The surprising truth behind a life lived fully

Have you awakened the wisdom of the Seer within?

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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The story I'm about to tell you represents the journey of psychological growth. And it is epic. You have walked this path before. But have you learned the lesson? Have you unlocked the wisdom that's up for grabs on the Seer’s journey? This is how to find out.

Introducing the Seer

The Seer is my gender-neutral name for the more traditional Crone archetype, which is the fifth in a series of six archetypal journeys that map onto the archetypal human life.  

Here are all six renamed archetypes, in the order they would take place. The Tenderfoot and Warrior represent the traditionally feminine and masculine journeys taken in the first part of life, the Luminary and Sovereign do the same for the midlife period, and the Seer and Mage take care of OLD age.

That said, real life doesn't tend to play out as linearly as this mythic version, which means that we could find ourselves on versions of each of these journeys during any stage or in any context of life.

The Seer’s journey we're exploring today is not about becoming the Seer but about arcing out of Seer and into Mage. 

The Seer's journey 

The Seer's journey is a pilgrimage to the underworld. And as such it has the potential to be dark. But regardless of this – or perhaps because of this – I can confidently say that this is my absolute favourite of all the archetypal journeys. I hope you like it, too. 

The Seer starts where the Sovereign left off. It’s a pretty rough place: they’ve just stepped down as the all-powerful ruler of the kingdom and lost everything. The Seer, therefore, is mourning for the Sovereign self that’s been laid to rest (albeit voluntarily). In order to process their loss, they have distanced themselves from the community, choosing to live on the outskirts of the metaphorical kingdom in the symbolic setting of the cabin in the woods. Hopefully, they won't stay there for too long because there is another adventure on the horizon and this one will take them to the darkest of places. 

The Seer's descent into the underworld will sometimes be depicted very literally  – such as when the Balrog drags Gandalf the Grey down into the fiery bowels of Middle Earth in The Fellowship of the Ring. Gandalf, of course, comes back after this descent into the Underworld as the Mage character of Gandalf the White. 

That's exactly what's up for grabs here. If we view human life as a three-act story, then the beginning of the Seer's journey marks the third plot point in that story, which, as K. M. Weiland points out in Writing Archetypal Character Arcs, is the “doorway of death and rebirth.” That said, there is some kind of symbolic death and rebirth involved in every one of the individual arcs we're exploring: they each have their own third plot point where the character sacrifices a past self and is then reborn into a new archetype. What this means is that the Seer archetype is present at the third plot point of all those other stories.

"[The image of a grandmother] embodies qualities of feminine insight, wisdom, strength and nurturance that may be missing from a woman's daily life. We call upon this crone aspect of the feminine to help us through difficult transitions."

Maureen Murdock, The Heroine's Journey

I'll admit here that I still see the Seer as a female crone-like figure when I imagine this – wise but totally unforgiving, and brutally honest, with long white hair and all-seeing eyes – and I love the image of her showing up to guide all the younger characters through the most challenging parts of their stories.  

But here the Seer has to make their own transition alone. In the aftermath of the complete death of the powerful person they were, the Seer's challenge is this: are they ready to accept the call to rebirth? 

The Seer's journey 

Journey: a Pilgrimage

Symbolic setting: the Underworld

A transition from the Uncanny World to the Underworld 

Theme: choosing life as a result of accepting death; facing one's mortality; embracing the deeper, more spiritual meaning of life   

So, in contrast with the Sovereign’s transformation, which hinged on the willingness to die (metaphorically, at least), the Seer’s transformation requires the decision to live… again. In real-life terms, this is about the challenge of picking ourselves up and carrying on after something like a breakup, losing our dream job or the death of a loved one. 

For a rare example of a Seer protagonist, check out Tom Creo in The Fountain, the climax of which sees him accepting Death, having refused to do this throughout the story due to the pain he's in after his wife's death. 

Other examples of the Seer include Carl Fredrikson in Up… 

Alan Grant in Jurassic Park… 

And, as mentioned, Gandalf the Grey.

The Seer doesn't know this at the beginning of the journey but losing everything has actually opened the door to something much greater, deeper and more meaningful. In order to fully realise this new life, though, the Seer must face the most universal antagonist of all: death.

The Seer's antagonists

1. Death / the Death Blight

When written into a story, the antagonist of Death is likely to be represented metaphorically as some kind of abstract evil, sweeping through the Kingdom. Weiland calls this a "death blight". It could be a plague, a death cult, or a threatening lifestyle like drug culture.

The Seer is recruited, perhaps by a questing Warrior or a visiting Tenderfoot, to reckon with this threat. Later, the Seer may well become a deeply loved mentor for this younger character but at first they're likely to be a little cranky. At this stage, they don't care that much because they're pretty occupied with their grief and if they do accept this call to adventure, it's unlikely to be out of a sense of need or duty. They're not interested in glory, and they don't really care that much about saving the Kingdom right now, either, because they've distanced themselves from that world and a part of them just wants to die.

And it's because of that part, perhaps, that they do end up accepting the call – they're old, they're going to die anyway… why not? So the Seer descends into the Underworld to (in Weiland's words) go and give Death a good talking to. 

"As with any descent to the unconscious, there comes a time when one simply hopes for the best, pinches one's nose, and jumps into the abyss. If this were not so, we would not have needed to create the words heroine, hero, or courage.”

– Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves

On this journey, though, they will meet the second of the Seer's antagonists – the Tempter – who offers them the one thing that could possibly turn the Seer's head: immortality. 

2. The Tempter

In a fantasy story or myth, of course, the Tempter may well be personified but as with all the antagonists (and all the archetypes and shadow archetypes we're discussing here), the Tempter is a representation of something that exists within all of us. 

The temptation to deny the reality of our mortality is a very real thing, especially in the death-averse culture of the Western world, where we actively resist the threat of ageing with anti-wrinkle creams and plastic surgery. We don't talk about dying or funerals that often. We much prefer to just pretend that's not going to happen to us, and in all of this we, quite successfully, create a collective illusion of immortality.

But as with all avoidance, this is a problematic strategy, because when you numb your awareness of your inevitable end, you invite a tendency to, at best, fritter life away with meaningless activities (after all, you have all the time in the world), or, at worst, you find yourself engaging in dangerous or unhealthy activities (because immortal beings don't need to worry about getting cancer, falling from a height while drunk or contracting an STD). 

The Seer’s Lie vs. Truth

“Tis only when faced with our own mortality that we truly realize what it means to be alive.” 

– Timothy Strother

The Seer’s lie goes like this: "All life ends in death." Now, the more literal-minded of you might scoff internally at that statement and say: true! So, here's a slightly less mysterious, but more easily fallible version of the lie. I interpret this as: "When death looms, there's no point in living" or  "When something is just going to end, why bother doing it in the first place?"

The Seer's contrasting truth is: Life is death… and death is life.

This one can be translated to: "In order to embrace life, we must accept and embrace death".

So, if the Seer is to successfully complete their transition and arc into Mage, they will not accept the Tempter's offer of immortality. They haven't, at this stage, fully grasped their transformative truth but they have an inkling – so as tempting as the offer might be, some part of them knows that, because life is death and death is life, then to deny or cheat death is to forfeit your life. 

“I recall a Japanese proverb often quoted by Alan Watts: "Flowering branches grow naturally, some short, some long." While the flower lasts it is enjoyed, but it does not cling to the bough. Fear of flying is fear of death. Death is seen as an enemy only by those who set themselves in opposition to Nature. If, however, death is a stage in the cycle of life wherein an organism undergoes transformation, then what is there to fear?”

— June Singer, Androgyny 

This brings us back round to the theme that links all the archetypal antagonists, which is stagnation. Anything that halts our progress and growth is the enemy, including anything that would prevent our advance towards death. So the Seer may have descended into the Underworld with the intention of facing and defeating the threat of Death, but what they find is not so much an enemy as it is a friend.

And having aligned with this most primal force, the Seer re-emerges from the Underworld evolved and learns to love life, after all. 

The Seer's shadow archetypes

If the Seer fails to come to terms with the great loss of their previous arc – if they prove unable to process all that's happened to them and come to peace with it –  then they will either refuse to journey down into the Underworld and face Death, as in the case of the Hermit, or they'll go, but instead of re-emerging as the positive, life-affirming Mage, they'll come back wielding the very shadows themselves. 

1. The Hermit – a passive rejection of both life and death

The passive side of the Seer's shadow self – the Hermit – is the character who simply gives up the fight and resigns themselves to a quiet and doleful end. When dramatised, most of these stories will start with the protagonist as the Hermit because they begin in that quiet, introspective place of healing and processing. 

The question then is less about whether the Seer will slip into this side of their shadow and more about whether they will manage not to stay there. 

Regardless of whether we have reached the stage in life where we are forced to face our mortality with any kind of urgency, most of us know what it feels like to wonder if we have it in us to pull our socks up and carry on. The eddies of grief can easily suck us into deep, deep water and it can be hard not to succumb. 

For examples of the Hermit, think Aunt March in Little Women…

Mrs. Snow in Pollyanna…

Tom Creo in The Fountain, who does claw his way out, but spends the majority of the film in the archetype of the Hermit. 

In order to pass the test, the Seer's first challenge is to choose to fight their way to the surface of that dark water. To fail the test is to embody the shadow archetype of the Hermit, give up all personal agency and simply wait for Death to take us. 

But languishing as a powerless Hermit is not the only shadow fate that threatens here. Should the Seer prove unable to come to terms with what has happened and instead resentfully turn against the world around them, then they will take the negative step towards their aggressive polarity of Shadow-wielder.

2. The Shadow-wielder – an aggressive rejection of both life and death

Where the Seer chooses life, the Shadow-wielder sides with death – but not the good, reframed perspective on death that enabled the Seer to rise again. Instead, the Shadow-wielder wields death as a threat and a weapon they can use to extort and manipulate other people into meeting their needs. 

They reject the responsibilities of elderhood; they might hate other people and life itself. The Shadow-wielder is someone that is so lost in their own bitterness that they have come to see everything and everyone as a hateful reminder of their pain. 

Just like the Vampire that shadows the Luminary, the Shadow-wielder is leaching the life out of the more virile Tenderfeet and Warriors of the kingdom. That is to say, they are attempting to cheat death and claim the Tempter's immortality for themselves. 

My favourite Shadow-wielder from pop culture has to be Evil Willow in Buffy. Unable to overcome the undue death of her true love Tara, Willow turns herself over to the dark side by engaging irresponsibly with the Death Blight of dark occultism, which is represented as a kind of magical opioid. Eventually, consumed entirely by this dark power, Willow rises up as that season's Big Bad. She redeems herself, thankfully, but it takes much repenting and she's never quite the same again. 

Other examples of the Shadow-wielder include the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz…

Fagin in Oliver Twist…

And Captain Ahab in Moby Dick.

Avoiding the Seer's shadow sides

So, how do we avoid the clutches of the Hermit and the Shadow-wielder? As with all of these journeys, it's a case of fully integrating the empowering truth, which for the Seer's journey is the slightly cryptic Life is death and death is life. 

The Seer archetype's wise gift to us is the knowledge that in order to live life to the fullest, we must accept and embrace death. In order to fully embrace any experience – a job, a relationship, health, love or any creative pursuit – we must accept that it will, some day, come to an end. 

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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.

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