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King, Warrior, Magician, Lover
Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette
1990. HarperSanFrancisco. New York.

Moore and Gillette are pioneers. They are two of the true elders of the men's movement. They still possess the authentic elder voices we all need to hear in our personal journeys. They were one of the first men to raise those voices. They both come from an archetypal, as well as spritual, perspective. Together they are psychologists, mythologists, and theologians. They have the credentials to talk of man's psychospiritual development. This they do quite eloquently.

The title comes from the four mature archetypes of masculinity that we all have to acknowledge and integrate into our lives. If we don't integrate their universal presence, these archetypes stay in our shadow, creating havoc for ourselves and those we love. As they say, talking of the unintegrated Warrior, "And like all repressed archetypes, it goes underground, eventually to resurface in the form of emotional and physical violence, like a volcano that has lain dormant for centuries with the pressure gradually building up in the magma chamber." The shadow Warrior is the moody, explosive man.

The book elucidates the devlopment of a mature man by first describing Boy Psychology. Boy psychology talks of the boy archetypes that we also need to integrate on our way to manhood. These archetypes provide a foundation for the mature Man archetypes. They also have their shadow side.

What is particularly interesting is their treatment of the Hero archetype. The Hero is, in fact, "only an advanced form of Boy psychology". The Hero is one of the Boy archetypes. The Hero actually "characterizes the best in the adolescent stage of development". Unfortunately, the Hero also is the best our society has to offer.

As Bly speaks of in his book, The Sibling Society , we live in a society stuck in the adolescent, stuck in Boy psychology. As Moore and Gillette point out, "patriachy is the expression of the immature masculine." This is good news and bad news. The good news is that the Hero has made it to adolescence. And the hero's job is to fight the dragon and sever the bonds of the mother complex. The best heroes can move past their mother dependence in an active, conscious way. As in a healthy adolecscence, the Hero boy moves toward a personal identity, rather than one imposed on him by society. "The Hero enables the boy to begin to assert himself and define himself as distinct from all others."

Does the Hero's job sounds familiar? Somewhat like the Warrior? No coincidence. The Hero archetype in Boy psychology is the foundation and source of the Warrior archetype in Man psychology. For a man to mature, the Hero must die, as the Boy in initiation, so that the Warrior lives. The Warrior completes initiation as well as guaranteeing its effects in the life of the man.

The bad news is that the stuck Hero doesn't move on in our society. He wins the damsel, but doesn't know what to do with her. He has a need to keep conquering and controlling and severing relationships, often turning into the Hero's shadow, the Grandstander Bully. The Hero knows no limits. Like a naive adolescent, he thinks he can do anything. The danger is that, as a man, he also has a patriarchal sword. He runs corporations and governmental agencies and tries to run families. The Hero is agressive, but not wise. His sword tends to cut rather than protect. He uses his sword to stay ahead of the competition and cut others down, instead of using it to protect the integrity of the work and of those he leads.

Because we are not an elder society, the Hero has no King to direct him in this chaos. Moore and Gillette stress the lack of the social "opportunity to undergo ritual initiation into the deep structure of manhood". These rituals can move a man beyond Boy Psychology and the Hero mentality. These deep structures include archetypes of Man psychology, the archetypes of the title. These rituals involve, from ancient times, both a sacred space and a ritual elder. These are the rituals that are absent today.

The sacred space is outside the village, outside normal time, "sealed from the influence of the outside world." This space resides within the inner life of men. The ritual elder brings the necessary masculine energy the adolescent needs to move toward maturity. He brings guidance and support to deal with the inner life. Both Moore and Gillette are very clear that the deficit in menÕs psychological development is from the lack of masculine fathering and eldering energy, rather than from a mothering deficit. Older men have dropped the ball, not older women. The patriarchy is destructive to men as well as women. Men have been slower to realize this because they have been told that they are heroes and have it all.

The authors have also written whole books on the King and the Warrior archetype. For those who are interested in the field of archetypal psychology, as well as mythology and spirituality, these books bring enough to think about for a long, long time.

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