My wee brass-strung harp Snowy Owl perched against a May Pole. This harp was made by Ardival Harps in Scotland

Growing up, I loved comic books. My delight with the Sunday funnies morphed into avid reading of Casper (I loved Wendy the Good Little Witch) and Archie comics (Sabrina The Teenage Witch was a fave) and finally into super-hero comics. I started with Supergirl, Superman’s cousin who had all his mighty powers, continued with the Legion Of Super-Heroes (I paid special attention to Saturn Girl with her telepathic powers and founding member/leadership status with the team, and was annoyed when she retired to marry, and–after saving the day and returning to service again–retired once more to be a mom). Other series I enjoyed were the redesigned Teen Titans by Marv Wolfman and George Perez (with Raven who was rather languid and angst-driven but who had compelling abilities as a teleporting empath with a cool Soul Self that could fight and go do things on its own on Raven’s behalf). The final series that I avidly followed before retiring from comic book reading was Neil Gaiman’s Sandman–a series coalescing around a semi-dysfunctional family of Archetypes and featuring an elaborate invention of contemporary mythology and legend. As with many of Sandman’s readers my favorite character was Death, the pleasant, practical, and cheery big sister of Dream and the other members of this family of Archetypes. Not only did this Death guide people out of their lives, but she was on hand at their birth–an unusual quality for a personification of Death.  As I look back at the comics I used to love to read, and examine the characters that captured my imagination the most, I can discern an obvious map of my own “super-hero” nature.

Story is great that way. Look at any story you loved as a child and love now, and in particular at your favorite characters. What qualities do you admire about that character? What are his or her abilities and gifts? What totally annoys you about him or her?

You can track your own essential nature in this way. You may have loved certain characters in the past, but find them flawed in some way now. Whether you admire their assumptions and attitudes now, you probably can still look back at your past favorite characters and see what gifts and talents were so compelling to you back them and find them compelling some way even now. Tales of large, essential, archetypal proportion such as myths, super-hero comics, heroic adventure tales, and fantasy directly point to the unique myth woven into your soul. Other more down-to-earth stories do so as well of course, pointing to qualities of culture, personality, profession, and lifestyle that appeal to your nature (just about any other fiction or non-fiction you can think provide illumination in this way!).

But back to super-heroes. In obvious ways they point to who and how you want to be in the world, what powers you’d love to wield to make a difference in the world, to “save it”–to be of service. Whether you’ve ever enjoyed super-hero comics or any other type of blatantly heroic literature, it is fun and useful to probe your own heroic/archetypal nature. Here are two ways to do so.

1. Sign up for Kara Jones’ upcoming online The heART Of The Hero course. Kara is a dear friend, colleague, and resident of my personal (if not at this moment actual) village, and a marvelous, generous-hearted, incredible creative spirit! As I have taken other courses from her I can attest to her fabulous offerings. Count on an imaginative, nourishing, simple-and-beautiful and enlivening soul quest experience and adventure.

2. Create your own super-hero self using HeroMachine 2.5. This is the Hero Factory mentioned in an earlier post carried to a mega-level. Lots of emplates and groovy options to choose from to create your own unique super-hero!

And here’s me as The Dragonsinger!  Note my wee harp Snowy Owl in one hand and the sword to ‘cut to the chase’ in the other.  My fire-lizard, Beauty, perches on my shoulder and my “aura” is harmony–all serving my mission to reweave the world.  A bit of trivia: that’s a red dragon insignia on my chest–the national emblem of Wales, a country that remains at the heart of my mythic nature.  The forest is, of course, Forest Halls–my invented realm of music and magic, and a dream of the possible for our culture.