There is one final notion we need to cover in order to complete this brief introduction to the basic concepts of the Archetypal Human. We have explored the human lifecycle in detail, drawing on the work of comparative mythology and anthropology as well as literature and psychology. It is perhaps not coincidental that it was another branch of comparative scholarship that also found a cyclical pattern at play, that of comparative history.
It is the comparative historians Charles Rollin, Giambattista Vico, Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee whose work is most relevant here. All of them posited that history is made up of the rise and fall of civilisations. They had argued that history is a cycle whose pattern is identical to the human lifecycle. If that’s true, it may be that the historical pattern of civilisation is also a Hero’s Journey. That is, the progress of civilisation shows a cycle ending in transcendence pattern.
This idea opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities about the nature of civilisation. In the interests of brevity, we will avoid these for now. In the most basic form, however, the cycle of civilisation idea is relevant to the Archetypal Human because it implies an interaction between two cycles: the human lifecycle and the socio-cultural cycle. Nobody would deny that society influences the individual. But if society develops in a cyclical fashion, we should able to map the interaction of the social cycle with the human lifecycle.
We would expect the influence of the social cycle to be most pronounced during the Orphan phase of life since this is the time when young people are initiated into the institutions of their society. It cannot be a coincidence then that some of the greatest stories featuring heroes who are archetypal Orphans show exactly this dynamic.
We have already mentioned in this series Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Both Hamlet and Ophelia are stifled by what is both a domestic and a political form of tyranny in the form of the court of Claudius. Similarly, it is the turbulent atmosphere of the rival families of Verona and the domineering attitude of their parents that brings Romeo and Juliet undone. Shakespeare explores a similar theme in King Lear as the tyrannical rule of Lear gives way to a fight for power that destroys most of the characters, with the Orphan character, Edmund, at the centre. The story of Macbeth follows a similar trajectory.
What we see in these stories is the rise and fall of the ruler. The correlation with the Father is not accidental since this is an extremely old and seemingly universal metaphor for political leaders. Even the USA has its founding fathers, of whom George Washington takes a predominant place.
Shakespeare follows this same pattern since most of his stories take place in the highest courts of politics. Thus, the Tyrannical Father at the household level maps to the political tyrant who wields an identical level of control over his nation. (Note that the same should be true of the Devouring Mother and this motivated much of the analysis in my book of that name).
From an archetypal point of view, there is another correspondence at play in the dynamic of the Tyrannical Father. Remember that the Orphan needs to move away from the family and forge a unique identity. A guiding role in that process is played by the Elder archetype, who initiates the Orphan into the institutions of society.
The Elder archetype is synonymous with wisdom. It is this wisdom that King Lear as tyrant has failed to achieve during his rule and which brings both his family and his kingdom undone. It is wisdom which Claudius and Polonius do not have and which brings ruin to Hamlet, Ophelia and the kingdom. It is the wisdom which Friar Laurence does have but which can’t save Romeo and Juliet.
What these stories show is that the Tyrannical Father brings ruin not just on his own family but on the state. In both cases, the archetype which is either absent or powerless is the Elder.
One of the main cycles of history is the distinction between the wise ruler and the tyrant. In our archetypal terms, this is between the Tyrannical Father and the Elder. This distinction appears in almost all of Shakespeare’s greatest stories. It is also at the very centre of perhaps the most famous story of modern times, the Hollywood movie Star Wars.
In the initial Star Wars trilogy, George Lucas gives us an archetypally perfect dynamic where the Orphan character Luke Skywalker receives initiation from two Elder characters, Obi-wan and Yoda. However, Luke is tempted to join the dark side by none other than his own father, one of the most memorable Tyrannical Father archetypes, Darth Vader.
This creates a direct correspondence between Luke’s personal archetypal situation and the larger socio-political one. The Elders, Obi-wan and Yoda, are on the side of the republic. The Tyrannical Fathers, Darth Vader and Palpatine, are on the side of the empire. The obvious parallels to both Roman and 20th century European history work precisely because the movement towards empire seems to be one of the ways in which the cycle of history repeatedly turns. The Tyrannical Father maps to empire while the Elder maps to the earlier phases of the cycle.
In this introduction, we do not need to go into depth about the matter, but suffice to say, this was also the conclusion of the comparative historians. Depending on how you look at it, the arrival of empire signals either the highpoint of the cycle or the beginning of the end. In Shakespeare’s stories and also in Star Wars we get a glimpse of why this is the case since the Tyrannical Father at both the familial and societal level must stifle and derail the initiation of the Orphans of society, thereby preventing the transmission of the culture to the next generation. In short, society sacrifices culture in the name of power.
For these reasons, the cycle of history forms the crucial background against which we must understand the human lifecycle. The Archetypal Calculus gives us an elegant way to describe that change because the archetypes are just as relevant at the socio-political as at the family and individual level.