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Archtypes to Live By Series
The Archetype of the Maiden
What you don’t know can hurt you
Sweet, innocent, naive, trusting, ever-faithful…these are the traits of the Maiden. And as with all archetypes, there really is no human age which can be assigned to them.
She is usually young. But not always, for the archtype of the Maiden can live long and prosper inside a woman’s body for decades, and maybe a lifetime.
Perhaps it is cultural thing-a western thing, even-but most of us women still long for something like the unicorns and rainbows we were promised as little girls, long before we knew better.
Embodiment of the Maiden takes many forms, but the one that is most prevalent is the sweet, kind, and trusting girl who eventually encounters evil. The evil she encounters might not be one she would even name as “evil.” She may not recognize it as that, at all.
She trusts him/her. She gets too close to them. And she gets eaten alive, burned, kidnapped, poisoned, or imprisoned.
There are many fairy tales of these sweet ladies. Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White come to the forefront. Their sweet innocence got them into a heap of trouble. Luckily, for them, the hunter and the prince come to the rescue.
