The darkness has been avoided for a very long time. Demonized. Ostracized. Exiled. Along with the darkness, and into the shadows, humanity threw the feminine, sexuality, and nature itself. Along with the shadow, the overculture demonized anything and anyone who wasn’t male or white. Rituals. Earth. Gender fluidity. Feminine power. Indigenous wisdom. Dark skin. Sex. The shadow archetype is the soil of the soul, where transformation occurs, where creativity stirs, where everything that we prefer not to look at, nourishes what is ready to grow. 

The shadow is filled with the beauty and the power of life itself. And in true human fashion, the pendulum swings. We forget that the shadow archetype is that which we turn to the monster, that which we point at and name; “the other.” Who is the demonic nowadays? Whatever we look at and think; “oh how horrible! That’s not me, that’s not us!” is the shadow. Don’t read on if you’re not ready to see it. 

What Is the Shadow Archetype?

The shadow archetype is the unconscious part of the psyche that holds what we don’t see, what we can’t see, what we fail to recognize as part of ourselves. 

Anything that we have repressed, anything in our psyche that we have sent to exile, anything that we are not willing to look at in ourselves, is the shadow. The shadow makes us uncomfortable. The shadow archetype is made of the pieces that we hide, suppress, and quash. It shapeshifts. It masks. It disguises and deceits. The shadow is whatever we fail to integrate and own. The parts of you that you’ve disowned. The parts of the culture that we have pushed under the rug. The shadow archetype is whatever we or the current overculture turn into the villain.

Religion, with its oppressive, repressive, controlling chains, has woven a wide and thick fabric of shadow, that today’s culture is still wrapped in.

The shadow hides itself within the emotions that erupt out of control. The unresolved issues that we tell ourselves that we’ve healed. It’s the reactions that come from a young part in the psyche, from a wounded place, from the inner child. It’s the self sabotaging inner dialogue. It’s the part that tries to protect you, but in doing so, it harms. 

Jungian Psychology and the Shadow Self

The shadow self in Jungian psychology refers to the unconscious. All the aspects of ourselves that we refuse to accept. The shameful qualities. The weaknesses. The desires that we don’t want to admit that we have. The behaviors we think are unacceptable. The instincts we consider negative. Whatever our ego rejects, creates the fabric of the shadow self. The Jung shadow archetype is what we might name the dark side of our personality, made of repressed traits, emotions, and everything we consider undesirable. 

The shadow archetype in Jungian psychology is a key player in a person’s journey of healing. When we learn to integrate the rejected, to reclaim the exiled, to re-weave the unhinged, we can turn the fragmented parts into the threads that sew the unwanted into a cloak of wholeness. 

But everything has a shadow, including the idea of wholeness, and the idealized goal of healing. 

The Shadow Side of Healing Culture 

We live in a society that is obsessed with healing and wellness. Capitalism has turned health and wellness into one of the fastest growing industries. Focusing on our wellbeing is a beautiful, important, necessary part of cultivating a life that we love. And like anything, it has a shadow. 

The toxic healing culture of our times is real. Instagram is full of health and wellness brands and influencers who promote unachievable ideals that are potentially more harmful than they are healthy. 

When we focus so much on healing, we paint a picture in which anything that is unhealable is deemed unworthy. There are incurable diseases. There are chronic illnesses. Sickness, old age, and death are inevitable. Disability is not fixable, and the ableist message in the wellness industry is damaging. 

Shadow work and healing psychological wounds go hand in hand – without integration of shadow, healing is not possible. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do healing work, but I want us to become more aware of its shadow. Part of our collective shadow work is shifting our ideals of health, and learning to recognize the dark side of healing journeys, the problematic, ableist language of the wellness industry complex, and the overemphasis on light, healing, and wholeness. 

Embracing Wholeness and Creativity 

Wholeness is a myth. And I love myths, but not those kinds, not when the message of wholeness is that something is wrong with you if you are shattered. How can you not be shattered in our world today? We are told that we need to fix ourselves. We are sold an ideal that keeps us searching for certainty. 

A heart that hasn’t been broken cannot be open. Wholeness is an idea that keeps us from experiencing the full range of our humanity, and of nature. Breaking can be a bummer, but it is also how beauty finds its way, how meaning is made, how life continues. Wholeness is a closed loop. 

The universe comes into being by breaking itself, and we are part of that breaking. There’s no completion. We are unfinished, imperfect, wonderfully flawed beings. We break. And our breaking creates who we are. We shatter. And that is how we weave together new ways of being. We fall apart. And that’s how we learn to develop empathy and compassion. 

You’re never not whole, but you are also ever breaking. This dichotomy keeps your life going, the planet spinning, the universe expanding. 

Read this Substack piece to explore the way that you make yourself by breaking yourself. 

The Shadow Archetype in Myth and Storytelling

In mythology, the Shadow archetype shows up as the villain. The archetypes of darkness might trap children and try to eat them (Hansel and Gretel), or arrive as an evil step mother who wants to destroy the heroine for her youth and her beauty (Snowwhite, or Cinderella). It waits for the hero in a deep, dark cave. It might swallow him whole. He has to battle and slay the forces of darkness that threaten him and or the world (Odysseus, Rama, Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins), or destroy the (shadow) beast that protects the treasure. But that is not the only way the shadow archetype manifests in stories. 

Mythology that centers around heroines, goddesses, and the journey of the feminine, often propose a much more nuanced version of the shadow archetype. She is the witch in the woods who seems like she might eat the young heroine, but instead, she puts her through tests and trials, and ends up sending her home with what she traveled into the woods for (Baba Yaga). She is the darkness, the death you must surrender to in order to be more fully yourself. In her queendom you decay. And you are rebirthed as a more empowered, mature version of self (Inanna and Ereshkigal)

The shadow archetype in myth and story can appear as demons, symbolizing all that we don’t appreciate, all that we label “Evil,” all that we tend to project onto the other. Greed. Jealousy. Egomania. Cruelty. Ignorance. Arrogance. Hypocrisy. Rage. Destructive behavior. Immorality. The demon embodies everything that we consider bad

I hear my philosophy and mythology teacher, Douglas Brooks, in my head, saying; “We are every character in the story.” The demon in the myth is not just “the other.” Mythology offers us a doorway into our unconscious, and invites us to do deep inner work.

Kali and the Goddess Shadow Archetype

The power of shadow archetype in mythology can be harnessed when we see that the demon is none other than our own shadow. But not everyone can so easily look at the demon in a story and say; “Oh yeah! That’s me. I totally see that!” The shadow might be easier to access when we encounter a deity who looks like a demon, such as (my absolute favorite, main squeeze) Hindu goddess Kali, whose ferocity can easily be confused with the demonic. 

Kali is a goddess who looks like a demon so that we have an easier time seeing our own shadow. She is fierce and badass and dangerous. Adorned in skulls, naked and covered in ashes and blood, wearing a belt made of human arms, with wild hair, dancing on the corpse of her husband. Her lolling tongue collects drops of blood shed by a terrible demon whose blood is the seeds that make more of him. Kali drinks his blood to show us that we must assimilate the demonic, digest it, and make it a part of us. 

The shadow goddess archetype shows up in many cultures; from Hecate of the Greeks, who meets you at life’s crossroads, to Lilith of the Hebrew tradition – a demonic goddess of the night, whose sexuality threatened the patriarchy that pushed her into the shadows. From Ereshkigal to Kali, the Great Goddess shows her sacred face not only as the Great Mother or the Divine Lover, but as the dark feminine who teaches us to embrace our whole being, and keep breaking, so that we can keep becoming. 

Why the Shadow Archetype Matters Today

At a time like now, doing our shadow work is needed. Learning to own our unwanted parts is necessary – not just for us personally, but for our loved ones, for the planet. The shadow is not just “them.” We might need to call upon the ferocity of a divine shadow archetype in order to walk through this dark, tight passage of history. 

The shadow archetype is important because we have to see it, recognize it, and own it. Archetypes are important because they offer a framework for understanding ourselves, each other, our community, the collective, and even that which we deem “the other.”

We can do shadow work in many ways. Reading and contemplating, moving with it and talking about it. If you’re ready to work with it in ritual and practice, I’ve created a free guide to help you begin. It offers simple yet powerful ways to bring archetypes into your own ceremonies, and you can weave the shadow archetype into the work in a potent, transformative way, so the work doesn’t stay in theory, but becomes a lived, embodied alchemy. Get the guide here. 

Facing Repression and Denial

So many people today feel that the overculture denies them. So many identify with “the outsider.” So many feel threatened and repressed. And the more people feel that way, the more divided society becomes. The more divided we become, the more we end up looking outside of ourselves and seeing “the other” as the demonic.

The shadow archetype is in the limelight right now. The more we recognize it, the more we can claim of it as our own, the more we can understand that when we see the demonic in the “other” it serves as a reflection of ourselves, and it expresses suppressed and repressed fears, insecurities, and over identification with feeling unseen, oppressed, and victimized. 

What will happen if we face it? If we turn toward it mythically? If we see ourselves in one another? 

I know, I know! “They won’t do it, so why should we?” and yet if we don’t, then who will?

Shadow in Collective Culture and Society

We can easily recognize the collective shadow archetype in today’s world. All that society has repressed and considered unacceptable is now rising to the surface and acting out like a toddler who was denied candy. Racism. Xenophobia. Sexism. Misogyny. Antisemitism. It has not only risen to the surface, it has risen to power. 

Projecting the shadow onto “the other” is manifesting as war, extreme social division, mistrust, and authoritarianism. And it shapes itself as rigidity, righteousness, and closed mindedness on both sides of the political map these days. Social Media’s echo chambers contribute to this. Polarization in our society is real. It’s the shadow archetype in its full glory.

It’s not that I think that if we do our personal shadow work, and do what we can to address the collective shadow – project less, reflect more, recognize our own shadow – we will solve all the problems in the world today. But we have to start somewhere. And a little goes a long way. 

Common Symbols of the Shadow Archetype

Many symbols and mythic concepts tell us about our darkness in the language of the soul. Symbols invite the imagination to participate in the meaning-making project of a rich, deep life, in which our ability to understand one another expands under the surface of the obvious, beneath the layers of our differences. 

Darkness, Night, and the Underworld

We call it The Dark Night Of The Soul when we go under the ground and fall apart, experience the death of an identity, or a relationship, feel lost and pointless, and break into infinite pieces.  

Darkness is a symbol of the shadow. Deep in the cave of our being we meet the cyclops of our unconscious. Deep inside the mountains, the goblins of our mind reside. When a story takes us into the night, we know that we are in the realms of the shadow. 

I want us to be mindful and sensitive to the way that humanity has labeled darkness as bad, because light has been associated with whiteness for a long time. I cannot not see the shadow here. I cannot ignore how problematic it is, and how inherent in the culture it is, to assign darkness a negative meaning.  

Shadow work invites us to learn to love the darkness, to stop demonizing it. Darkness and the night, just like the journey to the underworld in mythology, are potent symbolic doorways into empowerment and cohesion. 

Persephone travels to the underworld to become queen. Sure, the myth tells us she’s abducted, but under the surface layer of the story, we meet the part of us that can only become empowered if we go into the transformative journey in the land of the dead. 

Inanna tells us a similar story, teaching us that if we are to empower ourselves, to grow as a person, we must reclaim the parts of ourselves that we have forgotten, that we have shoved under the ground, that we have rejected and ignored. 

Exploring mythology is shadow work. 

Monsters and Demons as Shadow Beings

From the Minotaur of the Labyrinth of Ancient Crete, to the King of the Goblins in the 1986 Jim Hanson Labyrinth movie, played by the legendary David Bowie – shadow beings have fascinated humanity since forever. We are pulled toward them and we are appalled by them.

Monsters in stories provide an archetype onto which humanity has been able to project its fears and desires. The shadow archetype is the project of xenophobia. Dragons have been slain in Medieval times because they represented in European culture the darkness, the danger, and the powerful spirit of elemental forces. They were given villain status along with witches, and dark feminine, deep earth spirits. It is impossible not to see the relationship between this demonization and the church itself. 

The trickster archetype roams in the shadows of every culture. This archetype has its own essay and you can read it here. 

It is beautiful to see that modern storytelling is slowly changing the narrative. Have you noticed that many animated movies in recent years have given the monster an opportunity to redeem itself? From Netflix’ film The Sea Monster where we learn that those who chased the monsters are the real villains, to the big hit Kpop Demon Hunters, where the demon must be received, accepted, and integrated as part of us. This is the result of some collective shadow work. Will this help us stop the demonization of the other? Are we really doing the shadow work? 

How to Work With the Shadow Archetype

Becoming more aware of the shadow archetype, recognizing when the shadow is speaking, and learning what makes a difference for you in relationship to your shadow is transformative, and can help build inner strength, as well as the ability to show up maturely in your relationships. 

There’s no one magic pill to take. There’s no one method that works for everyone. And there’s no state of wholeness and completion to achieve. Shadow work is a process. It’s cyclical, serpentine, and spiralic. The unknown is always greater than the known. The shadow is the unseen, and will forever be more vast than the seen and the known. That’s not a problem to fix. It’s a gift to embrace. 

Personal Reflection and Integration

With the shadow archetype you learn to see yourself. You learn that you can never see yourself fully, and you learn to soften into that recognition, and become more true and more tender with yourself. When you notice your primal desires, your deep fears, your big reactions, and instead of pushing them away, or label them bad, or tell yourself elaborate stories about them, you begin to make space for them to belong in the soil of who you are, the journey of shadow integration begins. 

Journal Prompts / Conversation Starters / Questions to Ask Yourself

• • What emotions feel most out of control for me? Is it anger? Does sadness take over? Jealousy? Who do I become when I feel the feeling rising? Am I a dragon? Am I a Buffalo Demon? 

• • What qualities in other people trigger me most? What does it tell me about myself? 

• • What parts of myself do I suppress? What am I ashamed of? What do I hide in the cave of my heart? 

• • What would this part of me say if I gave it a voice? How would it move if I allowed it to express through my body? What form would it take if I placed it on an altar? 

Creative Reflection 

Words don’t always speak the language of the shadow self, and shadow work is sometimes more effective when you let your body express itself in different ways. Move your body. Put some music on and dance. Do yoga with the intention of watching what arises from the unseen, from the theater of memories, from the wildness of the imagination. Try this shadow archetype free yoga practice. 

Make art. Draw, paint, sculpt. Do something with your hands without thinking or planning. Let your hands tell the story your conscious mind won’t dare to. 

Go on a contemplative walk in the woods, or on the beach. The Jung shadow archetype is part of what he called The Sea Of The Unconscious. The ocean and the forest are mythical, symbolic landscapes that evoke the unseen. Immerse yourself in their presence if you can, and have a conversation with yourself about what’s hiding under the surface of the water, or behind the trees. 

Create a ritual and invite the shadow into the circle with intention, symbols, and a physical movement. If you need guidance and ideas for creating rituals, get my FREE ritual guide for the secular soul. /thrive_2step]

Shadow Archetype and Transformation

Engaging the shadow and deepening our relationship with the parts of ourselves that we struggle with most, opens up the doorway of deep transformation. I don’t think we can create real change if we’re not willing to look at the things that make us uncomfortable, if we’re not willing to turn the gaze and see that the very thing we demonize and project onto “the other,” exists within us too. 

When something holds an intense charge, it means the shadow is in action. It feels like a steaming, bubbling brew in the cauldron of the witch in the woods. It spills over the edges. Ghosts rise from within it. The sound of terror booms within the halls of shame. When we’re not aware of it, its power takes a hold of us. 

Creativity and Power Born in the Shadow

The shadow is powerful, and when we turn toward it and reclaim it, we become empowered. We’re never really fully in control, because let’s face it, the unknown and the unseen are always greater than the seen, but we have agency. When we’re aware and in touch with the shadow archetype, we reclaim our power. When the beast becomes your bestie, you are no longer chased by it.

The beauty of the shadow is that it stores the precious jewels of our creativity. For creativity to blossom, we cannot be fully in control, we must let the wild, uncharted territories of the unconscious be nourished and unchained, cared for and untamed. 

Imagination and innovation rise from the depth of the ocean of the unconscious. Dine in the dark dungeon with the dragon and the demon, and listen to their wisdom, make space for their roar. Starve them and they will haunt you. Feed them, love them, and they will become the very guides you need most in your creative life. They’ll become helpful instead of harmful in your relationships. 

It’s in the shadows that your wildest creativity roams. To harness it, you must receive it. You must receive yourself fully. 

To receive ourselves more fully, and to own our shadow, we will also need to reclaim the monsters in the stories as our own. We need to look at the characters that have been demonized in mythic narratives and reflect on where they live in us, instead of continuing to let the over-culture project on to them. You can check out this Substack piece about the Hag to explore and reclaim one specific shadow archetype. 

Final Words: Why the Shadow Archetype Calls Us Now

Shadow work is transformative individually and collectively, in one’s personal life and in the culture. And we really gotta do the work. Especially right now. 

When we look at the world around us, we can see the shadow creeping in from every direction. We need to learn to see in the dark, instead of demonizing the darkness. When the shadow screams so loudly, we need to sit with it, like a child who screams because they need our help. Being triggered and overwhelmed by it means it’s speaking from inside of us too. 

Deep breaths. Go slow. 

Our collective healing needs our personal, deep willingness to do the work. And part of the work is to stop demonizing and cancelling everyone who has ever said something that doesn’t fit into what your tribe says is ”right, “ or boycotting artists and peace makers from a country your tribe says shouldn’t exist. Tolerance is necessary. 

I’m not saying every voice must be heard. I’m not saying everything is acceptable. There are limits. Hatespeach is one of them. The invitation is not to look at the world through black or white lenses. The point of shadow work is to see nuance, to learn to live with the pieces that don’t add up, the parts that we think do not belong. 

Integration is not about becoming whole or perfect or complete. It means leaning into discomfort and learning to live with complexity. The shadow archetype reminds us that the very parts we reject and fear may contain the medicine and magic we need most. 

Thank you so much for reading! If this has been interesting for you, please share it with a dear, deep friend. 

To turn shadow work into a creative ceremony, get my free ritual guide here for ideas. 

Subscribe to my substack for Muse Medicine and Mythic Magic that drops every Monday from Mama Mandala into your inbox.

Embody mythic concepts regularly by subscribing to my YouTube channel here. 

Much love,

Hagar