List of Abstract Archetypes
Here’s a quick list of the abstract archetypes that I promised in the comments section of Abstracts. Feel free to add your own in the comments section, and I’ll be adding a few to this list as time goes on.
This list is intended to be used in exercises to build your own pantheon of abstract personifications, such as was done in the Money Makeover tag that Slade started. The idea is that there are abstract concepts throughout our society, and most other societies, that can be difficult to master. When a person hears the word money, what they most often visualize is the currency of their culture, and not the act of trading. While money makes use of currency to a vast degree, currency is not money, only a physical symbol of value; the act of trading is using money, whether currency is used or not.
If you were given a creative writing assignment to talk with Money as though it were a person, what qualities would it have? What would Money say to you? If, instead of using the version of Money that you had become familiar with, you used a version of Money who you could really get along with, how would that change the conversation? Would you be able to use such a writing assignment to get some of your anxiety about money into the open, and help to understand why money behaves the way that it does?
Most importantly, if you can get positive results from personifying money, then what else could you personify?
That’s what this list is for. It is to ‘hire’ a cast of characters for you to use in understanding the abstract concepts that we’re all presented with daily. If you don’t understand war, then create a character and ask him/her yourself. If your relationship feels like it is crumbling around you, ask the personification of Love what you can do to help things improve again.
The exercise is simple, but it will also be time-consuming. Go through the list and identify abstract areas of your life that you would like to understand better, then personify them. If you find that you can’t tolerate a certain character, then dump him/her and create a new character.
Jeff, Slade, and myself are working on this exercise behind the scenes, and I plan on posting my own fleshed out pantheon when I’m done. I also intend to pry Jeff and Slade’s pantheons out of their heads and share them here or on their own blogs so that everyone can see the differences in our approaches. This isn’t a task in copying each other’s work, it is here to understand what goes on inside of your own head, so seeing how vastly different each person’s pantheon can be is important.
- Work
- Money
- Relationship
- Home
- Family
- Fitness
- Intelligence
- Society
- Emotion
- Spirituality
- Character
- Fun and Adventure
- War
- Liberty
- Mystery
As I said, feel free to suggest additions. I’ll be editing this list as more ideas are available.
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