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

I hope you enjoyed this week's episode,

Architypal Character Arts Part 21,

the flat archetype of the mentor.

And so we come to the final archetype within the life arc cycle,

the well-known and well-loved mentor.

This final flat archetype, which precedes the final

transformation of the Mage Arc, is one of the most significant with inhuman

storytelling. Indeed, next to the hero, the mentor is perhaps our most

well known of all mythic archetypes. The wise old man, bearded of course, shows up time and again,

Obewan, Gandolf, Dumbledore.

In Sacred Contracts, Carolyn Mace references

the origin of the word mentor. The mentor is a teacher

teacher in whom you can place your implicit trust.

The word comes from the character in the Odyssey to whom Odysseus,

on setting out for Troy, had entrusted the care of his house and the education

of his son Telemachus.

Mentors do more than just teach.

They pass on wisdom and refine their student's character.

Without the beard, the mentor need not be explicitly male, of course.

The mentor is simply a character who has advanced well into the

elder phase and has proven himself or herself in all the great tests of life.

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