⋅ Author : Mael Duin ⋅ 2022-07-16
Unfortunately there’s a brutal truth for many boys when it comes to realising their full potential as a man. If you lacked a strong father figure as you grew up, your path to a maturely balanced King archetype was much harder than those surrounded with the mature masculine energy needed to guide a little prince into a good king.
Even those single mothers who possess more masculine traits than the average woman can never be a like-for-like substitute of the empowering influence a mature balanced male can provide a boy. The attention and encouragement of a wise man is what a boy really craves. It’s fertilizer for the psyche as it feeds self-confidence and self-esteem.
If you’ve been raised without a father or by a father figure you don’t respect, then the chances are you will have experienced a variation of the following self-belief:
I am not good enough.
However, on a deep-level you know this to be untrue. But the typical response to this belief is to collapse into weakness (deflated King energy) or to rebel against your perceived weakness with a determination to prove yourself and everybody else wrong (inflated King energy).
A clear case of a man acting out the wounds in his King archetype is Kanye West. Let’s take a look at him.
When Kanye broke onto the hip hop scene in the early 2000’s, he did so by producing beats for some of the biggest names around at the time. He had a reputation for being the hottest up-and-coming producer in the game, capable of propelling mediocre rappers into chart stardom with the backing of one of his beats. Kanye also wanted to do his own raps but the people at the labels only viewed him as a producer, a man with a good ear, but not a natural rapper. They told him he wasn’t good enough.
Determined to prove them all wrong, Kanye’s King energy inflamed to extraordinary levels. He went from being a small credit in the production notes to the biggest A-list artist on the planet. He went from being told he wasn’t good enough to telling everybody that he was “a God”.
As is so common in men with inflated King energy, Kanye’s early life involved an absent father and a fractious stepfather relationship.
When the King archetype is operating in a balanced form it brings order and structure to a world of chaos. Because of an absent or weak father, many men experienced an environment of too much feminine influence throughout their childhood and adolescence, as Guy Corneau (Absent Fathers, Lost Sons, 1991) explains:
The father’s presence provides the son access to this aggression. When the father is absent, the son cannot tap into his sex’s inherent impulses. The son is subjected to his mother’s restrictions; she is likely to be less tolerant of his instinctive aggressive behavior than his father might have been. Maternal love often causes a mother to insist that her son be polite and reserved, never raise his voice, and never slam the door.
Rod Boothroyd (Warrior Magician Lover King, 2018) further explains the strangling effect a dominant femininity can have on a developing masculinity:
…for as long as you remain under the control of the feminine, you will carry some degree of self-hatred. That’s because at some level, conscious or unconscious, you know you’re being controlled. You know you haven’t achieved the emotional freedom needed to be a man in your own right. You know you’re not free, as a Sovereign in your kingdom, to make the choices you want to make. You’re constrained by another, maybe by mother. Someone else has got your balls.
Those of us with unbalanced King energy will struggle with indecisiveness and insecurity. This has also been claimed of Kanye West, with an ex-girlfriend telling reporters: “He was insecure as he couldn’t be with me every day. … I got the impression he worried he wasn’t good enough for me. He needs people to tell him he is good and that he is needed and wanted.”
Too much King energy can be seen as the result of an overcompensation for the lack of a solid healthy male role model in a boy’s life. This manifests in the form of the Tyrant; he who sees threats everywhere. New ideas and new life will threaten this man – because deep down he is painfully insecure about himself and his position in the world because of his own weaknesses.
The Weakling shows up when a man lacks a healthy amount of King energy. Droughts and famine are characteristics within his kingdom – metaphorically speaking. He has no vision or purpose for himself. Other Shadow archetypes run amok in his land – commonly the Addict. He is often depressed.
The unbalanced King can flip flop between Weakling and Tyrant within an instant. We witnessed this when Will Smith strode upon the Oscars stage to slap Chris Rock. Married to Jada Pinkett, the embodiment of a critical and domineering Queen; Will Smith stayed with her despite her unfaithfulness – certainly an indicator that the Weakling King is showing up in this man.
All was not right within the Smith kingdom. So when Rock cracked a lame joke about Jada, she gave her husband a disapproving look and he flipped in an instant from passive laughing to an over-the-top assault on the jester holding court. It was clear his wife had hold of his balls.
Others also expressed a belief that Smith’s reaction came from a place of feeling inferior, even emasculated. A look at Will Smith’s relationship with his father reveals he had no respect for him; even contemplating killing him because of violent abuse towards his mother. The Weakling’s wingmen of addiction and depression are also issues Smith has openly discussed struggling with.
Your King within needs to be guiding you and your other archetypes towards a purpose. Without a purpose you’ll be like a piece of directionless driftwood, moving wherever the currents take you.
Your King should observe your kingdom and the land beyond it from upon a high throne. With the big picture he can hold court with your Magician to discuss and decide on ways to keep the realm strong and full of life. Your Warrior can be commanded to defend the land or to take action for a cause deemed worthy. Basically, your King should decide what’s valuable to you and what’s worth fighting for.
Jordan Peterson has referred to chaos as the “eternal feminine” and by all accounts was raised in a solid mother-father household. So how could it be that a man who seemingly embodied the balanced King and who wrote a book as “an antidote to chaos”, could fall into such disorder of his own – as he did in 2019?
“The self-help guru unable to help himself” are the kind of takes that could be found in liberal media publications, unable to hide their delight in seeing a controversial conservative lose his crown. By all accounts it seems that Jordan Peterson had a personal breakdown, despite undoubtedly having the solid foundations gifted from good parents, a loving family, and a sharp intellect. The lesson here is that the dragon of chaos will come for any of us. It came to Peterson in the form of a fire breathing media and mind-melting fame trying to devour him at every opportunity. But battle-scarred, he survived and returned.
A healthy King lives to fight another day and continues to provide for the people within his realm because he is resilient. Chaos will consume the Weakling and Tyrant. And everybody within the kingdom.
For men who are lacking in King energy due to an absent father, the first steps they need to take to balance their inner Sovereign is to treat themselves as a good father would. That means developing traits of leadership, leading yourself towards goals that are wholesome and contribute to your own development and wellbeing.
How can you lead and care for others – as a King should – if you cannot look after a kingdom of one? It’s a small but significant first step to take. You’ll embody a King in his fullness when you have created order out of your own personal chaos. Only then can you begin to create a future where you can offer guidance to others.
Sam Keen (Fire In The Belly, 1991) puts it nice and simple: “It takes a balanced King, not a Tyrant, to create a story that is revered through time. Yours could be raising a family, and the fond stories of you passed down to your grandchildren.”
Wouldn’t that be a reward worthy of the struggle?