The Shadow Archetype of The King
What is the shadow of the archetypal king in male psychology?
The final masculine archetype of The King within male psychology also has its own shadow, the shadow of the kings manifests differently both in active and passive forms. The active power shadow is called: The Tyrant, the passive shadow form is called: The Weakling.
The tyrant is known for hating and fearing the rise of new life in the world, reason being is that new life in its innocence may act as a threat to the tyrants dominion of the world, this hatred comes from the fact that like all shadow archetypes the tyrant has no inner structures of virtue, he also knows that his people do not cherish or admire any of his qualities which he does not have. We can think of King Herod, a tyrant whos ambition was to kill baby Jesus out of fear of usurpation and therefore killed all babies in the land but never Jesus Christ who at that time was symbolic of the divine child, the true king of kings.
The tyrant is also always overly sensitive to critique, the tyrant can never take on constructive criticism because his own dominion is predicated on sensitive unstable truths of incapability.
The passive shadow pole of the king is that of the weakling, this explains the hunger for mirroring - for ‘adore me!’, ‘worship me!’, ‘see how important I am!’ - that we feel from so many of our superiors and ambivalent friends. This explains also for their angry outbursts and their attacks on those they see as weak, that is, those upon whom they project their own inner Weakling.
This is a paranoid king who lacks calmness, centredness and security, the tyrant on the other hand knows what he wants to do in a brutal fashion but the weakling is more simply just a fumbling fool who is extremely indecisive and tries their hardest to let all others make decisions for him except himself, he cannot lead or be decisive, he has to reach out externally to receive what he should have internally.
His repressed grandiosity may explode to the surface, completely raw and primitive, completely unmodulated and very powerful. This is the man who seemed coolheaded and rational and ‘nice’ but who, once he’s been promoted, suddenly becomes a ‘different person’. This is the man for whom the saying ‘Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely’ is entirely accurate.
The man has to be the servant of a transpersonal Will or Cause. It needs to think of itself as a steward of the King energy, not for the benefit of itself, but for the benefit of those within its ‘realm’ whatever that may be.
When the ego is directly identifying with the king energy itself, it has no transpersonal commitment. He is his own priority (Shadow King).
If this resonates with you and are interested in doing shadow work on a practical and effective level. Book in a free 1-1 call with me: https://antiprocrastination.carrd.co/