And so we come to the final archetype within the life-arc cycle: the well-known and well-loved Mentor. This final Flat archetype, which precedes the final transformation of the Mage Arc, is one of the most significant within human storytelling. Indeed, next to the Hero, the Mentor is perhaps our most well-known of all mythic archetypes.
Sacred Contracts by Caroline Myss (affiliate link)
The Wise Old Man shows up time and again: Obi-Wan, Gandalf, Dumbledore. In Sacred Contracts, Caroline Myss references the origin of the word Mentor:
The Mentor is a teacher in whom you can place your implicit trust. The word comes from the character in The Odyssey to whom Odysseus, on setting out for Troy, had entrusted the care of his house and the education of his son, Telemachus…. Mentors do more than just teach; they pass on wisdom and refine their students’ character.
Sans white beard, the Mentor need not be explicitly male, of course. The Mentor is simply a character who has advanced well into the elder phase and has proven himself or herself in all the great tests of life. Unlike the previous Flat Archetype of Elder, the Mentor is a character who has now undertaken the first journey of life’s Third Act—the Crone Arc—and risen above the physical limitations of old age into a transcendent wisdom and even power.
The Mentor character will have one more possible transformative Change Arc to undergo—that of the Mage’s surrender of life itself. But for now this is a character who straddles the balance point of Life and Death—and has come to a sober peace with both. As such, the Mentor is in a prime position to not just guide the young, as the previous archetype of Elder did, but to initiate them by calling them into the Quest.
The Mentor Archetype: Coming Full Circle
Previous Arc: Crone
Subsequent Arc: Mage
Subsequent Possible Negative Archetypes: Miser (passive); Sorcerer (aggressive)
As referenced in the discussion about the first Flat archetype of the Child, the Mentor shares surprising commonalities with the young Innocent. The life cycle can be seen to represent a coming full circle—from Fool to Holy Fool. The Mentor, with all his or her hard-earned wisdom, represents if not a return to innocence, then at least a return to understanding it. What was lost in childhood has been regained, but with the compounded interest of experience.
As such, the Mentor is particularly fit to counsel the First-Act archetypes of Maiden and Hero, since by now the Mentor both knows what it was like to struggle with these life transitions and also that these youngsters must struggle through to transformation.
.../...
For reading more, visit : https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com
If you like the article, please share it.
Commenti