In her book SoulCollage® Evolving, Seena Frost briefly mentions the Pattern Keeper archetype. Someone asked me several years ago what she meant by this, and I had no idea, so I asked her for an explanation. Here is her response:
A brief answer about Pattern Keeper and Promise Keeper
In my mind Pattern Keeper is an archetype that is found in culture after culture since time began. This name for it is from an ancient Native American Medicine Wheel where the Pattern Keeper is the eighth one in a circle of eight Archetypes whose job is to council humans towards greater consciousness. This Council of eight answers human questions in different ways but they must always protect the Children’s Fire which burns in the center of the Council circle, and also preserve the life giving power of the feminine. These two laws of the Wheel are to preserve the future of the race.
The energy of the Pattern-Keeper is to observe all the answers given to questioners, and to halt the wheel if the laws are being broken and the children’s fire is in danger. In other words the Pattern-Keeper is like an all seeing Observer and Judge whose job it is to stop the action when there is big danger. Then this archetype begins the circular movement over, in a new and lawful direction. One might say that the energy of the Pattern-Keeper became manifest in the decisions of millions of voters this last November (2006), people who voted to stop the action because the Children’s Fire was in danger and direction needed to be changed. It is like we in the U.S. are being sent around the Wheel again with our big dilemmas, to question the other Archetypes, and see if we can get the pattern right this time. Thank Heavens for the archetype of the Pattern-Keeper who sees the Larger Story and knows that, above all, the Children’s Fire must be protected. This archetype is known by other names in other cultures but the energy would be the same. In a SoulCollage deck if you feel you have been grabbed by this all-seeing archetype, you can call it by any name that is meaningful to you.
The Promise Keeper is not an archetype of long history. It is a very recent name given to an American organization of Christian men who gather to describe a certain direction for men, one of morality, brotherhood, and of a certain, Bible based, male behavior in the world. In theory it can act as a helpful movement, but as an archetype (and anything that grabs one with enough passion can become an archetype ) it has become shadowed by a patriarchal view of the role of the male, and with a dangerous exclusiveness in terms of religion, of gender and also of race.
I think the Pattern-Keeper would look at some of the answers given by such a Council archetype, were it to be included in one’s Council, and say, “Stop! The Children’s Fire is in danger and so also is the life-giving role of the Feminine. Go back and re-find and renew this archetype so it is truly life-giving for all life on the planet.”
Seena Frost November, 2006