What exactly is an Archetype? 1
There are a lot of definitions of Archetype on the internet so this page will try to convey the meaning of the word to those who aren't satisfied with the dictionary definition.
Looking back at the development of conscious beings, back before cavemen etc, there was some point where the first "concept" existed. Maybe it was a worm that noticed light (probably it was something else, that's just an example).
That first concept had a singular quality for the worm at first. In other words it was aware of nothing else and its worm brain did not contain anything other than that first concept. Then, with time, nature caused it to realize a second concept, the lack of the first concept (or the opposite of it).
Now the worm has two higher things in its little brain, a concept of light and a concept of the lack (or opposite) of light. Those are the first two elements. The third element, whatever it was, initially seemed completely separate from the first two, and eventually the third element had to have an opposite, like the first two.
So now, fast forward to the present. The worm has evolved into the human being (or whatever you learned in school) and the human being has a complex verbal language that is a mixture of many different things and qualities, including agendas and deception. In other words, each word in human language contains an enormous amount of hidden baggage. If someone says "American Airlines" one person will be overwhelmed by those words because of the trauma they experienced when their cat got lost on an airliner. Another person will feel good as they remember how much money they made buying stock in that company. But even a simple word like "water" contains vast baggage and some of the baggage is actually information that is hidden in the meaning of the word.
An archetype is basically a word (in your mind) that contains (for you) a type of baggage that has been tested by time. How do you know if a concept has been "tested by time"? Nature is the only judge and the only provider of unquestionable truths. If you understand the difference between a "truth" that has been created to serve an interest and a truth that is simply a truth then you can begin to understand archetypes.
So the question a person might ask is "Can a word be an archetype?". Another way to say (ask) the same thing is "Are words and archetypes completely different, or do the terms overlap?".
Actually the idea of an archetype exists on a kind of continuum or scale. Theoretically there are perfect archetypes, but in reality a person understands an archetype only to some degree, and further, archetypes are collective, or common to all, but still they are seen or described through individuals so they necessarily are colored by the experiences of the one describing them.