Background into Archetypes

The term archetypes has its origins in Carl Jung's theories. He believed that universal mythic characters-archetypes-reside within the collective unconscious of people the world over. Archetypal images represent fundamental human desires and evoke deep emotions. each of the 12 archetypes we work with symbolizes a basic human need, aspiration or motivation. An archetype is a human type in its purest form e.g. Sage, Fool, Enchantress etc. Each type has its own set of values, meanings and personality traits

Each one of us is faced with the challenge to evolve in the journey that we take during our lifetime, overcoming the negative and flowing with the positive, trusting our instincts and not getting caught up in our needs, desires or fears.

Each one of the 12 archetypes represents an aspect of our personality and comes alive by being fed by an other. How we feed these archetypes is how we are as a person, how we show up in the world. Depending on which archetype is feeding which other determines whether we are a winner or a loser, or are just simply stuck.

The twelve archetypes break down into two basic groups of opposite polarities. Each group has a masculine polarity and a feminine polarity. A polarity is fulfilled as a pure energy, when the energy flow with connecting archetypes is right. Otherwise a conflict can trigger a negative flow if the wrong archetype takes over. No one archetype is better than another, they all have the main ingredients that are essential to our being. Each one has negative and positive sides depending on the flow of energy.

The twelve archetypes are shown on this wheel below: