What is your Goddess Archetypes?

First of all, you may ask what an archetype is. If you are a fan of Carl Jung, the Swiss scholar, psychologist and psychiatrist, you may be familiar with the terms such as archetype or collective unconscious. In my first book Goddess with Many Faces, I wrote about 6 Greek Goddess Archetypes: Athena, Artemis, Demeter, Persephone, Hera and Aphrodite. They are among the most well-known Greek goddesses in our popular culture, many of us are familiar with their images or myths. They each have a very distinctive archetypal influence.

I want to revisit these goddesses as I now have more to share with you and as I am writing my second book called Being a Goddess. I am going to do this is as a multiple part series. Today I want to talk specifically about our career motivation and inner calling for women based on these goddess archetypes.

How does your archetype affect your career?

So here is the context, archetypes are our inner patterns, they reflect our unconscious choices, inclination, interests and personalities. If we understand our own archetypal influences, we can understand how we related to others and why we are, the way we are. By discovering our archetypes, it helps us to better understand ourselves. You'll notice use the plural form to describe our active archetypes. This is because although we have one dominant archetype at any given time in our life, we can also see we have traces of other archetypes in us too. Also, as we grow and mature, the most active archetype in us may change. And both, nature and nurture play a part in this, it is not just we are born with one dominant archetype, and that's it.

In any case, you will know what I mean when we go through a brief overview of these archetypes in this podcast. I will talk about the typical career choices and tendencies for each goddess archetype. Also, what qualities of a job or career will motivate each archetype and inspire a more fulfilling career.

I use Goddess archetypes because I found their myths really resonate with our women experiences. Also, many of us are familiar with their stories, and the message can really hit home quickly. There are many archetypes out there, but I only focus on these six here.

Athena: Goddess of Wisdom 

Athena Archetype: The Strategist

In mythologies, Athena's father is Zeus, the chief God of Olympus, her mother is Metis, the goddess of wisdom also. Zeus values Athena highly and untrusted her with his symbols of power, in which no other gods or goddesses had that privilege. Athena appears in many epic hero stories alongside Odysseus or Hercules. She provided them with wise counsel and caution them with danger. I don't have time to go through the myths here, but they are fascinating to read. Once again, in you love myths, you can find more details and stories in my book Goddess with Many Faces, of course!

Athena was known for her intellect, wisdom, winning strategies and practical solutions. As an archetype, Athena is patient, she sees the whole picture, she is focused and efficient. Athena values rational thinking, will and knowledge over instinct and nature. This pattern is followed by logical women, who are ruled by their heads rather than their hearts. She thrives in the city and patriarchy culture and organisations. She is the "father's daughter", an Athens's father is always very proud of her achievement. Growing up,