The Ultimate List of Archetypes (350+ Examples)

What if the same forces that shape myths also move within you?

Across history, people have told the same tales—the hero’s quest, the trickster’s deception, the mentor’s wisdom—because each expresses a recurring pattern in the human psyche.

Many people meet archetypes through stories—hero and villain, mentor and trickster—long before they realize these patterns live inside the mind itself.

Psychologist Carl Jung gave language to what storytellers have always known.

This guide distills more than 350 archetypes drawn from mythology, literature, and psychology. It reveals how these timeless energies operate in culture and in you, offering a reference for creators, thinkers, and seekers within the Archetypes & Symbolism Hub.

Let’s dive in …

What is an Archetype?

Archetypes surface wherever human beings create meaning—through myth, art, writing, religion, and personal behavior. They are the invisible architecture of imagination: the hero who faces chaos, the mother who nourishes, the trickster who disrupts.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung described archetypes as “living systems of reactions and aptitudes”—forms the instincts assume in psychic life. He saw them not as learned ideas but as inherited potentialities that influence how we think, feel, and act.

Every culture gives its own names and symbols to these patterns, yet the emotional signatures remain constant: courage, betrayal, nurture, transformation. Recognizing them helps us perceive the forces already moving within us.

To understand archetypes is to translate behavior back into its original story—revealing that we are not isolated personalities but expressions of a shared human myth.

Types of Archetypes (Across Story, Myth, and Mind)

Archetypes appear in every domain where humans seek meaning. Across myth, story, and psychology, they reflect three overlapping dimensions:

• Mythic Archetypes – Universal forces embodied in gods, heroes, and cosmic dramas.
• Story Archetypes – Recognizable characters and narrative functions shaping fiction, film, and folklore.
• Psychological Archetypes – Inner patterns that direct emotion, thought, and behavior in daily life.

Regardless of context, each archetype expresses a symbolic energy moving between these worlds: the same Hero who slays monsters in myth is the one who faces fear within you.

Character Archetypes in Myth and Storytelling

Stories are the theater where archetypes play out most vividly. Every epic, film, or fairy tale arranges familiar roles that mirror psychological functions within us:

• The Hero – Acts on courage to overcome a challenge.
• The Mentor – Offers guidance born of experience.
• The Shadow – Embodies what the Hero must confront.
• The Trickster – Disrupts order to reveal hidden truth.
• The Lover – Seeks union and connection.
• The Caregiver – Protects and sustains life.
• The Ruler – Establishes structure and stability.

These same characters fill ancient myth, classic literature, and streaming dramas alike—proof that storytelling remains our oldest mirror for the psyche.

We have an unbroken lineage from Homer to Hollywood. The quintessential Hero’s Journey motif lives on.

Recognizing these characters sharpens perception of both narrative craft and the inner dramas they reflect.

Jump directly to the Master List of Archetypes

How to Recognize the Archetypal Patterns Active in You

Archetypes aren’t roles to choose but energies that move through us. Most people shift between several every day—the Warrior during conflict, the Lover in intimacy, the Sage while reflecting, the Trickster while avoiding truth.

You can start noticing which voices take the stage in different moments. Observe your language, posture, and emotional tone. What part of you is speaking now? Who resists? Who seeks approval?

The goal isn’t to label yourself but to see the inner cast more clearly. Once you notice a pattern, pause and breathe; awareness separates you from automatic identification. Then you can decide whether that archetype serves the moment or is acting out an old script.

Over time, this attention reveals the psyche as a living ensemble—each part essential, none sovereign. Consciousness expands not by exile or dominance, but by learning to listen to every voice within.

Why the Idea of a ‘Dominant Archetype’ Can Be Misleading

Modern personality tests often invite you to find your “dominant archetype.”

While this idea is comforting, it’s also deceptive. The psyche isn’t ruled by one pattern—it’s a constellation of archetypal energies that activate under different conditions.

You may express the Warrior at work, the Lover at home, and the Sage when writing. The goal isn’t to crown a single ruler but to notice the interplay—the inner ecology—of these forces.

Awareness arises when we can observe which archetypal voice is present right now rather than identifying with it permanently. Integration, not allegiance, is the path toward wholeness.

Major Archetype Frameworks

Throughout history, psychologists, mythologists, and storytellers have mapped archetypes into structured models. Each offers a different lens on the same underlying forces: patterns that drive behavior, creativity, and transformation.

From Jung’s early psychological map to mythic systems like the Tarot, Zodiac, and Greek gods, these frameworks help us recognize universal energies wearing cultural costumes.

What changes is the language—hero, king, lover, fool—but the essence remains constant: the patterned intelligence of human nature seeking self‑understanding through story.

Use the following jumplinks to go directly to a particular framework:

• Jung’s Core Archetypes
• Masculine Archetypes (King | Warrior | Magician | Lover)
• Feminine Archetypes (Bolen’s Seven Goddess Patterns)
• Pearson’s 12 Personality Archetypes
• Enneagram Patterns as Archetypes
• Myss’s Spiritual Archetypes (80 Archetype Cards)
• Cultural & Symbolic Lineages (Tarot | Zodiac | Greek Gods)

Jung’s Core Archetypes

We start our journey with the man who popularized the concept of archetypes.

Perhaps more than anyone else, Carl Jung provided us with a map of the human psyche.

Through his analytical psychology, Jung classified many of the driving forces that dominate human behavior. (See my beginner’s guide to Jung’s individuation process here.)

To Jung, archetypes weren’t just characters or subpersonalities. They also included motifs, symbols, and images. For example, birth, marriage, and death are symbolic archetypes in Jung’s canon.

Jung never created a list of archetypes. In fact, he stated that it was futile to do so. That said, here are the primary archetype examples Jung addresses throughout Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1959):

Jung referenced many other archetypes in his work, but the list above highlights the primary ones.

Get a closer look: A Beginner’s Guide to Classic Jungian Archetypes.

Masculine Archetypes (King / Warrior / Magician / Lover)

Another model for understanding archetypes comes from neo-Jungian Robert Moore. I reference Moore’s model frequently on this website because I find it incredibly practical and accurate.

In King Warrior Magician Lover (1990), Moore and Gillette highlight the four primary archetypes in the masculine psyche, as well as the eight bipolar shadow archetypes that accompany them.

The four healthy masculine archetypes are in the title:

1. King
2. Warrior
3. Magician
4. Lover

The eight shadow archetypes are:

Robert Moore’s Structure of the Psyche

The four healthy archetypes of boyhood are:

1. The Divine Child
2. The Hero
3. The Precocious Child
4. The Oedipal Child

The eight shadow archetypes of boyhood are:

While Moore’s archetypal research focused on the masculine archetypes, his model extends to the feminine psyche, where the Queen represents the King. He does suggest, however, that other variations in the feminine psyche probably aren’t addressed in his work.

See also: King Warrior Magician Lover: Four Foundational Masculine Archetypes

Feminine Archetypes (Bolen’s Seven Goddess Patterns)

Psychiatrist Jean Shinoda Bolen identified seven feminine archetypes rooted in Greek mythology in Goddesses in Everywoman (1984).

Each symbolizes a different expression of feminine energy—nurture, authority, passion, innocence, independence, wisdom, and spiritual communion. These patterns operate in every psyche, not only in women, as ways of creating and relating to life.

These 7 female archetypes, based on her analysis of the Greek goddesses, are:

1. The Mother
2. The Queen
3. The Lover
4. The Maiden
5. The Huntress
6. The Wise Woman
7. The Mystic

But again, this is just one example set. Clarissa Pinkola Estés featured the Wild Woman archetype in Women Who Run With Wolves (1992). Jungian Nancy Qualls-Corbett wrote a dedicated treatment on The Sacred Prostitute (1988). There are countless others.

Read: Feminine Archetypes: Decoding the Feminine Psyche Through Jungian Wisdom

Pearson’s 12 Personality Archetypes

The “12 Archetypes” is a popular personality model from Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson’s Awakening the Heroes Within (1991). This 12-archetype model—the PMAI instrument—was later popularized in books like The Hero and the Outlaw (2001) by the same authors.

To clarify, while Pearson’s work is based on Jung’s insights, these 12 personality archetypes are not explicitly identified in Jung’s work.

The 12 personality archetypes in Pearson’s model are:

These 12 are also referred to as brand archetypes and are used by businesses in their marketing strategies.

See also: Brand Archetypes: How to Apply Archetypal Psychology to Branding and Marketing

Enneagram Patterns as Archetypes

Every personality system represents a collection of archetypes. In my opinion, the most robust personality model is the Enneagram. Within the Enneagram community, there are two versions of the model. While they are both similar, they use different names to characterize these personality structures.

One model developed by Don Riso and Russ Hudson from the Enneagram Institute outlines the Enneagram’s nine personality types (or archetypes) as follows:

Type 1: Reformer
Type 2: Helper
Type 3: Achiever
Type 4: Individualist
Type 5: Investigator
Type 6: Loyalist
Type 7: Enthusiast
Type 8: Challenger
Type 9: Peacemaker

The other model used by Enneagram Worldwide and highlighted by Helen Palmer in The Enneagram describes the personality archetypes as:

Type 1: The Perfectionist
Type 2: The Giver
Type 3: The Performer
Type 4: The Romantic
Type 5: The Observer
Type 6: The Loyal Skeptic
Type 7: The Epicure
Type 8: The Protector
Type 9: The Mediator

Riso and Hudson’s Enneagram model also includes nine variations or levels of each personality type. If we add each level as an archetypal pattern, the Enneagram contains a list of 81 archetypes.

Myss’s Spiritual Archetypes (80 Archetype Cards)

Author and medical intuitive Caroline Myss introduced an archetypal model focusing on spiritual contracts and life purpose rather than personality.

Her deck of eighty archetype cards ranges from the Healer and Visionary to the Victim and Saboteur—each portraying a light and shadow expression of the soul’s lessons.

Where Jung mapped the psyche and Moore outlined maturity, Myss explores the energies through which we orchestrate karma and service. Her system invites introspection on how our spiritual patterns play out in daily choices and relationships.

Myss’ archetypes include:

Cultural & Symbolic Lineages of Archetypes

Long before psychology gave archetypes a name, ancient cultures mapped them through story, ritual, and divination.

Systems like the Tarot, the Zodiac, and the Greek pantheon each mirrored the same forces Jung later described—only in mythic form.

These symbolic lineages remind us that archetypes aren’t theories but living patterns woven into human history.

They reveal how every era, using its own language of gods and symbols, sought to understand the universal designs shaping fate, character, and transformation.

Tarot Cards

The Major Arcana can be perceived as a sequential map of transformation. For example, The Fool and The World mark the psyche’s beginning and return.

Jung and the Jungians devote considerable attention to divination systems, such as Tarot, the I Ching, and astrology. (Read: Jungian Synchronicity Explained: The Psychology of Meaningful Coincidences)

For Jung, these systems provide another means of access to the unconscious. All of the 78 Tarot cards and the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching represent archetypes. Jung had a particular fascination with Tarot, largely because it was considered “taboo.”

The Major Arcana tarot cards are:

The Zodiac Signs

The Zodiac signs are twelve solar patterns reflecting cyclical human drives. It is arguably the oldest archetypal roster in recorded myth.

The Greek Gods of Olympus

The Greek Gods of Olympus represent divine personifications of psyche. Characters like Zeus, Artemis, Dionysus, and Athena reveal distinct psychic energies.

The list of Olympians includes:

The Extended List: 350+ Archetypes Examples

Finally, we arrive at the ultimate archetypes list.

Now that you have a better sense of different archetype examples from above, let’s take a look at a more complete list of archetypes:

How Archetypes Shape Modern Life

Archetypes aren’t relics of myth—they run silently through marketing, media, technology, and everyday behavior.

When you scroll social feeds, buy a product, or vote for a leader, archetypal imagery guides the story you’re responding to.

Advertisers summon the Lover to promise connection, the Hero to sell transformation, the Rebel to brand disruption. Politics and entertainment use the same code: spectacle framed as a battle of saviors and shadows.

Inside the self, archetypes still choreograph our scripts. We build careers from the Warrior’s drive, search for meaning through the Seeker, and often burn out when the Martyr goes unchecked. Recognizing these patterns breaks their unconscious hold.

Every headline, movement, and meme carries myth beneath the surface. To see through the archetypal lens is to glimpse the operating system of culture itself—revealing that the stories shaping society are also the stories shaping you.

To study archetypes in modern life is to realize that myths never ended—they simply changed costumes.

Working With Archetypes for Personal Growth

Once you recognize archetypes around you, the next step is inside.

You can’t control these forces, but you can build a relationship with them.

Each pattern carries both light and shadow: the Caregiver heals or enables; the Warrior protects or dominates. Growth begins when you notice which aspect is active.

Start with observation—see which roles repeat in work, love, or conflict. Which ones energize you? Which drain you? Write or sketch them; imagination translates archetypal energy into awareness. As Jung taught, awareness differentiates you from the pattern, giving conscience a foothold.

Working with archetypes isn’t about chasing perfection but integrating the many characters within. Every time one becomes conscious, a fragment of the self returns to wholeness.

Read Next

As you can see, our psyche is filled with a pantheon of characters and archetypal energy vying for our attention.

It’s no wonder humans are such complex creatures.

Want to begin making sense of it all?

Start with these guides:

The Psychology of Archetypes: Everything You Need to Know

A Beginner’s Guide to Classic Jungian Archetypes

A Beginner’s Guide to the Individuation Process