Role
From New Age Village
By Shepherd Hoodwin
Our role is the type of soul we are, the spiritual archetype we embody. Every soul has a particular role that determines his dominant way of being. Although a soul can have only one role, there are secondary role influences from his essence twin and casting (mathematical position within the greater whole). We could say that our role is our primary style—it determines not so much what we do but how we tend to do whatever we choose to do. Anyone can do any activity, regardless of role, although each role tends to gravitate toward certain activities. For example, since sages are the cardinal expression role, they often like to disseminate information. However, a person should not assume that he is a sage just because he likes to do that—people of other roles may also have that characteristic. A role is not an exclusive, rigid set of behaviors.
For the same reason sages often like to disseminate information, they are also the quintessential actors and storytellers, and there are probably more sages among actors than any other role. A sage actor can be colorful, expressive, and dramatic, with excellent timing. Jack Nicholson is a sage. A majority of comic actors, such as Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Murray, and Teri Garr, are sages. Nevertheless, there are a great many actors who are not sages, and they bring the qualities of their essence role to that profession.
An actor with the role of priest is likely to focus on how his performance can reveal some higher truth. A priest’s style of acting can be intense, with much communicated through his eyes; Christopher Walken is a priest. An artisan’s approach to acting emphasizes craftsmanship and technique—Meryl Streep is an artisan known for her extraordinary command of the craft of acting. A king’s style of acting is commanding: Patrick Stewart, who played Captain Picard on Star Trek—The Next Generation, certainly acts in a kingly manner, and his Shakespearean training adds to the effect; Katharine Hepburn is another king actor who commands enormous loyalty and respect. No actor can capture power and instinctive drive like one with the role of warrior—Marlon Brando is a perfect example. Servers, such as Doris Day, bring a nurturing warmth to their roles. (Ms. Day is now directing those qualities toward helping animals receive better treatment.) Scholars as actors study their parts as a means of learning about people, and can look a variety of ways as an actor; Vanessa Redgrave has been channeled as being a scholar, which illustrates that although scholar is the neutral role, scholars are not necessarily neutral people; many other factors can make for intensity in a person. Still, every scholar is dominantly assimilative—someone who studies, ruminates, digests, experiments, and so forth, as a primary way of being—as opposed to being dominantly inspirational, expressive, or active (referring to the four axes).
There are probably more artisans in the fine arts than the other roles, and the stereotypical artist looks more like the artisan role than the others; however, there are artists of all roles. Again, the role has more to do with the way something is done than what is done. For example, painter Georgia O’Keefe demonstrated her warrior energy through both her subject matter and her style. She portrayed towering skyscrapers and cattle skeletons. Her style was focused and highly physical. Even her flowers were not “flowery” and had a sexual quality.
The quintessential chief executive is a king, but the United States has had presidents of all the roles; only John Kennedy was a recent U.S. president with a role of king. Jimmy Carter is a server, George Bush is a priest (“honorary scholar”), Gerald Ford is an artisan, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan are sages, Dwight Eisenhower was a warrior, and Richard Nixon was a scholar. It is easy to see how their styles as president reflected their roles. For example, Reagan was an actor and was called “the great communicator.” Clinton is known for his social skills, his love of being in the public eye, and his saxophone playing. Both men are quintessential sages.
According to Yarbro, roughly twenty-five percent of the earth’s population (and the sentient population of the entire cosmos) are servers, twenty-two percent are artisans, seventeen percent are warriors, fourteen percent are scholars, ten percent are sages, eight percent are priests, and four percent are kings. This follows the order of most ordinal to most cardinal, with the neutral role, scholar, comprising about one-seventh of the population. So about sixty-four percent of the population has an ordinal role, and twenty-two percent has a cardinal role, with, again, fourteen percent having the neutral role, scholar. On any planet, there may be historical periods during which these percentages vary. For example, there may be civilizations that attract many warriors but not many sages. In general, though, these percentages are fairly constant from planet to planet, according to my channeling, allowing for minor variations due to free will. Some planetary “experiments” call for slightly different mixes of roles. However, the Tao has found through past experience that these proportions work well: a planet lacking balance among the roles—one that is too ordinal or too cardinal, for instance—can invite added problems.
Those with cardinal roles—king, priest, and sage—tend to like to work with large numbers of people at a time, and focus on expansive ideas and projects. Those with ordinal roles—server, artisan, and warrior—tend to like to work one-on-one, and focus on the nitty-gritty. Scholars, the neutral role, are neither cardinal nor ordinal; they occupy the detached, objective position. However, they more often resemble the ordinal roles.
The cardinal roles have a more concentrated, penetrating, “wedge-like” quality; the ordinal roles have a less concentrated, more “rounded-off” interface with the world. For instance, inspirational energy from priests is usually perceived as being more intense than that from servers, who tend to have a more low-key, diffuse style. However, one can’t jump to conclusions here either. I had one client whom I had channeled as being a server, but she seemed too intense to be a server. She had striking, powerful eyes more reminiscent of the role of priest (she was exotic looking in general). She had a no-nonsense, “don’t-mess-with-me” style, and wasn’t interested in serving others in the mundane, physical ways we often associate with servers. The only elements on her Michael Reading chart that may have accounted for these characteristics were her warrior (number three) casting and her occasional sliding to power mode (from caution). On the other hand, in a key way the role of priest didn’t fit her, either: she wasn’t drawn to working with large numbers of people or to inspiring people in an exalted way. In time, she validated that she was a server, realizing that she served people in nonmaterial ways, such as through often supporting her friends during emotional crises. (Perhaps she had “burned out” on the more mundane ways of serving in past lifetimes.)
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