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Archetypes
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Origin Modern: the twelve-archetype framework used here was set out in 2001, on a Jungian basis.
Archetypes are the recurring character patterns used here to compare figures across traditions. The twelve gathered in this category (the Innocent, Orphan, Hero, Caregiver, Explorer, Rebel, Lover, Creator, Jester, Sage, Magician and Ruler), follow the scheme set out by Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson in 2001, which sorts them into three groups of four: the Ego, Soul and Self types. The idea of the archetype comes from Carl Jung, who proposed such patterns as structures of a collective unconscious; the underlying observation that similar figures recur in unrelated mythologies is older and does not depend on his theory. This category holds the patterns and links them to the deities, cards and figures that exemplify them.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodModern: the twelve-archetype framework used here was set out in 2001, on a Jungian basis. 1 Creator / OriginatorMargaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson, whose twelve-archetype framework of 2001 is the scheme these twelve entries follow. 1 Whose Classification This IsThe twelve archetypes named here are those of the Mark and Pearson framework, a marketing application of Jung's idea of archetypes. No religious tradition uses this scheme, and reading figures from unrelated traditions through it is a modern interpretive overlay rather than any tradition's own account of them. 1 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryUsed, but its validity as a comparative category is disputed: an archetype is fitted to a figure after the fact rather than predicted, and the framework is not testable. 1 Learn More
Recurring Patterns for Comparison
An archetype, in the sense used here, is a recurring character pattern used to compare figures across traditions. It is a tool of comparison rather than an object of belief: a way of noticing that the trickster of one mythology plays a role recognisably like the trickster of another.
The twelve archetypes in this category (the Innocent, Orphan, Hero, Caregiver, Explorer, Rebel, Lover, Creator, Jester, Sage, Magician and Ruler), follow the framework Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson set out in 2001, grouped into the Ego, Soul and Self types. The idea of the archetype itself comes from Carl Jung, who proposed archetypes as structures of a shared unconscious expressed in myth, dream and religion; it has been influential in comparative mythology, notably through Joseph Campbell, and also widely criticised as too loose to test.
Use and caution
The atlas uses archetypes as an organising overlay, a way to line up comparable figures, while being clear that the framework is modern and interpretive, not a doctrine any of the traditions themselves hold. Reading Zeus, Odin and Indra as versions of a sky-father, or Loki, Hermes and Coyote as tricksters, can illuminate patterns; it can also flatten the real differences between them, and the entries keep those differences in view.
Each archetype entry describes the pattern, names figures across traditions that have been read through it, and notes where the comparison holds and where it strains.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
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