Based on ancient archetypes, primarily drawn from Greek mythology, the author applies modern day self-help psychology to come up with a program for finding one's special purpose in life. ( )

This is a book I really should re-read some time later. It's a book I would need to read more than once to process the ideas and work with it. It's a book I want to re-explore again in a few months when some of the ideas have finished percolating.

It's all about connecting with archetypes and using them in your life, recognising the places in your life that are in flux and fixing them, or recognising them and working with them. In common with a lot of this sort of thing it's quite vague but is useful if you're trying to work out some of the spaces in your life. It does have a certain amount of new-age waffle but like much stuff of this sort it also has some stuff that made me think. I also think that it's the sort of thing to read, process and then go back to and do the exercises, which is what I intend to do sometime in the future. ( )

I am about to review a book that I have not read. Oh, I have read around in it many times, but I have never read it start to finish, and I’m quite sure I have never read it all. I have quarreled with it often, finding it a cross between pop psychology and New Age spirituality and not a particularly brilliant example of either. So why would I want to review it?

Because it led me to some very meaningful insights about myself, helping me view my life as a whole in new and reassuring ways. It has stimulated as much or more personal writing on my part than any book I own, personal writing that is especially significant to me. On a whole shelf of books that I have labeled personal mythology, I would count it as one of the two or three most provocative. The book is Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential by Caroline Myss (Harmony Books, 2001).

A sacred contract, if I understand Myss correctly, is simply a plan for one’s life, an active determination to fulfill one’s divine potential. “You are about to embark on a journey,” she says, “into the archetypal dimension of life, a dimension of consciousness that contains all of us collectively and yet somehow also individually.” And there, for me, is the key word to implementing Myss’s most helpful process of self-examination: “archetypal.” Clearly, she understands those archetypes as having been derived from one’s divine pre-existence, or perhaps in an earlier life before reincarnation. Never mind. As she admits early on, “If you do not choose to believe in a literal prebirth contract, or in reincarnation, or even in the power of grace, you might want to view your life metaphorically . . . ,” or one might say, as the working out of basic archetypes shaped by one’s genetic code, early childhood experiences, conscious decision-making, and/or intuitive grasp of one’s identity.

It’s her archetypes that are illuminating. Discovering or choosing one’s archetypes and having “conversations” with them is a powerful, insightful way to come to terms with one’s personal integrity—that is, the wholeness of one’s life experience and personal mission. She insists that you identify twelve archetypes, as in the twelve signs of the zodiac. What I found for myself were basic types that grew out of different phases of my life. I found her fourth and fifth chapters most enjoyable: “Speaking Archetypes: Your Four Principal Energy Companions” and “Identifying Your Archetypal Patterns.” At first, I thought of it simply as a game, a pastime to divert me attention from concerns of the day, like a crossword puzzle or solitaire. Then I began to feel the insights arising within my consciousness. As I look back now, some five years later, I am still amazed at the clarity with which I began to perceive the patterns in my life.

First, let me share with you a few of the archetypes Myss has identified in herself and/or her clients:

Addict (conspicuous consumer, glutton, workaholic)
Athlete (Olympian)
Child—an orphan child, or wounded child, or innocent child, or eternal child
Clown (court jester, fool, dummling)
Companion (sidekick, right arm, consort, friend)
Don Juan (Casanova, gigolo, seducer, sex addict)
Father or Mother (patriarch or matriarch, progenitor, Mother Nature, parent)
King or Queen (emperor or empress, ruler, leader, chief)
Midas (miser)
Seeker (wanderer, vagabond, nomad)
Trickster (Puck, provocateur)
Warrior ( soldier, crime fighter, Amazon, mercenary, soldier of fortune, gunslinger, Samurai)

The list goes on . . . . As you can see, these are indeed metaphors for basic personality types or dimensions of one’s character. Myss requires (if you follow the rules of her game) that four archetypes are universal and characterize all of us: child, victim, prostitute, saboteur. This was one spot where I quarreled with her generalizations. Except for Saboteur, which I found as definitely one of my most insistent archetypes (one that I had not consciously admitted to myself previously), I found myself redefining each of these. But, I have to confess, that the redefinitions worked very well: Orphan (not literally, you understand), Huckster (OK, maybe that’s just a cleaner way to say prostitute), and Exile (the nature of my victimhood).

The next step in Myss’s process is to hold—in one’s journal—a conversation with each “speaking” archetype. Again, she provides a host of helpful and revealing questions: historical questions, personal questions, energy and intuitive questions, and spiritual questions. For example,

Why did you choose this archetype? / “Why did I choose you?”

What fears and challenges do you associate with this archetype? / “What do you make me afraid of?”

How does this archetype factor into the unfinished business in your life? “How can you (or my understanding of you) help me take care of unfinished business?”

What have you come to know about yourself through this archetype? / “What are the most important lessons that you have taught me?”

Granted, these are simple, common-sense questions that one could ask oneself. But I found the division of myself into twelve basic persons helped me understand myself, appreciate myself, and yes, forgive myself and challenge myself.

Myss’s Sacred Contracts goes on into much more complex strategies: charting one’s chakras, reinventing the wheel of one’s life (like the zodiac again), using the wheel for everyday challenges or for self-healing. Maybe I will give that a shot one of these days. In the meantime, I have felt pleased and rewarded by the game she had me play.

Oh, yes, I discovered within myself an idolater, a hermit, a herald, a husbandman, even an emperor (with clothes on, I hope). But there is still that orphan and exile within me, to be dealt with every day; and the huckster and the saboteur, selling my soul and sabotaging my best efforts. Learning who they are, how they work, and why their efforts are sometimes in my best interests—that’s an archetypal pilgrimage that one needs to embark upon at least once in one’s life.

Bon voyage!