An Introduction to Robert Moore’s King, Warrior, Magician, Lover

The Four Archetypes of the Mature Masculine: Introduction

Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette’s King, Warrior, Magician, Lover is an introductory book to the Jungian masculine archetypes. It explores the process of mature masculinity in the psyche throughout stories and human history. Robert Moore, a Jungian psychoanalyst and professor, spent decades of his life studying the four foundational archetypes of the King, the Warrior, the Magician, and the Lover. The book introduces the male archetypes in an easy to understand way that will benefit men and women. 

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The reason I am absolutely passionate about the masculine archetypes is because it will help deepen our inner understanding and create a healthy foundation for masculine maturation. By understanding the different archetypes within us, we can see where we are lacking, where we can grow, and where our strengths are. Each archetype presents a unique configuration of characteristics, both positive and negative. 

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While we live in a society that likes to deem all masculinity as “toxic masculine”, it is important to reinforce healthy mature masculinity. The “toxic masculine” have been manifestations of the shadow side of the archetypes. A lot of the popular male “role models” have been those like Andrew Tate, who exhibit traits of the dark, or shadow masculine. For too long there has been a deep misunderstanding of what masculinity is. This article is going to explore the archetypal masculine in both its healthy and unhealthy aspects. 

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More importantly, for many of us, we have lacked male initiation in our lives. We live in an age without the man’s rite of passage. The masculine archetypes are an essential part to becoming a mature initiated male.

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This is the first part of a multi-part series on the King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover male archetypes. In this first part I’ll be creating the foundation for a solid understanding of the male psyche. I’ll be explaining what an archetype is, the difference between being a “boy” and a “man”, and an extremely brief overview of the four archetypes themselves. 

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Over the next few weeks, we’ll be exploring each male archetype. Once they’re complete I’ll be adding links at the bottom of this article if you’d like to jump straight into any of the archetypes. 

What Is A Jungian Archetype?

To put it in the simplest terms, an archetype is a universal pattern in the human psyche.

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For example, the “Hero” archetype which shows up in stories all across human culture and history. Fables, mythologies, dreams, and even within our own psyche there is a “hero” archetype that desires to overcome obstacles and come out victorious. The archetype is present and when boiled down to its simplest essence, that is the archetype (the hero can be Luke Skywalker or Ripley from Aliens, but the archetype is “Hero”). 

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It is vitally important for all who get into archetypal to know, we are not the archetype. 

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Read that again, and again. You are not the archetype. I am not the archetype. You are not the Warrior, or the King, or the Hero. I emphasize this because archetypes, as Robert Moore puts it, are divine conductors of energy. They are meant for inspiration, for driving our actions, for existing in this world in a fully mature and individuated way. However we are not the divine, we are not those energies. Robert Moore compares it to touching “nuclear reactor cores of the psyche”, where we can become grandiose and possessed by these archetypes. That is why building a healthy ego is important in this work with archetypes. Even Carl Jung himself points out the dangers of archetypal possession,

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“The characteristic feature of a pathological reaction is, above all, identification with the archetype. This produces a sort of inflation and possession by the emergent contents, so that they pour out in a torrent which no therapy can stop. Identification can, in favourable cases, sometimes pass off as a more or less harmless inflation. But in all cases identification with the unconscious brings a weakening of consciousness, and herein lies the danger. You do not “make” an identification, you do not “identify yourself,” but you experience your identity with the archetype in an unconscious way and so are possessed by it. Hence in more difficult cases it is far more necessary to strengthen and consolidate the ego than to understand and assimilate the products of the unconscious. (Carl Jung, A Study in the Process of Individuation, CW 9i, par 621)

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With that word of warning, I promise the rest of the article will be easier to digest. More in depth articles about archetypal possession and grandiosity will be written elsewhere. For now, let’s dig into the basics of the masculine archetypes. 

We will be exploring the difference between boy and man psychology, what the four masculine archetypes are, and examples of what they look like in action. 

Boy Psychology vs. Man Psychology 

There are many boys pretending to be men. Boys who are in adult man bodies. It is not a particular person’s fault either, rather we lack male initiation rites in the modern day, so we have not been taught what a “man” is. 

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Nowadays “boy” behavior is mistaken for manhood. Some men compensate with excessive aggression, hostility, and egotism. What this reveals instead is inner weakness, particularly the weakness of a wounded boy. When our ego doesn’t access healthy masculine archetypes, we get stuck in boyhood psychology. 

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When we are boys, we are of course in the appropriate immature masculine archetypes. The immature forms of the mature King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover. Much like those four mature archetypes, it is a triangle with the healthy expression at the top and the two active-passive bipolar dysfunctional sides at the bottom. The top of the triangle is the healthy expression. The left side of the triangle is the active shadow side (e.g. bully) and the right side is the passive shadow side (e.g. coward). 

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A tell-tale sign of boyhood psychology is grandiosity, a sense of invincibility, and lack of humility. The “hero” archetype is the last stage of boyhood psychology. In myths the hero goes through the hero’s journey (as told by Joseph Campbell), he faces an obstacle, is temporarily defeated, matures and learns to defeat the enemy. Lastly there is a “death” of the Hero and the “death” of the Hero is the “death” of boyhood because he has encountered his limitations.

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“He has met the enemy, and the enemy is himself. He has met his own dark side, his very unheroic side. He has fought the dragon and been burned by it; he has fought the revolution and drunk the dregs of his own inhumanity. He has overcome the Mother and then realized his incapacity to love the Princess. The “death” of the Hero signals a boy’s or man’s encounter with true humility. It is the end of heroic consciousness.” (Moore & Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician Lover, p. 45)

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Without this death of heroic boy consciousness, men are insensitive, arrogant, self destructing, in the active shadow pole. But with the passive shadow, men become cowardly and lacking in motivation. Does that sound familiar? 

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We see it now more than ever. Men that are self aggrandizing (Andrew Tate) and men that have completely given up on life (MGTOW or the “black pill” comes to mind) exhibit both the active and shadow pole. While the hero is necessary to transition into manhood, appropriate channeling of the hero is the step that prepares us into manhood. The hero’s veracity is needed up until his limitations are reached. That is then when he must die and be reborn into the man he is meant to become.

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Manhood psychology builds upon the structures of boyhood psychology. Our ego, Jung’s definition, is the seat of our consciousness. If we think of a board meeting, the ego is the chair of the board and the archetypes are board members. As you know, board members want to have their way and vie for dominance. It is the same with the archetypes. But a healthy ego ultimately calls the shot, since he functions like the chairman of the board. 

A man’s responsibility into maturity is that although we aren’t responsible for the things that might have stunted or traumatized us, we are still taking responsibility for what we’re not responsible for. We choose to heal, grow, and mature. It’s a tremendous task to take on. However, that’s the difference between the boy and the man. The boy excuses, the man takes responsibility. A male in his manhood takes ultimate ownership over himself and his circumstances, even when they aren’t necessarily his doing. A good example of this is Jocko Willink’s views of extreme ownership. 

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“Extreme Ownership. Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame.” –Jocko Willink

The Four Masculine Archetypes

Each of the four masculine archetypes serve a different purpose in the male psyche and are equally important for a healthy male to function in life. All men have these four archetypes within their psyches regardless of differences in culture and even time. There may be different configurations for each person (even women have a version of these four archetypes), for example I might have a “stronger” or healthier “Lover” archetype while another man might have a healthier expression of the “Magician” yet a detrimental “Lover”. This easily explains why there are men who have affinities, some men are naturally more militant and disciplined with Warrior energy while other men are more artistic, intuitive, and passionate like the Lover. 

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The four male archetypes are the King, the Warrior, the Magician, and the Lover. Each plays their own unique role in the psyche while also fueling each other and working in conjunction with each other to create a balanced masculine psyche. As we explore the four archetypes you’ll start to see in your own life how your King, your Warrior, your Magician, and your Lover come to fruition. You’ll begin to figure out who’s in charge, who plays along well together, who fights with each other, and more importantly where you are developmentally as a man. The main goal in this is to balance our four functions and become a master of our own masculinity.