The Quest An Archetype in Various Cultural Myths Essay

The Quest Archetype When examining various cultural myths, one archetype keeps repeating—the image of the quest. This archetype functions with various different mythologies as a method of learning about the world, both its external features and what is inside the self. The quest comes from ancient origins and is found in Classical Western culture, but has been fine tuned through the generations. In its most modern interpretations, there are continuing elements of the age old myth, where extenuating circumstances or hubris, place the hero in turmoil and needing to find an answer. Having additional sexual charges, it is clear that through the quest, adulthood is not only reached but embraced. This answer represents a completeness of being,†¦show more content†¦It is interesting to see that in the bulk of varying cultural identities, the archetype meant to find meaning is transformed into a journey in which experience slowly shapes ignorance into enlightenment. Thus, it is clear that the jo urney is important in the path to meaning. Through the journey small lessons are individually learned, and then collectively combined to create a more united whole vision of the world that was previously fragmented and lost in misunderstanding before the individual embarked on the quest. And so, the quest is a dominant archetype in numerous cultures. This creates a larger conception of the journey as the path to enlightenment in a way that can transcend beyond other more mundane cultural boundaries. Truth cannot be understood all at once, and thus it is through the quest that we slowly learn the whole truth of the external world piece by piece. Indigenous traditions represent the oldest cultures which associate the quest archetype with a search for real knowledge of the external world, which was otherwise unavailable to people with little technology to search the external environment empirically. 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