Have you made the *actual* real-life Hero's journey yet?
Also: are you the Coward, Bully or Warrior?
You can listen to this piece on TikTok (Part I, Part II), Instagram (Part I, Part II) and YouTube (Part I, Part II).
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So, you’ve heard of the Hero's journey, but do you know if you've taken its real-life equivalent? Or, more importantly, have you taken the real real-life equivalent and learned the real heroic lesson? Or have you, like most of us, been seduced by the less-healthy Hollywood version?
A hero by another name
Our first task is to give the Hero a new name because, in this series of posts, I am exploring gender-neutral alternatives for the more traditional, very much gendered archetypes of Maiden, Hero, Queen, King, Crone and Mage. For reference, here are the six renamed archetypes, in the order they would take place.
You can find an overview of the archetypal journeys here, and the Tenderfoot’s arc here.
Remember, these journeys are sequential, not random. You can only take the Warrior's journey if you have already successfully completed the Tenderfoot's, and so on.
The Warrior’s journey is not about becoming the Warrior but about arcing out of Warrior and into Luminary. Along the way, there will, of course, be some friction in the form of two archetypal antagonists (or baddies) and the threat of two dark and destructive shadow archetypes that could rise up and possess the Warrior.
Finally, every journey involves the transition from a lie to a truth. We start out believing something unhelpful, negative or disempowering about how the world works and the real pot of gold in the end is to trade in that lie for an empowering, contrasting truth.
Because it can be so transformative, I'd like to challenge you to see if you can work out what the Warrior's Lie and Truth might be over the course of this piece. I'll reveal the two sentences later on.
With that said, let's jump in.
The Warrior’s journey
The Warrior's journey is a quest. It starts in the symbolic setting of the Village. The real-life equivalent of this is any place or situation that feels familiar to us as an adult, so this could be a town, or a relationship or job, etc. Crucially, this world or context will feel a bit normal, predictable, same-y. The quest, then, takes the Warrior away from this humdrum existence and on an adventure into a much more exciting, epic environment, one that's intended to test their mettle.
Think: Luke Skywalker in Star Wars…
Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games…
Peter Parker in Spider-Man…
Or Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz.
At the beginning of the story, though, the Warrior is reluctant to leave their comfortable little world. Yes, they're bored – but not bored enough to begin questing for excitement. Not yet, anyway. They're going to need a little push to make them pay attention to their unmet need for adventure and initiation. They're going to need an enemy if they’re to swap the old lie for the new truth.
The Warrior's journey
Journey: a Quest
Symbolic setting: the Village
A transition from the Normal World to the Adventure World
The Warrior's antagonists
1. The Dragon
This brings us to the first (and definitely most familiar) of the Warrior's archetypal antagonists: an evil Dragon looms, threatening the village and those who live there. Someone, clearly, needs to do something about this threat but the Warrior is pretty certain at first that it won't be them. There must be some other, braver and more mature candidate for this task, surely?
You see, whether the Warrior is a bit idle, a bit disconnected or a bit wild, perhaps, they are not yet in touch with their own power or responsibility, and therefore, don’t jump at the chance to slay the Dragon and cover themselves in glory.
That is, until their “inciting incident”, when the threat of the Dragon becomes personal. Someone important to them is killed, like Uncle Ben in Spiderman, or hurt, captured or wronged in some other way. Now the Warrior is left with no choice but to accept the call to adventure.
So, they embark on their quest to defeat the Dragon – a greedy, treasure-hoarding creature that has stolen something (or someone) vital from the Kingdom, leaving the Warrior's world in a state of vulnerability and unrest.
Now, traditionally, the Hero – who represents the masculine side of the psyche – has to rescue from this dragon the Damsel in Distress, or to retrieve a treasure such as the Holy Grail. These things all represent the feminine, which means that the Hero's/Warrior’s journey is about union and reintegration internally, by bringing the masculine and feminine aspects of the psyche into balance, so that we're ready for external reintegration with the community, which happens at the end of this story.
The Warrior's call to adventure, then, is about the need to prove ourselves worthy of love and connection. The battle with the Dragon will involve some kind of self-sacrifice in the end, which is a test of our ability to use our power responsibly. It’s by passing this test that we’ll rescue the hard-to-attain treasure or the "healing elixir", so we can return to the Kingdom with just what's needed to restore the land to health and balance.
This brings us to the second of the Warrior's antagonists.
2. The Sick King
In story, the Sick King may be literally an unwell ruler, or an incapable or corrupt one. In any case, this impairment at the leadership level represents the effect of the Dragon's theft: stagnation. This is never a good thing. Stagnation is at the heart of every single antagonist we'll discuss because growth is the name of the game and so anything that prevents it is “evil”.
Themes of the Warrior's journey
Resolving the need for power with the need for love: acceptance of personal responsibility; mastery of personal power; and use of that power in the service of those we love
The Warrior, then, restores health to the kingdom and resets the natural cycles of life by reconciling their need for power with their need for love; their need to feel special with their need for acceptance; their masculine side with their feminine side.
This means they get to return to the Village whole and balanced, no longer a picture of youthful irresponsibility. The Warrior has become more powerful but also more responsible, and has therefore proven themselves worthy of reintegration with the community.
Rewards/virtues: power, awareness, personal responsibility and maturity, love and connection
And this is where the Warrior's true reward and proof of their transformation can be found. They may have begun this quest as an individual in search of adventure but when they slayed the dragon, they did it not for glory but for love. Which means they must have fully integrated the Warrior's empowering truth.
The Warrior's Lie vs. Truth
So, have you guessed it? The Warrior's Lie vs. Truth is one of Complacency and/or Recklessness vs Courage and Personal Responsibility.
The Warrior's lie: My actions are insignificant in the overall scope of the world
The Warrior's truth: All my actions affect those I love
Have you made this transition for yourself yet? Or are you still fooling yourself into believing that you're too small, too weak or inconsequential to have a real impact on anyone else?
In story, the Warrior's moment of truth comes after their fall – they make a desperate attempt to defeat the Dragon knowingly using false means and they hurt someone close to them in the process. Faced with the mortifying reality of their mistake, the Warrior must actively choose to shed the skin of the immature, power-hungry or glory-seeking self that came before and step into the new archetypal persona of Luminary.
Have you had a moment like that in your life – where your hubris has cost others? Or when someone you love has had to sacrifice themselves in some way to make up for your mistake? I know I have.
We all have the potential to do great damage in the name of personal gain. And if we fall prey to the temptation to shortcut our way to power or success, then we will slip into one of the two shadow archetypes for this leg of the journey.
The Warrior's shadow archetypes
1. The Coward – a passive refusal to take responsibility
The Coward is a Warrior who fails to mature into a responsible adult because – for whatever reason – they lack the courage to do so.
There are two ways the Coward archetype can occur in a story. They could either be an older version of the Naïf – the passive shadow version of the previous archetype. Having failed to complete the Tenderfoot's journey, they are unable to level up to Warrior because they don't have the strength of self to do so. And so, they’re forced to take the cowardly route instead.
Alternatively, the Coward could represent a Warrior's fall from grace and a failure to complete this archetypal journey. In reality, of course, things are not so black-and-white. As with all the archetypes and their shadows, the Coward is a psychic aspect of who we are. We all have an inner wimp who'd really rather not do the thing, thank you very much.
But there are moments when it’s vital to resist the Coward's call. Because to give in to the natural urge to avoid risk is to actively stall our own growth, to sit back and allow the Dragon to ransack the village until there is nothing left of the life, connection and opportunity it once represented.
Although the Coward is often personified as an external character in stories – think Ron Weasly in Harry Potter, Schnarf in Thundercats, C3PO in Star Wars, or Xander in Buffy – the Coward is primarily a force from within, an instinct that the Warrior must learn to overcome in order to successfully complete their journey.
2. The Bully – an aggressive refusal to take responsibility
At the other end of this continuum is the Bully, the shadowy result of an aggressive refusal to take responsibility and mature adulthood and connected relationships. Think: Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter, John Bender in The Breakfast Club, and Emily in The Devil Wears Prada.
Just like the Coward, the Bully could be an older edition of the Tempest, the aggressive shadow version of the previous archetype (the Tenderfoot). Or they could be the result of the Warrior's failure to resist the temptation to opt for personal power as opposed to making the self-sacrifice required to attain the Elixir and save the kingdom.
In either case, the Bully is overcome by resentment, fear and shame. We hugely demonise bullies in our culture – probably because we idolise the Hero/Warrior archetype so much – and as a result, it's easy to forget to empathise with those who exhibit bullying behaviours, including ourselves.
What this means is that collectively we push the Bully even further into the Shadow, where this archetype gains even more power and therefore shows up even more often. We need to remember that the Bully is in pain. They opt to stay stuck in this archetype where at least they have some shred of power (even if it's an illusion), because they are afraid to accept their call to adventure and/or reintegrate at the end of the journey. The Bully is afraid they aren't enough, afraid they won't cut it, afraid of rejection.
Avoiding the Warrior's shadow archetypes
So how do we avoid the trap of the Warrior's shadow selves?
Well, the simple answer to this question is that we have to take the journey, which, of course, will look different for everyone but it will start with us listening out for our respective calls to adventure. This means honouring our authentic wishes and desires, as opposed to just following the path laid out for us by others.
A courageous act indeed, but essential if you want to avoid the clutches of the Coward. Then, once on this authentic path when our personal power starts to become apparent, in order to avoid the trap of the Bully, we must rise to the challenge of accepting responsibility for our actions.
This means we have to acknowledge our potential to do harm and be prepared to self-sacrifice from time to time in order to protect those we care for. In other words, as the Warrior must do in order to level up to Luminary, we must learn to choose love over power.
Thank you for reading!
We’re Hazel (ex boxer, therapist and author) and Ellie (ex psychology science writer). We left our jobs to build an interactive narrative app for self-awareness and emotion regulation (Betwixt), which you can try on Android here and on iOS here.
