Home›Greek Deities›ArchetypeBrowse ByArchetypeThis page groups deities by the recurring mythic archetype they represent, a pattern such as a trickster, a sky father or a mother goddess that shows up across unrelated mythologies. Wikipedia traces the idea to Carl Jung's psychology, describing an archetype as "an inherited unconscious predisposition, behavioral trait or tendency ('instinct') shared among the members of the species." Browsing this way lets a visitor see which gods from very different cultures still fill the same underlying role.FactsLearn MoreArchetypeSourcesComments (0)Reader Challenges (0)FactsOverviewWhat Defines This GroupingWell-attestedThe gods of ancient Greek religion, among the best documented pantheons of the ancient world. The grouping rests on a literary record from Homer and Hesiod onward together with inscriptions, temple accounts and archaeology. The Olympian family of the poets and the gods actually worshipped in a given city are not the same list, and cult titles vary from place to place. 2AttestationEra of AttestationWell-attestedSeveral of the Olympian names are already present on Linear B tablets of about 1400 to 1200 BCE, and the cult ran continuously until the closing of the temples in the late fourth century CE. 2Veneration TodayWell-attestedThe public cult ended in late antiquity; no continuous worship survives. 2DirectoryCategoryWell-attestedDeities 1Learn MoreThe gods of ancient Greece This group holds the deities of ancient Greek religion, among the best documented pantheons of the ancient world thanks to a rich literary record from Homer and Hesiod onward. At its centre are the twelve Olympians (Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Hermes, Demeter and either Hestia or Dionysus), who dwell on Mount Olympus and govern the ordered cosmos. Around them the browser will find the older generation of Titans they overthrew, primordial powers such as Gaia and Chronos, chthonic and underworld figures led by Hades and Persephone, and a wide company of lesser gods, nymphs and personifications.Myth, cult and afterlife Greek religion was practised through local cult, festival and sacrifice for well over a thousand years; the myths preserved in poetry and drama are one part of it, the civic and mystery cults another. The same god could be worshipped under many local titles and take a different character from city to city. The tradition was later absorbed and renamed by Rome, and its gods became the common vocabulary of Western art and letters long after the temples closed. The entries note both the classical Greek figure and its Roman counterpart where the two were identified.ArchetypeFilter Results12 entriesArchetype GroupAllEgo Type (4)Self Type (4)Soul Type (4)Core DesireAllBelonging, connection, and to be part of the group (1)Control, order, and a prosperous, stable world (1)Freedom, discovery, and a life true to itself (1)Intimacy, beauty, connection, and deep relationship (1)Joy, and to live fully in the present moment (1)Revolution, liberation, and overturning what no longer serves (1)Safety, happiness, and a world that is fundamentally good (1)To bring into being things of enduring value (1)To protect and care for others and to relieve suffering (1)To prove worth through courageous, decisive action (1)To understand the world's laws and use them to transform reality (1)Truth and understanding, to know the world as it is (1)GiftAllAutonomy and the widening of horizons (1)Clear insight and wisdom that frees others from illusion (1)Creativity and the making of lasting works (1)Genuine care and the creation of safety and warmth for others (1)Genuine fellowship and the wisdom of shared struggle (1)Genuine intimacy and the capacity to love wholeheartedly (1)Joy, perspective, and truth spoken through laughter (1)Order, security, and a community in which others flourish (1)The power to disrupt injustice and free what is imprisoned by custom (1)The strength to overcome adversity and defend the vulnerable (1)Transformation, healing, and making the impossible real (1)Trust and the renewal of wonder (1)LessonAllTo act on what it knows, not retreat into pure thought (1)To belong without disappearing into the crowd (1)To create with purpose, not for endless novelty (1)To destroy in service of renewal, not for its own sake (1)To enjoy the moment without evading what matters (1)To fight for what matters, not for ego (1)To find belonging and meaning without endless flight (1)To give from fullness rather than from depletion (1)To hold that faith without denying reality (1)To lead in service of the whole, not for personal power (1)To love without losing itself (1)To use its power for the good of all, not for itself (1)Meaning in the Attesting SourceAllHe describes it as ambivalent throughout: the cherishing and the devouring mother are one figure (1)It is not a caring role (1)Jung's contrasexual figures, the anima and the animus, are not a lover type. They are the personified unconscious counter-sexual component of the psyche, met first as a projection onto a real person, and Jung treats the withdrawal of that projection as the difficult work (1)Jung's nearest figure is the child archetype, and it is not innocence in the sense of happiness. He treats the divine child as a figure of futurity and of wholeness, characteristically abandoned and endangered, whose smallness is inseparable from its invincibility (1)Jung's nearest figure is the mother archetype (1)Jung's nearest figure is the wise old man, treated as a personification of spirit or of meaning appearing in dreams and in fairytales at the moment when the hero cannot help himself. The figure is ambivalent, and as able to mislead as to guide (1)Jung's sustained treatment of transformation is his reading of alchemy, in which he argues that the alchemists were projecting the process of psychic transformation onto their materials and that the stages of the work correspond to stages of individuation. That, at some remove, is what stands behind the magician of the popular scheme (1)Jung's trickster is not a jester. He describes it as a collective shadow figure, amoral and appetitive, both creator and destroyer, whose capacity for transformation makes it in his reading a forerunner of the saviour. It is not a comic type (1)The loving aspect is not separable from the terrible one (1)The word shadow, used in the popular literature for each type's degraded expression, is much narrower than Jung's. For Jung the shadow is a distinct archetype in its own right: the personification of everything the conscious personality refuses to recognise in itself, containing repressed vitality as well as what is condemned, and its integration is a stage of individuation (1)Origin of the NameAllNot one of C. G. Jung's archetypes. Jung named the shadow, the anima and animus, the persona and the self, and figures such as the great mother, the divine child, the trickster and the wise old man; he held that there are as many archetypes as there are typical situations in life, so that no fixed list of them is possible. The twelvefold set the atlas records borrows his vocabulary and is not his (12)ShadowAllAimless restlessness and alienation (1)Arrogance and the need for a new enemy to conquer (1)Criminality and self-destruction (1)Cynicism, victimhood, and self-pity (1)Dogmatism, detachment, and cold judgment (1)Frivolity and cruelty (1)Manipulation and the misuse of power (1)Martyrdom and enabling: giving that secretly demands gratitude or control, and the neglect of its own needs until it collapses into resentment or burnout (1)Naivety and denial (1)Obsession, jealousy, and loss of identity in another (1)Perfectionism and creative block (1)Tyranny and rigidity (1)BrowseCompareThe CaregiverArchetype9 entriesThe CreatorArchetype4 entriesThe ExplorerArchetype2 entriesThe HeroArchetype4 entriesThe InnocentArchetype4 entriesThe JesterArchetype3 entriesThe LoverArchetype4 entriesThe MagicianArchetype5 entriesThe OrphanArchetype3 entriesThe RebelArchetype4 entriesThe RulerArchetype5 entriesThe SageArchetype10 entriesSources1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Treetier 12. Greek Religiontier 1Walter Burkert, Harvard University Press, 1985chs. 2-4View the SourceDivinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptionstier 1Comments (0)No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.Sign in to join the discussion.Reader Challenges (0)No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.