19 Nov MAGICIAN – The Archetype of The Mind
The Idea of a Magician within ourselves may conjure up a number of different internal conscious and subconscious reactions for us as men depending on the ideas we have subscribed too or internalised throughout our lives. However, The Magician simply refers to The Mind. A mind, we should be aware however, which is more than capable of producing Magic.Â
In order to lead your life with intention, self knowledge and emotional intelligence, an awareness of the archetypes as they relate to ‘parts’ of our personality gives us an illuminating framework where we can literally go through a checklist with each archetype and ascertain from each archetype the current condition of their mental/emotional posture.Â
Like gauges on the dashboard of your mind, reading the position of the needle on each archetype will show if your Heart, your Mind, your Soul and your Strength are operating in shadow or from the balanced true-north of your purpose and transcendent possibilities.
These concepts of shadow and archetypal parts of ourselves are deduced from Jungian Psychology. They have been developed in the men’s work movement specifically by helpful books like King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Douglas Gillette and Robert Moore who are jungian psychologists and Warrior, Magician, Lover and King Updated for the 21st Century by Rod Boothroyd who is a shadow work facilitator, therapist and Men’s coach.Â
I first came across these concepts when I began to read books related to male psychology on my own journey seeking for answers to the conundrums which I faced seeking to make it through life as a man and was further initiated into their practical application when I discovered Rod’s book at a critical transitional point in my journey when the wheels of my bus fell off and I was confronted with the necessity to re-evaluate everything about my life.
What these concepts did for me as I began to internalise an understanding of them and how they applied to me was to give me the ability to see that in childhood I had accrued wounds in each archetype which my ‘mind’ – My Magician had implemented patterns of behaviour to prevent recurring.Â
However, these patterns I came to understand were essentially survival responses to perceived threats, many of which were no longer relevant to my current station in life. Meaning I had an emotional trauma response to events which occurred in my childhood which I was responding to even as an adult male with more power and agency than the immature infantile me of childhood. Therefore, life was asking from me a more mature, considered and intentional response. But because of the lack of acknowledgement of the initial wound, I was living with unaddressed issues in my life, I had essentially put a band aid on top of a gaping rupture and as a result I was leaking all over the place.Â
As people we carry these unresolved issues until they are addressed and resolved and as a result we leak. We leak energy, we leak toxicity, we leak dysfunctional behaviour and we make choices and decisions which in a more healed and resourceful space we likely would have avoided. Because of this we find ourselves in spaces in life and wonder how we got here, we show up in our work and relationships suboptimally, meaning we are not able to realise our full potential or what is really possible for us. And most of the time although we may have an intimation that something back there far removed from our conscious memory still hurts, it does not seem to have any relevance to our life’s current situation.Â
The Mind whether as a result of evolutionary psychology or some other observable phenomena is by its nature skewed toward our survival, and let’s be honest, this is not a bad thing. This for many of us is the reason that we are alive and able to read this article right now. However, although this is the case, the potentialities inherent in the mind far exceed the agenda of survival, and when you consider that our brains are literally a portal which through our minds is able to access dimensions beyond the physical dimension and initiate us into the world of the Spiritual and connect our Minds with the universal Mind – to waste this powerful resource is surely to our detriment.Â
The Mind whether as a result of evolutionary psychology or some other observable phenomena is by its nature skewed toward our survival, and let’s be honest, this is not a bad thing. This for many of us is the reason that we are alive and able to read this article right now. However, although this is the case, the potentialities inherent in the mind far exceed the Bodies agenda of survival, and when you consider that our brains are literally a portal which through our mind is able to access dimensions beyond the physical dimension and initiate us into the world of the Spiritual and connect our minds with the Universal Mind – to waste this powerful resource is surely to our detriment.Â
But we live in a wasteful society, and in this world, we are not often taught the value of things, really. So if we are not paying attention, critical things get missed and life goes on and we find ourselves still wondering why the patterns are not evolving and why the ‘same -old, same-old’ keeps occurring in our lives.Â
Well some of these patterns like I said are survival patterns. You may be aware that the central emotion to access the archetype of the Magician is fear. If you want to get your mind racing, you simply need to think of something which scares you. But as you observe your mind in the fear-state, and for most of us, all we have to do is remember the last time we were in a hairy situation, – be clear, I’m not asking you to literally go back there in your mind (I don’t want to trigger any past trauma’s). But you may be able to remember that your thoughts are quite scatty and disjointed when in the fear-state, and there is little coherence and you may be quick to jump at any apparent solutions that present themselves to alleviate the fear you are experiencing.Â
When the fight or flight response gets triggered in response to fear or anxiety later on, in a more sober moment of reflection and hindsight, you may consider that you’d have rather chosen to resolve the situation differently. But in the moment of crisis, if we are not prepared, we do not recognise all the resources which are at our disposal, and if we have not been able to establish a baseline of harmoniousness within our internal landscape, we may find ourselves reacting rather than responding and behaving in a way we may later regret.
To illustrate from my own personal experience, the wound in my Magician archetype came from an event in my first year at school at four or five years old. I spent the first years of my life in the north of England where as a mixed race person I experienced considerable bullying and prejudice from the other children at school. However, the wound occurred when the racism and prejudice extended to the teacher of my class. As fate would have it I was set to leave this school as our family was moving across town. Therefore, in my last week attending this hell on earth, at the beginning of the week the teacher announced to the class that I was leaving which resulted in the whole class erupting into celebration. Children were jumping on their desks and making an almighty uproar. To my amazement, this teacher, who was quite strict, rather than rebuking the children, let this continue for quite a while. And to my horror, the teacher, repeated the same action every day for the rest of the week, and on the last day my one friend realising he would be left with this rabble on his own joined in, causing my heart to drop so far through the floor, I cannot even put the emotion into words.Â
To say I was afraid though is an understatement. What I realised when I began the process of my healing journey is that I had internalised a deep distrust and fear of authority. A fear which coupled with a conflict aversion and compliant, overly agreeable nature, rather than causing me to outwardly rebel caused me to bury my true thoughts and feelings and simply go along-to, get-along. The survival method my Magician chose to enable my personality to get through life was the path of least resistance.Â
You’d be right if you guessed that this strategy was a recipe to cultivate an immense amount of internal frustration, – of that you can be sure. The amount of anger, and internal rage is hard to express in English. However, unacknowledged, unconfronted and unresolved this wound remained embedded in my life expressing itself in behaviours, responses and decisions for many years to come.Â
Even in marriage when my wife became a sort of authority figure if she felt she needed to correct me for something, particularly as I had placed her as a sort of mother figure in my life, the psychology of this dynamic we’ll discuss in other articles, but needless to say it caused me once more to follow the patterns of survival rather than challenge them or interrupt them, at this stage I neither had the insight or wherewithal to accomplish such a feat. Therefore, the rage continued to be internalised and as we looked at as we explored The Warrior, the shadows of The Warrior, are either to become a rageful aggressor, or a passive aggressor. More often than not, my frustration expressed itself in passive aggression. Although occasionally, it leaked out as utter rage which always left me feeling ashamed, more frustrated and caused others confusion and bafflement at my overreactions to certain situations.Â
The Shadows of the Magician are the predator, or the prey. We live in a world where the dynamics of predatory machinations can be observed in so much of the strata of society. And in order for this to be maintained you can be sure that there are a great deal of individuals who are falling foul of these overchores and inevitably finding themselves prey, whether to predatory banking practices, employers, pharmaceutical conglomerates and healthcare systems. Or it could be culture vultures, vampiric friends or associates, abusive partners or narcissistic parents the list goes on.Â
Again we are facing the, ‘either’, ‘or’ dichotomies which require that we transcend the duality and rather than sliding from one end of the pole to the other, or seeking to find the middle ground we must arise and recognise the resources we have available to us.Â
Our minds house tremendous intelligence, when in our Sovereignty as a King in the Kingdom of our own lives, as we lead our lives, we can use our minds to come up with creative solutions to life’s problems. We can do the work to bring harmony and balance to our emotions by healing the wounds accrued in childhood and more vulnerable stages of our journeys and interrupt the patterns which served to help us survive these stages, but which are now outdated and require refining and perhaps removing so that other more age appropriate programs can be installed which honour your personal power, agency and capacity as an adult man to live your life aligned with your purpose and passion.
It may be time to interrogate your inner Lover to enquire how this aspect of yourself wishes to connect with the world in order to create a life for you which has meaning to you. By engaging the mind in the healing process, and investing in the development of your mind in the areas which interest you, your mind becomes a tool, as opposed to your mind playing tricks on you, you have the opportunity to have a powerful Magician in your corner able to advise on all sorts of things and take you from survival mode into the very heart of a thriving reality.
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