We’re getting deep today, exploring the great psychologist Carl Jung’s concept of the Collective Unconscious and the archaic “super-personalities” that dwell there — the Archetypes.

2500 years ago, the Persian king Xerxes, while invading Greece with an army of two million men (according to Herodotus), confronted the defending Greeks, led by 300 Spartan warriors, at a narrow pass called Thermopylae.

Lycurgus was the founder of Sparta. The first thing he did was outlaw money. He wanted his people to pursue virtue instead.

Spartan quips and Spartan swords were notoriously short.

Why did king Leonidas pick the specific 300 warriors that he did to fight the Persians (and to face certain death) at Thermopylae?

It’s only fitting to begin our exploration of the Warrior Archetype with the women of ancient Sparta, instead of the men. More than their beauty and freedom, Spartan women were famous as the toughest-minded and the fiercest enforcers of the warrior ethos to which their husbands, sons, and fathers aspired.

Today begins a new video series. I’ll be spending the next several months talking about what I call The Warrior Archetype. This series will look at the idea of what a warrior is in ancient times and modern times; the internal battle and the external battle; the warrior in each of us.