Game at the Edge | Feminine Archetypes in the Space of Service, Body, and Memory

Written by Elena Korol

“We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

William Shakespeare
From The Tempest, Act 4 Scene 1

In July 2025, I facilitated a session of the Jungian transformational game Rebirth, a metaphorical tool modeled after Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey that has been adapted to the female experience. I created this game during the war as a response to personal and collective need to find a language for internal change when the outside world was collapsing.

A two-day seminar conducted by UNODC, which gathered together Ukrainian women from the border service, police, and customs, was dedicated to the topic of female leadership, gender equality in the profession, and the challenges of service during the war time in Ukraine. But my part of the program was quiet. Unobtrusive. Different. I didn’t bring any slides with me. I came with a game. And along with it, a space where one could “take off the uniform” and speak through the depth of reality of the symbol.

We gathered in a room where there nobody had to give an answer. To report. To keep a public face. To make decisions.

And today I would like to share what my attempt was like when trying to touch the archetypal images that came to life in that circle. This meeting was too subtle to fit into the usual formats. The organizers took a risk and a kind of experiment because they had no previous experience of participating in such a format. I am very grateful to them for their trust and openness. This is already a symbol and manifestation of a new kind of leadership for me.

Perhaps this session is a small answer to a deeper question: is there a space in our professional field for a deep, slow, figurative presence precisely now, during the war time?

And although it doesn’t sound like “yes” or “no”.
But it breathes.
In the circle.
In the map.
In a woman who has remembered herself.

The Heroine’s Journey as a Game Structure

The session was structured in the form of a heroine’s journey. At the beginning, I told the participants:

“I invite you to a short version of the Heroine’s Journey, a personal journey where you will experience a true Call, Trial, and Return through images, feelings, body, and intuition.”

We worked in three mini-groups. Each had to choose three cards as a response to three questions. The answer was found through the chosen way of interacting with the deck of metaphorical cards: open, closed or random with the help of a dice.

The Images that chose women

Those images were not random. They appeared as a symbolic language of the unconscious which precisely and deeply touched those places that often have no words.

Catherine de’ Medici with the children

Isabella of Castile and Bloody Mary – Shadow Symbols for the Trial Stages

One participant drew the Isabella of Castile card twice in a closed way. Confused, she admitted that she did not want to be such a woman, and at the same time she felt that perhaps that image was about the power that she carried within but had not realized it.

“I don’t want to be her. I’d rather choose Beatrice. But she keeps coming.”

Isabella is her archetypal shadow image. The Dark Queen: Fair. Strict. Independent.

Mary Tudor (Bloody Mary)

The Mary Tudor or “Bloody Mary” card gave start to a complex conversation about the image of a tough, unyielding woman. The one who maintains power at the cost of warmth.

The participant shared: “I don’t want to be ‘bloody.”

This image was repeated in several groups. The red rose in her hand is not a symbol of romance. It is blood, choice, and pain. These are the stages of service where anger replaces compassion, and survival replaces contact with oneself.

William Shakespeare – Symbol of Gift and Resource of the group.

Space of Body, Memory and Service

These women are leaders, they manage, make decisions, and serve. They are aware of their leadership roles. However, many talk about the conflict between the external and the internal, between strength and exhaustion, between “have to” and “be”.

During the integration, they shared the states:
“I saw myself from the outside,”
“It was my mood, my face,”
“This is an echo of my choices.”

The game opened a field of presence and experience. A space in which the unconscious speaks to us through an image, through the body, through collective resonance.

Game as a Form of Ritual

It was not a game where someone won. It was a ritual of returning to oneself through a chosen image, through observation, through stopping.

“We are always in the field of control. And here we simply existed.”

This is perhaps the most accurate definition of what happened.

This experience on the border is not only in the geographical sense. It was the border between role and essence, between duty and call. The game gave a language for an internal conversation that often remains silent.

Portrait of the Heroine Today

When I recall these images: Catherine, Isabella, Mary, Shakespeare, I do ask myself: what is the archetypal portrait of female leadership in Ukraine today?

This is a Mother who holds everything. This is a Queen who is afraid of her power but is aware of it. This is a Soul who is tired of being soft but does not want to become hard. This is a Woman who has not heard her own voice for a long time and hears it in the image of the Artist.

This is a Woman in uniform, who does not remove the form from the body but wants to remove it from the heart.

This is a portrait that does not freeze. It changes. Lives. Seeks its voice in the circle. And speaks.