A few of you really took to the archetypes practice last month, and explored your own hidden potential by selecting a light, medium and dark type to embody and ‘grow into’. Progress reports are welcome, by the way!

This month I want to offer you an extension of the practice, and shift the perspective. So let us begin with a great question:

Which feminine archetypes are you most attracted to?

Which qualities of feminine energy — as manifested and portrayed in pop culture, history, or myth — ignite a particular erotic charge in you?

The feminine archetypes we’re attracted to are often very personal. There’s often something beyond her looks that arrests your imagination and transforms the state of your body. Needless to say, the archetypes we’re drawn to hold a powerful sway in our psyches.

Pick three feminine archetypes. Again, through the prism of light, medium and dark.

For example, a light feminine energy will likely open your heart and infuse you with sublime qualities. A light energy is often healing, muse-like, or draws out the boy in you.

A medium feminine energy is more grounded, more corporeal. If a light energy slips through your fingers like a butterfly, a medium energy is more a lover or a warrior, someone you could walk arm in arm with, clash personalities and fight with, build home and go the distance with.

A dark feminine energy spells danger. You might want to fuck her (and only fuck her), yet there’s something about her that threatens death. Get too close and she might kill you—physically, or psychologically speaking. (The older men here have no doubt run into the femme fatale. And after being dashed upon the rocks, we’ve crawled back to her, for whatever mysterious reason, wanting more!)

Pick three feminine archetypes. Ones that truly ignite something in you.

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An Inner Exploration

I like this exercise because it creates a lot of energy. Sharing who lights me up erotically brings excitement: talking about my attractions builds aliveness.

But this isn’t some cosmo-quiz ‘who do you fancy?’ show-and-tell. Just as with the initial archetypes practice, self-knowledge can be won here.

Consider:

— In your dating life, which of your archetype preferences do you tend to get: your light choice? Your medium? Your dark?

— Which of these archetypes do you never get? And how do you stop these connections from happening?

— In your relationship, which layers of archetype does your woman embody (light, medium or dark)… and which does she never seem to embody, as if she’s cut off from it? Was it this way in the beginning?

— Which of the three feminine archetypes you chose are you comfortable being with? What happens to you, exactly, when you see such a woman? Which are you afraid to talk to?

— Do you know a single woman who can embody light, medium and dark flavours within herself? Thinking about the women close to you, what flavours do they embody (and which do they tend to lack)?

Some men pine so badly for one or two feminine flavours, they never see the other options out there. Other men are so uncomfortable with certain aspects of women that their presence alone is an inhibiting force — keeping a woman’s expression suppressed and low.

Traditionally, so many men marry the Madonna yet covet the Whore, that their entire intimate life is split in two.

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A Practice for Relationships

I think Kelly used to say the phrase, I don’t want some-one new, but I sure as hell want some-thing new! Archetypes offer a fascinating view to understanding why our eyes tend to roam even when we’re happy in a relationship. Men like different colours, fragrances, textures, shapes. We like to see all the flowers under the sun. Many women, though, are energetically stuck in a ‘home flavour’. Many women don’t have a dynamic range of different archetypes, different emotions, feelings, forms of self-expression. Many women inhibit aspects of their lightness, mediumness or darkness. They have a thin line of sensuality, or go pale.

In 1978, Chaka Khan hit the charts with a disco anthem. She sung it proud: ‘I’m every woman!’ This song is a spiritual truth…

Now I’m a happy, monogamous man. I don’t want the chaos of secondary partners or sleeping around. But I do want my woman to be every woman! I want her to be able to embody, to express, the full range of womanhood — from innocent to sage, from harlot to hermit, and a huge dash of home-maker to tie it all up! My role is to seduce this to life, to coax her fullness out of her. For the good of all concerned.

A little while ago I shared this light, medium and dark exercise with my girlfriend. I told her the three archetypes in pop culture that have an effect on me. There was a playful invitation, a little request, that she embody these flavours for me, that she give me some spiritual role-play. Sure, she could wear the clothes and everything, but I’m not interested in acting. I told my woman that I wanted to feel these energetic aspects of the feminine in our intimacy — the wildness of these chosen archetypes — amidst the sheets of our functional bed.

Being a good sport, I asked which three male archetypes she had some erotic weakness for. And I take it on myself (in the spirit of humour and play) to embody these archetypes (which, of course, means to bring out as-yet-unexpressed qualities of my own psyche), as an offering and a gift to her.

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(Re-)Igniting the Spark

Many couples don’t know how to re-ignite the spark once their relationship gets cast in the same tired riverbeds and grooves. The imagination, the eroticism, dies out. This exercise is a starting point.

My theory is that a man in relationship, whose thoughts lead him astray, fantasises only for the flavours of women that represent a need in him which is not being met. Think about that.

(I’m showing my age here, but) do you remember when Hugh Grant, at the height of his acting fame, cheated on Elizabeth Hurley, recognised as one of the most beautiful women on earth, for a real common prostitute? What on earth was he seeking?!

That is the question, indeed…

If you could articulate the need, the energetic craving, that your woman isn’t fulfilling, and if you could speak that to her in a playful, enrolling way… what would that do to the vitality of your relationship?

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In the Comments…

Let us know, with images or in text, your favourite feminine archetypes. One light, one medium, one dark.

If anyone guesses my three from the image above (without cheating — be honourable), I’ll send you a free Amorati t-shirt 😉

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Answers & Refinements

Well, I guess no-one won the T-shirt challenge this month… so maybe I’ll keep 2 T-shirts for next time!

Patrick W. made a valiant effort, however. Glass-raise to you, Sir.

Ok: my feminine archetypes, the antidotes to all my malaise!

1. Rich Asian Bimbo (the way they wear this white silk… jeez) – best portrayal: Parasite

2. Devoted, Dedicated Dancer (the quality of her artistic expression is beguiling; watching her intent in her process… I just love it) – best portrayal: Zhang Ziyi in pretty much everything (this image is Memoirs of a Geisha, though I like her best in ‘2046’)

3. Narcissistic Psychopath in a Sugar & Spice Façade (yep, most of my shadow-work money went into resolving this affliction. Quite a few of my ‘grand seductions’ went terribly off-the-rails) – movie: Gone Girl. In the past I might have gone with that Taylor Swift video where she has a knife, but Gone Girl is so close to the bone it gives me chills (well, not just chills!)

I want to make sure this is clear:

Your favourite actress is not an archetype. Choosing your favourite actress (and stopping there) is a limited way of exploring this work.

Sure, start with ‘Salma Hayek in From Dusk Till Dawn’. But the ‘type’ she plays in this role is ‘Voluptuous Mexican Stripper’, or to give a little more erotic precision, ‘Voluptuous Mexican Stripper with Anaconda’. Identifying the type is often enough for bedroom play.

How?

Well, to paraphrase a well-known teacher around these parts, ‘every German librarian has a Voluptuous Mexican Stripper inside her for that ONE guy’. Make it known that you don’t fawn all over the actress, but you want YOUR GIRL to embody the Mexican Stripper, and she might be willing to do that for you. (Just make sure you have a few bottles of tequila, and enough dollars to fan at her feet.)

To take it up a level, ‘Voluptuous Mexican Stripper with Anaconda’ belongs to the broader archetypal category of Siren, or Outlaw. Mentioning to your girl that you’d love to see her step into her Siren or Outlaw quality is a greater invitation still, for she can start to find how the Siren expresses through her, and what her unique embodiment of the Outlaw might be. Your German librarian might invent something very interesting indeed, if she were to step into her own Siren and Outlaw.

I can’t make my girlfriend Asian, for example, but I can ask her to dress up as a bimbo in white silk, and put her hand to her mouth when she laughs. I can also provide my girl with the means she needs to dedicate to her dancing – to the performance art that she loves. I can give her permission to be a Gone Girl, and keep a knife under the pillow. And to take it a level higher, parsing apart true archetypes from my own strange fantasies, I might invite her to explore the Innocent, the Amazonian, and the Medusa, as each pertain to her.

It is about beckoning the energy you crave through YOUR girl. It is not about fawning over celebrities.

It is also about seeing energies out there in the land of women, and maybe choosing ‘types’ you never dared approach before.

So enjoy the ride. And bring back your stories and learnings!

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The Feminine Archetype Challenge was inspired by our own Masculine Archetype work, on offer now through the Ars Amorata.

Do you want to get into your body, release tension and blockages, and activate your core, primal power?

Click the image below, and join us for LOTM today.