The invisible forces that emanate from us—energies that drive motion, purpose, and behavior—can be understood as the “gods” described in ancient literature. Their manifestations are captured through archetypes, which are represented by symbols and narratives.
A simple way to grasp what is meant by “archetype” is this: every force of nature or instinct within us generates energy that moves us, shaping behavior and intent. Afterward, that movement is understood as “drama” or “story.” When we are possessed by love, rage, jealousy, or any other drive, there is a characteristic story that unfolds through us according to the force driving us.
Myths, stories, and traditions present avatars of these archetypes—figures that embody the most distilled expression of a force. The archetype, symbol, or narrative (all interchangeable at a conceptual level) is an after-image, and the uniting of all stories related to a particular force reveals its core essence, which is the archetype.
It has been said that attempting to perceive an archetype directly can lead to madness. This is likely because our structures of thought and understanding exist after the origin of these energies. The source from which they arise is beyond the kind of comprehension we recognize as “understanding.” These forces cannot be reduced into a single resolved category of thought. To look inward with the wrong tools—to try to translate raw current into coherent language without mediation—risks a kind of psychic tailspin, as the mind struggles to reconcile the irreconcilable.
This is why narrative, symbol, and avatar are used to represent these forces: they act as mediators, allowing us to know the story of the essence’s expression without risking psychic destabilization by trying to perceive the source of them directly. We cannot capture the source itself, but we can narrate its movement after it has lived through us.
Here lies a paradox: we experience ourselves as beings with agency, yet on examination, we also encounter a raw current whose origin is mysterious, and whose translation into action, motive, and purpose is difficult to locate. Where does “I act” end and “it acts through me” begin?
Perhaps the truth is that we are, in some sense, lived by these gods—and life itself is the story we tell afterward, in the wake of their influence upon us. I have lived as the plaything of the gods, granted only fragments of choice as I slowly learned to recognize which force was manifesting and what it was doing. In their first pass, these forces moved through me with nearly unchecked reign. But once they had passed and experience was etched into memory, that memory stood ready when they rose again. Each return became a battle—hard-fought, but with ground gained each time. Eventually, some of them reappear only as faint stirrings of thought, dismissed almost as quickly as they arise.
The only way to perceive an archetype directly—if it can be perceived at all—is through a kind of psychological “trust fall” into the abyss, into the ether. It requires practice to resist the reflex to know what is being seen, since the very mode of comprehension we normally rely upon is incompatible with the source energy itself. Whatever this force is, it reveals itself as an all-pervasive will, so powerfully weighted in its ultimatum that the choice I believe myself to be making is little more than its inevitable outcome. When I love or delight in the experience before me, it feels inevitable. When I despise what I see, feel, or perceive in the world around me, it is because I recognize I am being compelled—and that too is inevitable. In this way, I both curse and worship life at the same time.