Warrior, Magician, Lover, King

by Rod Boothroyd

  So getting your balls back is about giving up the feminine and embodying what we could call the sacred masculine on every level – emotional, physical, spiritual. It’s about being strong in every part of your being. (“Sacred” simply meaning pure, ancient and ancestral, something to be honoured.)

  The reality is that a man who’s lost his balls is mild and non-assertive. He doesn’t know what he stands for. He may agree with one person one minute, and someone with dramatically opposing views the next. Most likely he doesn’t know how to stand up for himself against men or women. He may not have any clear opinions.

  Maybe he’s done lots of workshops about feeling and sensitivity – not that there’s anything wrong with that, as long as it isn’t all he’s done by way of self-development. Maybe he’s “deeply spiritual”. Maybe his experience of self-development workshops extends no further than endless Tantra weekends – not that there’s anything wrong with that, either… as long as it isn’t all he’s done.

  In short, he’s deficient in the solid core of masculinity which enables a man to go out into the world and make an impact in his own way. He doesn’t really know what it means to be a man in the world. He may have some Warrior energy but somehow he isn’t a full-blooded man. Everyone in his life has a stake in him. He isn’t his own man.

  This raises the question of how a boy becomes a man. A lot of it has to do with having dad around, or perhaps some other suitable male role models, so the boy can learn how men are in the world. But it also has to do with a boy being allowed to test himself in situations that allow him to develop his assertiveness, experience his capacity to impact the world, and fully feel (and where necessary control) his fear, his anger, and his courage.

  A problem I see here is that rather a lot of women appear to be frightened of masculine energy in men and boys. They seem to fear men who are assertive and live their lives pushing the edge of what’s possible for them. These women sometimes look like they’re unconsciously trying to nullify male energy in their boys and their men. Perhaps they are afraid of male rage, perhaps with good reason. However, this situation does nobody any good, least of all the boys.

  Men who live in a less-than-fully masculine way do themselves no favours because they don’t experience the reality of who they are at their genetic core. And they do women no favours because as men they are simply not able to consciously and fully meet the feminine energy of their partners. I believe most women want a strong man who can set clear boundaries and protect them and their children, because then they can feel truly safe.

  Such men harm their children too, by not showing their kids what true masculinity is all about. Bearing in mind that children learn most things about masculinity from their fathers, you can see how a passive man may inadvertently teach his sons a few things they don’t need to know: how to be dominated by women, how to shrink from challenges, and how to weaken in the face of the hard knocks that life inevitably provides. So what to do about this?

  First of all, the man has to work out who’s got his balls. When he knows that, he has to symbolically and energetically get them back. Then he needs to find a place where other men can help him embody the essence of his new found masculinity on a day-to-day basis.

  A powerful men’s group is a great place to do those things, particularly if it’s made up of men who understand the concepts of emotional intelligence, honesty, trust, accountability and integrity among men. (You might like to look into what the ManKind Project offers if this sounds interesting to you.)

  Mixing with the right kind of men in life also helps – that’s men who don’t shrink from a challenge, who live life to the full, and who know exactly who they are (or are on their way to finding out). And doing your own personal emotional work is important. There are plenty of men’s workshops where men can extract feminine energy that’s been injected into them through no fault of their own, and replace it with something more masculine.

  5 Do Your Personal Work

  One of the quickest and easiest ways to recover your masculinity is to plunge headfirst into your unconscious, root out the reprogramming that somebody else put in there, and replace it with a truly masculine program, one that will make you the man you were always meant to be.

  I’m not talking here about counselling, which can degenerate into an endless discussion, or psychotherapy, which may produce great insight but comparatively little change. The thing that counts here is action.

  After 20 years’ work in various fields of psychotherapy with both men and women, I believe the most powerful way to rapid personal change is to find a way to work with your archetypes and your unconscious Shadow. Your Shadow is made up of the thoughts, feelings and emotions you hide, repress and deny, both as child and adult.

  Carl Jung showed us how the drivers behind our behaviour lie deep in our unconscious. For example, as a child you may have been told or shown or taught – directly or indirectly – that anger was not acceptable in your family environment. Or you might have picked up the message that your sexuality was shameful or even disgusting.

  Whatever you were taught, you would surely have repressed all of the “unacceptable” aspects of yourself to keep the acceptance and maybe even the love of your family. But trying to close these feelings down, hide them, or repress them out of sight in the unconscious mind is a double-edged sword.

  What you repressed as a child and what you repress now will not lose its power. Far from it: in fact the power of what is repressed gradually increases simply because it’s not expressed.

  The energy gradually grows, becoming more and more influential over your behaviour, disrupting your relationships, perhaps causing you to break down in unexpected grief, or to experience moments of rage. Sometimes it manifests as bodily symptoms, as aches and pains, as illness of one kind or another.

  This is the nature of your shadow unconscious. Often the material which bursts out of shadow feels as if it is somehow “not part of you”. It may feel like it is separate from you, has come from nowhere you know about, and has complete control over you.

  The process of emotional healing starts in earnest when you take a decision to delve deep down into your unconscious and look at the emotional wounds you’ve experienced in each of your archetypes or sub-personalities: Warrior, Magician, Lover and King. Then you can start to heal the emotional wounds you’ve experienced and recover the essence of your masculinity in its pure, original and truly magnificent form.

  For men who have somehow been “de-balled” this kind of work is absolutely essential if they’re to recover their true masculinity and express it in their own lives.

  And for anybody still wondering why this matters, it’s simple: a life lived split off from your natural essence as a man feels empty, desolate, a shadow of a satisfying life. If you continue to live such a life, you may well die unhappy, unfulfilled, and full of regret and bitterness. There is a better way, and seeking it out is a choice that you can make right now: all you have to do is find the path in life that will take you on a journey to recover your masculinity.

  6 Live with Integrity and Authenticity

  Every man has his own values. Examples of values include loyalty, courage, strength, defending what’s important, loving freely, trusting others, integrity and honesty.

  You are the only one who can decide what your values are, but two stand out for me: integrity and authenticity. I think these values are two essential foundation stones of mature masculinity.

  Yet to live a life of complete integrity is one of the hardest possible challenges for any man. From time to time we all take shortcuts, we all make life easy for ourselves, we all skip the difficult challenges. Life can be hard and sometimes it’s just easier to turn the other cheek, tell a lie, hide from the truth, and avoid facing up to our responsibilities.

  None of which, I might say, stops us developing a practice of building a little bit more integrity every day. But what exactly, you might respond, does it mean to be “in integrity” as a ma
n?

  In fact it’s simple. Integrity means that you do what you say you will do, you are who you say you are, and your actions match your words. So integrity means you live in truth. You know you are responsible for the consequences of your actions, intended or unintended. You accept those responsibilities.

  And of course to stay in integrity as a man you must keep your commitments, whether they are implicit or explicit. When you marry your wife you make an implicit commitment to be faithful to her – and you keep it. When you have children you enter into an implicit commitment with them to look after them. Hopefully you also make an explicit commitment with yourself to protect your children and be a great father to them. You keep those commitments. You do your best to fulfil all the other commitments and agreements you enter into. If for some reason you cannot, you find a way to make it up to those whom you have let down. And in all of that you continue to keep your commitments to yourself.

  Authenticity and integrity also mean living by a set of values. For me these values include treating others decently, respecting women, looking after children, honouring planet Earth, and setting certain standards for my own behaviour, among other things.

  When you embody qualities like this you are authentic: you are who you say you are and the world knows it. By staying in integrity in this way you forge a path to your own Sovereignty and become a role model for all those around you. You also become an example for other men who haven’t yet understood the true character and nature of mature masculinity.

  7 Get Male Support

  Make no mistake about it: you need the support of men around you, men who respect what you’re trying to do and who honour all your archetypal energies just as you do.

  I recently led a weekend Lover archetype workshop for men only. Several men on this workshop had spent a long time steeped in the Tantric tradition where personal development work takes place mostly in mixed gender groups.

  They were delighted and surprised about their new experience of working in a men-only group as opposed to a mixed gender group. The pleasure they found in being part of a male circle reminded me that men working together in a group with a common objective generate a special kind of energy which affirms them at the very core of their masculinity.

  To put it another way, men understand men. Men get a lot from being with other men, consciously and unconsciously.

  Of course we do! Why would we not? In my view, we are all more similar than different. And while most of us want a woman as a partner in relationship, there’s no denying that men seem more at ease, more open, more authentic in a group of men than in a mixed gender group. There’s a different energy when women are part of a group. I’ve heard the same from women, too.

  The energy generated in a good men’s group is something we desperately need in our society today. Men function better when they are not trying to do everything alone. They also need the support of men they can trust so they can allow themselves to be vulnerable. However, getting together with men in a men’s group isn’t about being an asshole and doing adolescent things. Nor is it about being a jerk or enjoying the company of other pumped-up men behaving like adolescent boys. (Though that can be fun for our inner children!)

  A good men’s group will give you a feeling for and an affirmation of true manhood, together with a sense of being with other men who understand you in a way that women simply can’t. It’s about having a place to share your deepest secrets with a group of men you trust. It’s about sharing a space where you can be heard and witnessed by men who understand your experience as a man more deeply than you could ever imagine.

  If you find a good men’s group, you will find true buddies, men who may become friends for life with a very deep connection. This kind of connection is much deeper than going down the pub and watching sport together, though that can be fun too.

  A group where men sit together and really hear each other’s deepest truths is a group which engenders a deep sense of male bonding. I believe that if every man in the world found a men’s group to support him in this way, the world would be a much better place. If you don’t know the meaning of love for your brothers (and all men are your brothers), then find a men’s group made up of open-minded men and discover it for yourself.

  In such a group, you can learn to take the push of other men defending their boundaries, and you can learn to push back against them. You can learn to listen. You can work on your emotional wounds. And you can learn to clear the tensions that arise between men without violence, anger or fighting. You won’t know how powerful this is until you experience it.

  And once you’ve experienced it, you won’t want to be without it. (If you can’t find a men’s group, you might even want to start one. Don’t know how? Well, take the plunge! There is good information at www.mensgroupmanual.com and in the book A Circle of Men: The Original Manual for Men's Support Groups by Bill Kauth.)

  The Boyhood Archetype Of The Warrior:

  The Hero And The Hero’s Journey

  The Hero archetype is probably the most advanced form of boy psychology, and normally the peak of adolescent masculine energy. Naturally, it’s an immature archetype simply because it’s an aspect of boyhood, and boyhood itself is an immature state of masculinity. So when a boy grows physically into a man but does not develop psychologically beyond the Hero, he cannot form a mature masculine identity. He remains a boy-man.

  Adolescent boy-men are all around us in society. They are driven by impossible dreams, and they haven’t yet recognized that these dreams are never going to come true. In fact, they haven’t evolved from their adolescent mission into a true mission of their own, a mission which reflects their soul purpose. That transition is a step which every man must take before he can move into full male maturity and sovereignty.

  So whether we look at a boy exploring the power of the Hero archetype or a man still locked in the grip of the Hero archetype, we see immaturity. Some men continue to behave heroically well into the later part of their lives when Elderhood and Sovereignty should be developing. This is a real case of inhibited development.

  And yet, the Hero is an important archetype in men. Moore and Gillette believed that it was an essential part of our evolutionary adaptation. They thought every boy needed a Hero archetype to provide him with the energy to break free from his Mother at the end of his boyhood, as he faced the difficulties and challenges of life as a man. In this view of the archetypal structure of masculinity, the Hero provides the energy to boost a boy out of his dependence on and identification with mother into true male independence. Presumably it’s also the energy which fuelled a boy through initiation rituals and rites of passage into manhood in societies where they existed.

  To put it another way, the Hero archetype provides the energy which a boy needs so he can show his competence and prove himself strong enough to overcome – or at least survive – the forces which the world throws against him.

  Moore and Gillette spoke of the Hero as an archetype that enabled the boy to establish “a beachhead” against the overwhelming power of the unconscious, much of which they believed is experienced as the feminine, specifically as mother, in men.

  In this view, the Hero is an important archetype because it somehow embodies an ideal vision of what a boy could become as a man – if he is indeed able to overcome the forces of the world.

  In archetypal legends the boy comes up against the forces of the world and defeats them, reigning supreme like Superman. In practice, this kind of spirit empowers a man to take action in the world to get what he wants. Although there may be hard lessons for him to learn before he grasps the reality and limitations of his abilities, strength and power, he will gain an understanding of what is possible for him and what is not.

  The Hero archetype is generally not well-regarded in our age. Often those who dare to stand above the crowd or try to shine are dragged down by others of lesser ambition or ability. And in that lies one particular representation of the archetypal legend about the
“Death Of A Hero, Birth of A Man” – a death which may be needed before the mature Warrior can take his rightful place.

  The death of the Hero represents the death of boyhood and boy psychology. Hopefully this naturally allows for the birth of manhood and man psychology, a condition which provides the opportunity to experience humility and an understanding of one’s true strength in the world. Humility combined with strength are qualities of the Sovereign. But if we continue to be possessed by the energy of the Hero into adult life we can never mature fully. We cannot take our place as a true Sovereign.

  And should we fall under the shadow aspects of the Hero, our transition into mature masculinity will take even longer. In fact, it may never happen.

  The Shadows Of The Hero Archetype

  There are two shadows of the Hero: the inflated grandstanding bully, and the deflated coward.

  A boy or a man under the influence of the grandstanding bully is all about impressing others. He wants everyone to know that he is superior, that he has the right to dominate. He has no sense of his true position in the world. When he’s challenged about the way he behaves he may respond with verbal abuse, rage or even physical abuse. Does you see this in people in your world, or on the wider political scene in our times?

  What underlies this shadow archetype is a deep sense of inferiority and insecurity. You can see this archetype playing out in so many ways: hotshot businessmen who refuse to be team players, bankers and financiers who buck the system for their own advantage (at the expense of the rest of us), immature men in the military who risk themselves and their men’s lives to gain glory or establish a reputation, small men who somehow manage to inflate themselves into positions of power. And so on. You can smell the immature Hero a mile away.