Not “just”. In Therapeutic Shamanism, Power Animals and Guides are real beings who exist independently of us, not merely patterns inside the human psyche. The word archetype does fit them in one sense: a Power Animal is the OversoulOversoul. A branch of Mother Earth representing the whole of a species: the single being all the individuals arise from. Lower-World work is always with the Oversoul, never an individual; environments are composite Oversouls, wheels within wheels. More about this of a whole species, and the Human GuidesHuman Lower-World Guide. A face put on the human Oversoul: the Ancestors met through an individual form, genuinely other than us, chosen from pre-Fall hunter-gatherer humanity. Related to as a teacher, never a master. Read the full answer represent the archetypal pattern of Human, and we clothe both in imagery we can relate to.
What does “archetype” mean? #
More than one thing, which is why the question needs care. Carl Jung, who made the word famous, used it in several ways. The Jungian analyst Christian Roesler finds that across Jung’s writings “at least four different types of definitions can be found”. In some, archetypes are inherited patterns in the human mind. In others they go well beyond it: in 1947 Jung wrote that “The true nature of the archetype is not consciously apprehendable, that means it is transcendent, therefore I call it psychoid”.1 So asking whether a Power Animal is just an archetype depends on which meaning is in play. If it means a pattern inside our own psyche, the shamanic answer is no. See What can Jung’s psychology offer shamanic work?
In what sense is a Power Animal an archetype? #
In the sense that it is the whole of its kind. In the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer, “when working with Animals, we are working with their Oversouls”. The PeoplesThe Peoples. The Animal People, Plant People, Standing People (the Trees) and Stone People: our elder kin, of whom the Human People are the youngest and least wise. A family, not a hierarchy. Read the full answer are a great tree rooted in Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this, whose branches are the Oversouls: “So, Fox Oversoul in the Lower-World is all of Fox, the whole of the species. It is the archetype of Fox, the Great Fox that all individual foxes come from. All of the individual foxes in the middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer are protrusions from this branch”.2
So a Power Animal is archetypal, but it is not an idea. It is a branch of Mother Earth, a being we can meet, come to know and be in relationship with. Both are true at once: the Great Fox is both the pattern of all foxes and someone. See What is a Power Animal?
And the Human Guides? #
The same is true of them. Lower-World and Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer Guides “are representations of the archetypal pattern of Human. But because Human itself is too vast and nebulous for us to get hold of, we clothe it in particular imagery, into particular human forms that we can work with and relate to.”3 That is why a Guide can look as though they come from a particular people or time: “your Human Lower-World Guide is simply a face that you put on Human.”4 The face is ours; Human, the Oversoul to which all humans belong, is real. See What are Human Guides?
So do we make them up? #
We make up the clothing, not the being. “The archetypal energies of the shamanic realms also exist independently of us, just beyond our perception”, and to make sense of them “we have to shape and clothe them into some kind of imagery and symbols that we can relate to and interact with. It is in this way that what we experience in shamanic journeys is something that is co-created between us and spirit.”5
We cannot meet the realms without shaping them: “The point is that to experience the shamanic realms we cannot help but fashion them into something.”6 But there is something there to fashion. See Is shamanic journeying imagination, and how are journeys co-created?
Does the imagery we bring matter? #
Yes. The shapes we give the archetypes are coloured by what we already believe: “If we are coming from a place of ‘up is good and down is bad’, a hierarchical model, then this will affect what imagery we use to fashion the Lower-World into, and then how we experience it.”7 Even our words play a part: “shamanism is a co-created process. How you think about things, and the language you use, will shape and affect what it is that you encounter.” So it helps to say ‘Next, Bear appeared’ rather than ‘Next, a bear appeared’, because “Using “a”, “the” or “my” reduces Animal to animal”.8 See How do I distinguish guidance from projection and middle-world bleed-through?
What did Jung himself think? #
That archetypes are not ours to control. In a letter of 1961 he wrote that many of his pupils “pay little attention to the fact that the archetypes are, as a rule, autonomous entities, and not only material subject to our choice.”9 Jung did not go as far as shamanism does. But he knew that what we meet in the depths has a life of its own. See What can shamanism offer Jungian work?
