Over time, I have learned to respect the forces of the human unconscious as very real internal natural forces. There is little we can do against them other than getting to know them and finding adequate ways to experience them. They are like winter—we cannot stop it. But we can choose to put on warm clothes and discover the beauty of this season, when life retreats to its roots.
The same applies to the inner winter. We cannot stop it when it comes, but we can discover its hidden meaning. Because psychic winter—depression—is also one of the archetypal forms through which our soulful life develops, matures, and expresses itself.
The name Carol Pearson (author of “Awakening the Heroes Within,” from which all the quotes below are taken) chooses for this archetype is the Destroyer. I want to present it now because it is the archetype that is least desired and most hated when it enters our lives. This is likely why it often arrives under the compulsion of external circumstances whose role cannot be mistaken—death, illness, loss. It is understandable to be drawn to attractive archetypes like the Ruler, the Magician, the Creator, or the Lover, but we flee from the Destroyer—if possible, at breakneck speed. But can one escape winter?
“We have so many ways to be numbed from our experiences—through food, compulsive shopping, television, alcohol, and drugs—that we are often afraid to wake up. Sooner or later, loss, fear, or pain turn our journey into an initiation. The quest is active; we feel we choose it (referring to the Seeker archetype). But initiation, especially under the power of the Destroyer, chooses us.
The experience of initiation can be accelerated by the death of a child, a lover, or a parent, and the sudden realization that we are mortal. It can be accelerated by a sense of helplessness, the discovery that everything we relied on, worked for, or tried to build in our lives has been destroyed. It can be a collision with injustice. You have been good, disciplined, you have worked hard and loved, and in return, you got a kick in the teeth…”
— Carol Pearson, “Awakening the Heroes Within”
This is the Destroyer—an initiation. It is the way we move from one level of awareness to another, higher one; but for this to happen, the Destroyer obligingly destroys and clears away the old. To achieve this, it uses not only external events like death and loss, but also internal ones—depression, alcoholism, and other forms of self-destructive behavior.
The change that occurs in our lives after encountering the Destroyer is so profound that the most appropriate word for it is transformation—we are not the same afterward. The events that triggered this powerful archetype have forcibly cleared away everything obsolete, childish, and immature within us. Like a wildfire that burns what we are attached to and upon which we have built our identity, it comes to show us what is truly important.
“An awareness of death can release us from an excessive fixation on achievement, fame, and fortune, for it calls us to remember what is truly significant. Whether we believe in an afterlife or not, if we do not stop denying the reality of death, it will inevitably conquer us. Sigmund Freud understood that Thanatos is just as powerful in human life as Eros, and that, like Eros, it cannot be denied… That which we deny in our conscious mind will possess us… There is encoded in our soul an attraction to death that is of particular importance for metamorphosis…”
It becomes clear that the Destroyer archetype clears the ground because it is linked to death. This does not necessarily mean physical death—it can be the loss of love, the loss of power to influence the external world, or the loss of beliefs, attachments, and illusions. The Destroyer demands that we exit the childish phase of our lives, and the resistance to this maturation can be immense. It means losing our own Innocence, getting “stained,” and recognizing the potential for sin within ourselves.
This is why we feel the arrival of this archetype as a form of violence—as something that forcibly tears away the things that sustain our childish, one-sided, or outdated attitude toward the world.
“Suffering often detaches us from Ego attachments. We are attached to our health, wealth, home, our way of thinking, and the people we love. Sometimes, to open ourselves to learning something new, we must let go of the old. We can do it willingly, reluctantly, or against our will, but the result is the same.”
Thus, the goal of the Destroyer’s entry into our lives is maturation and transformation, and the gift it leaves behind is humility and acceptance. To accept people and things in our lives as they are is, in its essence, the highest form of love—unconditional love. It is no coincidence that in Carol Pearson’s book, the Lover archetype follows the Destroyer. After Thanatos comes Eros. Once the fire has destroyed the old and unnecessary, space opens for something new.
A love of a different quality arrives.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
Note: The quotations are translated from Bulgarian and are not presented as verbatim citations.
