Modern Esotericism

Tradition8 entries

Thread · Modern Currents · 1990

The Sovereign

Moore and Gillette's King (or Queen) is the mature archetype that orders and blesses the realm.

SignificanceMoore and Gillette, following John Weir Perry, call the King "the central archetype": the psyche's ordering and blessing centre. A man is to serve it as a steward, never claim it as himself; accessed rightly, it gives calm, inner authority and the capacity to bless himself and others.

The FindingMoore and Gillette's own Preface (1990) concedes the four are not traditional. Many assume them long-understood building blocks of manhood, but the naming was first presented in lectures at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago, then on audiotapes.

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Movement · 1986

Shadow Work

The Phrase Jung Never Used

Named for Jung's shadow and sold as a practice he never described, to be done in a notebook.

What it meansIts practitioners say it guides a person to face the shadow self and accept what makes them feel guilty, ashamed or afraid.

The FindingThe phrase was Ivan Illich's, in a 1981 book, for unpaid labour. Its Jungian sense builds from Robert Bly's book of 1986; the bestselling journal was self-published in 2021.

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Thread · Modern Currents · 1989

The Warrior

Moore and Gillette's Warrior: the mature archetype of disciplined, aggressive action for a cause.

SignificanceMoore and Gillette read the Warrior as aggression in the service of a cause beyond the self. Trained, alert and able to bear pain, he acts for that cause, not his ego.

The FindingNot an inherited scheme: the 1990 Preface says the four were first named in Moore's Chicago Jung Institute lectures; his tape The Warrior Within is dated 1989.

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