9 Evil Archetypes

[causticus]

Ahriman - Stupidity personified; willful ignorance and anti-intellectualism; blind adherence to old/established habits and ways of doing things; perhaps fueled by the unconscious desire to regress to a simpler or more primitive form of life; a corruption of the Preserver/Maintainer archetype.

Lucifer - Hubris personified; intellectual vanity; the extreme of intellectualism without spirituality; deification of the mundane human ego; Promethean archetype taken to the extreme.

Typhon - The corruption of the masculine archetype; raw, blind rage; wanton destruction for the sake of destruction; manifests as destructive monsters in many ancient mythologies; psychopathy; lawlessness.

Moloch - Power for the sake of power; can manifest in the people as the blind worship of political power and authoritarianism.

Loki - Corruption of human mental aptitudes for the sake of "winning" in the moment by way of tricking or cheating others; blind tricksterism; the patron demon archetype of grifters, thieves, conmen, compulsive gamblers, and pathological pranksters.

Thanatos - the championing of death over life; extreme austerity and self-mortification; self-destruction; humorlessness and the effort to deny other people pleasure and joy; the "Buzzkill" and "Debbie Downer" archetypes.

Mammon - The personification of sensual gluttony and the pursuit of material wealth/riches for its own sake; manifests as both avarice/greed and hedonism.

Lilith - The corruption of feminine archetype; the abdication of motherly duties in favor of either a prostitute existence or a misplaced desire for a woman to act out an inversion of femininity.

Narcissus - Extreme self-possession and obsession with one's own image; visceral pride; failure to recognize others as independent beings; extreme solipsism

Comments

[violetcabra]

If I may:

I strongly disagree regarding Loki as an archetype of evil or as a demon. In the Eddas, Loki might engage in tremendous mischeif -- for instance cutting Sif's hair -- but he always gets himself out of the scrape in a way that benefits the cosmic order. So after cutting Sif's hair Loki goes to the dwarves and gets them to make new hair for Sif and he also gets them to make Mjolnir, the Hammer of Thor; as well as Gungnir, the spear of Odin. So yes, Loki does engage in mischief tends to strengthen the cosmic order. As such I think of him as a force of good, of dynamic disequilibrium that ultimately benefits the Nine Worlds.

One could extend this argument to Ragnorak and the Death of Baldr: because of Loki's treachery, Odin works all the harder to prepare and delay the coming of Ragnorak, thus strengthening the worlds. As with Baldr, we know that after Ragnorak Baldr will emerge from Helheim and rejoin the gods, rather than die in Ragnorak. And so the post-Ragnorak cosmos will ultimately be strengthened by Loki's mischief

Point being, my reading of the Eddas lead me to think of Loki as _ultimately_ a benevolent force in the cosmic order. Of course, given what you wrote above you probably disagree, but, that said, disagreements can be fruitful and certainly my disagreement has helped me to articulate these thoughts! And so in the spirit of inquiry and discussion I post this comment.

[causticus]

Violet, thank you for the very constructive feedback. This is indeed very much in the spirit of inquiry, if I may say so.

When I initially put out this rather rough sketch I was hoping that people more knowledgeable on the gods (or at least specific mythologies and traditions) than me could offer some corrections to anything I might have not put the right amount of thought or research into. I'll admit flat-out that my knowledge on Germanic polytheism is rather rudimentary, so in that sense I may have been working off a pop-culture picture of Loki.

On a more esoteric note, when I composed this schema, I had a planetary archetype model in mind. With regard to the "Loki' slot in this list I was looking for a character that would stand in for the negative aspects of Mercury, i.e. the misuse of speediness and quick-wit. I'm sure there's other beings out there that might better fit this. Would you happen to know of any offhand?

[violetcabra]

You're most welcome! I tend to follow the trad Cabala pretty closely when I think of the sort planetary dualism you explore here. In that context, we would examine the Negative Power of Hod, which manifests as lies, deceits and falsehoods. I suggest JMG's _Paths of Wisdom_ for its treatment of this very unpleasant being.