Imagine for a moment that you found a magical pair of glasses that, when you put them on, allowed you to see yourself and your life in powerful new ways.
To spot and embrace your fullest potentials. To identify and sidestep the traps that have previously hung you up. To see beneath the surface of life to the meaning and magic that’s been present all along.
This is the rich potential of archetypes.
Carl Jung described archetypes as deep, inherited, universal patterns in the human psyche that shape how we understand and engage with the world. They show up all over the place — in myths, literature, art, and movies, and also in our own dreams and personal narratives — although we might not consciously name them as such.
I like to think of them as lenses that shape how we see things, just like that magical pair of glasses. And of course, how we see things then dictates how we respond.
Very often archetypes are personas — such as the Mother, the Warrior, the Wise Woman, and the Trickster — but they can also come in other forms, such as places, tools, and story motifs.
Even those magical glasses themselves are a kind of archetype.
When we engage consciously with archetypes, it allows us to better understand the ways we’ve been seeing and to identify alternative perspectives that open up new possibilities for us.
And this month inside Joybook, that’s exactly what we’ll be doing. I invite you to join me for our explorations around this rich new theme.
Explore This Theme Inside Joybook
New this month…
- Journaling Series — Archetypes & Imagery
- Learning/Journaling — The Hero Within
- Quick Prompts — Archetypes Quick Prompts
- Forums — “Wild Unknown” Archetypes Cards & Guidebook by Kim Krans
- Forums — “The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By” by Carol Pearson
From the archives…
- Previous Themes — Journeys, Home, Shadow, and Imagery & Metaphor
- Journaling Series — Befriending Your Shadow
- Journaling Series — The Power of Life Metaphors
- Journaling — Your Alter Ego
- Journaling — Risking Failure
- Workshop — What’s Running You?
- Or you might also consider exploring other content from our Joybook content library with tags on topics such as archetypes, stories, imagery, metaphor, identity, psychology, etc.