The archetypes that are ruling your life – and how to take control

How fictional characters sneak into your head, and what you can do to turn them into guides

May 15, 2024

You can listen to this post here (Part I: TikTok, YouTube or Instagram; Part II: TikTok, YouTube or Instagram).

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Everything you've ever imagined actually exists – vampires, fairies, daemons, dragons, zombies, aliens. Just like any memory you have, regardless of whether these creatures could be proven to be physical, they very much exist in your imagination. This means that they have a very real impact on our lives – from perspectives to choices, fears and beliefs.

In other words, fictional characters like Cinderella, Prince Charming, the Wicked Witch of the West and Spike from Buffy are all archetypes: that is, they are examples of familiar, recurring symbols in our culture. As such, they live in what Jung called the collective unconscious – and therefore also in our individual psyches as parts of the personality that can inform the way we develop, what we believe ourselves capable or worthy of, how we think we should behave, etc.

Why do you need to know this? Because unless you become aware of these symbols – unless you “make the unconscious conscious”, as Jung allegedly said – these archetypes can exert control over you without you even knowing it's happening.

As K.M. Weiland writes in her brilliant book Writing Archetypal Character Arcs (which I’ll use as a reference for this and upcoming posts), when archetypes show up – and that is often – they come shrouded in resonant truths and undeniable moral lessons that can straight-up change our lives.

The Hero's Journey

Now, there is one archetypal story arc that you have definitely heard of before – and that's the Hero’s journey. Made famous by Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the Hero's journey is so commonplace that it's almost become synonymous with story itself.

And it's easy to see why. Not only is the Hero's journey a damn satisfying story but it's also one about the character type that our culture reveres above all others. Patriarchy loves the Hero's journey because it promotes its favourite values – individualism, saviourism, achievement, conquering objective evil, and probably winning the affections of some pretty damsel in the process.

The Hero has a black-and-white perspective on life: he needs to fight, dominate and overcome, and he has to do it on his own. In combination with the other archetypes, this is an entirely healthy, and necessary, part of individuation – the process of learning who we are and how to assert our individuality in the world, which we all need to do in our younger lives.

But when we over identify with the Hero, as our culture strongly urges us to do, things get out of whack. It can lead us towards an aggressive, us-versus-them, good-versus-bad outlook on life, not to mention an unconscious tendency towards the assumption of male supremacy, misogyny and a disregard for things like human connection and interdependence that oppose the hero’s individualism.

But here's the thing: the Hero's journey is not the only archetypal character arc. It isn't even the most important one. As Weiland lays out in her book and as Jungian theorists and psychologists have known for over a century, the Hero is but one of many equally important archetypes present in the human psyche and active in our lives.

The deal is this: if we get to know and embrace these archetypes, they will act as our guides in life. Deny, repress or otherwise ignore them, however, and they will "possess" us – and not even in their healthy forms, but as their darker, more destructive shadow versions.

But don't worry! This series of posts is here to kit you out with all you need to stop that from happening. We're simplifying things a little, though, and focusing on the six archetypal journeys that K.M. Weiland maps onto the human life story (and that correspond to other theories and systems, by the way, including Jung's archetypes, Campbell's stages of the Hero's transformation and Erikson's stages of human development).

The six archetypes

Our six archetypes come in three pairs:

First, the Maiden and the Hero, who cover the youngest third of the archetypal life.

The Queen and the King, who represent midlife.

And then the Crone and the Mage for old age.

Is the Hero really the… hero?

The first key thing to understand is that these six archetypes are sequential. They're not things we can pick at random because each is reliant on the success of the previous journey. In other words, you only get to embark on your Hero's journey if you have successfully integrated the learnings from your Maiden’s journey.

Another interesting thing to recognise here is that these archetypal journeys are not about becoming the archetype in question, but arcing out of it into another.

This is because life – so long as it involves growth and change – can be seen as a continual cycle of psychological death and rebirth. Ideally, we inhabit one persona only for as long as it is healthy and effective. At some point, every version of self will necessarily be laid to rest in order to make way for the birth of the next more evolved version of self.

Therefore, the Maiden's journey is not about being the Maiden. It's about arcing out of Maiden and into Hero. Likewise, the Hero's journey is not about becoming the Hero. It's about arcing out of Hero and into Queen.

By looking at this side of things, we can see a fatal flaw in how our culture has often misrepresented its beloved Hero's journey. In this particular arc, after slaying the Dragon and rescuing the Damsel, the Hero returns to the Village to reintegrate as a mature adult. His quest was one of initiation and in order to pass this test, the dragon-slaying is actually less important than the reason for doing it (which is love), as well as how it's done (which is with personal responsibility and, invariably, some sort of ego sacrifice).

The Hero's journey is about learning to sacrifice the selfish, power-hungry desires of the ego in the name of love.

But that last bit tends to get missed out – or at least squished into a teeny tiny little happy-ending-kiss in the movies. This actually deprives the Hero of the growth that's meant to happen in this part of their story, meaning that the version we get fed over and over again is actually freezing the Hero in Hero. As a result, the world (at least the West) also gets stuck in this hyper-masculine, conflict-focused archetype.

If we could only let the Hero level up to Queen and reintegrate with the community more fully, then the healthy cycle would be able to resume.

Gender issues in the archetypes

Now, as you may have noticed, these archetypes are very much gendered. This is because they represent the feminine and masculine aspects of the psyche, which of course, we all have regardless of our biological sex or gender.

This means that we all have an inner Maiden and an inner Hero, no matter how we identify. The alternation between feminine and masculine archetypes represents the internal act of balancing these parts of the self. When it comes to personal wholeness and integration then, the aim is to achieve psychological androgyny – or being able to accept and access both the feminine and the masculine within us.

I find this idea very exciting and it's part of the reason I'm proposing new, gender-neutral archetypes for these six stories as we explore them. My versions still represent traditionally feminine or masculine traits but without limiting the representation of those traits to female or male characters. Please meet my new de-gendered archetypes.

Oh, the places you’ll go: the archetypal character arcs

The story arcs connected to the archetypes we're exploring are what Weiland calls positive change arcs. This means that each of these archetypes has a particular journey of transformation to take.

As mentioned, these stories are not about becoming the archetype in question but about arching out of it and into the next. And in order to achieve such growth, of course, we need some friction or conflict. Therefore, each of these journeys comes complete with two archetypal antagonists and virtually universal challenges. In my opinion, most interestingly, they're also each trailed by two shadow archetypes – a passive one and an aggressive one – that threaten to drag the protagonist over to the dark side.

We will each live versions of all of these story arcs for ourselves – sometimes in big, obvious and complete ways, but probably more often in a kind of micro fashion, taking a Tenderfoot’s journey at work, for example, while also living a Luminary's story at home.

Let's finish, then, with a brief overview of each arc.

The Tenderfoot (formerly Maiden)

The Tenderfoot's journey is all about flying the nest, braving the big, bad Real World and facing the archetypal antagonists of the Predator and Authority.

Psychologically, we'll take this journey any time we find a certain situation feeling too small for us – perhaps a job, a relationship, or of course our childhood family setup – and need to make the uncomfortable decision to step out and away as individuals.

The Warrior (formerly Hero)

The Warrior picks up where the Tenderfoot left off and finishes the individuation phase by discovering and reckoning with their own great personal power while battling against the antagonistic forces of the Evil Dragon and the Sick King.

We'll touch on the learnings of this journey any time we have to balance our need for personal victory with the need for love and connection – which is often.

The Luminary (formerly Queen)

The first of the midlife arcs, the Luminary's adventure begins in response to a call to leadership and brings the protagonist up against the antagonistic forces of Invaders and the Empty Throne.

We'll take this journey any time we recognise a void or flaw in an existing authority, and (often reluctantly) realise that it is we who must step up and take on the role of leader. Alternatively, we'll face the Luminary's challenges any time we need to learn to work with others or to manage people.

The Sovereign (formerly King)

This arc is all about accepting the natural cycles of life, knowing when it's time to step down and therefore reckon with self-sacrifice. The antagonists here are the doubting Rebels and a great, otherworldly Cataclysm.

We'll touch on the learnings of this journey whenever we find ourselves in a situation where we can either act in our own interests, or in the interests of the greater good. But not both.

The Seer (formerly Crone)

The Seer takes a pilgrimage into the Underworld to face Death itself – that's antagonist no.1. The second is the dangerous Tempter who tries to distract the Seer with the one thing that could lure them off the healthy and powerful path they're on.

As this journey is all about (metaphorical) death and rebirth, we will come in contact with the Seer any time we make some kind of difficult personal transition or change.

The Mage (still Mage)

The Mage's journey is one of mentorship, and therefore the relinquishing of ego in order to have lived a good life. At this level, the antagonists are very abstract – the Mage needs to face down Evil itself and Human Weakness.

We'll touch on the themes of this journey whenever we're confronted with the challenge of letting go of anything we have become attached to.

Which journey are you drawn to?

So, based on that information, what's your guess as to which journey you might be living through – or struggling with – at the moment? You could be slap-bang in the middle of one of these arcs right now or you could be tackling all of them in different ways and different places, but it's unlikely that you're not dealing with any of those challenges.

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.