By Eivind Skjellum
A Brief Introduction to the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
As any man with life experience knows, life is a constant struggle wherein the desired goal is our attainment of inner peace as well as the ability to give and receive love fearlessly. On this journey of discovery and growth, there are many forces within us that battle for attention. Our personality is not a single entity with one homogenous voice as much as it is a variety of different voices that battle for dominance. Sometimes unfamiliar voices may shock or delight, and sometimes worn out voices may become so irritating, so jarring, so profoundly removed from what we want to hear, that we come to hate ourselves.
One of the most important types of work we can can do in our growth into maturity is to identify and befriend these voices, so that they find and relax into their rightful place in what becomes an increasingly integrated psyche. Maybe we must tune some voices down, others a little up. Maybe we must make the baritone into a soprano, the bass into a tenor. Whatever voices are within us, our primary mission in life is to conduct them from being a cacophony to being a beautiful and powerful choir. Such important work requires a powerful framework, a model for teaching, learning, and living. That is why we will now dive into the deep waters of the archetypes known as King, Warrior, Magician, Lover (KWML).
Jung did very important, revolutionary work on the archetypes and the collective unconscious. In his work he speaks of the anima, the feminine within the man, and the animus, the masculine within the woman. He further expounds that the anima and animus have four stages of development. And while these stages probably warrant an article unto themselves, Jung is merely mentioned in this context as a facilitator for the discovery of the KWML archetypes. Jung described four stages in his model, from immature to mature: Eve/Adam, Helen/Planner, Mary/Professor, Sophia/Guide as stages of an evolutionary path whereby the last stage is more evolved then the first. The KWML-model, on the other hand, attributes equal importance to all archetypes, claiming no superiority of one over another*.
This essay is based on the work of Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette in their book, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine.
The rest of the article may be found here
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