The Fifth Archetype
Jan. 2nd, 2006 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosTallman's Archetypes for Spiritual Direction continues to resonate with me and inform my daily choices as I pause to reflect on whether I am acting from a healthy/heroic energy or a Shadow, particularly in the area of the Sovereign and the Abdicator shadow, as it relates to my hearthkeeping.
I continue to play with my perceptions of the archetypes, listing my heroes and heroines in a matrix and checking off which archetypes they model.
The problem was that for several of them, there was something missing. For example, Veronica Franco (as portrayed by Catherine McCormack in the movie Dangerous Beauty -- that's her in the icon on this post) -- is a highly educated courtesan, definitely a Lover. But she's more than that. She takes a stand against her society's treatment of women, and the Church's repression of human sexuality. But it didn't feel right to label her a Warrior. She displayed some of the traits which I associate with the Warrior, but it didn't fit her energy.
After a lot of contemplation, and after looking at the mandala I had been slowly putting together, where I had placed Inanna at the center, I realized that what was missing for me was the Rebel. As Veronica demonstrates, the Rebel has traits in common with the Warrior: a willingness to confront, to resist, to be willing to die for something greater than self. But for me part of the Rebel is simply about being able to see outside the frame, to resist the dominant paradigm, to say "there is another way." I suppose Tallman would call the Rebel a combination of the Seer and the Warrior: one who sees another way and then goes to the mat in the name of those convictions (again, Gandhi comes to mind), but for me, this particular energy/orientation calls for it's own category.
The reason is that over the past couple of years I've come to finally realize that although I have expended a tremendous amount of energy since childhood in fitting in with the status quo, I have always had big parts of myself, my ideas, my creative expressions which I felt I had to conceal. I've started to let these out, at seminary, on LJ, in my personal life -- and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. But I still find myself reluctant to voice things that I perceive as being contrary to -- or potentially threatening to -- what I perceive as "ordinary society."
As I observed to a friend recently, being raised in a way that conflated God, social authority, and parental authority, it was very hard to own my own questions or alternative perspectives. Growing up in that environment, I equated questioning with sin, and alternatives with heresy. (I should hasten to add that as I look back I think I did the authorities around me a disservice with those fears. I think I would have been met with far more understanding and respect than I expected in my childish absolutism.)
To continue my growth, to expand into my vocation, to do the writing and teaching I feel called to do, I have to embrace the part of me that so frequently says, "But what about. . . ?" And which is unapologetic about the choices I have made that put me outside the realm of traditional faith, or relationships, or anything else. I have to own my essential Rebel nature.
I continue to play with my perceptions of the archetypes, listing my heroes and heroines in a matrix and checking off which archetypes they model.
The problem was that for several of them, there was something missing. For example, Veronica Franco (as portrayed by Catherine McCormack in the movie Dangerous Beauty -- that's her in the icon on this post) -- is a highly educated courtesan, definitely a Lover. But she's more than that. She takes a stand against her society's treatment of women, and the Church's repression of human sexuality. But it didn't feel right to label her a Warrior. She displayed some of the traits which I associate with the Warrior, but it didn't fit her energy.
After a lot of contemplation, and after looking at the mandala I had been slowly putting together, where I had placed Inanna at the center, I realized that what was missing for me was the Rebel. As Veronica demonstrates, the Rebel has traits in common with the Warrior: a willingness to confront, to resist, to be willing to die for something greater than self. But for me part of the Rebel is simply about being able to see outside the frame, to resist the dominant paradigm, to say "there is another way." I suppose Tallman would call the Rebel a combination of the Seer and the Warrior: one who sees another way and then goes to the mat in the name of those convictions (again, Gandhi comes to mind), but for me, this particular energy/orientation calls for it's own category.
The reason is that over the past couple of years I've come to finally realize that although I have expended a tremendous amount of energy since childhood in fitting in with the status quo, I have always had big parts of myself, my ideas, my creative expressions which I felt I had to conceal. I've started to let these out, at seminary, on LJ, in my personal life -- and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. But I still find myself reluctant to voice things that I perceive as being contrary to -- or potentially threatening to -- what I perceive as "ordinary society."
As I observed to a friend recently, being raised in a way that conflated God, social authority, and parental authority, it was very hard to own my own questions or alternative perspectives. Growing up in that environment, I equated questioning with sin, and alternatives with heresy. (I should hasten to add that as I look back I think I did the authorities around me a disservice with those fears. I think I would have been met with far more understanding and respect than I expected in my childish absolutism.)
To continue my growth, to expand into my vocation, to do the writing and teaching I feel called to do, I have to embrace the part of me that so frequently says, "But what about. . . ?" And which is unapologetic about the choices I have made that put me outside the realm of traditional faith, or relationships, or anything else. I have to own my essential Rebel nature.
