We now have the core concepts we need to be able to sketch out the main outline of what we call the Archetypal Human.
The entire human lifecycle is a Hero’s Journey. The archetype of the hero of that journey we give the name: Human. It is theology that is concerned with what happens before or after the human lifecycle. It is noteworthy that almost every religion posits that our lives are not the whole story and are just parts of larger cycles.
The Archetypal Calculus is concerned with the cycles “within” the human lifecycle but could easily handle the expansion to larger cycles since theology tells us that those cycles have the exact same structure as a human life i.e. a cycle ending in transcendence. Death then becomes the transcendence that ends the human lifecycle.
Whether death brings transcendence is a matter of faith. But the evidence we have reviewed from the scholarship of Joseph Campbell, van Gennep, Freud, Jung, and the comparative historians provides a solid foundation for the analysis of our lives as a series of cycles ending in transcendence. We have posited the archetype of the Human as denoting the overall lifecycle, and we have posited four main archetypes for each of the large cycles within the overall lifecycle: the Child, the Orphan, the Adult and the Elder. Each of these is a cycle ending in transcendence.
We transcend from childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to adulthood, and from adulthood to old age. These are metamorphoses in a very real sense because the life we lead in each archetypal phase is completely different from the other phases. For this reason, it is not hyperbole to say that these are mini-lives within the overall lifecycle.
Each of these mini-lives has a different set of challenges, opportunities and constraints. We can summarise those across the biological, socio-cultural (Exoteric), and psychological (Esoteric) levels of being as follows:
| Archetypal Phase | Biological | Exoteric | Esoteric |
| Child | Childhood | Family | Imagination |
| Orphan | Puberty | Initiation to social institutions | Intellect (training, education) |
| Adult | Maturity | Marriage, full membership in social institutions | Will (mastery) |
| Elder | Senescence | Retiree, Mentor | Soul (meaning) |
Since this is just an introduction to the Archetypal Calculus, we won’t go into detail about this. But note one thing about the archetypal phase of childhood, which is that the Child does not have an Exoteric identity outside of the family. It is for this reason that the relations with the parents completely dominate the Child’s life, and that is surely one reason for the Oedipus Complex. It is when we hit the Orphan phase of life and take up roles in societal institutions outside the family that the psychology becomes far more complex.
It’s also worth noting that the Esoteric column in the above table represents what we might call the dominant faculty of each phase of life. A full explanation of this is beyond the scope of this introduction, but the terms should be fairly self-evident. The childhood faculty of imagination is perhaps the least controversial since all children engage automatically in what we call “play,” which is a form of imagination. Remember that the Esoteric level of being shows the most variation between individuals and so this column will be the least generally applicable.
The Archetypal Mission
There is a normative aspect to the archetypal framework that many people would baulk against these days since it might seem to be an infringement on their “freedom.” It’s worth briefly addressing this issue.
The archetypal framework is not like the law of gravity but more like the laws around biological adaptation, natural selection, and human language. Like the grammar of language, the Archetypal Calculus is a set of constraints that can be pushed and pulled against, and even broken, depending on the circumstances. It’s possible to break the laws of grammar and still create meaningful utterances. What’s more, the laws of grammar evolve over time, and it seems clear that the same thing happens with the “rules” of the Archetypal Calculus.
What this means is that it’s possible for any individual or society to change or challenge any of the constraints in the above table. In fact, most societies have categories of people who are outside of the constraints. One of the most common are religious practitioners who willingly renounce the political, economic, and often sexual, roles of their society. Note, however, that this renunciation is the exception that proves the rule. Renunciation requires that there be something to renounce.
What’s more, we know from van Gennep’s research that practically every society sets up rites of passage around the archetypal phases, and this itself implies that the phases are meaningful. That is what Freud and Jung had also both discovered with their psychoanalysis. The failure to negotiate the Oedipus Complex can leave lasting psychological problems that need to be resolved. With our framework, they affect the ability of the individual to transcend from the Child to the Orphan archetypes.
The same is true for the Exoteric level of being. We know that unemployment, the failure to hold a stable economic identity, is correlated with all kinds of problems such as depression, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide.
It’s useful, therefore, to think of each phase of life as having an archetypal mission. That is what is implied by the Hero’s Journey concept. The hero has a mission to accomplish. The princess must overcome her feelings of revulsion and kiss the frog. Her reward at the end is the handsome prince who will become her husband. Therefore, the story is about the princess’ transcendence from the Orphan to the Adult phase of life. The mission in this case resonates across all the levels of being.
We might summarise the mission for each archetype as follows:-
| Archetype | Mission |
| Child | To develop motor skills and other instinctual traits; to learn basic socialisation skills via our relationships with our parents |
| Orphan | To deal with changes brought by puberty; to enter the institutions of society as apprentices; to begin to develop our own identity independent on family |
| Adult | To take up full membership in the institutions of society; to start a family of our own |
| Elder | To pass on our knowledge to the next generation both at a societal and familial level |
It is, of course, true that each of us gets to choose our mission to a very large extent, and more so in modern society than at perhaps any other time in history. We are free to choose a mission that is the direct opposite to the “rules” written above. If we did so, we might discover a brand new way of being.
What literature, myth, rites of passage, and psychoanalysis tell us, however, is that breaking the “rules” of the Archetypal Calculus is likely to cause all kinds of difficulties, and simply breaking the rules for the sake of it is the kind of churlish attitude that can end in tears.