How to Work with Archetypes for Empowerment and Clarity

What is the cause for your biggest frustration right now?

I’d like to bet, that whatever might be upsetting you, could be resolved, if you felt like you had the power to change the situation, and the clarity to know what to do about it.

Feeling disempowered and confused about what to do are always the biggest causes for frustration, but, at this point, all the knowledge and information is widely available that can enable us to feel empowered and clear in any situation.

We simply have to decide what it is that we want.

Working with Archetypes and with this Archetypes Oracle Card Deck can help us with that and can even guide us to discover where we might be stuck, how to get unstuck and, through that, feel empowered to change whatever might be troubling us.

Over time, working with Archetypes can also help us to confidently become our true and authentic, our qu_ing self, and with that, also invite more clarity, love, freedom, joy and peace into every aspect of our lives, for the rest of our lives.

Are you ready to take full charge of your life?

What are Archetypes, and how do they relate to our lives?

Before we will look at how working with Archetypes can help us, let’s make sure we know what we’re talking about.

The first person who has been recorded to mention Archetypes was Plato.

Plato called them forms and described them as the pure characteristics of a ‘thing’.

We can imagine this as what we think of when we hear a certain word, like human, or fox, or tree – we immediately have an image of an ideal, a form, a representation or an archetype in our minds, and, in that short moment, don’t think of all different kinds of foxes, trees or humans.

What exists in reality is never this ideal or archetype, but variations, different individuals, each unique and complex, but since we can’t always process all that information at once, we create an archetype and only look at the individuals when we need to.

The word archetype itself, originally comes from Greek and could be translated as ‘original pattern from which copies are made’ Wikipedia which gives us a bit of a better understanding as well, even though it is not necessarily how it’s used any more.

Archetypes can be formed collectively, in cultures and individually, through personal experience.

In the last century, the Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung familiarized a wider audience with the concept of archetypes, when he used them to describe unconscious or subconscious patterns of the human psyche, such as the mother, father or child archetype or that of the maiden or wise old man or woman.

Jung described these Archetypes as ‘a tendency to form such representations of a motif’, which he saw as inherent in all humans, as universal.

He viewed this representation of certain forms or archetypes that he recognized again and again in many of his clients as a process that was happening unconsciously.

As a result of this image that we create in our minds, we then unconsciously, when we become a mother, for example, copy the behaviour of our own mother because that’s the behaviour that we, in our subconscious, have attached to that role, image or archetype.

So, even though we can all picture a mother archetype in our minds, we might all have slightly different ideas of this archetype, yet, would be able to identify it as the same one nonetheless.

As an example: What I believe to be motherly or fatherly qualities might not be the same for you, though we can surely agree on some of the same characteristics or markers.

More recently, Caroline Myss has been using Archetypes as a way to help us understand ourselves and our path in this life better by suggesting that each of us has made an agreement or contract before birth to live through 12 main archetypes in this lifetime, which show up in different intensities in different phases of our life.

You can learn more about this in her wonderful book ‘Sacred Contracts’, or in her Sacred Contracts online course.

In the way she uses archetypes, their characteristics give us a better understanding of ourselves, as in giving us the option to see ourselves in some archetypes more than in others to direct us to our purpose and path in life.

Her work has directly inspired me to create this deck and you can read how so in this interview.

So, as we can see, archetypes have been used for personal development and to gain a better understanding of the human psyche in the past and present and there are different ways to use them.

But archetypes also appear in art and culture, especially when it comes to storytelling.

We’re all familiar with the hero, victim or villain archetype which appears in films and stories everywhere.

Joseph Campbell most famously wrote about the hero’s journey as a motif that can be found in different variations throughout all cultures and times.

Here are three cards that represent some familiar archetypes:

Leader Card from Verena's Archetype Oracle Cards Deck
Ice Qu_ing Card from Verena's Archetype Oracle Cards Deck
Angel Card from Verena's Archetype Oracle Cards Deck

A new & more fluid approach to working with Archetypes

This is a time, where we are all experiencing a big shift, in which it becomes more and more apparent that the binary, individualistic, exploitative and antagonistic ways, in which most of us were raised clearly no longer serve us.

And those of us, who have not completely forgotten to listen to their hearts, are moving from ME to WE, and I can literally feel and hear the sighs of relief that we can all make because of that.

What would it feel like if you could just be your authentic self? No masks, no roles that have to be played in a certain way, just you being you, joyful, relaxed, following your inner callings and knowings and exploring life to the fullest?

We can all start creating this reality right now, by doing the work we need to do to come to terms with our past, and transition to live with inner peace and following our soul’s calling and longing.

The first step in this direction is to become more conscious and aware of ourselves and how we can change our lives by changing the way we think about it.

Once we realize that the power to change any situation is actually not in our hands, but in our minds, more specifically in what we believe and think about ourselves and our situation – we can begin to act accordingly and create better lives for ourselves with more ease.

In any (uncomfortable or frustrating) situation we find ourselves in, we can ask ourselves what the best possible outcome would be (instead of limiting ourselves with fears, negative expectations, worries or feeling unworthy) and then do what we have to do, or think what we have to think, to achieve that outcome.

And archetypes can help us with that, as they allow us to embody or let go of certain characteristics, qualities or tendencies that either serve us or hinder us.

So while in the past, archetypes were mostly used to explain and see certain patterns, today, we can go beyond just recognizing these patterns in ourselves and others and living through them or waiting for them to pass, but instead use them to actively create a better outcome for ourselves, individually and collectively.

We can use these images, forms, concepts or archetypes to help us to recognize certain qualities or patterns in ourselves and change them, if we don’t find them useful, or begin to nourish them if we would like to cultivate them more.

As we, as a society, are moving from a fixed to a growth oriented mindset that is in alignment with the most recent research on epigenetics, we can also move beyond seeing ourselves as a representation of certain archetypes, but can instead use these archetypes to move from harmful behavioural patterns to more helpful ones.

As a coach and spiritual teacher, but also just as a human being, my main goal is always to help myself, my clients and the people around me to feel empowered to live the life we and our souls truly desire.

The qu_ing, also part of this Archetypes Oracle Card Deck, can serve as an image of our highest selves and potentials, to support us to create a clear image of where and how we would like to be in this world and thus allow us to reach our goals and live our dreams and with this also help to create a more peaceful and kind world.

And, as this is something that comes up now and then:

What does living our highest potential actually mean?

I believe it comes down to three things. Clarity, confidence and connection.

  1. Clarity: To be clear about who we are and what we want from our lives and to know that our emotions and intuition are our perfect guidance system that will always help us to navigate this world gracefully and guide us to our goals and dreams, if we are honest and have good intentions.
  2. Confidence: To know that our fate is in our hands and minds alone, that our soul is immortal and that we are free to become feel like the powerful qu_ing that we are, and have the right to have all we need, to live with inner peace, to allow for healing and forgiveness and act from a place of abundance and love – without having to prove anything.
  3. Connection: To know that we are all one and deeply feel this connection and base all our actions on love and the highest good for all, so we can be successful, feel useful and contribute to the prospering and thriving of all people and our planet – while being our true and joyful selves.

It never means to push, struggle, manipulate and fight to get somewhere or change something, but to allow, learn and unlearn, experience, accept, love, enjoy, flow and thrive.

If we’d like to, we can all live our highest potential and the Archetypes Oracle Cards can assist us to card there.

As you might notice from looking at the cards, they are also different from other bodies of work with archetypes, as they are completely genderless.

On the one hand, we are still struggling for gender equality and recognition of all genders and trans* people, on the other hand, it’s also never been more apparent that we need to overcome these divisions altogether so that each person can express themselves freely and without limitations.

We are becoming more and more aware that we each have masculine and feminine parts, which need to be balanced to live a fulfilled and happy life.

In the same way that some people might have developed more masculine aspects and others more feminine aspects, in their lives so far, some archetypes might also be more developed in our current expression than others.

But in each case, it is up to us to decide which ones we want to cultivate or let go of, once we’ve recognized them – and we’re not doomed to a certain expression, existence or direction for the rest of our lives, only because we’ve lived a certain way so far.

About Verena’s Archetypes Oracle Cards Deck

I started creating this deck in 2022, to assist me in my work, and the process has been quite interesting.

All of us who create things (which we all are, whether it’s thoughts or material goods), know that the lines are thin between what we create and what creates us, what our original idea is and what is directed from above, beyond or within.

All I can say is that this deck came together effortlessly. And some of the descriptions were written through me, not by me.

And, when I was about to finish the deck, I got a clear message from my own personal unicorn and dragon, that they wanted to be included as well, which led me to creating a whole set of spiritual joker cards, which right now, I think, became the best and most fun part about this deck.

The jokers are the god_dess, angel, unicorn, dragon and ancestor cards – and they are here so you will always know who’s ready to assist you with the problems you might be currently facing.

For personal development, these Archetypes Oracle Cards can be used, in the more traditional way, by simply pulling a card or laying a spread to learn more about your subconscious state and what that may lead to (rather than to predict the future) and understand yourself, your situation and needs better in each moment.

But they can also be used by simply looking through them and seeing which cards, archetypes or qualities attract you, so that in combination with the description of the cards, you can tackle the areas of your life, that could use more love and peace, ease or joy.

As humans, we often make the world much more complicated than it needs to be, so it’s good to get some assistance, to see things more clearly – and this is what these Archetypes Oracle Cards are for.

If we would like to do everything we do in life with joy, love, confidence and clarity, we don’t have to do much more than to set our intentions to that.

Yet, if we haven’t lived this way yet, it’s hard to even imagine such a life.

So when we try to set our intentions, we are faced with doubts, blockages or make up excuses and find distractions (our troubled past, our confusing and frustrating presence or our unpredictable future).

But the choice, to let this stop us or go deeper, is ultimately ours to make, in every moment, again and again.

If we experience blockages and become conscious and aware of them, we can find the help we need to resolve them, and this Archetypes Oracle Cards Deck can be a tool to help us go beyond our current limits.

If we notice that we are making excuses, or distracting ourselves, we can stop doing that, or find help to learn how to act more in alignment with our intentions as well.

I opened the CREATRIX School to assist with that in practice, and created the Oracle Cards for the same reason.

Using the Archetypes Oracle Cards over a longer period of time and for different aspects of your life, will make the choice you have in every moment to go into expansion and joy or fear and distraction or avoidance become much more obvious.

To get a better understanding of this, you can start by reading more about the two Source Cards, which represent the most important choice we have to make at any moment.

Creating this deck has been such a joy. And I’m excited to be using it now, so we can all live with more abundance, ease, joy and love.

You can have a look at the whole deck of Archetype Oracle Cards here, and you can also book a reading with me and, if you’re lucky and quick, also get a free deck once the decks are printed.

Book a reading with Verena

The first 100 people who book an Oracle Cards Reading with me will get 1 set of my Archetype Oracle Cards Deck shipped to their home for free as soon as they are printed.

As long as this offer is up – it is still available.

Book a 40-min session in which we will use my Archetype Oracle Cards Deck to find out where you are at in life right now, what you need to look at to get the best outcome for your current situation and who in the spirit world is offering to help you with it.

Plus, you will be one of the very first people to ever hold this deck in your hands!

🌈 You have the power to create your reality.

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Clarity - Confidence - Connection

In the CREATRIX School we bring clarity, confidence and connection into every area of our lives - and we look at a different topic each month.

This month is all about community, and thinking about how we can best work and come together with others - so that we can build the world we want to live in together.

It's fun, it's exciting, and it is surely also challenging, as we have to become honest about our wants, needs and desires.

What are yours?