Elegance 101 : The Art Of ‘Dark Feminine Energy’ Archetypes
Recently, I am interested in the Jungian archetype reading to support the psychology of my writing style in depicting character’s background. As a freelance writer in my free time, sometimes I wrote stories in online platform and to support the character’s psychology, I analyzed psychological readings and found the Jungian Archetypes. What makes it more interesting is, I find these archetypes are relatable in the movie personalities but what about in the reality world? Have you ever imagined what kind of character are you in the movie comparing to your reality existence? If you’re really into book character’s junkie, maybe this story is a ‘good to know’ information you want to read!
The Jungian Archetype Explained
According to Wikipedia, the Jungian Archetypes are a concept from psychology that refers to the universal pattern of thoughts, inherited ideas or images that present in the collective unconscious of all human being. The term was coined by Carl Jung — a Swiss Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst — who rejected the tabula rasa theory of human psychological development, which suggests that people are born as a “blank slate” and their experiences shape their thoughts, behaviors and feelings. Instead, Jung believed that human experiences such “collective unconscious” which is expressed from death, love, belongings and fear — and these collective unconscious experiences are what he called ‘Archetypes’.
Jung identified various archetypes in human psychology. These include events (such as birth, death, marriage) and figures (maternal, paternal, and child), but as the characters of these archetypes can be limitless, we can assume there are at least 7 feminine archetypes who dominantly play the role of dark feminine energy.
Archetypes seek actualization as the individual lives out their life cycle within the context of their environment, which Jung called ‘The Individuation’ — where the process include creative process of internalizing unconscious experiences which embodied primordial images through exposure of unexplored potentials of the mind.
Dark Feminine Energy as Your Shadow
There are various sources which cited more about dark feminine energy, but I love the explanation from womenlovepower.com which does not solely depends on mythological psych.
While Jung didn’t clearly defined dark feminine energy as one of the archetypes he created, but some character developments in psychology evolution offer new perspective of Dark Feminine as one of the important spectrums of image in a personality. Like Yin & Yang, dark feminine energy works as the shadow of the light feminine one. They complement each other and work in a divine complex system of personality. Understanding your dark feminine energy may require you to work on your shadow to get the best reflection of your light.
Being in your dark feminine energy doesn’t necessarily mean that you are showing your darker shade of personality in the negative nuances. The dark feminine energy often represent the misunderstood, mysterious, and sensual quality, but is not always on the negative tone. Understanding your dark feminine qualities will help you pointing out the best version of your traits and how to cope with your negative traits
7 Dark Feminine Archetypes
Working on your feminine energy also means you deal with your flaws — warts and all. You cannot choose what kind of archetypes to show up in your life, and it means you don’t have to hinder your own flaws or wearing a mask as a coping mechanism to polish your personality far from failure & rejections — to be someone else’s liking version. According to WomenLovePower.com, here are the 7 dark feminine archetypes you may need to know :
The Sage
The Sage archetypes is driven by the pursuit of intellectual and power proximity who enjoys being amidst masculine quality of pragmatic and logic, but embodies the feminine virtues of emotional, strategy and discipline. Her shadow tells that she might be over-competitive, obsessed with perfection, judgmental and sometimes being mean to other women, but it contradicts their own femininity in terms of being vulnerable and sexual expression. In a glance, the sage archetype is well depicted as Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada, or Baroness Von Hellman from Cruella who thrives in a harsh-competitive fashion industry who makes her a cruel boss and intolerant to non-sense attitude.
The Huntress
Females fall in this archetype is defined as super independent, and just love the idea of being herself. Her independent traits take multiple stream — she can be financially & emotionally independent, but far from there she is also free of popular ideas, trends and ‘common social setting’ created by patriarch culture or male dominions. Opposed to The Sage archetypes, they are feminists who believe in feminine quality to strive in the world full of patriarchy, embrace female athleticism, robust sexuality and female androgynous side which is empowered by action, bold moves and adventures to make life colorful.
Like The Sage, The Huntress struggles with vulnerability expression, but they crave for intimacy from males who often misunderstood them as ‘sister’ than a partner. Her shadow is being vengeance, rage and cruelty. However, when it comes to the female protectors, The Huntress will come forge the hard path and be the voice for those who have been victimized. You can see the character of The Huntress in Katniss from ‘The Hunger Games’
The Mystic
As the world demands rapid changes in dynamic state, The Mystic finds inner-peace in solitude and self-completeness. While The Sage and The Huntress are motivated by external goals, this archetype longs for the internal work with herself, focusing her quite beatitude and extreme self-possession power to fulfill personal goals without external distraction. Their talents are including serving others in volunteering activity, find fulfillment in acts of service, and being devoted to personal tasks which feeding up their innate interest. They work best in balancing life and pointing out important aspect of internal matters.
Her shadow can be showing up as the extreme cold, deep-introverted and frigid woman towards their loved ones and never let people to explore their deeper characters as they are lack of assertiveness and busy in her own thoughts without bold actions — following their spiritual path to serve the community. The Mystic is struggle to start meaningful relationship, or to express intimacy and emotional expression — even when they really care about others. They put too much strains on the relationship they hold dearly. The prevalence of this archetype can be seen in the religious sisterhoods.
The Queen
The Queen represents a woman’s yearning for marriage where she is motivated to build successful family and career. As a natural born leader, she is capable of leading sustainable business, taking charge of home, supervising her children and still be on the top of organization ladder. This archetype’s superpower often draws alpha males with the divine character to accomplish a meaningful life-relationship goal in a remarkable way. The Queen exhibits loyalty, charms, persuasion and diplomacy rather than intimidation.
Jealousy, over-protective, shallow, and image-conscious are some of The Queen’s inner shadows that needs to be worked on. To sustain her marriage and keep her partner out of ‘stealer’ radar, she will get alerted by getting in emotional rage, channeling on her most destructive mode, plan the best revenge to whoever she perceived as the ‘threat’ in order to keep her throne as the Queen.
The Mother
The Mother’s winning side is becoming the nurturer and the caretaker for her children, but more than that you can see this type of archetype in your office/group where there is always someone who always support the team with her maternal approaches like sending gifts to the ones who celebrate birthday, reminding about next project’s deadline, bringing some food to the table for group’s enjoyment, or providing emotional support like ‘a mother’ when you have problems. In short, this archetype finds fulfillment in addressing her motherly quality.
The downside of this archetype is fear of losing dominance, overprotective, and sometimes can be manipulative to achieve what she wants by affecting opinion of people under her dominion. She would struggle to set personal boundaries and saying ‘no’ due to the fear of abandonment. While she believes no one can’t live without her, The Mother archetype actually really can’t live without her symbolic ‘children’.
The Maiden
When I read about this archetype, I can’t help but remember a character personality of Holly Golightly from Breakfast At Tiffany’s. The Maiden archetype is all about charming individual with her own definition of self-love, innocent, naïve, and free-spirited with a sense of child-like rebellion. Her virtues are being life-long effervescent — something youthful in her spirit doesn’t age despite her physical aging — highly intuitive, creative, compassionate, and radiating natural seductive power to the masculine. She struggles to shift her character into the dualism of happy-go-lucky and persistency, being vulnerable yet independent, or taking deliberate actions while still believing a prince will be coming to save her.
However, she needs to work on her shadow to complete her grown-up queen phase. Due to her compliant nature and lacks of personal boundaries, The Maiden often draws the attraction of the narcistic partner who appears as malevolent and abusive to her. Her toxic experience in relationship may deepen her growth to be self-reliance, making empowered decisions for her life. That’s why, she may appears as fear of commitment and struggle in finding true love — especially when they are lost in direction — operating from what is acceptable in society standard by shutting down her vulnerability to be loved.
The Lover
And finally we come to the most iconic character of all archetypes and probably the most wanted female version in every ‘femme fatale’ movie selections — Marylin Monroe. I think, the story of her life has defined what kind of character The Lover archetypes itself. Marylin Monroe personifies the best of Dark Feminine Energy from The Lover archetype — sensual, charming, alluring and feminine. Her presence is the symbol of primordial vitality which is embodied by Aphrodite in the Greek’s goddess folklore, makes her capable to easily connect with people through love.
Her shadow is seeking validation from her relationship which sometimes leads to the emotional heart-breaks and ups-and-down love stories— which often spiraled around complex personality men. Beyond any words, The Lover often experienced betrayal and infidelity which causes her to be non-committal, narcistic, irresponsible and ‘drama’ queen. The Lover might also struggle to make reasonable decision due to her judgements are clouded by sensitive feelings. However, when it comes to personal self-care, The Lover puts herself as the top priority.
Understanding each nature of dark feminine energies as the shadow in 7 archetypes will help us understand the background of character in the movies and more over in the reality — because psychologically human interactions adapted the movie characters which took real life as the background. The shadow is inseparable from our lights, like yin and yang, but it guides you to understand the nature of your character’s persona and how to work on it.
Actually, you can find different types of another archetype from various sources — this is not the only resource I read, but these 7 archetypes reflect the best of Dark Feminine Energy in some movie characters I have ever watched.
So, what is your favorite archetype?
