Sample Mythic Essay

Dian Student
Teacher OReilly
English 12
Date Period

Oh, Oh, Oh...It's Magic

On the website, The Heroes Within, author Carol Pearson outlines twelve archetypes, the underlying personality traits which predominate in one’s personality. After taking the archetype test on the website Avidtran, which determines which archetype is dominant in my personality, I have to say, I agree with the test's conclusion. As defined by the test, my mythic archetype, the magician, does correspond to my personality in two very significant ways. I fit the archetype in that I can tell stories and transform my world.
The Magician archetype "has the power of naming" (Pearson); this is the power to re-tell or re-create an experience to give it new meaning. I do have the desire to continually relate the stories from my life, to somehow make what I have experienced more understandable. For instance, I would like to talk about what I did today. It was a simple day, but quite a lovely one. It is fall, and so the air was warm and rich with the sense that summer has ended. It is nostalgic, sweetly nostalgic to know that winter is coming. It reminds me that I am fifty three and in the autumn of my life, and all day, as I made an effort to let the sun fall on my face to get the last little bit of October sun, I kept thinking of the shortness of life. And Michael and I hiked to this silly pioneer day on the top of a mountain in New Almaden. There were many long boring speeches about what used to be on that site: a mine, a map house, cows grazing, a school house. But now there is nothing but ruins, dry grass, and shrubs. I didn't listen to the speeches. I was staring at the long thumbs on a very old man. His thumbs were so long, I wanted to ask him if he had loved to hitchhike in his youth. His thumbs were delicate, like fingers. I longed to look at his toes to see if they were so lovely. And I stared at a girl with Down's Syndrome. I stared and stared, but she had no notion of my staring. She did not have those perceptions. She ate with rectitude, concentration, and passion throughout the entire affair. I noticed her parents were quite old to be parents of so young a girl, and I wondered if her mother had an ultra sound and knew she was having a Downs Syndrome child. I wondered who would care for the girl after they died. We hiked down the mountain afterward with a Mexican couple, so I got to practice my Spanish, and given the opportunity to speak the truth in her own tongue, the woman, struggling in her Payless heels on that rocky trail, admitted that, despite the opportunidades aqui, she would rather be in Mexico where it was warmer, the food was better, and she didn't have to make rent. She didn't want to get old in this country. I wondered at how lucky I was to have this warm day, a nice boyfriend, sane and moral children. And I wondered how I would die. It was a beautiful, but short day, a short day because it is fall. Summer is over. As I write this, I see that I transformed my day into a meditation on the brevity of life.
"Magicians move into altered states, and then explore these realities," declares Pearson on her website The Heroes Within, and I too have explored different modes of being. I have the idea that if I live as cleanly as possible in my food, exercise, and habits, my state of mind will continue to evolve to a more ecstatic place. Sometimes I include Yoga or meditation to my regimen. Playing music or creating art also changes my frame of mind. I sometimes go through phases where I get up early and write down my dreams. It opens up my mind. Life becomes crisper, more vivid, funnier. During a time in my life when I was practicing the discipline of rising early and writing I had an unusual experience: it was Thanksgiving and I had a delicious meal with my family. Then I went home and read a very lush fairy tale to my children. As I ws reading, I became aware that the story and the illustrations were extremely lyrical, poetic, and exquisite. After the story, I played with my children. They were about five or six and quite hyper, but I had infinite patience and love for them. We played and tumbled on the floor, laughing, tickling, singing, and they went to bed with no effort. I just sang them to sleep. My mood became increasingly jubilant, yet relaxed. I began to get a sense that everything around me was energy, particles, and reality seemed to be in tiny swirling pieces, like a Van Gogh painting, but more particulate. My husband described his Phd Physics thesis to me: how laser beams hit micron sized particles and cause them to spin, and I could see it in my mind's eye, and I understood the math. It was visionary, and I peaked in the early hours of morning when I felt like I was melting in the colors swirling around me. I asked my brother, punk that he is, if he had slipped some LSD into my tea, but he denied it and looked at me like I was crazy. The feeling from that day and night has never completely left me. I always know there's got to be another world.
The website Changing Minds claims that "the Magician's quest is not to 'do magic' but to transform or change something or someone in some way." Yes, I see my life as an energetic river, and I constantly seek to "transform reality" as a way to keep moving forward, and that appears to be the role of the magician archetype ("Pearson'e Heroic Archetype"). I always feel I am on the verge of another reality.