Archetypal Zeus: A Force to Reckon With

Amirrorself.com: Welcome Zeus. Thank you for taking the time from your archetypal rein to describe how you manifest in our lives. Can you shed some light on what makes you an archetype to reckon with?

Zeus: I may be an archetype to reckon with, but do not confuse my energy with that of my brother Warrior.

Amirrorself.com: Tenacity and perseverance also part of your nature, yes?

Zeus: They have their value.

Amirrorself.com: Zeus as myth, the legends that proceed you through history declare you a leader, a fighter, then what makes your behaviour different from that of a warrior’s?

Zeus: The difference has to do with intention. Consider me an archetype who conquers to gain and foremost lives to rule. I do what I do on my terms, for my purpose, to increase my power, to benefit me. I consider myself first. Warriors do my bidding. I look down on them as they look up to me.

Amirrorself.com: Then we shouldn’t think of you as a humanitarian, an activist, a supporter of causes.

Zeus (smiles): I deal with individuals, large segments of the populous, organizations of men and women, society, nations. If they represent groups that support a certain cause and what I do enables that cause, then of course consider the outcome an act of humanitarianism even though humanitarianism isn’t my aim.

Amirrorself.com: Can you explain how your psychology works.

Zeus: I am not the one in the trenches. I am the One who tells others where to dig. While some of us get their hands dirty, combat is not my means. You understand the differences? I am the politician. I am the strategist with the intent to acquire. It is how empires and nations are built, corporations established, how leaders negotiate and heads of state do business: Each depends on the imagination and the forethought of a mind that finds the challenge of acquisition thrilling.

Amirrorself.com: You’re very clear and decisive. I’ve seen statues erected in your honour, and sometimes posed grasping a thunderbolt and/or with an eagle. Why an eagle?

Zeus: I have made a long study of the eagle. The eagle is a loner, has no interest in joining a pack. It survives on its ability to strategize. Have you ever watched an eagle source its prey? It circles the parameters, studies from on high the borders where the prey might escape. When it strikes, it aims, never losing sight of its target.

Amirrorself.com: Not everyone has the capacity to rule.

Zeus: Yet there exists a spectre of Zeus, whether dormant or active in every personality. I am considered a masculine energy; the polarity of the feminine, and I am discovered in both man and woman.

Amirrorself.com: Is fidelity an attribute you encourage? Where does your loyalty lie when it pertains to the affairs of the heart?

Zeus (knits his brow): Desire is what I know of life, and I am the force behind every desire; the force that knows the difference between love and lust. Lust is what I know of love. The act of love is the satisfying of an urge; nothing more. One can gain gratification by one’s own hand. However, relationship, the manner in which you are asking, that kind of intimacy is not in my nature. The loyalty I keep is to myself. The power I wield, like musk to a doe. I am the how, the what, and why of initiative. As I see it, everything exists to my advantage.

Amirrorself.com: And you take it.

Zeus nods in agreement.

Samson Slaying the Lion, Durer

Amirrorself.com: If everything exists to your advantage this means somebody else loses. Knowing this how does Zeus sleep at night?

Zeus: The human instinct to survive is what your Darwin called: “the survival of the fittest.” Whatever I conceive, I achieve because I have the power and the ability to do so. I have no fits of an ill conscience. No guilt to concede to and disturb my sleep. I close my eyes and slumber follows. I make no complication out of living.

To keep things in perspective, I remain emotionally detached. It is an attitude that roots me to the moment; capable of dealing with what arises, able to satisfy my passions and acquire what I need. Life, and I am the One to survive it, balances wits and charisma; understands good fortune born of good luck.

Amirrorself.com: Is there more of a Shadow side to your archetype than Light?

Zeus: Every archetype has its Shadow.

Amirrorself.com: Shadow has to do with extremes, an imbalance of energy, one overpowering the other. Does Zeus agree?

Zeus: It is true that taken to the extreme the Shadow re-enforces the selfish, greedy, power-hungry and vicious tendencies equated with being a ruler. These aspects of my nature must be understood, kept in check, made accountable to others; cooperation and the ability to work co-operatively factors that must be learned through life experience. Then if one suffers the lack of initiative, a disinterest in self and power, they can also be construed as Shadow: a refusal to engage in life, known as the weaker forms of my nature yet every bit as self-serving and non-caring as the one who achieves.

Amirrorself.com: How can we use the Light Zeus has to offer without trespassing the Shadow? Or to be happy, is enough never enough for the Zeus temperament?

Zeus (grins): One person’s poison may be another’s cure, and opinion depends on the point-of-view and all the rest that stands in-between. In my case, a very fine line separates the two, so one can easily move back and forth and cross the line at will.

I never think in terms of “enough”. Enough does not fit in the equation.

And happiness? Well, to me, coming from this frame of mind, happiness is a temporary notion, one that changes whenever a strong wind blows.

Amirrorself.com: Thank you Zeus for sharing so much about you as an archetype. You’ve left us with plenty of information to ponder and investigate.

Top Tip: Consider the Zeus in you. Make two SoulCollage® cards: one to honor the Light within, the other to acknowledge the Shadow.