3 Archetypes for Expanding Creative Capacity (An Introduction)

Working with greater elegance

For the last decade, I’ve used my name ‘Libby Hoffman’ and ‘Lib-Hof’ to mark my design work. After 2 years of coaching, training and expanding into new territory in the tealm of body/mind connection and creativity…

I’ve created a separate account to articulate this process. You can follow Elegance Unfolding with ✩ Creatrix Libby ✧ ೃ༄*ੈ✩ for more. Below is a taste of working at the intersection of embodiment coaching and creativity:

What are Archetypes and why use them?

Archetypes are ways of stepping back from our psyche and witnessing the inner dance between conscious and unconscious, light and shadow, expressed and unexpressed with greater curiosity and clarity.

The process of seeing ourselves, rather than using ourselves… awakens new and more organic and joyful choice in our lives… rather than pushing, forcing or repeating old cycles to escape the inner noise.

Writer and mystic Caroline Myss describes the roots of archetype work in this way:

Awareness of archetypes dates back at least to the time of Plato, who called them Forms. Plato believed that these eternal Forms were reflected in material objects. The Form of Beauty, for example, is abstract and applies to all beautiful things; as different as the individual manifestations of Beauty may be–a beautiful person, horse, or flower–the Form itself never changes.

Seeing ‘Beauty’ distinct from x, y, z ‘beautiful thing’… allows us to work with a concept, virtue, or theme within ourselves with more artfulness and less attachment.

Carolyn Myss continues:

The great Swiss psychologist Carl Jung developed this idea further. For Jung, archetypes comprised psychological patterns derived from historical roles in life, such as the Mother, Child, Trickster, and Servant, as well as universal events or situations, including Initiation or Death and Rebirth.

Along with our individual personal unconscious, which is unique to each of us, Jung asserted, “there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature that is identical in all individuals.” This collective unconscious, he believed, was inherited rather than developed, and was composed mainly of archetypes.

In this analysis, one might consider ‘archetypes’ as a way of dancing with the mystery and multidimensionality of the our collective unconscious… much like Old Testament, Greek, and Hindu Mythology use story and character to portray facets of human and divine power.

What are Creative Archetypes and why use them?

Continue reading here and watch a short intro below.