fairies and goddesses, and I miss the most powerful
female Archetype – The Mother – of which C.G. Jung had written at great length.
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Toni Wolff, colleague and presumable lover of Carl Jung, identified four feminine archetypes:
Mother, the Amazon, the Hetaira, and the Medial. Wolff at the first glance comes closer, but her
model is a male-centered quadruple (male Anima structure) instead a male-female archetype
symmetry: This is most evident in Wolff’s definition of the Amazon, who represents more a female in
good contact with her Animus, furthermore the semi-divine Queen is missing, while her Hetaira is
not quite a full lover.
Emma Jung, the wife of C.G. Jung, wrote two very concise papers about Animus and Anima. Those
two functional complexes represent symmetrically the personality component of the opposite sex
and, at the same time the image of the opposite sex. By their fundamental nature, Animus and Anima
symbolize primal masculinity and femininity in general. In other words, the Anima figures represent
the archetype of the feminine. Emma Jung gives various narratives of the Great Mother like Cybele, of
Prophetess and the Love Goddess and animal or mixed human-animal semi-goddess motives like the
swan-maiden in the Edda. Emma Jung refers to her husband, stating the male archetype is the one of
meaning and the female archetype primarily of life. And indeed, life as such to me is about birth and
death – between is wisdom, spirituality and individuation (redemption), if one is unlucky only
staring at the Dow Jones.
Archetypes
C.G. Jung totally differs from Sigmund Freud and most of his colleagues in that he thought (wo)men
as “homo religious”. Freud’s deep fear of spiritualism was rooted in his urge, to
establish psychoanalysis as science. Jung’s own approach to religion was complex, unorthodox, and
open to the speculative ranging from affinity to Catholicism and Eastern thoughts to gnosis and
alchemy. He recognized and valued collective cultural patterns (archetypes) but also individual
enlightenment or at least development to find a person’s whole being (individuation). He felt
those were dismissed by modern positivistic science and political systems which recognizes only the
material world and denies or claim any spiritual dimension (totalitarian systems with personal cult).
The acceptance of the spiritual dimension allows us to understand holistic a person, society,
cooperation —the complex of (conscious and unconscious) beliefs, attributes, and virtues that defines
that entity. Key to this understanding is Jung’s concept of the archetype. According to Jung, “The
concept of the archetype is derived from the repeated observation that, for instance, the religious
myths and fairytales of world literature contain many symbols which are manifestations of those
archetypes”. There is a good book from his former assistant Jolande Jacobi (http://wp.me/p2bcCT-35)
about archetype, symbols and complexes to clarify Jung’s slight ambiguity using those terms over his
lifetime.
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Significantly, female in myth and art can serve as vehicles for both the understanding and the
modeling of these female archetypes. Jung’s theoretical framework of the human psyche follows
Taoist principles and is remarkably symmetrical; the extrovert is balanced by the introvert;
the material outer world by the inner world, the masculine principle—the Animus (Yang within the
Yin) — is balanced by the feminine principle, the Anima (Yin within the Yang). Jung also favored
strongly the number four and following Jung’s idea of the complementarity of opposites, a similar
foursome archetype can be identified and used to provide a foundation for the understanding of the
unique qualities that characterize the female psyche.
All four representations of the archetypes have one positive (right amount – fullness) and 2 negative
poles (deficit or surplus). For example, the positive lover archetype embraces the world with passion
whereas the negative poles are the seductive (or promiscuous) lover and the frigid (or
selfish) lover. One can see every woman (or girl) somewhere between these three extremes.
The Queen is the semi-divine leader responsible for the safety and well being. History and art
have shown that every society must have not only a wise leader who is entrusted with guiding his
people to success and comfort but navigate in unknown territory towards redemption. The
responsibilities of the Queen are mainly on the unconscious side, but worldly benefits and virtues
must be many as well. And if the Queen fails in her duties she is traditionally disposed and evil
prevails. Her shadow sides are tyrant and weakling both disposing male energies.
The Mother is like the Warrior today the most controversial of the archetypes, because of
ideological former and current stereotypes. The two male (warrior) shadow sides are the Sadist
and the Masochist. The Mother is a life giver who maintains humanity as the warrior clears the
space for renewal and change. The prototype of the mother is, well – the mother. But there are
shadows here too – the careless and the devouring mother.
The Wise Woman, represents Logos according to Jung a feminine principle, is the archetype
behind a multitude of professions like doctors, but also lawyers, teachers and priests. She sees the
unseen. She is the prophetess, mediator and communicator of secret knowledge, the healer,
counselor, teacher, and spiritual. The Wise Woman always has a tendency to abuse her power,
being the negative , the witch.
The Lover like the feminine principle Eros manifests energy and fertility of the nature. The
gendering of Eros and Logos and synergy is a consequence of Jung’s anima/animus synergy.
Lovers are at ease with our own deepest and most central values and visions. And only through
union of the feminine and the masculine our culture and personality prospers and grows. The
“me- society” of the impotent is sterile and without compassion and destroys any spiritual
dimension.
All these roles could be fulfilled by one person. The shaman as a holistic archetype has the King’s
capacity to lead, the Mother’s capacity to care and the Lover’s capacity to value someone or
something enough to fight.
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Despite the visible presence of men in political power and economic power in various cultures, social
and hidden political power has been disproportionately exercised by women. Western culture has its
religious sources in the Jewish-Semitic and the Greco-Roman political and philosophical traditions
and of course Christianity. They were distinctly patriarchal on the outside, but quietly influenced by
women. The success of Christianity was mostly based on reaching out to females essentially with
ancient female archetypes. Christianity entered the drama of ancient life—and, in particular, Roman
urban culture—rather late in the play. Savvy architects with great insight —not to mention foresight
— understood ancient female archetypes as critical success factor for the spectacular growth rate of
Christianity. If you look at the gospels and apocrypha and the early church, you find little patriarchy
at all. I have written here (http://wp.me/p2bcCT-24E) in my “Jungian journey through a land of
heretics and Mary Magdalene” how vivid the archetypes of lover (Mary Magdalene), mother ( Holy
Mary) and wise women were.
In the Western, Eastern and Orthodox political, religious, and economic spheres, however, the
majority of kings has been male. In those cases, where women have been called upon to lead empires,
they have exercised male-like leadership, even literally assuming a male role. Nonetheless, most
cultures, including Hindu and Buddhist regarded women’s roles in the family highly. Tribal societies,
of course dominated by the male Warrior archetype, have integrated the original matriarchal social
system in parallel. All of these cultural frameworks employ both powerful male and female
symbolism. Honor and respect is not enough. However. It is quite ironic, that in such a geographic
proximity, there were major civilization, one as Egypt, which thrived on freedom for women for
almost two thousand years, and others, predominantly some Muslim context, because having been
much more restrictive of female freedom, have arguably suffered distinctive social and economic
disadvantages, but gaining now not only demographically for this very reason.
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The Faerie, the Goddesses—The Great Mother, the Wise Woman and the female Lover are found
within the secondary C.G. Jung literature and in feminist and/or New Age books Goddesses are
everywhere. Not so the Mother and only as a recent addition the Queen. As is the case with her male
counterpart, the King, the Queen is the most holistic and temporal (worldly) of the female archetypes.
But also the most simple to map to the Moore model. There have been weak and evil Queens and
Kings at all times. The image of Queen serves as a center for the mature ordering of things; it includes
and transcends the other archetypes of the Feminine. Ideally, all “leading” human would, to a greater
or lesser degree, embody the ideal King or Queen. Now it is evident, that the “Good King” in the
temporal realm is an archetype of a good statesman. But recently we have many female leaders of the
state. The acceptance is with ease, but they reflect more often an archetype of the Mother than of the
Queen. One female politician’s nickname is even “mom” and this is uttered in the context of the cold
cruel mother. Why those symbols can be created so easily? Because, as we see below, all this female
archetypes were here for thousands of years. Tell me what calendar (lunar, solar, event) you have and
I can tell in which archetypical context you live (open or hidden). As societies moved from pre-
historic to complex civilizations, their calendar system adopted from nature and weather calendars to
direct observation and lastly to calculated calendars (see here) (http://wp.me/p2bcCT-1S9). In these
transitions, the switch from lunar calendars to solar calendars (pure solar, lunar-solar or solar-lunar)
represented changing dominance of male or female archetypes (see here) (http://wp.me/p2bcCT-20I).
In former
times, the
worldly Queen
was also a
priest, warrior
and mother –
sometimes
even the
ultimate
archetype, the
Self or
goddess. It was
rare, but did
happen. One
example, born
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in the 15th
The Queen
century BC,
Hatshepsut,
daughter of Tuthmose I and Aahmes, both of royal lineage, gained the throne upon the death of her
father. To have a female Pharaoh was unprecedented. Although there were no wars during her reign,
she proved her sovereignty being a master politician, and an elegant stateswoman with enough
charisma to keep control of an entire country for twenty years. In all, Hatshepsut accomplished what
no woman had before her. She ruled the most powerful, advanced civilization in the world,
successfully, for twenty years. Another example, the mother and the father of a family would model
them. In those not so rare cases where women become leaders of nations, the archetypical Queen may
take visible form, wise or foolish, caring or cruel. Just as the King is not born as a King, but must start
life as a divine child, so does the Queen. A powerful embodiment of this archetype is the Pharaoh,
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like in Egypt were those roles merged. Another example is Nefertiti, who oversaw the first semi-
monetheistic attempt. Here the Queen Nefertiti and the Heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten became a
mediator to an all-powerful God abstraction, the source of complete cosmic power – the sun (see here
(http://wp.me/p2bcCT-1QE)) and below. As is true of her male counterpart, the Queen was the
symbol for the leader of a nation as divine couple. However, all the essential attributes of the
archetype of the Queen are present in any real woman wherever she plays a leading (if only
herself) role, regardless of the scope her real responsibilities—be she queen of an empire, a nation, a
clan, or her own family.
This is the one archetype that is distinctly different for male and female development. Just as the
Warrior is the most natural complement to the King and embodies a set of virtues that are necessary
to defend the Kingdom, the Great Mother is the most natural complement to Queenship – and the
King. The explosive, destructive energy of the male Warrior archetype is balanced by
the reproductive energy of the female Mother archetype. This is most evident in Kali-Ma the terrible
mother. The Hindu religion has a myriad of Gods and Goddesses and the most revered Goddess is
Kali. She is usually pictured wearing a necklace of skulls and girdle of human hands, dancing on the
body of her consort, Shiva. In many attributes the Mother clearly complements the
Warrior. Wagner’s Valkyries, those tough maidens who took worthy fallen warriors to Valhalla also
served as sources of inspiration for heroic action. Just as the Warrior appears most fully when he
gives himself over to death in an act of self-denial, the Mother appears most fully when she gives
birth. Warriors take life, Mothers give life. This is the source of her power. Both places them outside
any human power; thus, she has the power to inspire, to create. Kali, in this aspect is said to be “The
hungry earth, which devours its own children and fattens on their corpses.
But
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The great and cruel mother
the Mother archetype is also the symbol of all that is fair, all that is beautiful, all that transcends
material existence. These concepts are not merely ornamental niceties, but are at the very center of
Being. Indeed, in their mythological thinking, the Ancient Greeks recognized the importance of
Skills in their concept of the Nine Muses—each the inspiration and source of such humane gifts as
poetry, music, and history. In their philosophical thinking, the Greeks recognized Beauty is an
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essential attribute of the Absolute Good. The Mothers’ virtues are intangible and ethereal; they often
had been be self-sacrificial. Consider the holy Mary and the real-life women who have embodied
legions of Virgin-Martyrs venerated by the early Church attest to the power of the self-sacrificing,
inspirational but unreachable mother. As a powerful archetype the “feminine” aspect the Mother
come up in the Christian quadruple conception of the Holy Mother.
Like all archetypes, the Mother can appear as a shadow, the distant and cruel mother. Like any
shadow, the cruel mother is not bad or evil. The cruel mother energy links itself to the male
archetype counterpart the warrior. Both are associated with death and destruction – actual physical
death. For instance the Hindu goddess Kali embodies a cruel mother, whose destruction is in the
service of creation.
The enigmatic chief queen Nefertiti (Neferneferuaten) of Akhenaten’s (Echnaton) is the most
mysterious and interesting of all the ancient Egyptian queen and an example of a possessive mother
symbol. Little is known about her and his overpowering mother Tiye influence on the androgynous
Pharaoh, who brought down the Egyptian empire with his daring cultural and religious revolution
(see here) (http://wp.me/p2bcCT-1QE). After a few loving years, in which the couple celebrated
publicly family life with six children, they separated. Close to her end, she reacted again, as it is
believed that Nefertiti sent a frantic letter to the Hittite King Suppiluliumas after Tutankhamun died,
begging the longtime enemy of Akhenaten and Egypt, for a marriage with one of his sons.
In one of
the
oldest
cults
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cybele
imported into Rome, the Great Mother Cybele’s major attributes was, that she protected people at
war and, as such, was often shown wearing a crown of city walls symbolizing the defense she offered
adherents. Also, as an earth-mother deity in origin, she bestowed fertility and governed creatures of
the wild—ancient portraits show her riding in a chariot pulled by lions—and in both aspects she
appealed to the Roman public whose lifestyle was still, for the most part, agrarian. Besides that, her
powers included the ability to cure disease and predict the future, making Cybele an all-purpose
deity if ever there was. I have written here (http://wp.me/p2bcCT-1OC) about the clash of male and
female Archetypes in classical Rome. She was an ancient fertility goddess whose worship is thought
to have spread from Anatolia to Greece in the Archaic period (c. 800-500 BC) and mysterious rites
were performed in the name of Cybele — as they were for the other earth mother type goddesses, like
Demeter and Isis. It is worth to note the ambiguity, which makes it possible to align many female
mother archetypes with the lover and the warrior but not the queen.
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I like to think that psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein a woman in the shadow of C. G. Jung and Sigmund
Freud (see here) (http://wp.me/p2bcCT-1Yh), resembles the archetype of the Wise Woman or Queen
(in exile). The archetype of the Wise Women inhabits not ethereal regions where all appears as bright
and luminous, the Wise Women inhabits like the magician the shadows. She is at home near the
earth, even inside the earth, inside the dark, moist, primordial womb, the source of all fertility. The
Wise One is no longer young. She started as precious child, but is mature now, rooted. She is likely to
be old. Like a priest, she may have even loved, but she has now transcended all sexuality and
reproductivity and has reached a state of superior wisdom.
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The Wise Women
Also in contrast to her male counterpart—the Magician— a non spiritual mind seeks not to penetrate
beneath the surface of things and probe the mysteries of nature, rather, she looks inward into the
mysteries of Being. This earthly knowledge extends to the body and more specifically to the very
distinct realities of the female body, with its mysteries of fertility and procreation. Women who knew
this much were much respected and feared. Mary Magdalene might be one of the wise women,
Kassandra was one and in a way every midwife. Male resented them and worldly institutions
persecuted this source of feminine power because it lay out of their control. Antigone was one The
mortal daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta she openly defied her evil uncle King Creon to bury her
brother, Polydices. Creon sentenced her to be buried alive. Many Wise Women were later accused of
being “witches”.Saint Augustine of Hippo, the most influential Christian theologian argued around
400 AD that, neither Satan nor witches had supernatural powers and only pagan can believe this. In
1208, however, Pope Innocent III opened an attack on Cathar dualistic heretics who believed in a
world in which God and Satan, both having supernatural powers, in a perpetual war. Many
adherents of this secret dualistic sect had migrated into Germany and the Savoy where the first witch
hunt started. It was natural for both Wise women and Magician, to seek separation from the world,
but being a single woman – especially with low status and without children, was a major source of
suspicion. Their quest for special knowledge requires long hours of solitude for study and reflection.
Most often, both become a seer, an adviser. The Queen of Sheba, one of the most famous figures in
the Bible visited King Solomon in Jerusalem after hearing of his great wisdom. According to legend,
King Solomon was not only the wisest man in the land, but he also had magical abilities and could
command demons. The Queen of Sheba tests Solomon’s wisdom, asking him many questions and
giving him riddles to solve. He answers to her satisfaction and then he teaches her about his god
Yahweh and she becomes a follower. The two most famous queens of Egypt Hatshepsut and
Nefertiti were also high priests and Wise One’s. Another powerful and inspiring embodiment of the
archetype of the Wise One outside Christianity, is the gnostic Figure of Sophia.
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Sophia__Wisdom
As equally powerful Christian archetype the “feminine” aspect the Wise Women come up in the
Christian Trinitarian conception of the Holy Spirit. Who is Sophia? Literally, she is Wisdom, because
the Greek word Sophia means “wisdom” in English. More than that, she has been revered as the Wise
Bride of Solomon by Jews, as the Queen of Wisdom and War (Athena) by Greeks, and as the Holy
Spirit of Wisdom by Christians. Solomon was considered to be married to Sophia. One of the many
layers of symbolism attributed to the Song of Songs (also known as Song of Solomon or Canticle of
Canticles) is that it speaks of Solomon’s marriage to Holy Sophia. Sophia surfaced in the Eastern
Christian tradition with the construction of the Hagia Sophia cathedral in Constantinople (converted
to a Mosque 1453 and today a Muslim museum in Istanbul). Sophia has survived in the West today,
in the form of Gnosticism. Sophia plays a very active role in Jung’s Answer to Job (Hiob), where she
also completes Quaternity.
Lover – Eros
The fourth archetype of the mature feminine is the Lover, or Eros. The Lover is a life-affirming and
sometimes hedonistic archetype which dislikes rigid order and sterile knowledge. But without love,
without compassion those are nothing. I would argue that self-sacrifice belongs there too. The lover
energy, arising as it does from the Oedipal child, is the source of spirituality and fertility. It is the
attachment of the child to the parent of the opposite sex, accompanied by envious and aggressive
feelings toward the parent of the same sex.
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The Lover
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A powerful female mythological archetypical lover complex runs deep in Eastern and Western
Civilizations. In the cradle of civilization, it started with Astarte and Ishtar. Some scholars hold
Astarte was a prototype of the Virgin Mary. Their theory is based on the ancient Syrian and Egyptian
rituals of celebrating Astarte’s rebirth of the solar god on December 25th. Other counterparts are Isis
of Egypt, Kali of India, and Aphrodite and Demeter of Greece and Venus of Rom. In China you have
the archetype of the Green Snake and White Snake and the holistic archetype of Tao, which to me is
the perfect example of the Self, integrating female and male love..
Thus, the Lover intrudes powerfully into humanity’s collective consciousness and enthusiastic,
connects with followers, inspiring them to accomplish the difficult deeds. The intoxication of love
opens an alternate reality with its own truths which separates those in the grip of the Lover from
mundane concerns. Thus, as is the case with the male Lover, the female Lover gains enormous
powers of transcendence, but she, and he, are subjected to “the other” and therefore lack the freedom
of the other archetypes. This is the power and limitation of the hierosgamos—the cosmic marriage of
opposites. Without Jesus, our life would be meaningless, incomprehensible; Jesus explains our life.
Joan of Arc, whose last recorded words before she was burnt at the stake were: “I pray you, go to the
nearest church, and bring me the cross, and hold it up level with my eyes until I am dead. I would have the cross
on which God hung be ever before my eyes while life lasts in me. Jesus, Jesus!” It appears again that the
Lover archetype is essential. Of course, there is also the dark story of Salome, the infamous daughter
of Kind Herod, has fascinated many painters for centuries. Paintings of her equally infamous dance
with John the Baptist’s head evoke a sensual, evocative atmosphere.Salome’s story first appears as a
fragment in the New Testament Gospel of Mark, where she dances in exchange for the head of John
the Baptist on a silver charger, at her mother’s behest. In the Gospel version, the burden of
wickedness thus falls upon Salome’s mother, Herodias, and Salome’s virtue remains ambiguous.
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salome-with-the-head-of-st-john-the-baptist
Salome dances as a femme fatale for her stepfather, Herod Antipas, defying Herodias. The beheading
of the Baptist is Salome’s own idea, for which she will pay with her own ghastly death. Nevertheless,
John, the Evangelist, comes to prepare the way of Messiah with a new gospel of love, succeeds in
coaxing the Judean princess to a personal epiphany, for the soul of Salome is not the same fetid sink
as her mother’s. “Speak again,” Salome exhorts him, “Thy voice is as music to mine ear…. Speak
again…and tell me what I must do.” But just when a prophet’s wisdom might have done some good,
John is out of ideas, saying: “I will not look at thee. Thou art accursed, Salome….”
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Conclusion
What can we learn from the examination of the archetypes of the mature feminine ? First, female like
male, in order to fulfill their wholeness properly, would do well to embody the best qualities
represented by all of their archetypes. When men and women do this, they model these archetypes
inspire both of them on the path of virtue and spirituality. The archetypes are viable because they
furnish us with a short-cut, an intuitive way to grasp the essence of a group of attributes that connects
directly with the unconscious mind. Instead of patient intellectual analysis of each individual
attribute of leadership, the ethos of each archetype is immediately accessible through a complex of
cultural pattern which are instantly recognized even trans-cultural. These archetypes are emotional
and spiritual pictures that have an immediate effect on individuals and groups. This effect is readily
apparent when one compares the phrase “The Good King” with “a King who is good, strong, wise,
just and so on”. The first phrase is incomparably richer in context and seems “alive” compared to a
list of adjectives to describe a particular King. It evokes an instant visual image that has an immediate
appeal. This is why the old Greek epics, the Bibles stories and Wagner’s opera are so powerful.
Archetypes – actually “archetypes per se”- are, are cultural patterns and by their very nature, are
universal and here to stay. Like the physical heritage, stored in our genes, cultural patterns are saved
in our collective consciousness. They can be invoked or forgotten, or even suppressed. But even in
materialistic, matriarchal or patriarchal cultures, that are hostile to spirituality, to the male. or the
feminine, archetypes cannot forever be suppressed. Once more, external like internal suppression of
archetypes is a case of too much, or of too little, of a needed cultural model for humanity to survive
and for the individual to live a meaningful life. However, archetypes can be invoked as symbols any
time — hence their power to manipulate, to motivate, to influence. There is much to contemplate in
these archetypes which can be mapped with political, mythic and culture examples. The self-evident
interpretation and its usefulness is overwhelmingly convincing.
Women should be aware of her animus and thus with the aspects of the four male archetypes and for
men to mature, they must meet and integrate their anima and learn from the four female archetypes.
How does it look in your family or relationship? Suppression of an archetype only results in denial of
attributes and spiritual resources that we, as humans, need. If one comes to terms with the Shadow
and the Soul, one will encounter the enchanted castle with its King and Queen. This is a pattern of
wholeness and individuation. The opposites of the outer and the inner life are now joined in
marriage. Great power arises from this integration. Be aware of pretended or real archetypes in the
public realm. For example, look at your (male or female) politicians: Does one of them have the
virtues of those positive archetypes?
Looking beyond herself, women should care how and if divine couple symbols (syzygy images) are
invoked. Pharaoh and his Queen, Christ and the Church, God and Israel are syzygy images. Do we
still have Divine Couples (Syzygy) and Divine Triads in the spiritual realm? The believer who aspires
to be the “bride of Christ” is modeling his or her experience in response to the syzygy archetype.
Next our hope is from the Child Archetype, a pattern with a promise of new beginnings. The birth of
the Christ Child who unites Heaven and Earth, God became Man and God, is one of those powerful
archetype creating a triad. Triads, like for example the Egyptian triad of Isis, Osiris and Horus are
predecessors symbols of the Trinity. When the Mother Archetype joined the Holy Trinity Jung’s
Quaternity (http://wp.me/p2bcCT-ew) was formed.
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28/02/2023, 20:32 Queen, Mother, Wise Woman and Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Feminine | stOttilien
What I am trying to say in a nutshell, is this: Good Kings (and Queens) need to encompass two
Quaternities. Not only take care of your own set archetypes, which enhances your temporal virtues,
we need also to understand our opposite sex archetypes – of our Animus or our Anima. According to
C.G. Jung this will lead you to our Shadow, and if we integrate the Shadow, that opens us to our Self
– the divine in us – or at least a communication path to it. God or goddesses are both holistic and
androgen. The yin yang symbol from ancient China represents the belief that everything in the
universe consists of two forces that are opposing but in need for each other. The Great Mother Cybele
was Mother (in a narrow sense) and Warrior symbol.
Copyright 2011-2014 stottilien.com – Text and illustrations may be used indicating stottilien.com
ownership.
Bibliography Links
See slide show with some basic concepts of C.G. Jung. Press buttons to change slides manually or
switch to full screen:
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