Home›Roman 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 Roman public and household religion, a tradition defined more by correct performance of rite and by divine function than by narrative. Rome's major gods were progressively identified with Greek ones and much of the myth attached to them is Greek; the archaic priesthoods, the festival calendar and figures such as Janus and Vesta are where the native religion is clearest. 2AttestationEra of AttestationWell-attestedAttested from the sixth century BCE in inscriptions and in the archaic festival calendar; the public cult ended with the imperial legislation of 391 to 392 CE. 2Veneration TodayWell-attestedThe public cult was ended by law in late antiquity; no continuous worship survives. 2DirectoryCategoryWell-attestedDeities 1Learn MoreThe gods of Rome This group holds the deities of ancient Roman religion. Roman worship began with native Italic and household gods and a strong sense of divine functions and rites, and over time identified its major gods with those of Greece, adopting much of Greek myth in the process. The browser will find the Capitoline triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, along with Mars, Venus, Neptune, Mercury and the rest of the Olympian equivalents, as well as distinctively Roman figures such as Janus, the two-faced god of doorways and beginnings, and Vesta of the hearth. The entries note the Greek counterpart of each syncretised god.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 CaregiverArchetype2 entriesThe CreatorArchetype1 entryThe ExplorerArchetype1 entryThe HeroArchetype2 entriesThe InnocentArchetype1 entryThe JesterArchetype1 entryThe LoverArchetype1 entryThe MagicianArchetype2 entriesThe OrphanArchetype1 entryThe RebelArchetype1 entryThe RulerArchetype2 entriesThe SageArchetype2 entriesSources1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Treetier 12. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th editiontier 1Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2012s.v. religion, RomanView 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.