The Magician Archetype
The Magician within you is your internal problem solver, your creative power. He is the one who finds answers to problems and works out how the needs of the Kingdom may be fulfilled. He is the one who kept you safe when you were a child, and he may continue to work as your safeguarder and protector even when you are an adult.
Many names have been used for the Magician archetype including the Witch, the Wizard, and a whole lot of other things – Wise Woman, Mystic, Sage, and so on. They all come down to the same thing: the Magician’s main motivation is problem solving and coming up with solutions. This is an archetype concerned with thinking in all its forms – rational thinking, logical thinking, and creative thinking.
This is also the archetype which serves the Sovereign as an adviser or counsellor. The Magician finds solutions to problems and creates ways around difficulties; he likes an intellectual challenge. It’s an archetype that’s abundantly present in the world today, particularly in the world of hi-tech industry and technological development.
As we shall see there are both advantages and disadvantages to the abundance of Magician energy in the world today: in some ways it helps us but in other ways it can be quite destructive. This is because Magicians aren’t so much concerned with the emotional consequences of their actions as simply meeting the challenges presented to them. The Magician is, in short, a Transformer. He can take one thing and make it into something new, something different.
Video – the Magician or Transformer Archetype – Marianne Hill
The Magician is also the part of us which comes up with strategies to keep us safe when we’re children. For kids who are raised in less than perfect environments or in downright abusive environments, the part of the Magician we call the Safety Officer is vital: he creates strategies which keep the child as safe as possible even in circumstances that can’t really be controlled.
One of the challenges we all face in life, though, is that the Safety Officer continues to play out those strategies for the rest of our lives, even when the need for them has long since passed. This can be unhelpful and limiting. (read ore about archetypes and shadow work in Rod Boothroyd’s book Warrior Magician Lover King: A Guide to the Male Archetypes Updated for the 21st Century.
The Lover Archetype
The Lover is all about the glorious experience of deep emotional connection to another human being – as well as the world beyond another person.. He cares not one whit for boundaries; for him, life is all about unity, connection, flow, and of course finding ways to express those qualities. He values sensuous experience over anything else.
You may think of sex and romantic love when we refer to the Lover archetype but that isn’t really what the Lover is all about. The archetypal energy of the Lover is much more primal than the expression of sexuality: it’s about establishing connection with other human beings. We are social animals, and when we don’t have the opportunity to meet others and connect with them on a social level we may descend into mental disorder and even madness. You see this in prisoners who are kept in solitary confinement.
The Lover is a primal archetype, probably the first one to appear after birth. Our first and most urgent need as a helpless baby is to bond with mother. Our very survival depends on it. Our Lover archetype helps us to do this: it’s programmed to connect with other people from the moment we appear in the world. In fact, the power of this drive is immense, yet it’s not consciously felt by most people even though it controls much of what we do and how we are in the world as adults.
And because so much of this energy is based in the body, an alternative name for this archetype is the Feeling Body.
Video – The Feeling Body – Marianne Hill
One of the unavoidable problems with such a powerful urge to bond is that it can never be fully satisfied – in fact it’s impossible for any child to have all of his or her needs met perfectly. That would require a perfect parent, and as far as I’m aware there’s no such thing. So every one of us is inevitably hurt or wounded to some extent in our Lover archetype.
Unfortunately many children are born into an environment where their needs are barely acknowledged, let alone adequately met. Their lives are subsequently blighted by the pain of connections never made, or made and broken. We’ll see how this can affect a person’s entire life later in the book. Addictions, dependency and neediness are some of the most common outcomes of emotional wounds in this archetype.
The Nature Of Emotional Wounds
Obviously we do not all have equal amounts of Sovereign, Magician, Lover and Warrior energy. This is because what happens to each of us during childhood influences the growth of the archetypes within us in a very individual way.
In an ideal world all these archetypal energies would find a fully mature and balanced expression in each of us so we could all achieve our full potential. In reality we are all emotionally hurt or “wounded” in various ways during childhood, and this wounding can inhibit or transform the way an archetypal energy is expressed later in life.
The good news is that our emotional wounds can be a catalyst for change. They can lead us to seek guidance from counsellors, therapists, and other Magicians who work in the healing arts. Shadow work coaches are some of the Magicians who fit into this category! Working with your emotional wounds (if you prefer, “healing” them) means you can more fully express your innate potential and become more of the person you were always meant to be. In fact, working with your archetypes can be a fast and effective way to discover how to express every aspect of yourself in a healthy, confident, powerful and uninhibited way.