Archetype Cards by Caroline Myss

The Archetype Cards is a set of 78 cards, created by intuitive healer and the Archetype Empress herself, Caroline Myss.

I’ve had these cards for years (OMG bought them in 2007!) and each time I have tried to work with them, it just all seemed too hard and too complex to not only figure out my active archetypes, but what to do with that information when I had worked it all out. And if I can’t use it? What’s the point.

But in the past year I have watched so many of Caroline’s Youtube videos on spirituality and her new series on these very archetypes, so I thought I would dig in again.

What do you need to know? There are loads of archetypes – many more than this deck can conceive, but there are 6 blank cards for you to add in your own, if you feel that some behaviour pattern in you isn’t represented by one of the existing cards.

We all have four basic archetypes – the Victim, the Prostitute, the Saboteur and the Child. There are several variations on the Child archetype – Eternal, Wounded, Orphan, Nature, Magical, Divine and Dependent. There isn’t actually a card for the Dependent Child though, so that’s a bit of a shame – still, one can use a blank Archetype card to create one.

Although I am working with the cards on a personal level, I thought that it would be fun to compare her King, Queen and Knight cards with our understanding of our tarot Kings, Queens and Knights. Myss doesn’t have a Page card in her deck and I didn’t want to appropriate one of the other cards to stand in for it; so it will have to remain a mystery for a little while longer.

And if it works for you – it’s more information that you can add to bring an additional nuance to your Court Card interpretations.

Light Attributes would equate to the tarot’s Kings rightsides up whereas Shadow Attributes could apply to reversed cards. I like the idea of each King showing ‘enlightened, benevolent leadership. Benefiting those in your charge.’ So for the King of Cups, that would be in the field of relationships, the King of Swords that would be in the field of thinking and logic, the King of Pentacles in the field of ownership and for the King of Wands it would be in the realm of passion.

The Shadow side of ‘Excessive feelings of entitlement. Rulership without restraint.’ That’s nice information to tuck away for using with a King card.

When we take a look at the Queen archetype, we have the description ‘Radiates the regal feminine.’ I’m not sure what that means – but it is an appearance, charisma attribute. She ‘uses her benevolent authority to protect others.’ So the King brings benefits to people, the Queen protects people. Her Shadow side is that she ‘Becomes arrogant when authority is challenged. Controlling and demanding.’

The Knight in the Archetypes card is quite a different animal to that of the tarot, I think. Each of the four Knights holds something of this ‘loyalty, romance and chivalry’. The Knight of Pentacles is loyal, the Knight of Cups is romantic and the Knight of Wands or Swords would fit the Chivalric standard. As a reversed Knight, do the tarot’s Knights show ‘allegiance to a destructive ruler or principle? Does he have ‘romantic delusions’? Yes, the Pentacles Knight reversed could show misplaced loyalty rather than a lack of loyalty, the Knight of Cups could have romantic delusions and those Knights of Wands and Swords could have an allegiance/commitment to the wrong sort of action, the wrong sort of thinking. And when I say ‘wrong’ I mean that it is currently detrimental to the situation in hand, rather than ‘wrong’ altogether

And as for the Pages … I think they might be derivatives of the various Child cards, but I’ll need to look into that more closely and probably give it a post of its own.

Do you use the Archetype cards? I’d love to know how you use them! This is an affiliate link, if you want to buy them from Amazon.