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The Archetypal Evolution of Masculinity

A window into the male path

By Insinq DatumPublished 2 years ago 20 min read
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The Archetypal Evolution of Masculinity
Photo by Kitera Dent on Unsplash

There are two archetypal patterns, polar opposites, which comprise the existential experience of human beings collectively. These are the light pattern and the shadow pattern, alternatively recognisable as a progressive attitude which tends towards the elevation of consciousness vs. a regressive attitude characterised by the sporadic and compulsive manifestation of the unconscious.

Naturally, these general notions of light patterns and shadow patterns are embodied differently by masculine psychology than by feminine psychology, and this article is a preliminary attempt to sketch out the contours of just such an imaginative space. Significantly, the outlined schema is quite black-and-white however in practice these two paths are intertwined with one another at every level of analysis. The higher peaks of the light archetype require the integration of the relevant aspects of the shadow if one wishes to reach them, and similarly the higher levels of the shadow require the collaboration of one’s light archetype.

To be clear:

The shadow pattern is a corruption of the light pattern and involves repurposing the hard-won skills and virtues garnered through the continual and progressive elevation of one’s light archetype. Consequently, if one is dominated by the shadow prior to achieving spiritual evolution, their shadow is thereby limited by the powers then possessed by the light. In other words, the shadow — when permitted to dominate the individual — keeps the individual down, and therefore one can never reach the bottom-most depths of depravity which are ultimately possible unless they are willing and able to struggle against their nature to begin with, to grow and to learn and to elevate the pattern that they inhabit towards the heavens above. For it is through this very same elevation of one’s pattern that the shadow receives its many blessings: unappreciated aspects of the light.

It is important to grasp this point, as it helps to explain why each level of the shadow archetype corresponds to the corruption of the light idea at the peak of its power. It is because the shadow is capable of assimilating the nascent potency of the light archetype that this usurping of position is possible, because the transformative elevation — the level up — results in the removal of previously concrete limitations. This, in turn, makes accessible vistas of power and control which one has never had cause to learn to resist, and it is precisely at this moment that those elements of one’s own nature which one has failed to recognise, honour and integrate make themselves manifest. Slowly but surely, the corruption takes root and before you know it, you’ve fallen from grace.

In order to clarify how this can be possible, it will be necessary to move from the abstract into the concrete. What follows is an imaginative projection regarding the archetypes as they manifest themselves to my mind, and they may be different for you. If they are, I would love to know what changes you would make to my schema and why. If, on the other hand, you resonate with what I’ve laid out, I’d love to know that too! This is a piece of conjecture, to be sure, but it is one which my intuitive abilities affirm absolutely. I wonder what you think of it?

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Level One — Light: The Seeker

The first level of the light archetype for a male is the idea of a seeker, and it is exactly what is depicted in the image of Harry Potter searching for the golden snitch, that elusive winged golden ball. It is the seeker of Truth, the seeker of knowledge, of secret things and above all it is the one who seeks the truth that has been forgotten, hidden or denied. It is the curious soul who asks questions, who has integrity in his investigation, and who is dedicated to finding his answer. Moreover, it is the individual who is willing to speak Truth, as Harry demonstrates in his proclivity to speak Voldemort’s name aloud — in this detail, Rowling tells us something about the archetypal hero: he is the seeker and the speaker of Truth.

The seeker is the ideal problem solver, the strategist and thinker who is best situated to adapt to any given emergent situation, the brave individual who is willing to go on ahead and alone in life. The seeker is one who has gone into the dark forest of their unconscious and recovered the holy grail, that explorer who discovered the spring of eternal life and drank from its waters only to find himself rejuvenated and transformed. The seeker is the individual who is able to discover the secrets that Nature, in her wisdom, has kept hidden, like the fire which was the primordial symbol of our dominance over the world. The seeker is the original fire-bearer, the sole recipient of a sacred revelation and the selfless herald of a systematic revolution. ‘Such secrets only sages know’; only one whose very nature is to search could ever uncover the mysterious roots of the tree of life.

This is the individual who knows where to look, who looks, and who finds. Consequently it is the individual who has the capacity to bring a new era to pass.

“The wisdom is only hidden from one who thinks they are above the search.”

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Level One — Shadow: The Lightbringer (AKA The Kingslayer)

An individual such as the one described above is one who not only seeks, but finds, and who is therefore capable of bringing light to a situation obscured by ignorance. This can be the catalyst for a cascade of changes which results in a new social order dictated by the revelation of a new understanding, and which must largely rely for direction in its unfolding upon the individual who conceived of it to begin with. In order for the dominoes to begin to fall, however, the individual in question must have serious ambitions and wish to reap the immediate rewards of his hard work as a seeker. More importantly, he must be willing to suspend that role in order to facilitate his movement upwards through the social strata until finally he has a chance to challenge the dominant value.

In some cases, this may mean that, in order to implement his vision, he must seize control — this is epitomised in the notion of a kingslayer. The only way to seize control is to destroy the dominant authority, the ruling idea, and consequently there is a tremendous temptation for the seeker to lose himself in the conquest of a kingdom which he thinks he wants a lot more than he really does. Once in control, he will miss the way his life used to be — back when he was following his destiny — but he will not be willing to relinquish the position he has achieved because it guarantees the longevity and power of his ideas.

The true problem with this abandonment of the path of the seeker for the false and unearned position of a king is that the people will quickly see through any amount of posturing once one’s rightful reign has ended; the crowd has a keen sense of smell for identifying when one’s ideas have become stale. In this case, discontent with the state of tyranny will slowly begin to grow until another lightbringer arises, another kingslayer to repeat the cycle. There is always a new revelation, a new challenger, and a seeker who has abandoned his path to become a lightbringer will have to answer to the next one that comes along.

The lightbringer is the next big thing, but only for a day. Once the sun has set on him, it isn’t guaranteed to rise again. Instead, another sun may rise in its place.

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Level Two — Light: The Magus/The Magician

The Magus is the student of the universe, and he has a choice between two paths: the tradition of the sun, and the tradition of the moon. The tradition of the sun is rational and intellectual, conscious and visible, involves seeing and dissecting into parts and culminates in achieving understanding through analysis of those parts. It is the realm of science and signposts, form and formulae, rules and reality as such. The tradition of the moon, on the other hand, is the domain of the intuitive and the unconscious, the magical and hidden workings of the mind. It is the realm of the psychic and the paranormal, a place of chaos, birth, death and rebirth. It involves learning from the whole, from the round of the seasons, from the passage through time and the cycles which accompany that passage. These two paths, though they diverge, both depart from and arrive at the same place, yet they may reveal different secrets. Whichever path is chosen, he shall have to walk both in the end, for the coincidentia oppositorum cannot be avoided.

The magus is the individual who dedicates himself to understanding the arcane secrets and inner workings of nature, no matter the cost. This is the seeker par excellence, the man who not only seeks to understand all phenomena but who actually achieves a level of insight which permits him unparalleled control over his natural environment. This is the ideal student, the favourite protege of the creator himself, diligently studying himself and his world in order that he might learn to see the many subtle connections among all things. The magus understands that the world has a fractal order just as he understand the maxim “as above, so below”. Possessing more than a merely intellectual comprehension however, the magus embodies his understanding, that is, he is a manifestation of the eternal teaching. One might even say that such a man is blessed by God.

To the degree that the magus embodies his understanding, he gains control over both the whole universe and his own soul. He gains the capacity to manipulate the most subtle among the vibrations of the universe and to reach through the realms of imagination in order to influence the continual unfolding of all things. He is able to utilise all the latent powers of the mind which man has foolishly, throughout modern history, neglected and ridiculed, because the magus understands that his mind and the universe are of a piece, and pervade one another in ways he cannot even imagine. In this regard, the magus is unique because he alone has respect for the degree to which the boundaries of his world are set by the boundaries of his language, and he refuses to box the universe up within his mind. He refuses, in other words, to limit Reality as such to what he thinks might be possible.

This is the man who listens to the winds and summons the rains, and this is the man on whom the tribe must rely when the world bids them to listen closely.

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Level Two — Shadow: The Master

The Magus who has excelled in the study of his craft risks becoming, in every respect, a Master. Ordinarily, this is a positive notion associated with a maximal level of skill at a certain endeavour, however in this usage it is meant to highlight the intention of being the master of the universe, that is, being in total control of everything that ever happens — or rather, trying to be. This pernicious idea arises quite directly out of the ever-increasing scope of control which becomes available to the aspiring magician as his powers are magnified by his spiritual evolution as much as by his dutiful study of the natural world and the soul of man. As this man gains the capacity to control more and more of the world, the undercurrent in his soul which is served by such unfettered manipulation is intensified by the sudden vistas of possibility. Once he realises that he could, at a wave of his hand, realise his dreams, he wonders ‘why shouldn’t I?’

This notion of changing things at a whim is extremely intoxicating to the budding mage, and it beckons to him in his darkest moments throughout his journey to meet with the soul of the world. He reasons that God must have given him these abilities for a reason, and produces complex fantasies where he is the king of the world, loved by all — a just ruler, divinely chosen. Of course, this struggle within his soul continues throughout his magical development and the moment the shadow wins, his progression stops. From this point on, his magic begins to fester; the more conscious he is of his stagnation, the more he strives for control over his world and the more he will try to bend other souls to his wanton will.

This is the truly horrifying part of the degeneration of the mage: he becomes a puppet-master, obsessed with power of all different kinds and willing to use any means necessary to obtain it. This is reminiscent of the Nazi scientists, who reasoned that knowledge was worth any cost. As the ancient saying goes, ‘scientia est potencia’ — knowledge is power. At bottom, this was an attempt to further man’s domination of nature, which could at times be called his rape of nature, and the souls of men were sacrificed as collateral in this ‘noble’ quest.

Often the master will be enchanting and magnetic, and one will feel that they have no choice but to do as he wishes. Such an individual is more than merely domineering: it is as if his will has possessed you, and you do as he bids. This might be taken as hyperbole, but it is not. It is as if manipulation were magnified by magic such that his manner is hypnotic and his words will bewitch you. Of course, in so attempting to control the entire world he does not realise that he is robbing himself of the very power he cherishes: he is nullifying the magic of life.

In striving for control over his universe, he alienates himself from it, and thereby loses any control he once had. The more control he loses, the harder he strives. One day, he finds himself alone and powerless to stop what is coming for him.

The Master is the man who seeks to bend the whole world to his will only to find that the magic has gone from his world, and he hasn’t the faintest idea why.

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Level Three — Light: The Avatar

The Avatar is the face of the world, the spirit of God incarnate in man. This is the prophet, the king, the law, the saviour. This is the master of all four elements, the universal man who has completed his partial mind. This is the individual who is walking The Path, who is in tune with the Tao, and who therefore manifests The Way. The avatar is the hand of God who perfectly plays his part in the divine drama of humanity on Earth; it is he who speaks for the elements and who has communion with the soul of the world. As in the popular TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender, the avatar is the link between the human world and the spirit world.

In certain moments, the avatar can find himself possessed by the soul of the world, and in these moments he becomes Logos, the agent of The Word, that speaker of Truth who brings the world forth out of chaos. The Avatar is the equivalent of the pharaoh of Egypt, who was thought to embody the spirits of Horus and Osiris. He is the manifestation of the divine capacity in human form, and this means he has the power to change the world, remaking it as he sees fit. Of course, as Spiderman would remind us, with great power comes great responsibility; he is charged with the duty of mediating between chaos and order quite directly, and at a level of intimacy and intensity that few of us can truly appreciate. In these moments, he remakes the world, and he must take extraordinary care that he is not influenced by personal desires and thoughts. If he is, then he can warp the fabric of reality through his deliberate interference.

In other words, it is his unique responsibility to ensure that his inner song remains a pure reflection of the outer harmony of existence itself, and to maintain this state of affairs requires the utmost in mindful and attentive focus. This is why the avatar must be the complete universal man, the polymath who specialises in everything and who can control every element: he must be well rounded in order that any noise generated by his framework, be it intellectual (the element of air) or emotional (the element of water), may be successfully manipulated by his expertise and inner equanimity and consequently transformed from noise into something approximating an echo of harmony.

In this, it is important to emphasise the element of internal tranquility, the peace of mind which is crucial to the proper manifestation of the pattern of the avatar. Unless the man who has the avatar spirit is able to successfully quell the inner rumblings of his own nature, the little snags which upset our mental balance and frustrate our concerted attempts to maintain our composure, its manifestation will only result in the destruction of those around him. As again we see in The Last Airbender, when Aang enters ‘the avatar state’ it is quite often defensive and can have incredibly destructive consequences. If the man with the avatar spirit cannot maintain his peace of mind, he cannot truly be the bridge he is meant to be between the spirit world and the human world, and consequently he would manifest these powers intermittently, if at all. For the entire purpose of this complete control is that he is able to manifest the will of the soul of the world.

The Avatar is the hand of God, the agent of The Word, the manifestation of The Will, and the incarnate Soul of the World. He is the persistent link between the spiritual plane and the material plane, ‘the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape’. The avatar is the changeless yet always shifting face of Being: The Universal Man par excellence. He dances with the flame of existence, slowly going with the flow, and he lives perpetually in the light of the present moment.

The Avatar is the timeless force of Destiny, the man who manifests ‘amor fati’.

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Level Three — Shadow: The Old King

And at last, we have reached the end of the road with The Old King. Here we find the spirit of the avatar corrupted by the passage of time, as the principles and rules which guided the avatar in his youth have been allowed to ossify. Why have they been so allowed, one might ask? Well, The Old King is an immortal who earned his position through his profound vision, however as time passed he grew quite satisfied with the great kingdom that he had built and over which he presided. So proud did he become in fact that when the world demanded that he grow and change, he used his position and power to silence what signs he could, and he steadfastly ignored the rest. In short, he became more rigid as he aged.

When the whisperings of a new kingslayer naturally began, as the soul of the world sought to balance the scales and rejuvenate the kingdom, The Old King intensified his control over his domains and employed his unparalleled powers, both sociopolitical and magical, to fortify his realm. Rather than recognise this happening as an indication of Nature’s intention to set things back on course, his intentional blindness encourages his utilisation of the rumour to rationalise the crystallisation of his role as a tyrant. In his mind, he is merely an accidental tyrant, though nonetheless absolute for that fact, because the intensification of his grip on the people was only a response to the latent threat against his life.

With each opportunity that the world gives him to allow the order of things to re-establish itself, The Old King is persistently and purposefully blind to the signs which indicate his inevitable demise; unconscious of them though he may indeed be, his predicament is not as accidental as it seems, and he possessed more than enough insight in his day to see that he is caught in a self-feeding cycle, like the snake that eats its own tail. Being eternal, he seeks to consolidate his power and expand his control over the entire conceivable domain in order to quash any potential threats. His paranoia increases and his willingness to do absolutely anything to preserve his legacy increases proportionately. He knows, on some level, that he is turning away from God, that he has betrayed all that he used to be, but feels that it is really God and the world which has betrayed him. He cannot comprehend his own role in designing his personalized slice of hell.

As time passes, The Old King begins to go quite mad. What this means is that his thinking becomes wild; he is not irrational, nor does he fail to perceive anything that one could attempt to slip by him. Rather, he has ceased to think rather like a man and has instead become a wild animal, claiming and controlling territory and ensuring its longevity. It is not any higher purpose which guides him, and certainly not the harmonic resonance of synchronistic consciousness, but rather the basic needs of any animal: safety, security, territory, dominance and control. He feels that he must be in control of everything, but has no sense of self-control, and his thinking increasingly diverges from anything recognisable to his former self. The longer that he remains disconnected from the soul of the world, the more twisted his soul becomes by the distance it has travelled from its place.

Whatever the ending to this degenerative spiral is, I’m sure that I do not have it in me to imagine what that might be. Certainly, it is something which has a significant potential of verging on the inhuman and the inhumane, and which could even reach the catastrophic and cataclysmic. Most importantly of all, however, is the recognition that The Old King, being wilfully blind to the signs as he is, is incapable of adaptation, growth and change in the face of new obstacles. Consequently, as the world transforms throughout the generations, The Old King cannot help but continually impose an archaic frame on a world which has transcended his experience and his expertise, and his insistence on maintaining his iron-grip on the society becomes more and more detrimental to the people under his rule. What inevitably happens is that he creates the world of his nightmares, where there is a kingslayer around every corner and his guards can be bought for a couple of pints and some kind words.

In other words, his paranoia is increasingly justified and his kingdom crumbles around him whether he is alive or dead. Perhaps he emerges from the rubble, perhaps he does not. He is not even sure that he knows why he’s doing this anymore, but he feels driven by a force more powerful than he. It’s similar to the way he used to feel when he was possessed by the Soul of the World, but somehow more bleak, desperate and lonely. He knows that he is in hell, but he cannot figure out who put him there or why. After all, in his world, he’s the only god there is. But why, he wonders hopelessly, would god create his own hell?

Obviously, someone must have put him here. The only question is how to find that someone and how to make them regret they’d ever been born. And remember, it could be anyone, especially those people who are closest to you…

The Old King is the archetypal tyrant, the absolute dictator who is wilfully blind to the reality of his effect on the world. He is the hand of a corrupt and cruel God, who he increasingly identifies with the man in the mirror.

The Old King is the face of the corruption of Being itself, the snake in the garden.

He is Death incarnate.

humanity
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About the Creator

Insinq Datum

I'm an aspiring poet, author and philosopher. I run a 5000+ debating community on Discord and a couple of Youtube channels, one related to the Discord server and one related to my work as a philosopher. I am also the author of DMTheory.

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