%20BB.png)
“Captain of My Soul”: The Inner and Outer Sovereign in Invictus
- Scott Neumeister, PhD
- Jul 6
- 5 min read
It's only when a man tames his own demons that he becomes the king of himself, if not of the world.
Joseph Campbell, quoted by Bill Moyers in conversation with Maurice Sendak
As we enter into the month of July in this year’s MythBlast series, we turn to filmic expressions of the archetype of the Sovereign (occasionally called the Ruler or sometimes split into the binary of the King and Queen). While certainly this archetype appears in many societal structures—families, businesses, religious institutions—its presence in politics often garners the most attention. Because a political sovereign can influence all those affiliations mentioned (and more), it evokes more fascination and fear regarding its manifestations in the world. I have chosen to explore the 2009 film Invictus, a movie that I believe both speaks to the current political state of the world and is instructive across time and geopolitics because its archetypal resonances transcend the setting of the story. Moreover, it can address the inner Sovereign within us all, no matter what our relation to power is in the outer world.
Sovereign or tyrant?
The story of Invictus follows the unlikely alliance between black South African president Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) and Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), the white captain of the South African rugby team known as the Springboks. When the nation elects Mandela as president, he faces more than just the problems of his country’s poverty and crime; he also understands that he must confront the pressure stemming from many of his fellow black South Africans’ desire for retributive justice against their white Afrikaner neighbors after years of oppression. In other words, Mandela is feeling hard-pressed to embody the Tyrant variant of the Sovereign archetype–a role which would certainly not embrace the almost all-white Springbok team.Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, in their book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, outline the attributes of mature Ruler archetypal energy.
It stabilizes chaotic emotion and out-of-control behaviors. It gives stability and centeredness … It looks upon the world with a firm but kindly eye. It sees others in all their weakness and in all their talent and worth. It honors them and promotes them. It guides them and nurtures them toward their own fullness of being. (62)
This, the noblest function of the Sovereign, is able to bring balance and order to seemingly oppositional forces that would each seek just to overcome each other.
Defying the expectations of the more vengeance-minded within his country, Mandela convinces the South African Sports Committee to keep the Springboks intact in a powerful speech:
Our enemy is no longer the Afrikaner. They are our fellow South Africans, our partners in democracy. And they treasure Springbok rugby. If we take that away, we lose them. We prove that we are what they feared we would be. We have to be better than that. We have to surprise them with compassion, with restraint and generosity; … You elected me your leader. Let me lead you now.
Mandela here expresses some of the high attributes of the Sovereign archetype, strategic in his use of power towards the ends of “taming the demons,” as Campbell points out in the epigraph above. But the origin of Mandela’s nobility as a leader in the outer world began with his journey into inner sovereignty.
the Sovereign, is able to bring balance and order to seemingly oppositional forces that would each seek just to overcome each other.
Soul sovereignty
When Mandela meets with Pienaar to reveal his plan to make the Springboks the symbol of political unity, Pienaar is shocked. He appreciates the support and belief in the team’s ability to win the upcoming World Cup (hosted in South Africa), and yet he questions how Mandela can show such “restraint and generosity.” So Pineaar arranges for the entire rugby team to visit Robben Island, the site of eighteen of Mandela’s twenty-seven years of imprisonment. The words of the poem “Invictus,” written in 1875 by William Ernest Henley–words which served as inspiration for Mandela during his incarceration–now echo through Pienaar’s mind: “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” Pienaar begins to realize that Mandela, through his “Long Walk to Freedom,” first gained sovereignty within, a captaincy of his own soul (both the light and dark aspects). This kind of freedom transcends politics; it emanates from the soul, thus it can be found in all kinds of worldly situations.
The state of inner sovereignty is not about “mastery” in the most oppressive sense. Indeed, Henry David Thoreau commented in Walden, “It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself” (11). Self-mastery is more akin to the fluid capability of a dancer to move freely, to occupy whatever positionality serves the best in the moment. Joseph Campbell addressed both the idea of the Sovereign and this concept of freedom in the final two stages of the hero’s journey, the Master of the Two Worlds and Freedom to Live. He observes, “Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division … is the talent of the master. The Cosmic Dancer, declares Nietzche, does not rest heavily in a single spot, but gaily, lightly, turns and leaps from one position to another” (The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 196). To many, Mandela’s dance between the two political sides of his country felt puzzling, but it simply embodied an outward expression of his own completed hero’s journey from prisoner to president.
While one may already know the outcome of the 1995 World Cup, the real story-behind-the-story as told in Invictus is that of two Sovereigns–one of an entire country, one of a rugby team–who work together to epitomize the mastery of two worlds in a symbolic but powerful way. Moore and Gillette remark that the Sovereign archetype is “the energy that seeks peace and stability, orderly growth and nurturing for all people” (62, emphasis added). Whether through the inner work of integrating all of our own soul’s qualities, or through the outer work of exerting whatever power we have towards those ends, we all can embody the Sovereign, with the principles of these two people as guiding examples.
MythBlast authored by:
Scott Neumeister, PhD is a literary scholar, author, TEDx speaker, mythic pathfinder and Editor of the MythBlast series from Tampa, Florida, where he earned his PhD in English from the University of South Florida in 2018. His specialization in multiethnic American literature and mythology comes after careers as an information technology systems engineer and a teacher of English and mythology at the middle school and college levels. Scott coauthored Let Love Lead: On a Course to Freedom with Gary L. Lemons and Susie Hoeller, and he has served as a facilitator for the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s Myth and Meaning book club at Literati.
This MythBlast was inspired by The Hero With a Thousand Faces and the archetype of The Sovereign.
Latest Podcast
This lecture was recorded at Sarah Lawrence College in 1971, Campbell’s final year of teaching there. In this episode, he delves into Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, framing it through the lens of the Hero’s Adventure. With insight and depth, Campbell explores the myth’s historical roots and its enduring power as a metaphor for the journey of life. Host Brad Olson introduces the lecture and returns at the end with closing reflections.
This Week's Highlights
"Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division . . . is the talent of the master. The Cosmic Dancer, declares Nietzsche, does not rest heavily in one spot, but gaily, lightly, leaps from one position to another. It is possible to speak from only one point at a time, but that does not invalidate the insights of the rest."
-- Joseph Campbell