Archetypal Thought
With admiration and gratitude to the north of my country. A piece of my soul I found in the desert.
Carlos Sandoval
Our Western tradition has transformed our learning processes into a matter of prose and method.
Prose, since we tend to link knowledge to a continuous, coherent, explanatory, logical, analytical and well-founded writing style.
Methodical, since we have seen in the assumptions of the scientific method the way to produce effective knowledge: we look for observable domains, we demand that those domains be experiential, we formulate hypotheses, we develop forms of validation and falsity and we establish conclusions.
My concern in these pages is not to question this way of knowing. I recognize in him a powerful and effective way of relating to the world and transforming it.
However, prose and method are not the only ways of thinking about the world and ourselves.
Poetry, analogical thinking, images and metaphors, movement, dreams, stories and traditions are, among others, ways of thinking that, far from prose and method, allow us to renew our relationship with the world and transform ourselves.
In general, we have rooted these ways of thinking in the space of marginality, historical tradition, entertainment or, in the best of cases, art.
In all these situations, what we have achieved is to remove from these ways of thinking all the transforming power they have over our future and, why not say it, over our spirit.
Reduced to the anecdotal, the trivial or the traditional, unsystematic thinking became a matter of the past and with it a secondary matter; Well, what really matters to us in the processes of reflection and conversation is the redesign of the future and the transformation of our being.
As Walter Benjamin showed, we can all recognize the power that certain moments have over our lives that, embedded in our souls as images, play an important influence on our vision of ourselves and our predisposition towards the world.
At the bottom of the generic interpretations that we have about ourselves are hidden scenes of our life, which are the foundation of our way of being in the world.
After the explanation of our shyness inhabits the image of the Father calling us to show our thanks, after the explanation of our fear the scene of a mother who "reprimands" us for returning crying from the street, after the trial of abandonment the image of waiting endless of the absent Father.
To recover our images for thinking, to have the ability to bring them to the presence, to accept, recreate and challenge them.
In another domain, we have all experienced in our lives the transformative power that a poetry, a scene, a phrase fallen in a conversation or a casual event has over us.
Many events of this type triggered conversations, reflections, decisions, turns in our lives or the opening and closing of possibilities in us.
Ever since Aristotle divided the world into substance and accident, we have endeavored to weave our history together in an essential way and for this we have resorted to prose and causal explanation, thereby covering up the power that chance has had over us.
Heidegger pointed out at the beginning of "Being and Time" that the drama of philosophy was in the loss of meaning. Perhaps part of this is due to the fact that the essential way of interpreting ourselves has ended up discrediting our experience, detaching the interpretations of the events that gave rise to them.
"I wanted to study philosophy because of my permanent concern to understand the ways of relating to reality that cultures present." This valid interpretation forgets and neglects the importance of my philosophy teacher, the reading of Nietzsche and the concrete result I obtained in the Academic Aptitude Test.
My gaze somewhat fearful of the future can be explained as a phenomenon of the unconscious or as a sociological issue; but this covers and despises the silent fear that I professed for years to the secret police taxi of the Military Government that followed my university brother.
To recover for thinking the shaping power of our soul that events have. Interpretations? Yes; however, there are also chance, chance or chance encounters.
During the last years I have experienced the transformative power that exists in traditions of Eastern thought such as the I-Ching, the Tarot or Buddhism.
I am not talking about them from the esoteric esoteric space, and less from the idea that these thoughts are validated to the extent that they are able to predict the future, this is otherwise the temptation to want to compete with science.
I only realize that the poetry of the I-Ching, the Arcana of the Tarot or the Greek myths prepared to think about my future have been a suggestive company.
It is worth noting that these symbolic ways of thinking did not represent for the cultures that created them, an accessory way of thinking, on the contrary they were their way of reflecting and seeing the world.
Recover in thinking all the power that there is in symbolic ways of thinking.
• The recovery of symbolic thinking.
It was the psychologist Carl Jung who revealed the power of symbolic thought in shaping the human soul and cultures.
With scientific rigor he showed us how every culture or historical epoch built certain images that represented the aspiration or the ruin of the soul: The Greek Hero represented in the theater, the Roman Warrior or the Medieval Saint.
It was Campbell who brought us closer to understanding the mythical world as a cyclical time, always characterized by the repetition of moments that shape the soul: The "call" as that divine message that challenges a person or community to take charge of a vital matter, the "belly of the whale" as the painful process of facing all the demons and darkness of the soul and the return, as the moment that returns us to everyday life renewed.
Campbell, a scholar in the field of mythology, showed us how this mythical structure is present in all ancient peoples and even more, how we can observe our great personal processes from the mythical structure.
It was Mircea Eliade who taught us that the profane time of work, transactions, the fair and production is radically different from the sacred time of the rite, of the relationship with the divinity, of the soul and of healing.
The first is fundamentally linear, technical and effective; the second circular, ritual, metaphorical and poetic.
Profane time founds the space of production and the coordination of actions; sacred time the realm of meaning, of the community's contact with divinity, of initiating and ending the cycles of life.
The North American philosopher Ken Wilber identifies the different forces that configure the being of the world: this is how he tells us that matter is taken by physical forces, that biology is taken by the forces of instinct and emotions; that the conscience or mind moves from the force of language and commitment and that the soul is governed by archetypal forces; that is to say, by universal models that configure the soul.
• Archetypes
In its archetypal etymology it derives from the Greek word arjé, which means the principle or fundamental form of something.
For the Greeks, the arche was that which gave substantial form to beings, or if you want, that which is most typical of being.
The question that opens philosophical reflection in Greece (and therefore in the West) is about that fundamental, permanent and transcendent principle of the cosmos. That for the Greeks was the arche.
For the Greek world, there had to be something permanent in things and beings that would make them remain fundamentally the same beyond their permanent changes and transformations: birth, death, accidents.
This fundamental force or principle animated the life of all beings according to the harmonic proportion or dissonance in which it appeared in each one of them.
When Empedocles points out that love / hate is the arche of the universe, he tells us that behind everything real the tension of these emotions is observed.
Love explains the world of friendship, peace, recognition, agreement and all the phenomena that tend to merge the elements. On the contrary, the forces of hatred, explain the distancing, the dispute, the separation of the objects and the distance.
Arjé, refers us to the following meanings:
1.- Fundamental principle that is present in all the beings of the universe.
2.- Transcendent principle, that is, it is beyond the changes or alterations that things and beings undergo in their history.
3.- The different proportion in which the principle is manifested in each being, explains its way of being and becoming.
Following G. Deleuze we can think of the arche as that fundamental force by which beings are taken and which, therefore, are responsible for their configuration or for how they appear and behave in the world.
However, the act of giving meaning (of configuring) is a human act: we human beings give value to things, people and relationships, we are the ones who arrange the world as objects for transformation, use or enjoyment. We are the ones who give the world the value of threat or possibility.
As Martin Heidegger points out, what characterizes human beings is that we have to deal with meaning.
In this way we can point out that it will be the fundamental archetype that governs the configuration of the human soul, the one that ultimately gives value to the world.
Let's put it this way: the world, beings and the self itself are configured from the archetypal force that has taken the soul.
A soul taken by the force of resentment constitutes the self and the world from resistance. Posture, body, emotions and conversations are born from the space of exhaustion of the spirit. The past is viewed as lacking and the future with contempt.
Following the phenomenological tradition, we can argue that resentment is prior to the subject and objects and to reflection. These are constituted from the archetypal force that the soul has taken. The self and the world is a second-order phenomenon with respect to the archetype, reflection (of the self) appears even as a third-generation phenomenon.
• Universal archetypes
A review of different cultures existing in the history of humanity allows us to argue that, beyond their differences, they all have in common the presence of certain archetypes that represent the space of power, action, learning, the invention of possibilities and of affections.
The Mapuche toqui, the Inca or the medieval king share being an archetypal representation of the phenomenon of power. The German warrior, the Roman gladiator represent the world of action, the magician, the alchemist or the healer, are the invention of possibilities, and the teacher, the lover of the affective world.
If we take the Western literary tradition, we can choose four classic representations of the archetypes of the human soul: King, Wizard, Warrior and Lover.
Each of them represents a force or archetype from which our individual or collective being is configured and with it, the world that we bring to hand.
• Description of the Archetypes
The king
The archetype of the King represents the image of justice, right proportion, power and supreme authority.
The sole presence of the King generates an aura of formality and solemnity, his words are powerful as they resolve conflicts, determine actions, give recognition and punishments, entrust tasks.
In medieval paintings the King is the highest figure of all representation, nobody is above him.
In terms of speech acts the King lives, mainly in the world of statements. That is, in those conversations that in the act of being enunciated with power generate new worlds and realities: the investiture of a knight, the condemnation of a guilty, the mercy of forgiveness, the establishment of a new vision or the declaration of values fundamental, belong to the realm of the King.
Deleuze represents the declarative world as the "eye of the storm" because looks in themselves are nothing, however, they represent the center from which all the power of actions and meaning will emerge.
Basically the archetype of the King is linked to the power of the word.
The King is the bearer of sovereignty, in his being the representation of force, justice and ethics are combined.
The King is safeguarded by tradition and is also capable of committing others to his commitments; the King's acts are the acts of the State, hence his power of representation.
In bodily terms the King is linked to the disposition of stability and permanence and his element is the earth.
In the leadership space, the King is linked to the enunciation of the mission and vision of the organizations, the declaration of the values that will constitute their public and private identity, he appears in the courage to state the problems and challenges, to challenge the results, to recognize and give feedback, in short, to set the course.
In mythical terms the King is represented by Zeus, charged with the will to power, the instinct for conquest, possessor of the vision of the future, implacable rationality, administrator of justice, self-sufficient and disciplined.
When in our life or in our culture we try to solve every human relationship or difficulty from the space of power, EL TIRANO appears.
We represent the tyrant with an excessive exercise of power because he has lost his purpose of service, because it is exercised in an arbitrary, discriminatory and abusive way.
While the King instills respect, the tyrant generates fear, while the King generates adherence, the tyrant obedience, where the king produces stability, the tyrant insecurity, where the King generates sense for action, the tyrant simply imposes servitude.
The soul of the tyrant lives in an obsession for control and distrust, his relationship with the world is arrogant and contemptuous, he fears betrayal.
The world divides it into supporters and opponents, all action is measured in calculations of power and convenience. The difference of opinion is experienced as an offense or plot.
Just as the excess of King generates in us abusive relationships with others, his deficit literally turns us into servants of the gleba.
When we are taken by the force of the servant, a weak being appears in us, incapable of resolving conflicts, ordering, deciding, meaningfully reprimanding or recognizing with excellence.
The words of the servant are just that, words powerless to generate worlds, move, align or resolve. Finally their statements are constituted from the objection, resignation or unrealizable expectation.
The world from the servant is simply the events to come, not the one that will be created by the power of the statements.
The absence of King creates a world without meaning, without creative tension, without consequences.
The strength of the servant transforms all sacred, royal, formal or solemn space into a vulgar, stale, gray, monotonous and linear context.
• The warrior
A second archetype that operates as a configuration principle of the personal and collective soul is the Warrior.
The Warrior is one who gives himself entirely to a transcendent cause or action: recovering a sacred place, reestablishing territories, taking care of the limits of the kingdom.
Likewise, you have the ability to persist in your purposes beyond all the risks and difficulties that life presents.
He lives in a state of alertness, of lucidity of his senses, of the impeccability and effectiveness of his movements.
The Warrior is an archetype that refers us to the value of austerity, since he is able to function with what is just, what is strictly necessary. Likewise, he talks about the value of good repute: he lives in the space of commitment, truthfulness and rigor.
We also see in the Warrior archetype the ability to care for others, to sacrifice for their own.
In the world of conversations or acts of speech, the Warrior refers us to requests, promises and offers, on the bodily level to the disposition of resolution, as an element the Warrior is fire, as an emotion ambition.
More linked to the space of the soul, the archetype of the Warrior puts us in contact with the ability to take care of our spaces, to commit ourselves in action with our fundamental purposes, to take care of what we have in charge and, very importantly, to establish the limits of our dignity.
From the archetype of the Warrior, the world is seen as a sequence of actions and results.
In the leadership territory, the Warrior archetype refers us to the design and execution of actions, to the ability to impeccably fulfill commitments and to recurring action and overcoming difficulties.
In the world of Greek mythology, the Warrior is represented by Heracles, a figure of force at the disposal of a purpose and capable of facing the pride of himself and the defense and construction of his ego.
The absence of the archetype of the Warrior configures us as deserters.
That is, as those unable to act accordingly with our statements or unable to establish and defend the limits of our dignity.
The deserter is one who runs away from the breach of his commitments, does not show his face.
Also the one whose speech is lacking in rigor and truthfulness.
In the inner world of the absent Warrior there are conversations of guilt for the permanent violation of his principles and of shame, for the permanent debts he has with his community.
The defector is complacent with himself, sloppy in his doing, fearful of relationships and elusive from conflict.
At the other extreme, the excess of the Warrior configures a soul of mercenaries.
Here all human affairs are experienced as a dispute, a confrontation. Every relationship is founded on tension and pressure.
The mercenary is so concentrated in the exercise of force that he forgets the meaning and purpose of his action; in truth there is no more meaning than to overcome, dominate, impose, subjugate.
For the mercenary, human relationships are only utilitarian to the task, there is no valuable relationship to take care of, there is no bond that is respected, there are no rules of the game to be followed.
Betrayal, infidelity, lies, quarrel, unexpected assault are the basic moves of the excessive warrior.
• The magician
As an archetypal force, the Magician is linked to invention, astonishment, the creation of new possibilities, healing, and contact with ancestral knowledge.
The Magician is capable of finding new ways of solution where reason has run into the impossible. It is capable of re-enchanting and surprising human beings. His power will alter the laws of nature; produces - as an alchemist - encounters between elements that generate supernatural powers.
The Magician is capable of redirecting the forces of evil, of keeping in his memory the secrets of the community and many times of delivering deep knowledge in metaphors that invite reflection.
The Magician lives in the space of the game, human affairs are lived from lightness and possibilities.
In terms of acts of speech, the Magician lives in conversations of possibilities and seduction, of those who redesign the future, invent the new or reconquer meaning.
In bodily terms the Magician lives in the disposition of flexibility and as an element is air.
In the domain of the soul, the Magician allows us to live thrown into the invention of future possibilities, in enthusiasm and in the ability not to take ourselves so seriously.
In the field of leadership, the archetype of the Magician refers us to the capacity for innovation and learning.
In Greek mythology the archetype of the Magician is represented by Hermes, son of Zeus who possesses an intelligence endowed with the gift of divination and intuition, friend of fortune changes, guide of walkers, inhabitant of dreams and signs, father of creativity and messenger of the gods.
The forces of the Magician off-center configure the manipulator and the bureaucrat.
The first puts all his power of seduction, charm and creativity at the service of the mechanical use of others.
As Aristotle would say to the manipulator, the world begins and ends in his interest.
The manipulator tricks others into his stories, he tells stories to themselves by modifying the sequence of events to save his deteriorated public identity, he does not mind damaging others with his words for free, he generates expectations that he is not concerned about formally not fulfilling. He offers what he is not, tells what has not happened, commits himself to what he does not believe.
The manipulator disappoints the soul of his own.
The absent Magician is the faithful reflection of the bureaucratic spirit. He lives in a world without meaning, disenchanted, repetitive, monotonous.
There is nothing but tasks to accomplish, with no horizon or purpose.
In the bureaucrat there is no distinction of days or times, everything is profane space unloaded with significance and relevance.
The bureaucrat has the damned power to transform every challenge into a mere task, every statement into a specific objective, every adventure into a procedure.
Here resigned realism lives, the small voice, envy, jealousy, disbelief.
The bureaucrat lives in the hellish world of routine, there where finally "nothing has happened."
• The lover
The fourth shaping force of the soul is the Lover.
Linked to the world of affections and emotions, this archetype refers us to the ability to welcome others, to empathize with their emotions of joy or sadness.
Literally in the Lover is the ability to merge into the desired object, to give oneself with passion to the loved one.
In the Lover lives the beauty of movements, concern for the environment and contexts, the pleasure of relationships.
It is also the space of art, poetry and careful completion.
The Lover enjoys both the process and the results.
In the Lover appears the care of himself, his body and his presence.
The Lover is not an archetype that only refers us to the space of sexuality. There is a lover in the teacher's relationship with her students, the father with her children, the doctor with her patient, or the mystic in her relationship with God.
At the level of conversations, this archetype refers us both to the ability to listen to others, and to the ability to generate emotional contexts of trust and respect.
In bodily terms it indicates the arrangement of the opening and as an element it is reflected in the water.
At the leadership level, the Lover connects us with the ability to generate contexts for action: trust, commitment, enthusiasm. It also gives us the ability to orient ourselves to the concerns and concerns of those we serve.
In the Greek world the Lover is represented by Iris and Aphrodite, the first responsible for the care of the gods, queen of communication between the divine and the earthly, guardian of harmony and with an intelligence that puts sentiment before reason. The second, representative of passion, beauty and joy.
The excess of a lover makes us possessive, overprotective: we care too much for the other, we try to avoid all suffering, we fear distance and we are finally jealous of relationships.
“Be careful”, “don't go”, “don't do it”, “it's not necessary”, “I'll do it for you”. The excessive Lover generates disability, subsidizes the spirit of the other, generates attachment.
The off-centered Lover sacrifices his self to maintain the relationship, he becomes addicted to affection and dependent on the recognition of the other.
Finally, the Lover chokes.
At the other extreme, the absence of Lover makes us powerless; that is, in being unable to give ourselves to someone or something entirely.
There is always a reserve that allows us not to be there, not to merge with.
The incapacity of fusion of the impotent is presented in a constant inner conversation that judges the world or himself, but which finally prevents him from being confused with his doing, resting from his self, getting lost in the task or the relationship.
The powerless ends in neglecting himself, in the inability to be in the concerns of the other. He does not know how to welcome or listen, he cannot comfort, there is no beauty in his movements, no seduction in his words, only dryness of action.
• As an invitation
What archetype do you inhabit more easily? In what area of your life do you notice excess of Warrior, Lover, King or Magician? Where do you observe a deficit of an archetype…?, What costs are you paying for what difficult situation you are living requires the presence of the Warrior? What relationship can you reinvent by summoning the forces of Mage? What are the powerful declarations of your King? What conflict is prolonged in time due to the absence of a King to end the dispute? What do you do in life with the lover's passion? Where are you playing the game of overprotection and where are you playing the game of manipulation?
In short, just a few questions to provoke and to remember that the value of archetypal thought is in its power to observe and transform us.
Download the original file
