Of Rooks, Guardians of the Threshold and Boundaries…

The chess piece or character known as The Rook, which is also called The Castle or as I like to say, The Tower, can move as many spaces along a row or column on the chessboard.

The Rooks (each player has 2) combined with The Queen, form the major chess pieces. In this way they operate like Guardians of the Threshold preventing the opposing player’s pieces from gaining or capturing a player’s King.

Guardians of the Threshold in a novel hold the boundaries between the protagonist and her or his goal.

While it may seem these Guardians work to prevent the major character from attaining her or his desire, they actually ensure the protagonist has or does integrate the skills provided by the Mentor, and necessary for achieving the ends to which she or he seeks.

In this way Guardians of the Threshold operate similarly to our personal unconscious. Interactions with them reveal our Shadow.

Prolonged interaction with the Shadow aspects of our personality promote the development of psychic muscles that allow and promote the development of healthy and safe relationship with the deep unconscious, that dimension of the unconscious that links all who have ever lived with those of us presently alive.

Writers and authors, like other artists, draw from the collective or archetypal unconscious. This is why the the statement that, “No story is ever truly original.” Every story written has been told or rendered in one fashion or another.

Every painting or sculpture has its precursor. Any piece of music written and played is but a variation of a theme on another. We are all connected, our souls and hearts. The lines and lineages that draw us together converge in the collective unconscious.

The various archetypes of personality and those of character types in both stories we write and that we observe in not just literature but life stand rooted in the landscape of humanity’s collective unconscious.

It is through writing and reading that we encounter what we call kindred spirits–aspects and dimensions of consciousness displayed through and by various character types in stories we read and those we write and who speak to that which we cannot always verbalize in daily life, but continually experience in both ourselves and others we meet.

The various chess pieces or characters address and express these various dimensions of personality.  The rules governing and delineating the manner in which they can mover about the board point to aspects of life and living.