The lost masculine archetypes men desperately need now - Ian MacKenzie
Episode 540, released 18th March 2026.
Mythosomatic guide Ian MacKenzie explains why men get psychologically stuck at the hero archetype, what the older, pre-heroic masculine archetypes of the shaman and trickster actually offer, and why the absence of initiatory culture is shaping so much of what we see in men today.
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Or if you prefer to read: Scroll right down for the transcript
Ian MacKenzie is a mythosomatic guide, filmmaker, and founder of The Mythic Masculine, a platform dedicated to realigning masculinity with thriving life.
In this episode, Lian and Ian explore the deep masculine as a layer of archetypal soil that predates the hero, one that men in the West have largely lost access to, and what that loss is costing us. Drawing on the work of Alan B. Chinen, Robert Bly, and Martin Shaw, they look at why the heroic stage of masculine development, though necessary, was never meant to be the final destination, and how an entire culture stuck there begins to look a lot like the one we're living in now. They move through the trickster's gift of holding complexity without collapsing it, and what erotic initiation actually means when it's held within a proper relational ecology.
The conversation turns to what gets unleashed when men reach for sacred sexuality, the wilderness, or community without the initiatory frameworks to hold it, why good intentions aren't enough, and what the land itself has to teach about belonging, reciprocity, and the kind of love that doesn't dominate.
Listen if you're a man who has reached a point where doing more, achieving more, or proving more has stopped feeling like it leads anywhere worth going.
We’d love to know what YOU think about this week’s show. Let’s carry on the conversation… please leave a comment below.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
Why the hero archetype is a necessary stage of development and what happens when a man, or a culture, never moves beyond it
How the trickster holds the capacity to see complexity without forcing resolution, and why that quality is among the rarest and most needed things right now
What happens when men reach for erotic energy, sacred community, or wilderness experience without the initiatory containers that make those things safe for everyone involved
Resources and stuff spoken about:
Ian’s course The Deep Masculine
Ian’s substack
Register your interest for the upcoming Wild Sovereign Soul journey here.
Join UNIO, The Community for Wild Sovereign Souls: This is for the old souls in this new world… Discover your kin & unite with your soul’s calling to truly live your myth.
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Thank you!
Lian & Jonathan
Episode Transcript:
Please note: We are a small team and not able to check through the transcript our software provides. So you may find some words are out of place and a few sentences don’t make complete sense. If you do see something utterly ridiculous we’d love you to let us know so we can correct it. Please email any howlers with the time stamp to team@bemythical.com.
Lian (00:00)
Could the version of masculinity that built this modern world be the same one that's now behind the destruction of all that is precious and sacred? Hello, my beautiful soul seekers. This week I'm joined by mythosomatic guide and filmmaker Ian MacKenzie to explore why men get psychologically stuck at the hero archetype. What the older pre-heroic masculine archetypes of the shaman and trickster offer, and why the absence of an history culture is shaping so much of what we see in men today. But first, if you've just arrived here, welcome. If you've come back, welcome home. And if you keep finding yourself here, perhaps this is the second, third, fourth time, if you keep finding yourself here without subscribing, your soul clearly knows what it's doing. Honor the call and go ahead and subscribe. Ian is the founder of the Mythic Masculine.
A platform dedicated to realigning masculinity with thriving life.
Together, Ian and I explore the deep masculine as a layer of archetypal soil that predates the hero, one that men in the West have largely lost access to and what that loss is costing us. Drawing on the work of people like Robert Bly and Martin Shaw, we look at why the heroic stage of masculine development, though necessary, was never meant to be the final destination and how an entire culture stuck there begins to look a lot like the one we're living in now.
The conversation turns to what gets unleashed when men reach for sacred sexuality, the wilderness or community without the initiatory frameworks to hold it. Why good intentions aren't enough and what the land itself has to teach about belonging, reciprocity, and the kind of love that doesn't dominate. Listen, if you're a man who has reached a point where doing more, achieving more, or proving more has stopped feeling like it leads anywhere worth going. And before we jump into all of that goodness, it's challenging to live in this crazy modern world. Wild Sovereign Soul is what we know will help.
So if you're struggling the challenges of walking your soul path and your heart longs for guidance, kinship and support, come join us in UNIO, the community for soul seekers. UNIO is the living home for the wild, sovereign soul path where together we reclaim our wildness, actualise our sovereignty and awaken our souls. You can discover more and walk with us by hopping over to BeMythical.com/unio or click the link in the description.
And if you're called to go even deeper on your wild sovereign soul path, join us for the upcoming world sovereign soul course, a three month immersive initiatory journey into becoming a wild sovereign soul.
Register your interest at BeMythical.com/wss and now back to this week's episode. Let's dive in.
Lian (03:05)
Hello Ian, welcome to the show.
Ian MacKenzie (03:10)
Thanks, Lian Good to be here.
Lian (03:12)
I am delighted to have you and really looking forward to the exploration we're going to have around what you call the deep masculine. Which as I was saying, is kind of a bit like a side rabbit hole down a rabbit hole, often journey down. So we shall see where that takes us. But I would like to start with understanding your origin story. And I've noticed that our soul is often speaking long before we really recognise it's doing that way back in childhood. And so I would love to know what do you, what you recognise looking back?
was already unfolding for you being shown to you, I guess around the kind of wider mythic masculine that you work with. I mean you could say deep masculine if you want but what aspects of your work were foretold back in childhood?
Ian MacKenzie (04:06)
Mm-hmm. Well, I was definitely drawn to fantasy, both in video games in particular. This is back in the 80s. Final Fantasy, for those who might be listening, was a big ⁓ draw for me. And then fantasy books as well. You know, I read a fair amount of, think it was Dragonlance and sort of Shinera and The Wheel of Time. And so clearly there's a link between draw into fantasy in the mythic dimension that seemed very familiar to me later on in life when I began being drawn and sort of claimed by the mythopoetic lineage of which of course includes Robert Bly and Michael Mead and James Hillman and that whole men scene which I'm sure we'll speak to. So for me certainly there's clues I think back then that that would be a realm I was drawn to of archetypes and magic and heroes and all these things.
Lian (04:58)
Mm-hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (05:05)
Again, it felt very familiar. Uh, and then also in general being drawn to just curiosity about, you know, how the world works and why people believe certain things. Um, you know, I was definitely into philosophy. mean, this is a bit later, of course, not in my, not in my early years, but, uh, just philosophy and, um, science and all these things, right. To try to continually uncover how did we get here and, how could things be different? So that really.
kind of became an online, think as I eventually was drawn from the realm of filmmaking though, right? Again, cause at my sort of earlier years in my twenties and thirties was documentary filmmaking was my main focus before I sort of became into the men's mythopoetic lineage. So again, it was like a, it was like a spiral returning again to the things that I was interested in my youth, but now from a deeper sort of applicable, culturally applicable perspective.
Lian (05:42)
Hmm
And how about, unless I missed it, I didn't hear anything specifically about the masculine.
Can you see how that perhaps has its roots in childhood experiences in some way? mean, sometimes it's the inversion. I mean, for me, my journey was actually a real kind of disavowal of the feminine and feeling very disconnected to the feminine. And so it was a real unwelcome callback to the feminine when it came in adulthood, where sometimes it can be a gentler, of breadcrumbs that we can see looking backwards. How is that for you?
Ian MacKenzie (06:45)
Yeah, think that I also was sort of looked out, again, this is maybe largely unconscious in my early years, early teens, and then beyond into a sense that, yeah, men ultimately were not trustworthy, right? So the masculine was, violent, created a lot of harm in the world and ultimately untrustworthy. had a certain degree of male friends. wasn't, to my close friends, I had those bonds, but at large, certainly I had a certain, similar perhaps aversion to masculinity or that it was unsalvageable in a way. And then certainly that became, that's sort of how it aligned in my film work because at one point I was drawn into a whole,
Lian (07:24)
Hmm
Ian MacKenzie (07:33)
film project that became a large sort of media, transmedia exploration into the feminine actually first. And that was called Amplify Her, co-directed
Lian (07:40)
I saw that
Ian MacKenzie (07:44)
by Nicole Sorkin. again, so it's interesting to me as I look back that my first impulse was actually to explore the feminine, not even realising in a way that what did that mean about my relationship to masculinity and the masculine? And so I had to kind of come.
Lian (07:54)
Hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (08:01)
back around as well only by noticing the absence, like the hole I felt actually of kind of understanding, wait a second, what is it about masculinity and how had I maybe disassociated myself from it? And how does that reflect in the culture at large without any real mentorship or modeling explicitly that I didn't have growing up? My father was great and did his best and at the same time there was no cultural.
Lian (08:19)
Mm.
Ian MacKenzie (08:28)
tapestry, you know, that I was properly raised in that I've come to understand is so important to a more holistic ecology of masculinity.
Lian (08:39)
It's a sneaky, isn't it? The way the soul gets us to where we need to be. You mentioned Michael Mead, he was a guest on the show a couple of years ago and he said something like, you're calling. will keep calling as in we can do everything in our power to escape it and then one way or another it gets its hooks in us. Thank goodness, thank goodness. But yeah, thank you for that. It makes so much sense. It's often the places that we most sometimes unconsciously avoid that turn out to be our deepest work. really makes sense. So the aspect of the masculine that we're going to
Ian MacKenzie (09:02)
Mm-hmm.
Lian (09:22)
well mostly explore, probably end up going all sorts of places, is what you call the deep masculine. And there's Charmin Trickster archetype
Ian MacKenzie (09:30)
you
Lian (09:32)
that you were speaking about predating the heroic, heroic paradigm. Would you just define that a little bit more and then we can dive into
Ian MacKenzie (09:43)
Sure.
Well, maybe a little bit of history. And again, I trust that your listeners probably understand a lot of, or have heard very different ways of exploring this terrain, in particular for the, I would call it the men's mythopoetic lineage of which is credited largely to Robert Bly, Michael Mead, James Hillman, Martin Shaw.
The great storyteller has said that those three were known as the three headed Hydra of the mythopoetic men's movement. And really through, of course, Blythe's book, Iron John in particular, ignited a whole era of men, which continues to reverberate, largely men in the West, in the Western world. But that really awoke a kind of mythopoetic longing for mentorship, for pathways of maturation. and for men to like lean into soul work. And so of this particular lineage, there's a few other sort of touch points. One is the King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. Of course, the book by Douglas Shet and Robert Moore, which is generally fairly known, at least of people as they begin to sort of encounter this terrain. But there's another book that is less well known and is called Beyond the Hero.
Lian (10:46)
Mm-hmm. Thank
Ian MacKenzie (10:56)
And it's by a San Francisco based fellow named Alan B. Chinon. And he studied, I believe with Bly around those early years. And he was also drawn with fascination to fairy tales and myths. And whereas Iron John seems to be, or at least how Bly unpacked the story, seems to focus on this, the journey of maturation of boy to man. You know, that's where the story, at least he puts forth that that's where it focuses on.
Whereas Chinon in his book, Beyond the Hero, he gathered stories that spoke to men at midlife, actually. So beyond the initial phase of masculine maturation. And that's why it's called Beyond the Hero, Beyond the Hero archetype. And so he posits, actually as in his research, that actually there's a, call it a sort of deeper, more primordial masculine archetype that predates the hero.
Lian (11:33)
Hmm
Ian MacKenzie (11:55)
Or maybe you could say sort of comes from the soil of which the heroic psychology or the psychological stage of the hero is sort of comes later. And so that's the phrase I think that you're speaking to, or at least that I wrote about in the post
Lian (12:11)
Mm.
Ian MacKenzie (12:13)
on my Instagram. And I can have it, I can read it here actually, just the short phrase that might be helpful for the listener as well. So yeah, this is from Alan B. Chinin in his book. He says,
Lian (12:13)
Yes, very much so. Perfect. Thank
Ian MacKenzie (12:24)
The primordial trickster reintroduces a new form of male energy, focused on healing rather than heroism, communication instead of conquest and generativity rather than glory. Ultimately, he reminds men of their sacred calling, a summons into the unknown. This is the divine face of the deep masculine, hidden in the shadows of the patriarchal paradigm.
And I think this is very pertinent, of course, now, because as we look out at the scene and the label of patriarchy has been wielded a lot, largely picked up through the feminist movement and in the now progressive circles, of course. And it sort of points to patriarchy as the root of all ill, right? And so it can stir a lot for people. And I find sometimes it's not as useful because it kind of...
Lian (12:51)
Hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (13:17)
people can have reactions that are entrenched and don't seem to create much possibility. But this is also where I lean on Rhianne Eisler in her work with the Chalice and the Blade and her sort of exploration of what she calls the partnership paradigm versus the domination paradigm, which again, you might've explored already in the show. But I think that's helpful because when we begin to see patriarchy or the patriarchal order as...
Lian (13:31)
Hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (13:43)
sort of built upon a stage of masculine development that is stuck in the hero, the hero phase, which is understandable because again, if folks have explored the king, war magician, lover, they understand that the hero is the sort of final necessary stage of boy psychology, right? That it's not, and this is where I think a lot of maybe contemporary critiques of the hero often kind of miss.
Lian (14:02)
Hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (14:13)
because they can sort of critique the hero as unnecessary and wanna like toss it out as opposed to recognising that there is a deep part, mean, both genders, but there is a deep part of the masculine consciousness I think that is fulfilled by going through the path of the hero. And when a culture though gets stuck there, because we actually don't have the initiatory frameworks to move men beyond the hero, as is the case today, then we have an entire culture
Lian (14:36)
Mm-hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (14:43)
and an entire generations of men that are essentially psychologically stuck, right, at the hero. And the hero characterised as the sort of lone actor that either, you know, saves the day if we're looking at a benevolent, you know, version of the hero or the anti-hero where they see themselves as somehow, again, you know, fighting against the evil other and that kind of binary, which we can see a lot with political leaders.
Lian (14:59)
Hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (15:11)
right, certainly today, and I won't name names, but in particular, there's a few that seem stuck at this level. And again, the call that I think Chinon has been writing about, this was in the early nineties, which is still very much the case today, is that actually beyond the hero, there's some, there's the capacity of the need to tap into a deeper masculine archetypal soil, which is really, again, the realm of soul work for men that can carry us
Lian (15:14)
Mm. Mm.
Ian MacKenzie (15:41)
beyond the polarisation, the violence and the destruction that the culture at large seems so hell bent on pursuing.
Lian (15:51)
Thank you for that. There's so much there that I want to explore before we go into the other areas I wanted to explore. So a couple of things. Maybe I'm being pedantic, but there you said, you know, that's where something like we can really get into the soul work. Wouldn't you?
Say all of this is so work.
Ian MacKenzie (16:13)
Yeah, I mean, I maybe it's a the shift for me is basically when or whether it's intentional or not, right? So you could say that people are, you know, in the in the wake of their souls calling in a way. if a lot of folks don't intentionally tune into it, then again, they miss the signals. They sort of feel at the mercy of both.
Lian (16:20)
Mm-hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (16:37)
the times and maybe what the soul is calling them into, but it's easier to resist or to miss the signs versus turning towards. And so this is really what I mean by that. It's the, it's the invitation to turn towards it with intentionality.
Lian (16:45)
Hmm.
Yeah, sorry, maybe I wasn't clear as in it sounded as though you were saying what ⁓ lies beyond the hero is kind of when we can, you know, really start to become our soul work, where wouldn't you consider those other archetypes as also being soul work? So for example, love a magician, king, warrior, hero.
Ian MacKenzie (17:09)
Absolutely. Yeah, the way I see it is the archetypal map provides the ability to discern these energies. Right. And that's why I think we're so powerful for men to be granted this framework back in the early 90s to discern these different energies. How is the warrior? What's my relationship to those energies? What's my relationship to the lover But they also have their positive and shadowy expressions.
Lian (17:19)
Hmm. Hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (17:37)
Right. And so again, I could, I could absolutely see men who are unconscious of their shadow relationship or shadow expression of these archetypes continue
Lian (17:47)
Hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (17:48)
to wreak havoc both on themselves, their families and the world at large. And so again, would I say basically you can do all of that unconscious without turning intentionally towards the calling of your soul. So again, I, that's, guess how I see the distinction. A lot of men are unconscious of that work.
Lian (18:00)
Yeah, so true. Yeah. Thank
Ian MacKenzie (18:07)
until they finally are willing to confront, this is something that actually I need to directly address and align my life with.
Lian (18:17)
Gotcha. Thank you. And for you personally, why did this speak to you? It sounds as though you found yourself at a point where you were feeling in some way called beyond the hero. How was that showing up for you?
Ian MacKenzie (18:36)
I think, again, there's some great images that can be drawn for this, that in Iron John, there's a element of the story where the young boy, he's just been mentored, or at least was given various trials by the wild man in the story, in this case to sit by the pool of the golden pool water in the forest. And he fails three times to maintain these trials. And there's something in that moment, in that role that the wild man, as the initiator,
knew that the boy would fail, that there's some, know, he kind of gave him an impossible task to like take care of the spring, knowing that he's probably gonna mess it up. But that was necessary. And there's something in that, you know, older wisdom, tradition of understanding that you set the initiate up to fail because failure is the lesson. Failure is the, you know, the invitation to the next stage. And so in the story, he then goes to the city, you know, wild man says, basically, that's it. You you got to go out on your own.
Lian (19:23)
Mm.
Ian MacKenzie (19:35)
But you know, I'm here if you need me in a way, but it's like, you know, it's over to you. And so he ends up going to the city and he tries to find work and he doesn't know anybody. And he ends up in the castle and the cook takes pity on him and says, okay, well, you can work in the kitchen. You can rake the ashes, you know, to fire. Bly talks about that stage really as the stage of being on the road of ashes. And so for men, often this is like it was for me around 30, 35, where a lot of my best intent and you know, ambition and my relationship, my marriage, ended up dissolving around that time. And there's a certain humility that can creep in, or that men are confronted by through that very process, right? All the sort of youthful certainty about how their future would be, how my future would be starts to turn to Ash. And so oftentimes Bly said that's usually a magic number around 35 or so where again, men are invited into a deeper reckoning.
Lian (20:18)
Mm. Thank
Ian MacKenzie (20:35)
And that often can be the gateway into men's work, into soul work. Because again, you sort of, the way I like to call it actually, this is with another friend of mine, Amen Armstrong. we, you know, jammed about this a number of ways. He's also, you know, in men's work and often questing. I always call him, he's the guy he's always questing on the next thing. But I described that, in some ways, a men's circle of men willing to do the deeper soul work. I call them the league of failed heroes.
The failed heroes, because the heroic paradigm, you know, ultimately leads you to a recognition, hopefully of your own limitation, right? That a man can't actually can't do it all. And when he tries to do it all, he burns out, reacts in other ways, becomes numb, right? Or lashes out. Like there's a certain, again, the meeting your own limitation or Martin Shaw might say the goddess of limit, know, bending down to the goddess of limit is the gateway.
Lian (21:15)
Yeah.
Ian MacKenzie (21:34)
recognising that there has to be something beyond the hero because that paradigm is ultimately unsustainable forever,
Lian (21:40)
Yeah.
Ian MacKenzie (21:41)
right? That a man has to be able to say, okay, you I need actually other men on the path with me. I need mentors. need stories. You know, I need myth to guide the way.
Lian (21:52)
Yeah, that really... It feels like consciously or not so consciously, so many men are at that point culturally where it's like the stories that we're being told, are no longer kind of delivering or sustainable. And yet what we're talking about here isn't, isn't typically something that's offered. it feels, really interesting. Again, as soon as I heard those archetypes like Shaman and Trickster, I'm like, huh, these aren't the typical archetypes I hear mentioned in men's work and it feels there's some medicine in them that is really needed for these times.
If we, and I'm going to just share my own sense of these words and it could be that you're like, no, that's not what's meant, which is fine in itself. if I just share some of the things that come to mind with those two archetypes and therefore, I guess some of the challenges and pitfalls and also invitations they bring. So part of my path has been, shamanic. And so the shaman archetype is very familiar to me, but also within that work, the trickster is often present. And so those two archetypes, of course, healing, you've already mentioned a big part of the shaman, that kind of bridge between worlds. There is a real community service aspect of the shaman. And then of course, with the trickster,
It brings this idea of, course, you know, change, disruption, entropy, but also some of the, I remember stories of my first shamanic teacher who was working with indigenous Mexicans who had a very strong tradition of having someone play the role of the trickster. would be like a community role that they would take for say three years. And that was their role. And they would be doing all sorts of crazy taboo breaking things, just hilarious, but also, you know, sometimes very edgy. And so kind of it carried themes that weren't just kind of that, yes, it's nice to have things broken up and changed. They could like be quite sexual in nature, really have people confront themselves and parts themselves they wouldn't want to see, it could be quite dangerous.
I remember sometimes where I would be in ceremony and there would be that very strong trickster element, which actually could cause real harm if we weren't observant of it. And so is there anything you would add to or correct in my description of those two archetypes in the way that you're using them?
Ian MacKenzie (24:53)
Yeah, thanks. mean, big territory here too. my understanding is well, one, I shaman is be a complex word, obviously, and it can be overused and misappropriated and it mean lots of things. And, you know, for talking perhaps at the maybe a fundamental level of the quality of what one might call shamanic.perhaps not as a identity, because I do think there's, as an identity, it needs a cultural framework to live out. Like one that is called forth by a community,
Lian (25:19)
Of course, yes. Mm-hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (25:22)
let's say, and they go through the proper trials and things. But as a practice, let's say, or like a capacity or skill set, there seems to be the quality of working with energies, working with elements, right? Working with the unseen, building alchemical spaces. ritual spaces and again, and also in service to healing. So these are the qualities I think that at least Chenin may be also bringing forth as well. But I, or joined with the trickster element in this case, I think it might be helpful too to bring up the, a chemical sequence that also appears in Iron John and other stories. But it's the sequence of the red, the white and the black. And in the Iron John story, you know, he, the young boy, ends up being called to a tournament to essentially prove his valour for the princess. But in the story, he gets three coats of armour from the wild man and a horse to ride as well to the tournament. And the way that Bly talks about the three suits of armour is he says the red armour, like basically every man must go through these stages. And he says the red armour is the armour of passion and vitality and sex and that kind of.
Yeah, the capacity to turn on what often is sort of seen as like the rebellious side of a man or the one that can act, you know, the motorcycle gang. I'm thinking of Austin Butler and there was some movie recently with him and there's that quality, right? Of a man has to be able to access that energy and harness it well, right? Rather than just be sort of reckless and destructive with it, but actually be able to tap that energy says that's the red. And then there's the white.
Lian (26:45)
Mm. Mm.
Ian MacKenzie (27:07)
which is the energy of the good, right? Which is again, virtuous, the quality of, to act on behalf of the good, but a little bit too farther is like the good boy, right? The boy who sort of is, you know, maybe seen as the mama's boy or unwilling to really kind of access that more fiery vigour in his life and can often feel stagnant and stuck, right? Because he's too busy trying to please everybody. And so that man often needs the quality of the red. to tap the red to bring in to balance that out. But beyond that is the armour of the black. And the way that Bly talks about it and also Martin Shaw in other commentary is that it's, that to me is also the armour of the trickster because what it asks for is a kind of capacity to weave between like frameworks or qualities of possibility, of certainty. You know, I've studied many years with a fellow named Steven Jenkinson.
and he talks about the quality of ambivalence, whereas in the sort of modern lexicon, ambivalence typically means a kind of like whatever, he's ambivalent about it, like it doesn't really matter one way the other. But he says that the older understanding of the quality of ambivalence, ambi-valence, is that you can hold multiple perspectives at the same time without forcing any of them to be true over the other.
Lian (28:17)
Mm.
Hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (28:34)
Which again, I would say is a quality of the trickster. so where the, absolutely. Yeah. And so the hero often sees, well, the quality of the hero is to see in black and white, right? That's, that's generally the quality. It's like good guy sees this is good. This is the way it has to be. And the bad guy is evil and they're wrong. And we have to, know, in every popular movie and Marvel superhero and star Wars, even like there's very much a, there's the good side and there's the bad side. And that's that.
Lian (28:36)
Yes, much needed in today's
Ian MacKenzie (29:04)
binary is limiting. it's an, I believe it's an adolescent perspective that sees the world exactly as this or that. Because if you are able to step beyond into the realm of the trickster and this capacity to see complexity and nuance is that, you know, one other elder, ⁓ Gigi Coyle, who, you know, one of our trainings with the way of counsel, she would say often with questions we would brought, you know, what about this? What about that? What about this? And she'd say,
It depends. there was, which it wasn't just being coy, like that there was actually some deeper wisdom there, which is actually, depends. And so that quality to see, you know, a complex challenge and not immediately say, this is what it is. Those are the bad guys. You know, this is what we need to do, but actually to hold that I'd see that also as deep medicine for the times, because things are complex and. know, political leaders can be all sorts of things.
Lian (29:38)
Hmm. Okay.
Ian MacKenzie (30:02)
And, you know, who we thought were the bad guys, you know, actually may be onto something. And again, so we need to be able to navigate more complex terrain without collapsing it into, you know, easy, you know, this is right and this is wrong.
Lian (30:18)
Yeah, goodness. The more I hear, the more I'm like, my goodness, this is exactly what we need in these times.
It has me ask, and in some ways, maybe the answer's obvious because we've lost so much of, you know, with civilization, in quote marks, we've lost touch of so much that allowed humans to live in the right relationship with absolutely anything. But I'm still going to ask it anyway, just because I'm interested in your thoughts. Why is this a kind of lost archetype? How did we lose this?
Ian MacKenzie (30:59)
The the Shaman trickster you mean?
Lian (31:01)
Mmm. Yeah.
Ian MacKenzie (31:03)
Yeah. Well, this is again, I mean, this, this could be a long answer, appropriately, but maybe I'll do a shorter version, at least my understanding of how, how I wonder about these things. And this is again, I'm drawing upon my time with Steven Jenkinson who really held upheld a high degree of value of the capacity to wonder without, you know, pinning things down. Right. And it's not just philosophical. It's actually that there's a capacity, there's a life-giving quality to wonder well about something.
Lian (31:30)
Hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (31:33)
And so if I wonder about this question, what I believe I come to is that there's a kind of wake of the impact of humans encountering technology. That, you know, early, early encounters of tools and tools to make things a little more, you know, effective and efficient. And suddenly with efficiency, becomes a different kind of loss. And I mean, even right to the shift from nomadic to essentially farmers, that shift, which of course is a major thing and, know, Rhean Isler writes about this a lot, but the shift from essentially a relational movement across the land with seasons and, you know, deep attunement to staying put and now being able to...
Lian (32:21)
Mm-hmm
Ian MacKenzie (32:29)
develop and grow food and therefore surplus and therefore surplus allowing for more complex civilizations and the specialisation of labour and therefore now there's cities that maybe start to eye the city next door and they say, we want what they have, right? And the rise of patriarchal hierarchy and war. And then again, this cascade where I've come to recognise that culture if we understand it to be an achieved thing.
Right. Not just like, the things people do, but real culture that is essentially the reenactment of memory of how to be in a place and how to be with each other, that there's a consequence to the forgetting, right? They forgetting these pathways of, right relationship and reciprocity and initiation and the need for initiation. Right. It's only after we began a different peoples and thankfully, you know, this isn't across the world, a lot of places have lost these things, but there's some cultures, indigenous folks that are still practicing these things. But that the loss of these things, there's sort of catastrophic consequences that ripple downstream, which is, again, As soon as a culture forgets, or forgets how to go through the initiatory process site for young men, suddenly you have the next generation of men that aren't initiated, don't understand the value of it, and get stuck at a psychological threshold.
That there's no way to like will themselves towards something that they actually don't remember the value of or even how to do and so we have generational loss That I think we're in the process of reclaiming now, right? And so again as the heroic paradigm Has sort of taken hold and you know hyper influenced and accelerated by capitalism and the commodification of life
Lian (33:55)
Hmm. Hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (34:23)
there's this deep call and maybe this is the soul connected to the world soul is inviting us into remembering, right? Remembering again, to come back into, into relationship with life. And so we are, I think all participating in this reclamation and this cultural remembering of actually, again, what did, what did we miss and why actually are these aspects important and how do we begin to take steps to begin to again, plant seeds that will take some time to come to fruition. again, as we recall the trickster back into the mythic ecology, as we bring forth the initiatory pathways, once again, and men can participate in this no matter where they are, and then we help the next generations begin even further along on this journey, then we start to see again the drift back into what looks like sanity.
Lian (35:20)
Hmm Something that occurred to me, I would love your sense on this, I could be wrong. I was thinking of those themes of sexuality and spirituality, that this, you know, aspects of this archetype. And I was pondering how in recent times there's been the whole kind of neo tantra movement where There's also alongside that, it's not to say it's wrong, but there has been a real shadow side of that and abuses and I guess, immaturity. I was wondering as I was listening to you, whether that is in fact a kind of a sense of these things are lost, but without having all the things we've just been talking about, the initiation, the framework, the mentoring, it is a kind of almost like an immature grab for these experiences and these archetypes without that full understanding and the kind of right relationship to the community, the land that would hold that. What's your thoughts on that?
Ian MacKenzie (36:33)
Yeah, I mean, I'm also very influenced by the community of Portugal, or the community of Tamera in Portugal, which some folks may have heard of. I produced a film about it over decade. And so it was quite a PhD in Tamera. I visited five times over four years for about a month at a time. So I didn't live there for the whole time, but we participated myself and the two other directors in that.
Lian (36:45)
Wow.
Mm-hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (36:57)
their community there. And for me, among many things, I mean, this is a radical peace project that has really tried to reimagine and to, you know, regenerate a lot of things we're talking about, including, sort of discovering what is human, what is the ecology of human relating and sexuality outside of the patriarchal paradigm, or at least, the version of it where we sort of live nuclear lives and are separate. Like, what does it mean to come back into village around these things? And
Lian (37:24)
So as interrupt, I'm congratulating myself on asking you that question because I've forgotten you've done that. And I'm like, of course you're the perfect person to ask that question to.
Ian MacKenzie (37:29)
Okay.
Yeah, no problem. So,yeah, folks want to listen to that then or watch it. It's called the village of lovers, which they can see online, the village of lovers.com. but yes, to your question is what I began to see is we're sort of inherently setting ourselves up for challenge or, the, shadows to come forth without actually building.
Lian (37:32)
I'm very pleased with myself.
Ian MacKenzie (37:57)
again, I would call it the relational ecology of right feedback loops. And what Tamara calls embedment as a way of being together, which is where they often brought a lot of what was up in, you know, personally, and in the community to the centre through a practice what they call forum, which built on a ZEG forum. folks may know that. But basically ways in which any of the kind of movements of shadowy
Lian (38:02)
Mmm.
Ian MacKenzie (38:24)
hidden dimensions were continually brought forth into the light. And not to say they're perfect and there's lots they're going through as well. But I began to see that a lot of the shadow behaviours that often go unchecked or sort of run rampant often in various community projects and in businesses and spiritual communities is because they don't engineer the right kind of accountability that comes from
Again, it's not so much like a personal failing in a way like we always, and we have to kind of proceed with the likelihood that everyone in certain positions of power will abuse it in some way, or they'll have shadow dimensions coming up around it. And so by proceeding with that as the foundation and say, okay, that's likely going to happen. So we don't rely on the individual to basically check themselves. Like, I mean, it's a nice idea basically, but.
Lian (38:58)
Hmm Hmm
Ian MacKenzie (39:19)
We kind of engineer that and say, well, look, everybody's susceptible in different ways to shadow, particularly men in power of, you know, ⁓ in organizations. mean, the whole Deepak Chopra thing that recently come out with Epstein and all of that is one clear example, but we actually have to engineer proper feedback loops within our systems to continually. Check, this, shadow around power and the shadow around, you know, behaviour and manipulation and.
Lian (39:45)
Hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (39:49)
harm and things like that. And so I guess to answer your question, so yes, a lot of these communities who are experimenting on reclaiming sacred sexuality and tantra and all this stuff is, I mean, it's good in the sense that we're starting to shift things, but also we have to be very aware of the kinds of systems we need in place to not prevent entirely, but to properly account for because of the fact that so many of us have not grown up in proper initiated, you know, pathways of embedment and consequence and all these things, right, that a proper cultural ecology provides, the shadows are definitely gonna come up. So it's like, again, how do we build communities of trust, as Tamara might say, to engineer those kind of feedback loops to work with it? You know, not see it as a flaw, but actually something that we need to directly address.
Lian (40:42)
Yeah, that really makes sense. So you just mentioned Epstein and Deepak Chopra, which of course, you know, is happening right now and in some ways is just an extreme version of energies and arcs that have been rippling for quite some time.
Given an aspect of, I guess if we could say the deep masculine, meaning both the Shaman and Trickster together, is that right way to say it? Yeah. Ish. Yeah.
Ian MacKenzie (41:16)
I think, I mean, that's at least how, yeah, how Shannon writes about it. Yeah.
Lian (41:21)
If we see an aspect of the deep masculine is healing, what do you feel in these times that that healing is for?
what is being called to be healed that the deep masculine has the medicine for.
Ian MacKenzie (41:42)
Yeah, I think, I mean, big question.
Lian (41:44)
Hmm, do you buy us no pressure?
Ian MacKenzie (41:47)
Yeah. I mean, mean, this is the, this is the core of essentially why I'm drawn to the work I do as well. And just to name that the deep masculine actually has become again, like the core archetype and the inquiry for a lot of the work that I now do with men. in particular though, I would call around erotic initiation is actually how I would phrase it. and it's something that we didn't necessarily, my colleague and I, when we started doing this, we didn't necessarily.
know that's what we were doing in the sense we just felt maybe the call of the soul to craft something around essentially again a step that a lot of men don't ever experience which is proper initiation into their erotic energy right the consequences that they can enact the relationship to that energy which oftentimes again without proper guidance and integration ends up creating a lot of harm in particular for women
Lian (42:26)
Hmm
Mm hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (42:44)
and so the journeys that we bring men on through this deep masculine,
Lian (42:47)
Okay.
Ian MacKenzie (42:49)
archetypal inquiry is about that. It's about coming into integrated relationship with your amazerotic energy, and bringing forth, the sort of intentionality and capacity to both find a deeper wellspring of what I, what I understand to be Eros, right? Which is the, you could call the vital force of life itself.
and not try to seek it as a hungry ghost, you know, from every other source, similar to, you know, the Harvey Weinstein, and the whole me too thing could be seen as that again, at a, on a mass scale, men uninitiated into accessing the wellspring of eros, within then seek it elsewhere, right? It becomes like this pattern of like consuming. and so why I feel that the deep masculine provides this, pathway and this kind of invitation for men is because it brings men more in tune with a deeper relationship to life, right? The rhythms and the ways of the intelligence of life, which inherently invites men into be of service, to protect, to regenerate that relationship. I myself have been through a four year cycle of what can be called a wilderness vigil.
Right. Um, I don't call it a vision quest because it feels a bit lofty, but there was a relationship there where being out in the wilderness for a period of time, you know, without food and water and a kind of, kind of humbling encounter with the vastness of life that I never would have, you know, just going about my days. Again, this is why the architecture of something like a wilderness vigil is so important for the initiatory pathways of men, because without that, it's like the majesty and the vastness and the sheer awe of life itself. It's not obvious, right? It's not obvious to a man caught in, you know, the, the, would call it like the distorted magician, you know, playing with Bitcoin and, you know, seeking thrills and, numbing out on, you know, alcohol. And there's just, it's not a thing that will usually happen.
Lian (44:41)
Mm-hmm, completely agree.
Hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (45:10)
without sort of culture forcing it to happen. Right. Or the, again, the negative side, which is Michael Mead, think uses this phrase a lot of this quote, which is, a village doesn't initiate the men, the young men, they'll burn down the village to feel the warmth. Right. There's that other
Lian (45:11)
Yeah. Yeah. Thank
Ian MacKenzie (45:30)
longing that men actually have to be like a deeper service of something. And it gets abused, I think, or harnessed by the economic capitalist system to be in service towards know, consumption and destruction and a sort of a false idol when that impulse is actually, I think, true and noble in men who actually want to be of service to life and to live meaningful meaningfully and to deepen the work of their soul. And so again, this is why I call upon the deep masculine archetype as again, the one pre-existent to the King, warrior, magician, lover to kind of anchor into something old, something ancient.
Lian (46:03)
Hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (46:09)
that then allows for a kind of the soil, the foundation for the expressions in our lives to come forth from a deeper place.
Lian (46:22)
Beautiful. are, well, actually up on time, almost up on time. We're up on time and there's so much more I want to explore with you, but I guess we'll just bring it to a close.
Before we do, mentioned there about your time in the wild. What has your local land in particular taught you, showed you about what we're talking about here about the deep masculine? What was your particular land shown you?
Ian MacKenzie (46:55)
Well, that's an interesting question, um, I mean, grew up here in this region of the world, so I'm grateful to, but also my people come from Ireland and Scotland and England. And, uh, you know, it's not too far back either. You know, my grandmother came from Ireland and, uh, my grandparents on the other side came from South Africa, actually through England. And so you can say that I'm, I haven't been here long. You know, my people haven't been here long here on Vancouver Island or Vancouver region. And so while it feels like home.
Lian (47:13)
Hmm Hmm
Ian MacKenzie (47:24)
to me, like a certain familiarity at the same time, I can't claim that I know in the same way that an indigenous person from this region would have, you know, a lineage stretching back into time and memorial and have the words and the names for the plants and the animals that are coming from this place actually. So on the one hand, what that taught me was the
Lian (47:49)
Mm hmm.
Ian MacKenzie (47:55)
The land here taught me the power of slowing down or in this case, stopping, you know, stopping
Lian (47:58)
Okay.
Ian MacKenzie (48:00)
the momentum of my days, which is again, part of the architecture of the confrontation and the kind of power of that, right? The alchemy of just stopping and confronting yourself while in the face of, you know, call it the wild, but the, the majesty of life. So it taught me a lot about myself and again, the need to slow down, to stop.
But it also brought up again, the kind of longing to really belong to this place, which is very unlikely to ever happen to the degree of what I just spoke to around the indigenous folks who again can really claim a deep familiarity and intimacy. That's not nothing. It just means that I kind of have to reconcile with that, right? To be from somewhere and also not really belong here. And so it sort of invokes a deeper
Lian (48:44)
Hmm
Ian MacKenzie (48:52)
sense of a preciousness in a way and a kind of love that hopefully continues to invite me into a relationship, reciprocity with this place and, you know, doing my best to uphold my end of a lot of this cultural reclamation work to turn men towards a similar attunement, you know, in service to the times, but also a sense of
Lian (49:00)
Okay. Okay.
Ian MacKenzie (49:20)
And this maybe is a good place to weave that the real invitation, I think, for the initiatory possibility of men beyond the hero, beyond the sort of psychological threshold of the hero is what my colleague Charles Eisenstein and I have spoken to. This idea of beyond the sort of boyishness, right, which aims to dominate and control
Lian (49:28)
Okay.
Ian MacKenzie (49:45)
nature, that actually there's this invitation to step into the lover.
the mature lover, like what does the land actually want from us, right? From a co-creation versus a kind of returning to sort of a primordial lack of consequence or footprint. Cause this is a lot of the, you call it the misanthropy these days, right? Which is like humans are terrible. Let's just, know, sooner we're wiped out, better life would be fine without us, which in some ways is maybe true. But in the other hand, that's pretty pessimistic understanding of what humans are here to do. And, it doesn't come from.
a deep love of place, right? It comes from a lot of self-hatred and a lot of people feeling like, again, there's not much of merit of humans. But what if actually there is a possibility that we're being invited to a mature co-creation with life? I think that's the promise that is on the horizon.
Lian (50:36)
Hmm Hmm
thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. There's, yeah, so much in, I think our relationship with our, the land around us can speak volumes about who we are, where we are. And so thank you for sharing that. So we are, off on time. Where can listeners find out more about you and well, your vast work, you've shared some of it in this conversation. Where can they find all of that?
Ian MacKenzie (51:09)
Well, folks want to check out this mythic masculine ecology, which is where you know, all fans from check it out at the mythic masculine.com. There's a podcast I've been doing as well for about six years now. A lot of probably similar guests and things. It was, we explore this territory and then upcoming as of this recording of being published, there'll be another cohort of the deep masculine, which is actually the name of a three month online program. My colleague and I.
de S Fortier have put together, been running for the last few years. That really is an embodied mythic inquiry into all this territory that we've been speaking about for men and does seem to have some real merit for the men that go through the journey and the gratitude they express in the shifts that they seem to go on. And so, yeah, men are invited to check it out. That's also on the website under the deep masculine
Lian (52:00)
Wonderful. this has been glorious.
Thank you so much for doing the beautiful work you do.
Ian MacKenzie (52:06)
Well, thanks, Lian. Appreciate the opportunity to come and share it.
Lian (52:10)
Thank you.
Lian (52:13)
What a wonderful episode. Here's what stayed with me from this conversation. The hero archetype is a necessary and important stage of masculine development. But when a man or an entire culture has no pathway beyond it, becomes a ceiling rather than a threshold, generating cycles of destruction, numbness and false power that really serve no one.
The trickster to hold something the hero can't, the capacity to sit with complexity, to resist collapsing nuance into good and evil and move between perspectives without forcing resolution. That quality, rare, well, very rare as it is, maybe amongst the most urgent medicine available right now. Sacred sexuality, wilderness and community can all become sites of harm.
when the men entering them have never been properly initiated. The longing is real. The missing piece is the initiation to hold it. If you'd like to hop on over to the show notes for the links, they're at bemythical.com slash podcast slash five four And as you heard me say earlier, if you're struggling with the challenges of walking your soul path in this crazy modern world and long for guidance, kinship and support, come join us in Unio.
the community for soul seekers. You can discover more and join us by hopping over to BeMythical.com/unio now. Let's walk the path home together.
And if you're called to go even deeper on your wild sovereign soul path, come join us for the upcoming wild sovereign soul course, a three month immersive and mystery journey into becoming a wild sovereign soul. Register your interest at BeMythical.com/wss
And if you don't want to miss out on next week's episode, head on over to your podcasting app or platform of choice, including YouTube and hit that subscribe or follow button. That way you'll get each episode delivered straight to your device, auto magically as soon as it's released. Thank you so much for listening. You've been wonderful. I'll catch you again next week. And until then, I'm sending you all my love and blessings as you walk your wild sovereign soul path.