Navigating your Masculinity: Part 1 The King

The nature of the Masculine attributes have received much criticism in recent years especially with the feminist movement, but there is much more to the masculine nature of men than this one sided perspective. The following 4 part series are a summary from the work of Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette: KING, WARRIOR, MAGICIAN, LOVER – Rediscovering the Archetype of the Mature Masculine.

Each of the archetypal energy potentials in the male psyche – in both its immature and mature forms – has a triune, or three-part structure. At the top of a triangle we see the archetype in its fullness. At the bottom of the triangle the archetype is experienced in what we call a bipolar dysfunctional, or shadow, form.

The first archetype we look at is THE KING:

The King energy is primal in all men. Historically, kings have always been sacred. As mortal men, however, they have been relatively unimportant. It is the kingship, or the King energy itself, that has been important. We all know the famous cry when a king dies and another is waiting to ascend the throne, “The king is dead; long live the king!’’ The mortal man who incarnates the King energy or bears it for a while in the service of his fellow human beings, in the service of the realm (of whatever dimension), in the service of the cosmos, is almost an interchangeable part, a human vehicle for bringing this ordering and generative archetype into the world and into the lives of human beings.

The king sits central in the creation that radiates out to the frontiers of his realm. The king has influence only in this realm. As a co-creator of his own reality, the King energy will serve him the ability to direct the wellbeing of his realm. As a king, he must give clear orders to that what he wants to support or create and he must provide the fertile ground for the seeds of his orders to grow and give bounty.

The king receives the orders that he is to give, directly from the King energy itself and then passes them on to his ‘nation’. This wisdom that premeditates the orders of the king is described in the Ancient Egyptian mythology as a goddess called Maát, ‘Right Order’ or later in the Christian idea of Christ as the Logos, the ordering, generative and creative Word the Gospel of John talks about. In Hinduism, the archetypal ‘’right order’’ is called Dharma. In China, it is called the Tao, the “Way”.

It is the mortal king’s duty not only to receive and take to his people this right order of the universe and cast it in societal form but, even more fundamentally, to embody it in his own person, to live it in his own life. The mortal king’s first responsibility is to live according to the Right Order then his kingdom will flourish. If the King does not live ‘’in the Tao’’ then nothing will go right for his people, or for the kingdom as a whole. The realm will languish, the Centre, which the king represents, will not hold, and the kingdom will be ripe for rebellion.

Because of man’s ability to plant the seed of fertilisation, he has access to the creative fertile force that can direct his orders so that his world can prosper, be fruitful and multiply.

Another of the king’s energy is embodied in the ability of the king to give blessing. Blessing is a psychological, or spiritual event.

The good king always mirrored and affirmed others who deserved it. He did this by seeing them – in a literal sense, in his audiences at the palace, and in the psychological sense of noticing them, knowing them, in their true worth.

The good king delighted in noticing and promoting good men to positions of responsibility in his kingdom. He held audience, primarily, not to be seen (although this was important to the extent that he carried the people’s own projected inner King energy), but to see, admire and delight in his subjects, to reward them and to bestow honours upon them.

Being blessed has tremendous psychological consequences for us. There are even studies that show that our bodies actually change chemically when we feel valued, praised and blessed.

Young men today are starving for blessing from older men, starving for blessing from the King energy.

The king archetype in its fullness possesses the qualities of order, of reasonable and rational patterning, of integration and integrity in the masculine psyche. It stabilizes chaotic emotion and out-of-control behaviours. It gives stability and centeredness. It brings calm. And in its ‘fertilizing’’ and centeredness, it mediates vitality, life-force and joy. It brings maintenance and balance. It defends our own sense of inner order, our own integrity of being and of purpose, our own central calmness about who we are, and our essential unassailability and certainty in our masculine identity. It looks upon the world with a firm but kindly eye. It sees others in all their weakness and in all their talent and worth. It honours them and promotes them. It guides them and nurtures them toward their own fullness of being. It is not envious, because it is secure, as the King, in its own worth. It rewards and encourages creativity in us and in others.

This is the energy that expresses itself through a man when he takes the necessary financial and psychological steps to ensure that his wife and children prosper. This is the energy that encourages his wife when she decides she wants to go back to school to become a lawyer. This is the energy that expresses itself through a father when he takes time off from work to attend his son’s piano recital. This is the energy that, through the boss, confirms the rebellious subordinates at the office without firing them. This is the energy that expresses itself through the assembly line foreman when he is able to work with the recovering alcoholics and drug abusers in his charge to support their sobriety and to give them empowering masculine guidance and nurturing.

This is the energy that expresses itself through you when you are able to keep your cool when everybody else in the meeting is losing theirs. This is the voice of calm and reassurance, the encouraging word in a time of chaos and struggle. This is the clear decision, after careful deliberation that cuts through the mess in the family, at work, in the nation, in the world. This is the energy that seeks peace and stability, orderly growth and nurturing for all people – and not only for all people, but for the environment, the natural world. The King cares for the whole realm and is the steward of nature as well as of human society.

The shadow aspects of the king energy is known as the Tyrant and the Weakling.

The passive pole of the bipolarity is the Weakling and the active pole is the Tyrant. The Tyrant energy is he who hates, fears and envies that what he does not have a grasp on. In the Christiaan story of the birth of Jesus, King Herold sends soldiers to Bethlehem to kill every male child, so the Tyrant is active in our lives when something new is born and the Herold within us attack. The Tyrant is not creative, only destructive.

The Tyrant is abusive, ruthless, merciless and without feeling when he is pursuing what he thinks is his own self-interest.

It is the Shadow King as Tyrant in the father who makes war on his sons’ and daughters’ joy and strength, their abilities and vitality.

The Tyrant King manifest in all of us at some time or another when we feel pushed to the limit, when we are exhausted or when we are getting inflated. But we see it operating most of the time in certain personality configurations, most notable in the so-called narcissistic personality disorder. These people really feel that they are the centre of the universe and that others exist to serve them. Instead of mirroring others, they insatiably seek mirroring from them. Instead of seeing others, they seek to be seen by them.

The man possessed by the Tyrant is very sensitive to criticism and, though putting on a threatening front, will at the slightest remark feel weak and deflated. He won’t show you this, however. What you will see, unless you know what to look for, is rage. But under the rage is a sense of worthlessness, of vulnerability and weakness, for behind the Tyrant lies the other pole of the King’s bipolar shadow system, the Weakling. If he can’t be identified with the king energy, he feels he is nothing.

The hidden presence of this passive pole 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 friends.

This explains their angry outbursts and their attacks on those they see as weak, that is, those upon whom they project their own inner Weakling.

The man possessed by the Weakling lacks centeredness, calmness, and security within himself and this also leads him into paranoia.

Parents can guide their own young baby boy out of the state of grandiosity where he is given just the right amount of adoration and affirmation so that he can gradually be taken down a peg at a time into the state of the real world where everything does not revolve around him.

In conclusion:

When we are out of touch with our own inner King and give the power over our lives to others, we may be courting catastrophe on a scale larger than the personal. Those we make our kings may lead us into lost battles, abuse in our families, or into war. Or they may simply abandon us to our own underlying weakness.

But when we are accessing the King energy correctly, as servants of our own inner King, we will manifest in our own lives the qualities of the good and rightful King, the Kin in his fullness. We will feel our anxiety level drop. We will feel centred, calm and hear ourselves speak from an inner authority. We will have the capacity to mirror and to bless ourselves and others. We will have the capacity to care for others deeply and genuinely. We will ‘recognize’ others; we will behold them as the full persons they really are. We will have a sense of being a centred participant in creating a more just, calm and creative world. We will have transpersonal devotion not only to our families, our friends, our companies, our causes, our religions, but also to the world. We will have some kind of spirituality, and we will know the truth of the central commandment around which all of human life seems to be based: ‘Thou shalt love thy Lord thy God [read, ‘the King’] with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And thy neighbour as thyself.’

Take back the control of your own realm. Give new and clear orders. Bless the transformation and use guerrilla tactics to win the mental battle of your mind by staying centred in the present where you have access to the Right Order.

(Image source: Edward Poynter, The Queen of Sheba Before King Solomon, 1890)