I WAS ASKED THE OTHER DAY about archetypes and how we can be sure whether or not they're the real thing. After all, my questioner said, myth has been abused and distorted for years by governments of an extreme kind, and it's done us no good. So how can we make sure we get the real or the true meaning?

I think we can answer that by addressing something as basic as the story of Adam and Eve. We all know it from Genesis and it's a creation myth of some power - indeed, other cultures have similar versions. So it's not a bad place to ask questions about how myth works. To begin with what has to be stressed is that this not a literal story. It's a metaphor: a fable that is to be seen as a way of talking about who we are rather than a factual description. Some people don't want to think of it that way. If you go to the Creation Museum in Tennessee, they'll tell you it's not a myth. It's one hundred percent true, they claim; the Earth was created six thousand years ago. They even have an animatronic version of Adam and Eve, standing in a lily pond that covers their genitals conveniently, showing exactly what they believe Adam and Eve looked like, carefully arranged long hair obscuring Eve's breasts and nipples. This literal approach, however sincerely meant, unfortunately takes all the power out of the story.

So let's look at the story itself.

Adam and Eve are created. God moulds Adam out of clay and breathes life into him, then Eve is made from Adam's rib. They eat the fruit, blame the snake, and get sent out of Paradise. Yet, if we take this story one step at a time we can learn something about who we are, today.

Adam is a combination of earth and air, two contrasting elements, and already we have an indication that something is going on, for God provides the breath that makes Adam live. He didn't have to do that when he made the other creatures, he just produced them, complete. So why the extra detail? It's there for a reason - and it makes a good metaphor for our mixed nature. After all, we are all creations of the earth, fleshly and grubby, but we are also inspired by spiritual ideas. Our body will die and go back to the earth, and our spirits will, presumably, return to God. It's a neat way to describe why humans can be so basic at one moment and so spiritual at another.

The detail reminds us of our essential nature. Likewise, Eve comes from Adam's rib, because she is his equal. That's the only possible interpretation of that metaphor. She comes from a place near his heart, and Genesis actually says that Adam will 'cleave unto his wife' because they are the same flesh. As a description of the love bond that can unite people that works rather well, too.

Then we have the episode of the fruit. Now, until this happens Adam and Eve don't even know they don't have clothes on, so equal and happy is their life. In archetypal terms they are Innocents in the truest sense. Then they eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and what do they see? They see that some things are polarized. The knowledge they gain is of 'Good' and 'Evil' which are man-made categories that may help us navigate through the world but ultimately are not that helpful. Is a storm at sea 'good' or 'bad?' It depends upon where you are. Is sunshine 'good' or 'bad?' It depends on whether or not you have sensitive skin, perhaps, or know someone with a melanoma, or if you're in the burning hot desert without shade or water.

Once they eat the fruit Adam and Eve stop being Innocents and start feeling alienated from God, and that's why they try to hide. It's also when they become Orphans - even before they've been sent away. And like all Orphans, they blame others, they try to make others responsible for their situation. Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the snake. It sounds exactly like half the divorce court fights I've ever heard of - each party blaming the other, and then blaming their childhood trauma, or their parents, or whatever it is they can blame.

God sees this unenviable trait in Adam and Eve and he has a choice. He could shrug and say, that's alright, it was bound to happen; but he doesn't. In fact, what he says is that if these two remain in Eden then there's nothing to stop them taking the fruit of the Tree of Life, too, and then they'd 'live forever.' Presumably that means they'd be equal to God. So he banishes them, and sets Cherubims and a flaming sword to make sure they don't come back. The message is pretty clear - there's no room in Paradise for people who whine, and who take no responsibility for themselves. Paradise doesn't want whiners or those who play the victim role.

So Adam and Eve are banished, and the snake as well. Now they really are Orphans, longing for what they've lost. And here's the fascinating part; the snake. In most cultures the snake is revered and even worshipped (in India especially) and it has such a high status in part because the snake sheds its skin. Because of this it becomes a symbol of constant renewal, constant growth and development. The myth seems to be saying that God exiled Adam and Eve and the serpent and sentenced them to a life wandering the earth, a life in which they would have to find their own way and grow through different stages.

The myth, therefore, points the way ahead to the Pilgrim archetype, the Warrior-Lover archetype and the Monarch archetype, until finally the king of kings will arrive who is the ultimate Magician, the Messiah. And indeed, as one reads through the Bible we find the myth does continue in this way.

There, for example, we see Moses - the Orphan - rejecting his adoption by the Egyptians, then wandering, Pilgrim-like in the desert, before his people find the Promised Land. When they find it they fight for it as Warrior-Lovers, and eventually they find a worthy king, king David, who becomes the Monarch figure to emulate and learn from.

Now this, it seems to me, is a myth, a metaphor, about the deep nature of the way the human psyche can grow; but it only works if we see it as a metaphor. Otherwise it's rather confusing. Why did Moses wander in the desert for twenty years? Logically we have no answer for that, because it's not a very big desert. Yet if we see it as symbolic of the time necessary to find out what one believes, then it becomes understandable. It takes a long time to establish what one is going to believe in and commit oneself to, sometimes.

Unfortunately, various religions have seized hold of these stories and used them not for spiritual purposes but for political ends. Adam and Eve, to the Catholic Church, is a tale about disobedience and sex, although sex is not mentioned until much later. Original Sin is a fascinating idea, but it's not a notion that lets one feel fundamentally good about one's self. The real myth isn't truly honored in those versions, which is probably why it no longer feels relevant to most people.

Myths can get hijacked in this way. Repressive regimes all over the world have used folk tales and perversions of religion to keep power for themselves. Today, for example, we can hear rhetoric about the Promised Land, and how it is a place to be fought for, and there's lot of strife about that. But how would that change if we could see the Promised Land as a state of mind?

We enter the Promised Land when we find out what we believe our purpose is in life - and that can happen anywhere, geographically. That polarization Adam and Eve gave into, the knowledge of 'Good' versus 'Evil' that was the effect of the Tree of Knowledge, and that's what you hear every day people talk about 'the enemy,' or speak in terms of 'terrorists' and 'patriots,' 'us' and 'them.' It's simplistic thinking, and in the myth God didn't want it in Eden.

If the myth has anything to tell us then it might be that such black and white thinking will not get us into Paradise. In fact, it won't even get us into a world we can live in.

We could do well to remember that today.

© Dr. Allan Hunter, 2009

Dr Allan Hunter has two books on Archetypes:
Stories We Need To Know (Findhorn Press)
and The six Archetypes of Love: From Innocent to Magician (Findhorn Press).

Visit www.allanhunter.net or www.sixarchetypes.com to find out more.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Allan Hunter was born in England in 1955 and completed all his degrees at Oxford University, emerging with a doctorate in English Literature in 1983. His first book was Joseph Conrad and the Ethics of Darwinism. In 1986, after working at Fairleigh Dickinson University's British campus and at Peper Harow Therapeutic Community for disturbed adolescents, he moved to the US. For the past twenty years he has been a professor of literature at Curry College in Massachusetts, and a therapist. He has produced two books specifically aimed at using writing and drawing exercises therapeutically - The Sanity Manual and Life Passages. Both books are based on his revolutionary interactive writing exercises, tried and proven in counselling sessions and classes. While working with clients in this way he began to uncover the presence of a series of archetypes within their writings. This led to his present work with the formulation of the six archetypal stages of spiritual development.

Four years ago he began teaching with the Blue Hills Writing Institute and he has remained with it ever since, working with students to explore the memoir and life-writing. His own experience of this medium is reflected in From Coastal Command to Captivity; The Memoir of a Second World War Airman, a project on which he worked with his father up to the time of his death. It required extensive reworking to bring this memoir to completion. As in all his books, the emphasis is on the healing nature of the stories we weave for ourselves if we choose to connect to the archetypal tales of our culture.