The Healing Power of Role Play, Ritual, and Archetypes

Earlier this year I went on an extraordinary journey with Eclectica.... a deep dive into the Passage of Self, a ritual theatre process that culminated in a live stage performance across three days.

Every Tuesday evening, I stepped into ceremony, into ritual, into unraveling. Layer by layer, I peeled back the versions of myself I thought I had to be... the ones polished for acceptance, compressed for comfort, hidden to stay "safe."

One of the most powerful discoveries has been consciously connecting with different arechetypes. Archetypes that have helped unlock powerful aspects of myself that have been waiting to be seen.

Through role play, through movement, through embodying these energies, I’ve met parts of myself I had long suppressed. The Creative Rainbow Mother has risen... ready to hold and nurture the Giddy Garden community with colour, vibrancy, and fierce love. (Though my inner Maiden, who is playful and rebellious, has whispered doubts, afraid that stepping into the Mother might mean losing my wildness.... but it doesn't. It combines all of these.)

Other archetypes have come roaring forward too:

🌿 The Wild One — untamed, ferocious, unapologetically alive.

🌿 The Witch — powerful, intuitive, instinctual, the wise medicine woman, living an unapologetic existence outside the constraints of rigid social roles.

🌿 The Warrior — protector of boundaries, keeper of fierce self-respect, wielding healthy anger for action towards change.

🌿 The Whore — the embodied eros, the sacred sensuality, the one who claims pleasure without shame.

These are the parts of me (and maybe of you, too) that society taught us to suppress. Too wild. Too much. Not "lady-like." Not "polite."

But in denying them, I have realised, I was denying my own power. I became the people-pleaser. The one who silenced her intuition. The one who tiptoed around her desires, her no’s, her deep knowing. The one who let life happen to her, instead of moving in deliberate, soulful steps.

Costumes, archetypes, and role play aren’t just for performance. They are portals. They are permission slips. They let us remember ourselves... not who we were told to be, but who we have always been underneath.

Through embodying these archetypes, I am learning to stand taller, speak clearer, move wilder, and live more truthfully. Not shrinking. Not apologising. Not fragmenting myself to fit into a world too small for the fullness of who I am.

Photo credit: @ports_by_me

Models: Left to Right (@estherogilvie, @patty_smack, @thevelvetlilith, @giddygarden, @the.kinky.chef)