Sexual Archetypes

Myths from around the world describe different aspects of the divine and different ways to approach divinity. 

Myths are stories whose purpose is to create a model or image of divinity by associating it with familiar human characteristics, behaviors and events.  Carl Jung, an eminent colleague of Sigmund Freud, popularized the term "archetype" to describe such models or images. 

Jung was himself a mystic, and later in life infused his concept of archetype with myths of his own concerning the collective unconscious, but the term in its more general sense retains a broad applicability, because it explicitly avoids judging at what levels archetypes do or do not exist in reality. 

Religious myths and archetypes

Polytheistic religions usually divide divinity up into a wide variety of archetypal roles and personalities, each of which is worshipped as a distinct god or goddess. 

Monotheistic religions also present a variety of archetypes in their myths.  Roman Catholicism, for example, sees divinity as having three different parts — the Judaic male creator god, his human son Jesus, and the genderless "Holy Spirit" who for many people has a feminine aspect.  In addition, many Catholics worship Mary, the mother of Jesus, much as pagans would worship a goddess, and the same is true to a lesser degree of the rest of the saints. 

Some people believe their myths literally and understand their archetypes as having tangible physical reality.  Many Christian fundamentalists, for example, believe that every word of the Bible is true and was dictated by their god.  Some pagan fundamentalists believe that, for example, the Norse myths are literally true and the Norse gods have a physical existence as described in those stories. 

Other people are less attached to the literal details presented in their favorite or traditional myths, and are more interested in the images or models the myths create — the archetypes. 

Issues of appropriation and authenticity

Fully comprehending an archetype from another time or another culture is not always easy and may not even be possible.  In many cases, myths are deeply informed by their cultural context.  If unstated cultural assumptions are crucial to correctly understanding the images and models they present, a person who doesn't share those cultural assumptions or who has different ones will not be able to grasp the archetype as it was intended to be understood. 

This is one good reason why people whose spiritual tradition is deeply rooted in a particular culture sometimes strongly resist "appropriation" of their tradition by people outside that culture. 

Many Native American and Voudon practitioners, for example, feel strongly that no outsider can understand their spirituality without having grown up in their cultures. 

Others feel that a serious seeker, given aptitude, time and proper instruction, can in fact arrive at an authentic understanding of their archetypes. 

Whichever position you take, though, it's clear that claims of authenticity from anyone not belonging to the culture that originated a tradition should be regarded with suspicion. 

Creative borrowing of archetypes

Authenticity of comprehension is not actually necessary for an archetype to be useful to you.  It's worth keeping in mind that the cultures from which many archetypes are typically borrowed often borrowed them in turn, and changed them many times over centuries of use. 

Christianity, for example, is famous for having taken over important archetypes from virtually every religious tradition it competed against.

For neo-pagans, historical evidence strongly suggests that all its "ancient traditions" are actually only revivals of ancient traditions, sometimes highly creative revivals of traditions about which we actually know almost nothing. 

Some pagan groups freely accept this, and openly encourage their members to borrow archetypes from other times and cultures without seeking or claiming cultural authenticity.  Such eclecticism seems superficial to some people, but as long as the borrowing is creative, it makes a good deal of sense. 

Surprisingly seldom does the translation of an archetype from one culture to another weakens its power, even though its outward context may change dramatically.  In this sense Jung seems to have been right — archetypes often seem to reflect unconscious structures and interests we have in common with peoples far distant from us in time, circumstances and culture. 

It's worth keeping in mind, then, that the value of archetypes is that they speak to us, not that they establish our credentials to speak to others.  Seeking and claiming authenticity may not be the best way to find a spiritual practice that really works for you. 

Specifically sexual archetypes

A variety of different sexual archetypes have arisen in human cultures throughout history and around the world.  On this site, we're only dealing with a few at this point:

• Sacred whore:  An ancient and important archetype that agricultural societies have struggled to suppress for thousands of years. 
• Sacred marriage:  A key archetype of the fertility cults that agriculture gave birth to. 
• Sexual healer:  An archetype of our time that we could benefit from better mythologizing. 
• Sirens:  A popular Greek archetype borrowed from Egypt that united sex, death, knowledge and resurrection. 

And please — if you feel inspired to write about other sexual archetypes, we enthusiastically welcome submissions!