Your soul is your innermost being, your higher self, who you really are. And according to the Michael teachings, your soul will have one of seven distinct ‘vibrations’ or ‘tones’.
The Spectrum of Essence
When we cast light through a prism, it comes out in the form of a spectrum which we perceive as the seven colours of the rainbow. Similarly, when the Source of all being (God, the Tao, the Absolute, whatever you like to call it) casts its consciousness into the relative world, it comes out in the form of individual souls of seven types:
What are the roles?
The word “role” refers to the fact that we each serve a particular type of function in the great scheme of things. We are all parts of a greater whole—the evolving consciousness of all-that-is.
Think of how every cell in your body is designed to play a specific role or function. And, although there are trillions of cells in the human body, there are only a few different types of cell.
Or think about all the stars in the cosmos. Although their number is so high as to be virtually infinite, scientists classify them all into just seven types, from hottest (type O) to coolest (type M).
Similarly, there are only seven types of soul. Which is to say, there are seven primary ‘roles in essence’ — seven ways in which the One becomes the many.
The names given to the seven soul types in the Michael Teachings are deliberately archetypal — hence somewhat old-fashioned sounding and not necessarily politically correct. The names are:
The names reflect the natural purpose and proclivities of each soul type:
- Servers are naturally accommodating, caring, nurturing, hospitable, altruistic.
- Artisans are naturally creative, inventive, imaginative, sensitive, dexterous.
- Warriors are naturally forceful, loyal, protective, determined, steadfast.
- Scholars are naturally curious, studious, academic, analytical, neutral.
- Sages are naturally engaging, articulate, charming, entertaining, expressive.
- Priests are naturally inspirational, uplifting, motivating, energising, visionary.
- Kings are naturally commanding, assured, powerful, authoritative, decisive.
You are one of these. I am one of these [a Scholar, to be exact]. Everybody is one or another of these. All the 7 billion souls who are currently on the planet, plus all those who are currently are off-planet between lives, can be identified as one of these seven types.
Incidentally, you can often (but not always) tell someone’s soul type from their facial features. I have a separate article on this: The seven soul types: what do they look like?
(Feel free to look at that now, but do come back here to learn a lot more about the nature of the seven types!)
The Proportions of Soul Types
The seven roles make up different proportions of the overall population. In percentage terms:
Servers = 25%
- Artisans = 21%
- Warriors = 18%
- Scholars = 14%
- Sages = 11%
- Priests = 7%
- Kings = 4%
So, one quarter of the entire poluation is made up of Servers, while there are fewer Kings than any other type.
To illustrate this, think of a school class with 28 students. According to these figures, those students would probably be made up of the following: — one King, two Priests, three Sages, four Scholars, five Warriors, six Artisans and seven Servers.
Now here are some further explanations about the roles in essence.
The Nature of the Roles
- Roles are not assigned to us or imposed on us. They are who we are.
- There is no hierarchy. All roles are equal in value, and all souls are equally free. A King is in no way “higher up” or “better off” than a Server. The roles are simply seven different ways of being, seven ways of playing the game of life.
- A person’s soul type has no bearing whatsoever on that person’s station in life. A King soul will live just as many ordinary, hard-working lives as a Server. A Server has just as much opportunity to become a leader as any King. In fact, the present monarch in the UK is a Server, as is the heir to the throne.
- The roles are certainly not be confused with the Hindu caste system. There are similarities in the names used, but this is simply because the caste system is a tragic misrepresentation of the nature of the roles. Soul types having nothing to do with birth, ancestry or class heritage.
- Despite the labels used, no gender is implied. Souls have no gender. They simply choose between one or the other for each life to come. There are preferences, however. Priests, Sages, Artisans and especially Servers generally enjoy being female and often prefer it. Kings, along with Scholars and Warriors, tend to favour being male. (That said, the challenge of being female and the fight for equal rights can be very attractive to a Warrior.)
- Our soul type is often evident in the first years of life but then becomes masked to some extent by false self or false personality. This consists of cultural programming, ego, persona and so on — the superficial identity we all develop which has nothing to do with who we really are. Usually, it is not until mid-life (when much of this false identity is broken through) that our true essence comes to express itself more clearly. For example, a female Warrior in her late 30s who has so far been a stay-at-home housewife might suddenly find her true home working as a political activist. A male Artisan who has followed in his father’s footsteps in the armed forces might have a mid-life crisis and decide to become a poet.
- Whereas our soul type is permanent, everything else can change from one life to the next: race, nationality, religion, gender, social standing, profession. But the essence and consciousness will be consistent. For example, a certain Artisan soul might incarnate as a woodworker in one life, a choirboy in the next, then a housewife, then a wealthy wine merchant, then a child prostitute, then a female shopkeeper … and so on. Throughout all these human lives, however, the Artisan will tend to be creative and inventive, seeking to bring fresh and original perceptions into being.
- I am often asked if it is possible to identify with more than one role. In fact, it is almost impossible not to. Here’s why: Casting — your soul’s place in the cosmos (and how it affects your soul type).
Our role in essence is our true nature, the part we each play in the cosmos. And, as the Michael teachings remind us:
NO MATTER WHAT THE ROLE OF ESSENCE, THE ESSENCE ITSELF IS COMPOSED WHOLLY OF LOVE.
Complementary opposites
Another interesting thing about the seven soul types…
Six of the seven soul types actually belong in pairs. Those in a pair share a similar function or specialism in life:
- Priests and Servers are both inspiration specialists, bringing good intentions to life, serving a good cause, seeking to improve the quality of life for all.
- Sages and Artisans are both expression specialists, bringing good ideas to life, giving form or voice to thoughts and feelings, changing perceptions.
- Kings and Warriors are both action specialists, bringing concrete objectives to life, making things happen, setting goals and moving towards them.
Scholars stand alone as the neutral role, and they are the assimilationspecialists, absorbing knowledge from life.
In each of the pairs (action, expression and inspiration), one is “cardinal” and the other is “ordinal“. Another way to put this is in terms of yin and yang.
In each of the pairs (action, expression and inspiration), one is “cardinal” and the other is “ordinal“. Another way to put this is in terms of yin and yang.
The cardinal of the pair is yang: proactive, expansive, foreground, driven, and with a big-picture focus. The ordinal of the pair is yin, the equal-but-opposite complementary energy to yang: reactive, responsive, background, introspective, and with a detail-level focus.
- In the action-type roles, the King role is cardinal and the Warriorrole is ordinal. To use a simplistic analogy, Kings embark on wars while Warriors fight battles.
- In the expression-type roles, the Sage role is cardinal and theArtisan role is ordinal. If all the world’s a stage, Sages are the presenters of the show, while the show itself is created and crafted by Artisans.
- In the inspiration-type roles, the Priest is the cardinal role and the Server is the ordinal role. If inspiration is likened to shepherding, Priests move the whole flock on to better pastures while Servers tend to those in need.
The Scholar role is neither cardinal nor ordinal, but at the intersection of all the pairs. The Scholar is the only neutral type, the role beingassimilation — absorbing information from life to create knowledge. At the risk of mixing too many metaphors at once, Scholars would be the ones who chronicle wars, record stage shows, and study sheep!
Positive and Negative
It is important to understand that we can manifest our potential in different ways. In the extremes, each role has a positive pole (+) and a negative pole (–).
- The positive pole represents the highest, most authentic and positive expession of the soul, the true self, which is a source of love, truth and freedom.
- The negative pole represents the lowest, most distorted and negative expession of the ego, the false self, which is a source of fear, illusion and malice.
For example, my being a Scholar means that I am the sort of soul whose role in life is to take information from the raw data of reality. Scholar has as its positive pole “knowledge” and as its negative pole “theory”. When acting in my positive pole, I do indeed serve a positive purpose by collecting and offering valid, useful knowledge. But when acting in my negative pole, I tend to get side-tracked in invalid or useless theories of no interest to anyone but me, and then only because my ego gets off on knowing more and more things rather than interacting with real life. You could say that the positive manifestation of a Scholar is being a knowledgeable expert and the negative manifestation is what some would call a nerd or dweeb — (sigh) — so true.
So, the positive pole of any role leads towards true fulfilment of self and true intimacy with others. The negative pole leads to emptiness, frustration and alienation. Here they are in full:
| ROLE | POSITIVE POLE | NEGATIVE POLE |
| Server | service (serving the common good) | servitude (loss of own power) |
| Artisan | creation (bringing good ideas to life) | artifice (ideas used to deceive) |
| Warrior | persuasion (influencing others’ will) | coercion (imposing own will) |
| Scholar | knowledge (learning from life) | theory (lost in abstractions) |
| Sage | communication (delivering messages) | verbosity (stuck on transmission) |
| Priest | motivation (inspiring others to change up) | zealotry (overly fanatical) |
| King | mastery (absolute responsibility) | tyranny (absolute power) |
Relationships and Roles
Interestingly, the different roles do relationhips in subtly different ways.
- For Warriors and Kings (action type), relationships are a matter offealty or loyalty.
- For Sages and Artisans (expression type), relationships are a matter of commitment.
- For Priests and Servers (inspiration type), relationships are a matter of dedication.
- For Scholars (assimilation type), relationships are a matter ofinvolvement.
Channels of Input
We process our experiences through one or more channels of perceptual input. The number of channels we possess varies, depending upon our role in essence.
- Scholars, Kings and Warriors receive information through just one channel. This allows them to focus on what’s what, concentrate on the matter at hand, and think clearly amid chaos.
- Priests and Servers receive information through two channels. One is tuned to the immediate situation, and the other is tuned to, in the case of Priests, their sense of the “higher good”, and in the case of Servers, a sense of the “common good”. Hence, there is often a moral or ethical overtone to their conversations.
- Sages process information through three channels, while Artisans have five channels. With Sages, one channel is tuned to the immediate situation, one is managing their “act” or “performance”, and one is monitoring their audience. With Artisans, it is more a case of having multiple “back burners” making creative connections around the immediate situation.
While they are shifting their attention between their multiple channels, Sages and especially Artisans can appear to “tune out” the person they are communicating with. This makes Artisans in particular seem somewhat scattered, at least to non-Artisans. By the same token, those with multiple channels can find it difficult to accept the single-mindedness of Scholars, Kings and Warriors.
Read On
OK, you have the background. Now perhaps you want to know more specifically about each of the seven roles in essence. If you want a quick sense of what they all look like, based on photos of some famous examples in each case, see:
If you want to read a fuller, more-in-depth description of each one (with more photos), click below. Enjoy!
Discover Your Soul Type
Some people find it easy to intuit their own soul type or essence. For others, it’s far from obvious. To help you identify yours, I have put together a questionnaire (personality quiz) at Quibblo. Here’s the link:http://www.quibblo.com/quiz/atufj3C/Discover-Your-Soul-Type.
Over 1,000 people have taken it already and the results look like this:
The ‘natural’ proportions, you may remember, range from 4% Kings to 25% Servers. So this chart is showing a lot more Priests and Artisans than would be expected, and not many Warriors. This suggests either that the test is skewed to identify Priests and Artisans but not Warriors (which I totally accept is a possibility), or perhaps it is simply that Priests and Artisans are more likely to be doing this kind of thing on the Internet and Warriors aren’t. Feedback welcome!
(and how it affects your soul type)
In addition to our core essence or soul archetype, each of us has additional tendencies at the soul level that influence our way of being.
I am often asked if it is possible to identify with more than one role. In fact, it is almost impossible not to.
Take me, for example. I am a Scholar soul in essence, yet I have a way of being a Scholar that is somewhat like a Sage. Okay, I am nowhere near as outgoing as a typical Sage. In fact, I am generally quiet and studious like a typical Scholar. But put me in a room filled with Scholars and I will stand out from the rest as being relatively outgoing, fun-loving, witty and expressive.
How so?
It is all to do with how souls are organized into groups.
Soul groups
First of all, each of us belongs to a particular “family” or “team” of souls — our own little soul group, all of the same essence. I, for example, belong to a small group of Scholars. If you are an Artisan, then you will belong to a family of Artisans. Your siblings in your soul group will be among your closest soul mates.
Secondly, each member has a distinct role to play within the group.This team role is equivalent to one of the seven archetypes (King, Scholar, etc.). Why? It’s just how consciousness naturally self-organizes, having these seven different ways of being that can interact with one another. It happens as the Source disperses into the seven essence types, and it happens again as individual souls organize into groups.
In the lingo of the Michael teachings, all this organising and grouping is referred to as casting.
Think of actors being cast into roles for a play. Or perhaps, think of molten gold being poured (cast) into molds to make beautiful objects, all made from the same substance (gold) but each unique in its own way.
Casting
So in addition to being the expression of some archetypal essence (King, Server, etc), we are also cast into specific positions within soul groups, each of us playing a particular function within our own team.
The casting roles/functions within any soul team consist of:
- Artisan-cast: creativity, inventiveness
- Sage-cast: communication, wisdom
- Server-cast: care, nurturing
- Priest-cast: vision, encouragement
- Warrior-cast: action, productivity
- King-cast: command, decisiveness
- Scholar-cast: research, knowledge
Imagine, for example, a soul group made up of Artisans like the one below.
Within this team, one will be a bit like an inspiring coach (Priest-cast), one will be a bit of a knowledge specialist (Scholar-cast), and so on. There will even be one Artisan in the team playing an inventive, Artisan-like role.
They are all Artisans at core; that is their primary nature. At the same time, though, they will each have this other, secondary quality that comes from their casting. The ratio of the two energies (essence to casting) is probably something like 70:30.
Coming back to myself as an example, I am a Sage-cast Scholar. So along with my primary thrust as a Scholar I also bring a Sage-like energy of outward expressiveness. This means that as a Scholar I loveto spread my knowledge about in a way that is both lucid and entertaining.
Here are some more real-life examples (caveat: these are probable, not certain):
- Sages
- Orson Welles — King-cast Sage
- Lenny Bruce — Warrior-cast Sage
- Isadora Duncan — Artisan-cast Sage
- Artisans
- Viggo Mortensen — King-cast Artisan
- Daniel Craig — Warrior-cast Artisan
- Michael Jackson — Sage-cast Artisan
- Scholars
- Ben Affleck — King-cast Scholar
- Ken Wilber — Priest-cast Scholar
- Michelle Obama — Warrior-cast Scholar
- Priests
- Barack Obama — Scholar-cast Priest
- Gandhi — Server-cast Priest
- Ed Harris — King-cast Priest
- Servers
- Queen Victoria — King-cast Server
- Ammachi — Sage-cast Server
- Dalai Lama — Priest-cast Server
- Kings
- Cate Blanchett — Artisan-cast King
- James Cameron — Warrior-cast King
- Lucy Lawless — Sage-cast King
- Warriors
- Judi Dench — Sage-cast Warrior
- Colin Powell — Server-cast Warrior
- Abraham Lincoln — Scholar-cast Warrior
So, this is why we can usually sense more than one archetypal energy within ourselves, though one will be predominant (the core essence or soul type) and the other will be secondary (the casting). Your casting is like an outer layer of archetypal energy enveloping your core essence, affecting how you operate as that soul type.
I say we can “usually” sense more than one because there are of course some souls who have the same archetypal qualities both in their essence and in their casting. An Artisan who is cast into the Artisan-like team position, for example, will be highly creative and inventive. They will also be more easily recognisable as an Artisan than, say, a King-cast Artisan, because they will be much more like the Artisan “stereotype”.
The bigger picture
Not only are our souls cast into positions within groups, but our groups are cast into specific positions within larger groups, and so on and so on… Ultimately, we all belong to the same infinitely large family, yet each of us has a unique place within it.
It would be of no value to the Source to create billions and billions of clones. Instead, each and every evolving consciousness has an absoluetly unique presence in the great scheme of things, a bit like the way each computer on the Internet has a unique IP address.
There is not another soul in the cosmos with the same quality of presence as you.
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