The final two archetypal character arcs in the life cycle deal primarily with questions of Mortality—and thus inevitably with the ultimate questions about the meaning of life.
Throughout this series, we’ve viewed the six “life arcs” as part of a unified story structure, or Three Acts. The First Act—featuring the Maiden and the Hero—focused on overcoming challenges of Fear in integrating the parts of oneself and individuating. The Second Act—the Queen and the King—focused on challenges of Power and on integration within relationship to others. Finally, the Third Act—the Crone and the Mage—turns its attention to Mortality and to the integration of soul and spirit.
As we discussed in last week’s post, the Crone Arc represented the complete transition of the character from the “outer” world struggles with one’s self and other people into the “inner” world struggles with more existential and spiritual crises. Although anyone who lives long enough will reach the Crone Arc at least chronologically, not everyone will accept her challenge and fulfill her difficult arc of embracing her own mortality. Therefore, even fewer among us will even get the opportunity to truly take on the deep mysteries of the powerful Mage Arc.
In part because of that fact itself, the Mage Arc is mysterious. We see it most plainly in the metaphor of fantasy stories that offer up a supernatural Mentor to a world in need. But rarely is this character the protagonist (perhaps because almost all of us relate more obviously to the younger archetypes who mirror our own positions in the cycle). Even more rarely is the Mage fully embodied in a “realistic” story (although to my mind Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird seems a possible example from a symbolic viewpoint)
Even when the Mage shows up in a real-world story, his deep, almost otherworldly wisdom inevitably brings with it a touch of the magical—as, for example, with Will Smith’s wise and mysterious caddy in the golf movie The Legend of Bagger Vance.
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