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Bill Moyer's interview with Joseph Campbell for the PBS program The Power of Myth rekindled my childhood interest in mythology, anthropology, and archaeology. Campbell offered an eye-opening perspective that invited people worldwide to see their lives and cultures through a different lens. Mythology can give you a multilevel perspective on the events of the day. A mythological perspective invites you to look at daily life and global events from the top down, opening your mind to see the overstory, the great tale, instead of being battered, blinded, and buried by billions of daily data points.
The ending of President Joe Biden’s candidacy and his endorsement of Kamala Harris catapulted my political perspective from the mundane into the mythic realm. I see the power of myth expressing itself in this political and cultural moment.
Focusing on this presidential race from a mythological and archetypal perspective, we’ve been caught in a dizzying whirlpool of conscious and unconscious powers and influences since 2015. As of today, we have been unable to escape from it. This year began with the archetypes of The Tyrant/King challenging The Wise Old Man. Now The Wise Old Man is bequeathing his place to the Warrior/Queen, a dynamic representation of the rising return of the archetypal feminine.
Make no mistake, I’m not talking about abstract intellectual principles that have no application in our daily lives. The archetype of The Tyrant/King has revealed itself globally through the rise of far-right fascist political ideologies, wars, terrorism, fear-mongering, heightened racism, white supremacy, religious persecution, attacks on the rights of women and the LGBTQ community, the denial of truth, science, climate change, and the promotion of alternative facts and lies.
The rise of the Warrior/Queen archetype is a direct response from the collective unconscious, the psyche of humanity, and the Anima Mundi, the world soul. At this time of existential crisis, Life itself is calling for a fundamental rebalancing of powers and priorities.
Vice President Harris, as a metaphoric Warrior/Queen, is immanently powerful because she embodies the necessary qualities of leadership from both the archetypal feminine and the archetypal masculine. It’s important to note that with these terms, I’m not referring to female and male genders as we have traditionally known them but to deeper psychological and archetypal principles that are active in all of humanity.
Archetypal feminine qualities include skilled communication, collaboration, active intuition, sharp-well-honed instincts, creativity, and the ability to be reflective, responsive, compassionate, and empathetic. Additional aspects of the archetypal feminine are nurturance, loving, caretaking, protecting, and being in tune with the cycles of nature and one’s body. The Warrior/Queen also embodies traditional male archetypal energies, including leadership, logic, reason, restraint, rationality, order, structure, rhetoric, and justice.
I invite you to consider how Vice President Harris embodies all of these archetypal energies. I see her mythologically representing the rise of The Warrior/Queen and the return of the archetypal feminine. This is a call for the return of power to half of humanity in a world that has been exploited to the brink of an existential crisis by thousands of years of patriarchy. It’s a failed cultural system that oppresses all people and denies women their divinity and equality. Patriarchy represses, denies, and vilifies the mythological power of the archetypal feminine in all humanity.
Through her family life and her career, Vice President Harris has been educated in and influenced by multiple mythological/religious traditions. This, combined with her education and career experience, gives her the knowledge and unique skill set to meet this mythological and political moment. All of these factors combine to reveal the dawning of a new generation of feminine leadership—and just in time.
Personal Life-
Kamala Devi Harris is a mixed-race woman. She was born to a South Asian mother and a father of Afro-Jamaican descent. She identifies as a black woman. She is married and has two stepdaughters.
Spiritual Background
She was raised in the Hindu tradition and the Black Baptist church. Her husband is Jewish. Her stepdaughters call her Mamala, which is very close to the Yiddish term used as an endearment by children for their mother, “mamaleh.” VP Harris knows the beauty and power within these three mythological/religious traditions.
What’s in a Name?
Kamala means lotus in Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Hindu tradition, and Devi translates as a goddess, divine, heavenly, or anything of excellence. The Times of India writes. “. . .[Kamala Devi Harris] has been blessed with a name that is packed with infinity and energy, that is, both Kamala and Devi.“ 1 The Lotus, in this case, is called the Sahasrara, and is located on the crown chakra. This 1000-petaled lotus, when opened, represents unbounded consciousness.
Devi is one Hindu term for the Mahadevi or great goddess energy behind the creation of the universe. The Devi incarnates as many goddesses, including warrior goddesses. The Tanach has its share of celebrated warrior women. In the New Testament, Jesus, who was born of a woman, first revealed himself to a woman, was attended by women on the cross, and ultimately, a woman witnessed his resurrection and birth of Christianity. Vice President Harris has a multi-mythic spiritual foundation that invokes the power of the feminine and inclusion within diversity.
Her career
Vice President Harris' career exemplifies her embodiment of archetypal masculine energies necessary for The Warrior/Queen. She is highly educated. A lawyer, she has worked as the District Attorney of San Francisco, a US Senator, the Attorney General of the State of California. She is the first woman and first Black bi-racial person to serve as Vice President of the United States. VP Harris is a shining example of Apollonian (masculine) archetypal energy. She embodies logic, law, rules, leadership, reason, rationality, order, and the principles of justice in her life and work. These are applied through her support for women’s reproductive freedom, women’s rights, children’s rights, gun safety, children's health, safety, and welfare advocacy, affordable childcare, affordable healthcare, a livable wage, criminal justice reform, and a determination to rebuild the middle class. In her skills, we see The Warrior; in how she applies them, we see The Queen.
Kamal Devi Harris knows and embraces three of the major world mythologies/religions. The power of her experience in the law and politics and her care and compassion for others are tailor-made to meet this moment. Mythologically, Vice President Harris embodies a coalescence of archetypal energies, representing some of the finest qualities of the archetypal masculine and feminine in leadership. In her, symbolically, I see the power of the Devi, the ancient sacred feminine, reclaiming its rightful place in culture, allowing the US the opportunity to realign, readjust, and reset our priorities as a nation and a world leader.
We are standing at the threshold of change. We can feel the depth and breadth of this moment every day as the energies of our collective unconscious boil over into aggressive attacks on our democracy, from an attempted coup to an attempted assassination. This is a highly charged, political, cultural, and psychological energy field to live in and lead from, full of positive potential and simultaneously fraught with danger from within our collective shadow. The Warrior/Queen archetype is invoked for just such a moment.
What will happen next week or over the next one hundred days? Time will tell.
We are truly living in a mythic moment.
Namasté,
Dr. A.
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