In previous posts, we have learned about the Spiritual Hero’s Journey and how certain points on that journey relate to certain personality types and hexagrams in what I call the fundamental Cycle of Creation. Now we’ll take a look at the 12 basic archetypes of personality to answer the following question: Where do archetypes come from?

What is an archetype?

The Greek word “archetype” refers to the origin of a prototype or the pattern underlying the form. Carl Jung expanded the concept of archetypes into universal psycho-physical patterns that are timeless and expressed by human consciousness and culture as mythical themes.

• Jung described both archetypal events (e.g. birth, death, marriage, union of opposites) and archetypal figures or images (e.g. mother, father, child, hero, trickster, wise elder, etc.).
• There are numerous different archetypes, some of which appear to combine with each other or interchange their essential qualities. Sometimes it’s hard to tell where one archetype ends and another begins. Why is that?
• Are there several distinct archetypes or just several variations of a single archetype? This is the question asked by philosophers, psychologists and marketers alike.

As a psychotherapist, Jung was researching the symbolic meaning of his patients’ dreams and conversations that had recurring mythical themes. He linked these themes to the twelve archetypes used in astrology, but not in a deterministic way.

• The planets and signs of the zodiac were projections of primordial archetypal images created by the collective. These thoughtforms have existed in the mental plane since the Atlantean era, according to Alice Bailey (“Esoteric Astrology”).
• The archetypes seek actualization within an individual’s environment in the sense that whatever is born or done at a particular moment of time has the quality of that moment of time, as observed by Aristotle, Sri Yukteswar and others.

That brings us back to our birth charts or soul blueprints. It is said that all of our human experience is contained within the archetypes found in the 12 signs of the zodiac.

Where do archetypes come from?

Paramahansa Yogananda (“Autobiography of a Yogi”) said that all men are affected by an inner and an outer universe. The spinal centers in our chakra system correspond to the twelve signs of the zodiac (below, left), as modernized by the Human Design system (right).

Since we incarnate into the physical universe to play with duality, we may be born into one sign (Sun), but also play with its opposite sign (Earth) to try to balance their yin and yang qualities in the same lifetime.

• That means we have one axis to our personality, the conscious part that defines our Life’s Work and the Challenge we came to overcome.
• We also have a second axis perpendicular to the first axis, the unconscious part of our personality that defines our true Soul Purpose and Radiance (or inner light waiting to be activated by the soul).

The energies of these four gates or archetypes create an “incarnation cross” that represents about 75% of your human personality or who you are (below, shown as a black cross in the 2D diagram and as purple lines in the 3D spherical version). The rest of the personality is made up by other parts in the chart.

Each gate may be expressed as different levels of beingness, based on the frequency of the individual. As Alice Bailey wrote: “As man evolves, the mechanism of response or the vehicles of consciousness likewise steadily improve.”

• When the ego or human personality is running the life, the person may express mostly lower frequency or shadow states driven by fear or anger patterns (e.g. worry, doubt, conflict, intolerance, impatience, judgment, victimhood, force, corruption, greed).
• When the soul becomes activated, the person starts to express higher frequency gift states (e.g. integrity, acceptance, leadership) or the highest siddhic states (e.g. clarity, bliss, harmony, purity, empathy), when the person becomes self-realized or enlightened.

That’s why no two people are alike, even if they’re born under the same sign. But there is more to it than that. The gates that are paired as “programming partners” may be expressed in twelve different ways.

• For example, the combination of Gate 25 (Aries as Sun) with Gate 46 (Libra as Earth) has 12 different variants (depending on which hexagram lines are expressed in a person). Similarly, Gate 46 (Libra as Sun) with Gate 25 (Aries as Earth) has 12 different variants as well. They’re similar but not the same.
• There are 768 different incarnation crosses (or life themes) in total. That introduces even more variability into the game we play here in human form.

Here is a Table that summarizes the six different archetypal axes representing 12 astrologic signs and the I Ching Gates associated with each sign (click to enlarge):

You may notice that some archetypes (e.g. Warrior) assigned to a sign (e.g. Aries) may relate to one or two gates (e.g. Initiative and Action of Gate 51 and Courage and Authority of Gate 21), although Aries has several other gates that contribute to its archetypal pool, so to speak. The same goes for all the other signs.

Here is another diagram that illustrates the distribution of the astrologic signs within the Cycle of Creation (colored according to the elements with Earth signs in ocre, Fire signs in red, Air signs in purple, Water signs in blue).

Note: Different signs are focused on different steps in the fundamental Cycle of Creation, but the incarnation cross always creates a combination of four signs, one from each element (see What Is the Fundamental Cycle Of Creation? – Big Picture Questions.com).

Final Thoughts

What do we make of all this information? What is personality? Where does our true personality come from?

Paramahansa Yogananda (“Man’s Eternal Quest”) said that personality is the ego consciousness or the consciousness of existence (that says “I exist”). It becomes more or less bound by the personality traits that we hold from day to day. But our true personality comes from God. Human personality can be changed to divine personality. How? By knowing by deep intuition that you are not this solid body but are the divine eternal current of life and consciousness within the body.

Guy Needler explained that the ego is a temporary personality created whilst incarnate because of the almost total separation of the soul from its Higher Self. We are programmed from the physical perspective and create an individualized personality associated with the human form, but the underlying traits are part of your Higher Self.

We can choose to have whatever personality we want every time we incarnate. We can even elect to incarnate in a complete state of ignorance, i.e. not understanding anything to do with what we’ve done before in our level of evolution. But those of us who have had lots of incarnations wouldn’t choose to do that, because we’ve already been there and done that at some point on our soul’s journey.

He said if we look at your personality, about 95% of it is generated as part of your incarnation, and 5% of it is the real you, the sentient personality that has spiritual sense, knowingness or the desire to understand more. When we become a higher frequency being, that sentient personality starts to change and increase in its percentage relative to the human personality.

People who work really hard on themselves get a ratio of 20% true sentient energetic signature, but 80% is still made of their temporary human personality. People like Yogananda, Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed may drop that human personality value to 60%, so they express 40% of what they really are. But that takes more than just hard work — it’s to do with being and working on a very high level all the time, paying enough attention to being here, being responsible for our work here, and not being caught up in the vagaries or nonsense associated with the work.

For most of us, even a 1% increase in our true personality is a big deal! It’s quite significant in terms of how we operate here, according to Needler. Oh well, now we know.

For more information, please see:

Guy Needler: Home – Guy Steven Needler | The Dawn of a New Age of Science (new website) & books: The History of God, Beyond the Source – Book 1, Beyond the Source – Book 2, Avoiding Karma, The Origin Speaks, 2015, The Anne Dialogues, 2016, The Curators (in press)

Paramahansa Yogananda: Autobiography of a Yogi, 1998 & Man’s Eternal Quest, Vol. I, 1982

Alice Bailey: Esoteric Astrology, Vol. III, 1951

Ra Uru Hu: The Complete Rave I’Ching, 2001

Lynda Bunnell & Ra Uru Hu: The Definitive Book of Human Design, 2011

Richard Rudd: Gene Keys, 2009

Chetan Parkyn: The Book of Lines, 2012 & The Book of Destinies, 2016

Ulla Sarmiento: Spiritual Guide To Our Multiverse, 2018

Ulla Sarmiento: Spiritual Guide To Our Afterlife, 2019

What Is a Spiritual Hero’s Journey? – Big Picture Questions.com

What Is the Fundamental Cycle Of Creation? – Big Picture Questions.com

How Do Hexagrams Fit Into the Cycle Of Creation? – Big Picture Questions.com

What Is Our Tree Of Life? – Big Picture Questions.com

Where Does Toxic Masculinity Come From? – Big Picture Questions.com

What Is the Law Of Gender? – Big Picture Questions.com

What Is the Law Of Polarity? – Big Picture Questions.com

Is It Spiritual To Express Anger? – Big Picture Questions.com

How To Know Thyself? – Big Picture Questions.com

Do Enneatypes Reflect Soul Blueprints? – Big Picture Questions.com

How To Shift From Ego To Soul Activation? – Big Picture Questions.com

What Are the Stages Of Spiritual Development? – Big Picture Questions.com

What Are Higher Intuitive Functions? – Big Picture Questions.com

What Is Your Spiritual Type? – Big Picture Questions.com

How Can We Move Beyond Grievances? – Big Picture Questions.com

What Is Meant By Soul Age? – Big Picture Questions.com

What Is the Big Picture? – Big Picture Questions.com

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