[UA] Archetypes

[James Alan Gardner]

People seem to be talking as if archetypes are fixed at the moment
that someone ascends.  I don't see it that way.  Long ago, for
example, people ascended into slots like the Mother, the Warrior,
the Trickster, and so on...but all those concepts have changed
with time.  The collective unconscious's image of a Mother today
is different from what it was in the 1950's and *very* different
from what it was thousands of years ago.

Therefore, I suspect that a Godwalker Mother could have booted out
the previous Mother archetype during the 1950's: a time when the
nuclear family version of motherhood replaced whatever came before.
The old Mother archetype simply didn't correspond to Motherhood as
well as a Betty-Crocker-style Godwalker.  Similarly, the Betty
Crocker version of the Mother will soon be replaced (if she hasn't
been replaced already) by a Godwalker Mother who is more in keeping
with the 1999 concept of Motherhood.  Betty Crocker may have been
working hard over the past few decades to convince us that she
represents what Motherhood is...but I don't think she can manage to
stay on top too much longer.

The same goes for the Warrior archetype and many others.  Old
archetypes get booted out of the Clergy when there's just too much
of a gap between the old person who occupies the seat and the new
psychological image of what the archetype is all about.

This is much the same as the process for the ascension of new
archetypes.  How did the Naked Goddess ascend?  Our culture reached
a point where "The Woman Everybody Can Have But You" had captured
enough of the collective unconscious to deserve a place in the
clergy.  Now, of course, one assumes the Goddess will do everything
she can to keep that archetype powerful inside everyone's mind...
but inevitably, the psychic connotations of the archetype will evolve
over time, and eventually the NG will be booted out by someone who
fits the 21st century ideal more exactly.

		James Alan Gardner
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Web page: http://www.thinkage.ca/~jim
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