The Archetypes of Love – Decoding the Mysteries of Love

If we don’t know what these six archetypes of love look like, we’re likely to find ourselves making the same mistakes over and over.

Identify the Six Archetypes of Love

by Dr. Allan G. Hunter

Most of us have at some point been confused by love, or by the search for love, and finding our way forward has sometimes proved to be demanding and even exhausting. Some of us give up, others struggle on, and a few of us seem to manage to get it right. So, how do we get the love we want into our lives? And how do we know whether we can trust that it’s the sort of love that will grow and flourish? In answer to these tricky questions The Six Archetypes of Love, Dr. Allan Hunter’s new book, offers a series of revealing insights that will help to clarify the way forward and will awaken you to new ways of understanding love.

Drawing on the wisdom of his earlier book, Stories We Need to Know, Dr. Hunter shows us that we all have the chance to live our lives at six different levels. Part of the difficulty for most of us is that we understand love from our own specific context and personal history, and we tend to assume that ours is the only valid perspective. Unfortunately, not everyone we meet will share that same view. So we must ask ourselves some tough questions: who am I when I’m in love? And who is my lover? We know that being in love changes who we are, so these are important considerations. Furthermore, we will always tend to see love and romance in terms of which archetype is presently operating in our life. And this is the key.

So, what are the six archetypes of love? Hunter shows us that these archetypes function like mileposts, showing us where we are in our personal development. They have existed in our culture for thousands of years, and Hunter traces them elegantly through literature, myth, fairy tales, movies, the lives of contemporary figures such as Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and in popular culture’s TV offerings such as Desperate Housewives. Interestingly, one of the strongest representations of these six stages is to be found in the ancient wisdom of the Tarot, which precisely mirrors in visual form the stages of personal growth, and it seems certain that at least one use of the Tarot was as a spiritual guide for individual growth.

What this all means is that if we don’t know what these six archetypes of love look like, we’re likely to find ourselves making the same mistakes over and over, and we’ll remain stuck in unsuccessful behaviors simply because we don’t know any better. Everyone has met someone who always seems to date the same sort of loser, time after time. Perhaps you too have a tendency to fall for people who share similar traits – some of them not always very easy to deal with. If so there’s a good chance you’re living a specific archetypal pattern that needs to be changed. Change is not so difficult if you know what it involves and what you’ll be moving towards, and that’s the great gift of this book. Hunter gives us specific ways we can explore each archetype and mobilize the positive power in each to help propel us forward. In this way we can take what is good from each stage and prepare to move successfully to the next level, leaving what we no longer need behind.

So, let’s take a closer look at these archetypes. Taking them in order, whenever we first fall in love, whether we’re fifteen of seventy-five, we’re likely to feel that delicious feeling of excitement and joy that is the hallmark of the Innocent. The trouble is that, as the name suggests, the Innocent is a little too eager, a little too unsuspecting and idealistic – and can be heading for a major disappointment. Some people remain as Innocents all their lives, and they may be the ones who love too much and forgive too easily. Sometimes this means they will be the ones who set themselves up for hurt and abuse.

When disillusion sets in for the Innocent it may not lead to greater wisdom right away. It can lead to neediness, and the clinging lover is living the Orphan archetype. Any relationship is better than being alone for this figure, who wants to be ‘adopted’ by the one she loves. It’s a step up from being an Innocent, but it’s a desperate love, built on the fear of being alone, and it doesn’t allow much space for growth. Sometimes women and young girls will act helpless so that they can be ‘rescued’, and when they do that they’re playing the Orphan card. It may secure a lover for now, but they’ll forever be disempowered by the role of being helpless.

Fortunately, things get better. The person who has been an Innocent – who has faced deception and has decided to ask for more in life than the Orphan’s compromise – becomes a Pilgrim, a seeker after real love. It’s a bold step. It’s also risky, as everyone else will be putting pressure on the Pilgrim to ‘settle down’. They may set the Pilgrim up with a date and then be disappointed that their idea of who the Pilgrim ‘ought’ to be with doesn’t match the Pilgrim’s own view. The Pilgrim will step back from love, at least for a while, and will choose more cautiously – but first, she has to decide what she needs.

If the Pilgrim stays on the search she will find herself looking for inner values, both personal and ethical, in herself and her partner. This is when the Warrior-Lover archetype emerges, and this is the person who doesn’t just love the sex or the status or the fact that everyone else likes the lover. This person loves the other because she knows that together they can be good for each other – and good within their community.

This is a pretty strong place to be. But there is more. For as the Warrior-Lover pair learns to nourish each other’s needs and abilities they find that they are leading others through the power of their example. Their love does not just stay within the pair or the family circle – it begins to be noticed by others, who may see that there is more to life than they thought. This marks the emergence of the Monarch archetype. This is the person who trusts, whose love becomes empowering for others – and certainly, this doesn’t diminish the primary loving bond with the partner. In some ways, the two different types of love fuel each other. An everyday example might be the loving couple who are bringing up a family, running or leading a community organization, and yet allowing their children to be their own, autonomous, selves. This couple will be working for the good of all, perhaps for the good of the planet and perhaps confronting social evils because they recognize that these are more important things than whether or not they have the latest consumer toys in their lives.

At the highest level love appears in the Magician archetype. We all can reach this, at least on occasions, when we are fully present and honest and loving with others. When that happens we can change lives just by being with people, sometimes people we hardly know, and accepting them for who they are. It’s the most elusive of archetypes – because the change happens in the other person as we allow them the space to alter their own energy. And that, after all, is the nature of someone who inspires others.

Being able to see the six levels gives us a language, a sphere of reference, from which to reflect on our own actions and decisions. It gives us a chance to know ourselves more fully both in and out of the bedroom. Which of us hasn’t, at some point, taken the ‘safe’ bet and poured our emotions into a relationship that just isn’t very satisfying? That’s when we’ve fallen into living the Orphan archetype. And who hasn’t found themselves drawn to the public figure who is fighting for a great and good cause, and yearned to have that same sense of direction in our own life? That would be when we’re Pilgrims looking for a Warrior-Lover relationship.

We can have the relationship we truly desire if we ask for it, yet we have to know exactly what to ask for or we’ll certainly get the wrong thing. This book will help you to find your way to meaningful love in your life, love that will grow as you grow.

Click HERE to Connect with your Daily Horoscope on OMTimes!

You will also enjoy The Role of the Planetary Archetypes