The Archetype of You
Re-vision your life story to find healing, purpose and meaning.
“I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness:
“What is the myth you are living?”
I found no answer to this question and had to admit that I was not living with a myth, or even in a myth, but rather in an uncertain cloud of theoretical possibilities which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust. I did not know that I was living a myth, and even if I had known it, I would not have known what sort of myth was ordering my life without my knowledge.
So, in the most natural way, I took it upon myself to get to know “my” myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks.”
— C. G. Jung, CW vol.5, p. 300
The Archetype of You:
Re-vision Your Life
A 5-week coaching program inspired by The Soul’s Code and informed by years of working within depth psychological and shamanic traditions to help people re-vision their identity and life story through active imagination, self-inquiry and ritual practice.
INTRODUCTION
James Hillman’s bestselling 1996 book The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling offers a radical alternative to the dominant psychological theories that tell us either…
we are who we are because of what happened to us in childhood
we are who we are because of our genetics and brain chemistry
we are who we are because the events of our childhood caused our brain and nervous system to develop in a dysfunctional way.
All of the therapies that have developed out of these theories focus on changing who you are to be better adapted to society by becoming more centered, calm and rational.
“Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the anonymous roller that passed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life’s foolscap.”
—Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory
In contrast, The Soul’s Code revives a much older viewpoint that says we are who we are because our soul chose our life (including our parents) and that it is our sole task to remember and live out that chosen destiny.
The story goes that we forget our destiny the moment we are born into this world, and so we have been given an accompanying spirit, a daimon that attempts to keep us to our true path, speaking through dreams, fantasies, desires, obsessions and symptoms.
“When all the souls had chosen their lives, they went before Lachesis. And she sent with each, as the guardian of his life and the fulfiller of his choice, the daimon that he had chosen, and this divinity led the soul first to Clotho, under her hand and her turning of the spindle to ratify the destiny of his lot and choice, and after contact with her, the daimon again led the soul to the spinning of Atropos to make the web of its destiny irreversible, and then without a backward look it passed beneath the throne of Necessity.
— Plato, Republic X, 620e
THE ARCHETYPE OF YOU
In The Soul’s Code, Hillman makes the case that the daimon is actually an archetypal image that is encoded with all our gifts, character traits and life purpose — just as the acorn contains the oak tree — and that it can only come to fruition when we have shucked off the stories about who we are, how we should act, and how we should live that are imprinted in us by family and society.
This program is meant to help you remember your destiny by looking back to the past, not to find the source of your trauma but to re-vision your life through the lens of a myth that gives meaning and assigns a purpose to all the difficult and traumatic experiences you’ve endured.
“Because the “traumatic” view of early years so controls psychological theory of personality and its development, the focus of our rememberings and the language of our personal story telling have already been infiltrated by the toxins of these theories. Our lives may be determined less by our childhood than by the way we have learned to imagine our childhoods. We are, this book shall maintain, less damaged by the traumas of childhood than by the traumatic way we remember childhood as a time of unnecessary and externally caused calamities that wrongly shaped us.”
— James Hillman, The Soul’s Code
Through active imagination, reflection, ritual and one-on-one coaching sessions, you will be able to recover the connection you had to your soul and unlock the secret to who you really are and why you’re really here.
Ready to Start a New Chapter?
The cost of the program is $500 CAD, payable when you book the first session.
Shortly after booking, you will be sent an email with the first week’s reflections and ritual.
Make sure to give yourself a week to contemplate and complete the practices.
How it Works
The course consists of five “chapters,” each focusing on a different aspect of your personal myth.
Each week you’ll receive an email with writing and reflection prompts plus a “little ritual” to perform. We complete each chapter of the course with a one-on-one coaching session where I help you deepen and integrate what came up for you that week.
Chapter One: Rescuing the Child
Chapter Two: Reclaiming Allies & Ancestors
Chapter Three: Confronting the Shadow
Chapter Four: Recovering the Gold
Chapter Five: Meeting the Elder Within
Who It’s For
This course has been designed for people who are:
looking for an alternative way to work through trauma
seeking freedom from the limiting stories that were given to them by family and society
curious about a depth psychological approach to “parts work”
wanting to revive their imaginative capacity
desiring a more purposeful and meaningful view of themselves and their life