Title King Warrior Magician Lover
Author Robert Moore & Douglas Gillette
Year Published 1990
Kind of Book Masculinity/Psychology
How strongly I recommend it 8/10
My Impressions A delightful read about the Jungian perspective on how the masculine psyche matures (or fails to mature) into adulthood. The authors explore what stunted ego development looks like and how it manifests. The authors explore why today many men's psychological development has become stunted.
Date Read May 2019
What question is the author trying to answer?
Practical Takeaways
Find "Ritual Elders" to help you through the initiation
Keep the "Boy psychology" in you that is the source of playfulness, pleasure, fun, adventure, and open-mindedness
Everyone in a leadership capacity needs to be connected with the creative, playful Child in order to manifest his full potential and advance his cause
Honor the genius in you
Ask yourself how your are manifesting the High-Chair Tyrant and the Weakling Prince
Honor your Creative Child
Be a King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover ie. embody all 4 archetypes
Take responsibility for what you're not responsible for ie. What happened to us in our early childhood to stunt our development and shape us into who we are now-Old Saying in Psychology (King Archetype)
Live bye the Tao/Dharma/right order then enforce it upon the people
Have integrity, be calm, centered, stabled, secure, and balanced like the King
Encourage and reward creativity in others (King Archetype)
Don't be envious of others, be secure in your own worth(King Archetype)
Don't be too attentive to your wife's moods and fear to take initiative
Let your children develop sufficient independence of will, taste, and purpose
Don't repress your aggression (Warrior archetype)
Face the battle facing frontally and only move forward (Warrior archetype)
Know what you want and how to get it-Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castandeda
Never sleep through life(Warrior archetype)
Be mindful, awake, and discerning (Warrior archetype)
Learn fencing to be a better debater
Live with awareness of your imminent death(Warrior archetype)
Don't let awareness of death depress you, but rather lead to an outpouring of life-force and to an intense experience of your life(Warrior archetype)
Live with death as your companion so you only make time for meaningful acts
Don't overanalyze when it can lead to doubt, hesitation, inaction, and losing the battle (warrior archetype)
Don't spend more energy than you have to (warrior archetype)
Don't talk too much (warrior archetype)
Have a positive attitude (warrior archetype)
Have control over your mind first and foremost (warrior archetype)
Be willing to suffer to achieve what you want to achieve (warrior archetype)
Live not to gratify personal needs and wishes or physical appetites, but to hone yourself into an efficient spiritual machine, trained to bear the unbearable in service of the transparent goal (warrior archetype)
Look at your tasks, decisions, and actions dispassionately and unemotionally. (Warrior archetype)
Destroy only what needs to be destroyed in order for something new, fresh, more alive, and more virtuous to appear (Warrior archetype)
Avoid a hatred of the weak, helpless, and vulnerable (Shadow warrior archetype)
Don't be a Workaholic with anxiety driving their engine (Shadow warrior archetype)
Don't crush your students enthusiasm (shadow of Magician)
When you sense the onset of strong emotions- fear, envy, anger, despair- sit down in an 'observation' chair and as the feelings come up imagine placing them in a stack in the middle of the room. Each one should be placed on the stack carefully. Sit back and watch the feeling (its shape & color). Don't judge them. Just watch them. "Oh there you are again. That's what you look like". When the feeling is in the middle of the room, the Ego can see them and they not being repressed. After they have been seen they are free to go away.
Be in the world of sensual pleasure and in your own body without shame (Lover archetype)
Empathize with the world of things around you (Lover archetype)
Go back to the Hero stage of masculine development and slay the dragon of your life
To gain true humility: Know your limitations and get the help you need
Face your rebellious and negative energy forms
Have contact with older men whom you can look up to. If such men are not available to you personally, read their biographies and become familiar with their words and deeds
Act as if you are the archetypical character you want to evoke. Move and talk like them. (eg. King, Warrior, Magician, Lover)
Act as if you appreciate the sunset (and you will start to)
When someone comes to you for your wisdom, act as if you really have some
Be careful what you wish for; you may get it
Never feel apologetic about you gender as a man
Active imagination Dialogue technique:
Have a dialogue between you and one of your complexes. Use a piece of paper and given them your point of view and wait for their reply. Write both the Ego's thought and feelings as well as the opponents' thought and feelings just as they come.
Eg. "What are you? (pause) What are you? (pause) What do you want? (pause)
Take seriously you immature masculine energies. Listen to them and let them be heard, and their feelings validated, so they no longer need to act out through out lives
Invocation Technique:
Spend some time looking up images of a King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover
find a quiet place and time. Clear your mind as best you can and relax.
Focus on one of the images that has both mental pictures and spoken word
Set the image in front of you and talk to it
Make your ego his servant. As the detached ego tell the figure that you want and need his help and guidance
*optional: light candle and burn incense before an image of the archetype to honor them
Big Ideas
The grip of infantile pulls against the man from achieving his full potential
Young men today are starving for blessing from older men (ie. the King energy)
The enemy for both sexes is not the opposite sex
The enemy for both sexes is infantile grandiosity and the splitting of the Self that results from it
Most men now either don't have an initiation into manhood or a pseudo-initiation that failed eg.(gangs/prison rituals)
The ritual elder is an essential ingredient in initiation rituals
In healthy male development the boy ego must die
Most men are fixated at immature levels of psychological development
Patriarchy is an expression of immature masculine psychological development that has been fixated at an immature level of development
Often when men begin to heal their psychological wounds in therapy they begin to have the urge to have children for the first time in their lives
All immature masculine development is tied to the man's mother in one way or another
When a boy has no father or a weak father his Oedipal urge (urge to kill his father and marry his mother) will become stronger
And
When a boy has no father or a weak father he may become possessed by the Oedipal Child's bipolar shadow
The hero is overly tied to his Mother
But
The hero has a driving need to overcome his mother
The Hero is only an advanced form of Boy psychology
When an adult man is still being governed by the Hero archetype it blocks his full maturity
What men are missing is not “adequate connection with the inner feminine” but an adequate connection to the deep and instinctual masculine energies
Men bondage fetish comes from his desire to 'tie down' the feminine
Unknown Terms
Imprinting: any kind of phase-sensitive learning that is rapid and apparently independent of the consequences of behavior. Eg (baby ducks soon after they hatch attach themselves to whomever or whatever is walking by at the time as their Mother)
Anima: the feminine subpersonality that exists within the male psyche
Animus: the masculine subpersonality that exists within the female psyche
Pathological Narcissism: A person with narcissistic personality disorder generally has a distorted sense of importance or ability. In clinical terms, they tend to have grandiose thoughts about their social value, particularly in relation to other people
Don Juanism (Don Juan Syndrome): 1. a non-clinical term for the desire, in a man, to have sex with many different female partners. The name derives from the Don Juan of opera and fiction. 2. The man gets caught up chasing beautiful women, yearning for union with Mother from one woman to another
Gnosticism: Gnosis was the Greek word for knowing on a deep psychological or spiritual level
Alchemy: The attempt to make gold from common material
Symbols
Pyramid =The Human Self
Boy Archetypes
The Divine Child
The Id (Freud) = immoral infantile drives full of God-like pretensions
All powerful, the center of the Universe, and at the same time helpless and weak
Exs: Orpheus, Christ, Moses
+ The High Chair Tyrant
Entitled
Dark version of Christ Child
Sitting in high chair banging his spoon
Center of the Universe
Others exist to only to meet his needs
Exs: Joffery
-The Weakling Prince
Whining, complaining
Helpless, Coddled
Exs: Robin Arryn
The Precocious Child
Manifests in a boy when he is eager to learn
Wants to know the 'why' of everything
Wants to know what makes other people tick and what makes him tick
Introverted and reflective
Sees the hidden connection in things
Shares his insights with others
Powerful urge to help others with his knowledge
Others use him as a shoulder to cry on
+The Know-it-All Trickster
A manipulator
Enjoys intimidating others
Can believe he is the second coming of Jesus Christ
Wants others to know he is smarter than they are
Good at deflating others egos
His energy comes from envy
-The Dummy
Lacks personality, vigor, and creativity
Unresponsive and dull
Uncoordinated
Slow learner
Dishonest
The Oedipal Child
Fantasizes marrying his mothers and taking her away from his Father
Develops more in boys with no Father or a weak Father
Mama's Boy
Don Juan Syndrome Gets caught up chasing beautiful women, yearning for union with Mother from one woman to another
Doesn't want to take responsibility for having a relationship with a real woman
+The Dreamer
Isolated
Cut off from the world
Relationships with intangible things inside his imagination
Sits alone dreaming
-The Grandstander Bully
Man Archetypes
King
The central archtype around which the rest of the psyche is organized *Where the King resided was usually believed to be the center of the Universe
King energy is Father energy
Usually the last of the man archetypes to develop
King lives by the "Right order" then he enforces it upon the people
Calm, stable, secure, centered
The mature King is lacking in the lives of most men today
Young men today are starving for blessing from older men, starving for blessing from the King energy.pg61
The Tyrant (shadow King)
Hates, fears, and envies new life
Not creative, only destructive
May sexually exploit the weaks vulnerability
Can manifest in us when we feel exhausted, tired, and irritated
Sensitive to criticism
Shadow King sometimes forms when the parents abuse the baby boy
Warrior
Aggressive energy
Face the battle facing frontally and only move forward-Japanese Warrior Tradition
The religion of Islam was built on Warrior energy
Wishes not to gratify personal needs and wishes or physical appetites but to hone himself into an efficient spiritual machine, trained to bear the unbearable in service of the transparent goal
Shadow Warrior (Sadist and the Masochist)
Loves carnage and cruelty
Hatred of the weak, helpless, and vulnerable
Compulsive personality
Workaholic with anxiety driving their engine
Magician
Initiate themselves and others
Chief, Shamans, medicine men, wizards, witch doctors, bujos, inventors, scientists, doctors, lawyers, technicians
Understands the hidden dynamics of the hum psyche and can manipulate them for good or ill
A seer and prophet for seeing the future and seeing more deeply
The Jester. Calls bullshit on the King or those in power
The Archetype of thoughtfulness and reflection
The Shadow Magician (The Manipulator and the denying "innocent" one)
Withhold information from people they need for their well-being
Detached and cruel
Crushes their students enthusiasm
Withholding and secretive for the purpose of self-aggrandizement
The Lover
The drive to satisfy the hungers of sex, food, well-being, reproduction, creativity, and meaning
Focuses on sensory experience (colors, forms, sounds, tactile experience etc.)
Archetype of play
Connectedness to the world through feeling not intellectual
Wants to touch and be touched by everything physically and emotionally
The source of spirituality and mysticism
Sensitive to music
Can read people's moods and feelings like a book
Takes sorrows of the world upon himself
Opposed to the energies of the 3 other mature masculine archetypes
The religion of Hindu was built on Lover Archetype
Painters, musicians, poets, sculptors, and writers are often mainlining the Lover
Shadow Lover (The addicted and the impotent lover)
Insatiable hunger for he knows not what.
Doesn't know what he's looking for
Womanizer
Objectifies women