The Hunter
A hunter, ideally, is only a hunter.
A Hunter is not part of a group with motives, it is not a killer, not a provider of food, not associated with a gender, etc.
All of those things (member of group, killer, provider, gender etc) include separate archetypes that have overlapped with the Hunter archetype over time but are nevertheless completely separate. It's as if you had a glass of water and added sugar and lemon and still call it a glass of water. Lemonade is similar to water in some ways but it is not water.
So, what are the qualities of the hunter archetype?
The hunter looks for something for which evidence (however abstract), exists but which has not been identified. If you know what you are on the trail of then you are stalking, not hunting.
The hunter uses natural senses. If you are using something (you possess outside your natural body) to pursue then you are not hunting.
The hunter is part of a tradition. A person does not drop from the womb and immediately hunt. There is a body of knowledge in every hunter.
The hunter is "possessed" by the hunt. That means the "will" of the hunt is not part of the ego of the hunter. Nature hunts through the hunter.
Why is the hunter archetype so important to understand?
There is one quality of the archetypal hunter that is extremely important. In modern Western society the lack of this quality is a signature weakness.
Here are a few ways of describing this quality (or lack of).
1) Big world vs small world. A hunter who is prominent/successful/etc is living in a small world, a microcosm. In a small enough world anyone can be king but in a big enough world no person is a king. If the hunter is visible then the world is small.
2) Seeing with eyes vs seeing with muscles. The archetypal hunter is all senses, nothing else. The practicalities of life have caused the ideal to shift from hunting to producing.
3) A hunter is equivalent with what is being hunted. It isn't a contest or a struggle. The hunter will trade places with the other and there is no hesitation.
The importance of the Hunter archetype is related to the concept of Wu Wei in Taoism.