In today’s video we’re going to talk about archetypes, specifically female archetypes. What are they? What do they do blah, blah, blah. So let’s get into it. Welcome to Thomistic Womanhood. In today’s video we’re going to talk about the female archetypes, how many there are? what are they? What do they do? so on. So to begin, I think we should define what an archetype is, when I’m considering an archetype. In my opinion, it’s more of a psychological thing. Carl Jung was a big one like different archetypes, however, for female archetypes that and part of what I’m going to be pulling from these are not ideas that I came up with all on my own. There’s actually a woman named Tony wolf. She was an analyst who studied under Carl Jung. She actually became his mistress, believe it or not, but she actually wrote a paper on this. She is the one that really, I think crack the code on feminine archetypes from a psychological perspective. I know if you get into spiritualism and like some of that, or astrology, there can be female archetypes there. But that’s not what we’re talking about today. In this, this is a strictly psychological thing. And we’re not going to be getting into any of that. 

What is an Archetype?

So basically an archetype What is it? I believe, in my opinion, that an archetype is basically a pattern of behavior. It’s a perspective, a way of looking at the world that kind of governs your choices. So as we talked about in previous videos, like what is truth and we can throw up a link to that, but in that video we talked about how our mind knows truth. We also talked in the video on the soul, how our soul You know, our mechanism by Which we think and choose not necessarily like a religious thing. Like we all have a soul. It’s something that we use to get through life and make decisions and figure things out. But in our soul, we take in certain ideas, and it helps us make choices. And different archetypes can be like psychological sets of beliefs and knowledge about the world around us, which influences the kind of choices we make. And these are general themes. You know, I believe there’s four archetypes. Sometimes people say there’s like seven or there’s nine, I really believe that there’s probably about four. This is kind of, you know, it’s kind of debatable whether there’s, like, more, but I feel like a good rule of thumb is when you’re looking at the general patterns of how women behave, I feel like they fall into four general categories. And so I think Tony Wolfe was right. So anyways, let’s get into them.

The Four Archetypes

So, the four archetypes are The Mother, The Amazon, The Madonna, and what I’m going to call, like The Sidekick or it’s also known as the cortisone. I don’t know if I’m saying that word right or like the geisha, you know, it’s basically like the female companion. But so let’s get into the first one, The Mother, the mother is kind of it is what it sounds like, you know, she’s the caretaker, the nurturer, the healer. You know, sometimes you can hear a healer as an archetype. I would argue that that’s a subtype of the mother that is the side of a woman that is very nurturing and loving. She may or may not have biological children, but it is the part of femininity that wants to incline toward the weak and the helpless. You know, that’s the part of you that wants to help, you know, a whimpering puppy or, you know, water that drooping plant You know, that’s, that’s kind Have what the mother is, it’s the caretaker, the nurturing, it’s that self sacrificing part of us that wants to take care of others without necessarily a thought to ourselves. So that is the mother. And all of these archetypes can have a light side and a dark side, they’re not intrinsically good or bad. Just as everything with human nature, we can choose to use them in a good way or a bad way. And so I feel like with the mother archetype on the light side, the good side,this is the woman that, you know, she’s a great mother, she takes care of her friends, she takes care of things, and she’s very nurturing. You know, this can be a woman who, I could say something like maybe a queen that wants to take care of her people. But that is actually a blend of another archetype, which we’ll talk about but the light side thinks of it is that mothering, that caretaking. The dark side of the mother is that this can be the part of us that wants to Take care of others at our own expense. Sometimes when you have strong mothering tendencies, you can often not really, you know, put your foot down and stand up for yourself. You’re so busy, nurturing other people, making sacrifices for other people that you forget to nurture yourself. So that can be the one of the pitfalls of it being too much in that archetypal pattern living too much in that frame of mind.

So the second one is The Amazon, you know, or the warrior woman. We see a great example of this in the movie Wonder Woman. First one, the one I believe came out in 2017it’s not Wonder Woman 1984 it’s the first one. And you know, when you watch that movie, you see a great example of an Amazonian culture, you know, these women were training, you know, they’re into archery and weapons, and you know, they’re very self sufficient. They don’t need men. They’re very aggressive. They’re very goal oriented, and they get stuff done and they can defend themselves and are very strong. I don’t want to say masculine, but they have a lot of the qualities that we traditionally associate with masculinity such as the aggression, the goal oriented nature, taking initiative, lack of timidity, things like that. And that side of womanhood, I do feel every woman does need to have some Amazon in her, especially in today’s world, there’s a lot of threats and problems. And we’ll talk more about the Amazon in today’s world and that in a minute, but yeah, this is the warrior woman, this is the woman who’s not afraid to go out there and kick butt in a way she’s the opposite of the dark side of the mother. You know, the mother is too afraid to really set limits, take care of herself. The Amazon is the opposite. She’s very good at taking care of herself getting what’s hers, in careers, you know, you use your Amazon, Amazon side a lot in the careers in the workplace. It’s very aggressive, you know, you have to take initiative. And so the good side of this is, you know, this is the part of you that’s assertive, you know, you make sure you don’t get walked on, you’re not afraid to offend other people, if they’re offending you, and you need to, like kind of defend yourself. And also, this is the part of the woman that knows what she wants, you know, and you go after your goals and you take initiative that you know, that’s, that’s the good part of it, the dark side of the Amazon is she can be a little cold and calculating, there can be a lack of softness, and it can be exhausting to be in your Amazon too much. I feel like the dark side of the Amazon is very apparent nowadays. Because as women,  in order to have careers and make our way in the world which is often economically necessary. But in order to do that, we have to take on a lot of that Amazon warrior characteristics and that is hard on a woman. they’ve done a lot of psychological and biological studies that show when you take on those characteristics, you have a lot more adrenalin, your testosterone, you know, you can have that spike in your body, just like if you do like the mothering stuff, you know, oxytocin, you know, so the way we act can influence hormonal and chemical processes in our body. And that’s why I think if you’re too much in your Amazon, you can wear yourself out, that is one of the dark sides of it, you can drive yourself too hard. You know, if you’re very goal oriented, and you work a lot of hours and you never give yourself a break. That’s, that’s the dark side of the Amazon side. Sometimes you just need to dial it back a bit.

So the third one is The Madonna. And I don’t mean like the singer. I mean, more like the Virgin Mary Madonna. This is the part of a woman that is inspiring. She has values, she has morals, she’s more reflective, she’s maybe a little more mystical. You know, she can be very spiritual. This is the side this is often been called, like the Oracle, you know, that’s that’s an archetype that’s been brought up, you know, she’s the woman that knows things, and she’s very serene and calm, you know, the Amazon can be very aggressive and there can be like, some, some anger there, you know, not necessarily anger, like, but you know, like, if you’ve got to go out, you know, if you’ve got to take initiative, there’s a certain energy to that, you know, but with the Madonna, that is a side of us, it’s more serene and calm and peaceful and like inner peace, you know, that is the Madonna. And that is a very inspiring part of women. You know, when women develop their Madonna side, they can be, you know, they can kind of help point the way for society, you know, they can kind of be like, light bearers in a way and kind of shine that they can illuminate the path for other people. You know, it’s a very beautiful aspect of womanhood and in my opinion it’s very necessary so that is the light side of the Madonna you know the spiritual side. the dark side of the Madonna is she can get a little too sometimes you can kind of disconnect from reality a little bit I feel like if you get too into the spiritualism and some of that, you know, if you get too spiritual, you have to have a good grounding in certain things, and it can be dangerous. there are a lot of avenues for the female desire for mystery you know, that can I feel be misused that’s why a lot of and I hope I don’t annoy anybody I’m not some people might feel called out I hope not but some of the new agey and like Tarot cards and things like that. Sometimes you know, Wicca likes witchcraft, some of that stuff. There is a certain mysterious mystical aspect to that. And I feel like that is taking that female desire for something spiritual, something mysterious, and it can kind of route it into a bad point, there is plenty, you know, there’s plenty of mystery and stuff in, you know, like religions and things like that. But sometimes you can take it in a weird direction. So that can be a dark side.

The last one is The Sidekick. And, again, we don’t really have a word for this in the English language. And this is basically the woman in her capacity as a companion to men. And so this includes basically, you know, just getting along with men, figuring out, you know, understanding them, you know, in Japan, we see this a lot in the geishas of Japan, these women were like, basically Professional companions for men and I know, there’s some debate about whether they were like prostitutes. So sounds like history says that most of the time they weren’t. But we’ll see that that’s kind of an open debate. Maybe that’s another video for another time. But yeah, this is like the sidekick for men. This is you know, when you’re in a relationship, you know, like the girlfriend that could also be part of this, you know, you’d like men you want to be around them, you want their love and affection. And so you know, you work to make yourself pleasing to them. You want to look beautiful, you try not to be too needy, you try to put yourself in situations where you’ll meet men, you know, you really want a boyfriend that is like a sidekick. Yeah, just basically like the female sidekick or like the feminine companion kind of archetype. It’s where you really want to connect with a man and we see that in a lot of us women, you know, we all, not all of us, you know, not every woman wants to have a man in her life. But you know, I’d say most of us do. And so this is that instinct, that instinct to kind of couple up, I’m not going to get too into it, I want to keep this G rated, but sexuality is a part of this as well, you know, that that physical union with a man that connection there, and so that can be part of this too. So on the bright side, the good side of this, this is, you know, our ability to connect with men and become wives and companions for them. Men get a lot of good from being involved with women, it kind of helps give meaning to their life, men, I think they leave pretty empty lives if they don’t have women in their life. I think a lot of men feel this kind of a I don’t want to say metaphysical level, but like kind of on a deeper level. You know, a lot of men feel like they Need a woman in their life to really kind of feel fulfilled. And a lot of us women, we feel like we need a man in our life, it’s really loaded to say like to feel fulfilled. But a lot of us feel like, I do want a man in my life. And that’s kind of what this is. And so this is that drive in that incentive to help us figure out man, and all that. So on the bright side, you know, this can drive a very close and loving relationship with men. This is also the desire, I mentioned it earlier, but this is a desire to look beautiful, this is us when we want that male attention. So we want to look really pretty and we want to do our hair and we want to make sure we have a nice outfit. Oops, I just rocked my camera. But yeah, that’s what that is. So on a dark side though. This can be like the seductress. This can be like the slut. You want to connect with men a little too much, maybe too many men. And that can be the dark side. You know? Sometimes that desire for meal attention, that desire for meal connection can get out of hand. And that can kind of mess up our life.

So these are just food for thought. It’s kind of worth thinking about which one of these archetypes you find yourself living in the most, what is your kind of natural orientation, depending on our personalities, we’re all going to kind of gravitate toward, I would say primarily one, but secondarily another one. I feel like we’re all going to be a blend of predominantly probably about two of these. Ideally, in my opinion, just my opinion, I do feel like you should try to be a balance of all four. And if you’re interested in relationships and getting a boyfriend, I feel like if you want to attract a man, you really need to be a balance of all of these. You know, a guy wants a woman he can’t step on, you know that she’s going to have a healthy self respect. She’s gonna put him in his place that ‘s the Amazon, on the other hand, He doesn’t want the dark side of the Amazon where you’re like a ballbreaker. On the other hand, he wants the sidekick, you know, he wants to have kind of like a playmate. And I don’t mean like a Playboy Playmate. I mean, like, he wants a companion, someone that he can have fun with and who understands him and brings that joy and lightness to his life. He also wants someone who’s nurturing and kind. And then he wants, you know, the Madonna, someone who’s inspiring, someone he can look up to, and he feels inspired by. And so, you know, I do feel like it’s important to be a blend of all of them. And having said that, I feel like in society, we have very much kind of forced women into an Amazon role. I think, you know, because of us, we have to do careers. I feel like it can be hard for us to develop the other parts of our personality, which you know, maybe is another video for another time. But I do feel like in today’s society We often have trouble attracting men. And I think it’s because we are often on our Amazon side, or we’ve gone too much into the sidekick side, you know, nowadays, careers are encouraged. And I don’t want to say some promiscuity is encouraged, you know, there can be a lack of morals, a lack of values, you know, and that can be bad. So the Madonna side of women is kind of suppressed. And I do feel that you need to have a certain softness, you know, to attract men, and I think that’s how the Amazon can be difficult. When you’re in that like warrior woman, kind of frame of mind. It’s hard to connect with people, it’s hard to bond, you know, because you’re kind of you have to kind of like, let people in and this isn’t even just with men. This can be with like children and things like that. So I don’t know It’s Yeah, this might be a video for another time. But I do feel like in our society we encourage women to be very Amazonian. And we kind of suppress. And the sidekick part of us is really only encouraged from like a sexual perspective. I feel like they’re like, you know, be beautiful, be hot, you know, you have to connect with men like on that physical plane but there’s not really anything deeper to that, you know, you want to attract the guy with his heart, not just his body, you want him to want you on like an emotional level, not just a physical level. Those are the archetypes and I don’t know what else to say about them. But I Feel like it’s, it’s food for thought. I think this is all part of like knowing ourselves, and we can kind of take an inventory and ask ourselves, like, what archetype? Am I over utilizing? Maybe? And which one? Do I feel like I need to develop? You know, where am I weak? How can I fix that? So anyways, yeah, food for thought. I hope that was helpful. So yeah, if you like this Like, share, subscribe, you know, do all the things and I’ll talk to you late