This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the 546th episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast.

I hope you enjoyed this week's episode, Arcetypal Character Arts Part 13, Crohn's Shadow Artypes.

The final two archetypal character arcs within the life cycle

signal a distinct departure from the realm of the known.

After sacrificing herself for the kingdom

at the end of the king arc, the seemingly diminished

crone leaves behind the quote unquote real world of kingdom and throne and

enters instead the spooky forests and liminal hinterlands of Elderhood.

Symbolically the final two positive arcs, Crone and Mage, are decidedly more supernatural

than those that preceded.

In archetypal and mythic stories, we see this shift represented by these character's ability to perform magic.

This magic can be seen to represent the potential for a deeper spirituality, but it also certainly represents

the accumulated life experience, knowledge, and wisdom of the character's arcs up until this point.

The two arcs prior to that of the crone, the Queen and the King,

were focused on issues of power.

As such, a character who has successfully completed those arcs will have a

widely understanding of power that outstrips even the physically powerful youths of the earlier arcs.

For example, we see this delightfully represented in the film Secondhand Lions,

in which Robert Duval's Crone character handily beats up a gang of bullies,

then takes them home and offers them his initiatory speech about how to be a man.

As we've already discussed, the speech about how to be a man.

As we've already discussed, the Crone offers the potential for a profound arc into the deeper mysteries of life and death.

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