Upper Left Wisdom Tooth: Virtues Archetype

Learn about the metaphysical meaning of the upper left wisdom tooth represented by the tooth archetype, Virtues.

Whether or not your wisdom tooth is fully grown, is still impacted under the gum, causes concern, has been extracted, or just never developed, the Virtues tooth archetype may have something to say about your maternal ancestors and your inner moral code.

Explore the themes of this archetype, learn what symptoms and stages mean with this wisdom tooth, and get guidance on how to work with the Virtues archetype for oral health and overall well-being.

Part of the series of talks about the metaphysical meaning of each tooth. You may also want to first listen to the introduction called 'Tooth Archetypes: The Secret Lives Of Teeth' and follow up with 'Visualize Meeting With Your Upper Right Wisdom Tooth: Virtues', then join our ongoing discussion in the Secret Lives of Teeth group here on Insight Timer.

Transcript

Welcome to a deep dive into the metaphysical meaning of the virtues archetype embodied in your upper left wisdom tooth,

Or the space where it would be.

Tooth archetypes are a way to interpret oral health symptoms in one tooth and its part of the mouth,

With strengths that support the tooth to heal and be healthy,

And vulnerabilities which can influence how a tooth might succumb to ill health.

The strengths of the virtues archetype are grounded in your intuition,

And virtues vulnerabilities may emerge from feeling judged by the people closest to you.

In this talk I'll explain how the virtues archetype fits into its place in the mouth,

To understand the logic of its primary themes and relationships.

I'll offer interpretations of different symptoms,

Stages and variations common to this tooth,

And suggest strategies for using the virtues archetype to support the health of the tooth,

Your whole mouth and even your general well-being.

If you are not familiar with metaphysical approaches to healing,

Or the tooth archetype framework specifically,

You might like to pause this track and go and listen to my lecture called Tooth Archetypes,

Which introduces key concepts from my book The Secret Lives of Teeth,

Including considerations to keep you safe as you do this work.

Most importantly,

If you are in serious pain or have a fever or swelling around this,

Or any tooth,

You need to prioritise dental care before metaphysical healing.

What I'm discussing should be considered complementary rather than alternative health.

Also,

Please do not use this discussion of metaphysical influences on physical health to blame or shame anyone,

Including you.

To start,

Let's put the virtues archetype in context as your upper left wisdom tooth.

As one of a family of four wisdom teeth,

It may represent your readiness for a new developmental stage of adult life and personal growth.

Consider if you happened to be going through any significant personal transitions around the time your wisdom teeth erupted or this tooth presented with challenging symptoms.

Were you dealing with a troublesome wisdom tooth while also making major life decisions about relationships,

Family or your body?

With its location in the upper jaw,

This tooth speaks to your origin story,

The family you grew up in or are descended from,

The influences on your culture,

Family pattern and common sense.

Upper wisdom teeth may represent the influence of your most distant forebears.

They remind you that you are a descendant of countless generations back to your ancestors,

A lineage stretching through history,

Connecting you with the earliest people whose culture still influences your life now.

Virtues is on the left side of the mouth so it may be particularly linked with your mother's side of the family or your lineage through either of your grandmothers.

Maternal energy is strong on the left side so not necessarily through childbearing so much as with the kind of soft power inside the home.

This side of the mouth is concerned with personal behaviour,

Intimate relationships and private thoughts.

This is the side of the mouth where you have a gut feeling,

Act on your emotions or speak from the heart.

So that's the virtues archetype in context.

Now what about the unique meaning of the upper left wisdom tooth,

The singular tooth out of 32?

The three main themes of the virtues archetype are First,

Your ancestry,

Whether that's maternal family lineage,

Local indigenous heritage or historical representatives of an affinity group you identify with.

Second,

Your body and body image,

Your intimate relationships,

Personal beliefs,

Family or home.

Thirdly,

Your intuition and inner moral code of right and wrong.

Once upon a time,

Your ancestors used their intuitive wisdom to create a morality of personal behaviour that made sense in their time.

When the virtues tooth asks for your attention,

Think about your grandmother's culture as expressed through family dynamics or explore the beliefs and practices of the indigenous people where you live.

Or if you identify more strongly with an affinity group such as queer people or witches than with your family of origin or a particular place,

Then the early history of that group could be expressed through your upper left wisdom tooth.

The virtues tooth may carry ancient ancestral scars from the persecution of pagans and witches,

Those and other colonising conflicts between embodied intuitive wisdom and patriarchal religion,

Distorted and codified intuitive traditions,

Then dismiss them as old wives tales.

This tooth can internalise ideas about what is good or bad about your body and it holds on to prejudices about illness or disability.

Where economic,

Religious and political power was denied,

Historically,

The domains of home,

Family and the body became the main place where disempowered peoples could wield power and have control.

Virtues is concerned with the behaviour of family members,

Especially around questions of who to partner with,

How to raise children,

Or the care of disabled and elderly family members.

For example,

Someone in your family might be attempting to control your sexual or retroductive choices and that impulse from them could be inherited from the values your ancestors placed on marriage and childbearing in their multi-generational households that were at the centre of small subsistence communities.

The context has probably changed,

But the emotional intensity of the traditional values hasn't necessarily caught up to modernity.

When you were a child,

Your ongoing safety and acceptance in the family may have been contingent on your compliance with your family's traditional expectations and social norms.

You may have been punished or threatened with punishment when you tried to follow your body's sensory guidance.

As a result,

You may not know anymore how to listen to your intuition or be willing to trust it.

Despite culturally imposed disconnection,

You still have the same kind of body as your ancestors,

With the same potential for somatic awareness and for your body's wisdom to be a reliable guide to what is right and wrong for you.

Even though so much of the world you live in right now might seem to be in conflict with your body's innate wisdom,

The virtues archetype invites you to listen to your body and trust its communication.

It speaks to you through the language of sensations,

Your visceral feelings of desire or rejection.

You know,

The open,

Expansive,

Light,

Calm,

Yes of what's right in this moment.

Or the tight,

Heavy,

Closed,

Agitated,

No of what is wrong.

At its best,

Virtues represents your personal power and self-respect.

The virtues tooth is supported when you use your intuition to guide your personal choices.

Your inner morality may not align with what is legal or socially acceptable or how you're actually behaving,

And that might activate feelings of guilt or regret that can impact the tooth.

This upper left wisdom tooth may embody struggles around your personal beliefs,

Your private thoughts or your individual preferences.

Virtues the archetype may be telling stories about the origins of your self-expectations,

Self-judgment or self-confidence.

It can be understood better by looking inwards,

Meditating,

Dream work or somatic work,

That kind of thing.

Your body is the primary site where you can restore your relationship with your intuition.

The virtues archetype is supported when you trust your intuition about your body's needs.

This can be as complicated as gender identity and sexuality,

Or as mundane as intuitive eating,

Holistic oral hygiene or wearing colorful clothing.

Now,

Let's explore the ways those themes and relationships play out in the different symptoms,

Stages and variations of the upper left wisdom tooth.

When your wisdom tooth is asking for attention,

It could be an indication that your inner wisdom is off key or out of sync.

Perhaps you aren't listening to your intuition or that your body's signals are distorted by trauma.

In general,

Virtues symptoms indicate a lack of trust in your intuition or ability to express your own moral code,

Especially when it seems to conflict with your family's expectations or maybe your best friend's assumptions or perhaps your publicly professed beliefs.

When you've spent most of your life ignoring your body's communications about what to eat,

How to move,

When to sleep or go to the bathroom,

Then it can be really hard to sift through the noise to find the signal.

When you're dwelling in feelings of guilt or regret,

Or you're acting out self-harm or self-punishment,

Then it's hard to trust what your body is telling you.

Consider whether your wisdom tooth has come to your attention when you've had any kind of difficulties making transitions through life stages.

The timing of a wisdom tooth's eruption out of the gum may coincide with a transition to adult independence.

If your attempts at autonomy and individuality resulted in traumatising pushback such as punishment or exclusion from your family,

Then that could influence a virtues tooth to grow sideways instead of upwards.

It may embody an unhappy conflict where your intuitive sense of right and wrong is distorted by the response of others who you're in close relationships with.

An alternative interpretation of wisdom tooth problems could come from trauma resulting from you judging and trying to control others.

This may be because you don't trust anyone else,

And so you try to impose your personal moral code as though it is an objective truth.

It can also embody your secret or not criticism about what other family members do in private,

In their relationships or with their own bodies.

The rocky road to maturity could also be an inside game.

Perhaps you live with a disability which means that some standard milestones aren't available even though your family is supportive and loving.

Perhaps you've witnessed adult suffering which makes you want to stay in the perceived safety of childhood dependence in a loving family.

I had a client,

Who I'll call Adele,

Who was in her mid-twenties when she was advised to have her upper wisdom teeth extracted because of their potential for crowding the rest of her teeth out of alignment.

At the time she was still living with her parents in a small apartment,

Sharing a room with her younger brother.

In her crowded circumstances she felt unworthy of having boundaries.

She felt ambivalent about leaving home,

Afraid of physical intimacy,

Embarrassed about not pursuing a career.

Together we worked to heal her virtues archetype as it expressed her maternal lineage.

Her great-grandmother had witnessed trauma and her grandmother was mentally ill.

Adele's mother had been raised by those two women who were controlling,

Strict and cold and Adele experienced her mother as distant and depressed.

After working with the virtues archetype for a few months Adele decided not to extract her upper wisdom teeth,

At least not yet.

She also started to make progress into a more confident independent adult life.

She moved in with her boyfriend and then got a job in another region which meant she'd only be home in the weekends.

At worst the virtues archetype can embody the pain of conditional love when someone you depend upon criticizes your clothes or hair or makeup,

Your diet and weight and body shape,

Your exercise habits and health choices or your housekeeping and decorating or your parenting style,

Your hopes and dreams,

Your hobbies,

Your favorite music,

Books,

Games or shows,

Your choice of friends or partners,

Even your crushes,

Your sexual identity or sexual behavior.

But what if you are one of the 20 to 25 percent of people who never develop a full set of wisdom teeth?

If you miss out on growing an upper left wisdom tooth it may indicate that you have a capacity to easily adapt to rapidly changing social norms for personal behavior.

Potentially you might have a more flexible moral code and feel more free to define your own sense of right and wrong without being influenced by your family's culture.

Conversely not growing a wisdom tooth could mean that you don't have a sense of your own moral center and are vulnerable to the influence of someone with more certainty.

Either way you can still work with the virtues archetype as an ancestral influence on the back of your jaw where it would have grown but didn't.

A wisdom tooth that is present but not visible,

Which stays impacted below the gum,

Could embody resistance to expectations of you as an adult in your family.

It reflects your inner expectations of what it means to be a spouse or a parent or the adult child of aging parents or the sibling of your adult brothers or sisters or the aunt or uncle to your nieces and nephews.

This tooth impaction invites you to explore whether you are denying or resisting against what you've always thought such adult roles in your family would mean for you.

When the upper left wisdom tooth is impacted it may be embodying avoidance of outer expectations about a difficult personal decision,

Maybe like committing to a relationship,

Where to live or having children.

It could be showing that you need to be taking a side in a relationship conflict to speak up for your intuition or personal morals,

Especially if your sense of right and wrong is at odds with what someone you love wants from you or for you.

This impacted tooth may also hold disappointment with what your adult body looks like and does and feels.

An upper left wisdom tooth which is staying comfortably impacted without causing any problems,

Suggests that you might be perfectly content with your personal life,

Perhaps willing to continue in a state of childlike freedom from obligation that doesn't cause conflict.

You aren't struggling with virtues archetype issues,

They haven't confronted you yet.

Sometimes a partially impacted wisdom tooth seems to be rising and falling in the gum,

But actually the gum periodically is swelling to cover all or most of the tooth.

Metaphysically when this happens to the virtues tooth it may suggest that you're ambivalent about following your gut feelings with a family member or intimate relationship.

You could feel conflicting desire for and repulsion by a particular life transition.

Try to observe the movements of the gum on a partially impacted virtues tooth to see if there's any correlations to personal events,

Private concerns or intimate opportunities.

You may start to see a pattern or theme that you can work with.

What about cavities?

A cavity in the virtues tooth suggests that you aren't doing something that you think that you should be doing and you feel bad about yourself as a result.

The location of the cavity can be interpreted with specific meanings according to Dr Christiane Bayer.

A cavity on the mesial surface,

Which is the part of the tooth that faces the front of your mouth on the virtues tooth,

Can be embodying regrets about your actions or decisions.

It may indicate that you hold yourself to very high standards for language and behavior and are harsh with yourself when you think you don't measure up.

You may be picking up on an unconscious need for redemption by your ancestors.

A cavity on the distal surface of the virtues,

Which faces the back of your mouth,

May be embodying chronic depression from feeling guilt just for existing.

There can be a heavy threatening silence resting on this surface.

It could hold ancestral trauma from lifetimes of unresolved conflict within your family.

A cavity on the occlusal or chewing surface,

Which faces the lower jaw,

May embody anxiety about being punished for some mistake from your past or even a fault of your ancestors.

You may blame your health problems on what you consider to be poor hygiene or immoral behavior.

This surface could be trying to hide self-harming behaviors which limit your growth and subvert your well-being.

A cavity on the barcal surface,

The side of the virtues tooth that faces your cheek,

May embody inner struggles about your beliefs.

It could be responding to your own or ancestral conflicts with religious leaders about the morality of private behavior such as sexuality or choice of marriage partner.

The cervical buccal part of the virtues tooth is the gum line facing the cheek and it can embody conflict about religious obligations,

Although note that this part of the tooth is concerned with practices rather than faith.

A cavity here could be in response to feeling as though your desire to stop attending religious services is a threat to family harmony or honor.

Or there could be inherited trauma from an ancestral scandal over someone walking away from a religious role such as a nun leaving the order.

A cavity on the cervical lingual part of the virtues tooth,

That's the gum line facing your tongue,

May embody feeling spiritually bereft or attacked.

If you or your ancestors were excommunicated,

Attacked or exiled for religious reasons,

A cavity on the surface may hold the sadness of feeling unable to talk safely to anyone about your spiritual beliefs or atheism.

If your virtues tooth is infected,

Inflamed or has an abscess or cyst,

Consider whether you're internalizing anger about aging or being unfairly judged by older generations or feeling oppressed by the expectations of those closest to you.

Infection around a virtues tooth may embody irritation about a role that you've entered with maturity.

It might be feeling burdened by responsibilities as a parent to your children or as the child of aging parents.

An infected virtues tooth is likely to be embodying annoyance at others' expectations of or in your intimate relationships.

Like if you feel resentful about doing something that's aligned with your moral code but it's boring or draining or uncomfortable,

Or if you're doing the right thing but with lots of complaints and ill will.

Perhaps you're impatient with the ways that you've acted maturely at the expense of your well-being and individual desires.

Over time these resentments can build up and make you vulnerable to infection.

Conversely,

This tooth may hold suppressed anger towards a family member who is guilt-tripping you about not taking up responsibilities or meeting expectations of maturity.

Infections or inflammations in the virtues tooth could be embodying internalized anger about signs of your body's physical aging rather than your behavior.

How do you feel about your body getting bigger,

Heavier or saggier?

Are you annoyed with your hair for graying,

Receding or thinning?

Do you feel irritated with wrinkles or stretch marks on your skin?

Most dentists would rather extract an infected wisdom tooth than do a root canal on it.

On a population scale,

Perhaps the widespread practice of extracting the virtues tooth is reflected in our cultural obsession with looking youthful while disrespecting actual young people.

As an individual,

Once the virtues tooth is extracted,

You may feel less committed to traditional definitions of virtuous moral behavior.

You could feel more free to define right and wrong on your own terms without reference to family and tradition.

One of my coaching clients,

Who was in her early 70s,

I'll call her Helen,

Worked with virtues archetype as she prepared to have her upper left wisdom tooth extracted.

Her story is a vivid example of a painful maternal family legacy.

The tooth's symptoms coincided with the dissolution of her lifelong role as a steward of that lineage as daughter,

Sister,

Mother and grandmother.

Helen initially had a cavity develop in her upper left wisdom tooth around 2012 when the legal battles over her late mother's estate were becoming actively divisive between Helen and her six younger siblings,

As well as increasingly destructive to her health and well-being.

At the same time,

Helen's divorce was finalized and there were other family traumas,

Breakdowns and deaths,

Leading to lawsuits over other family members' estates.

Within a year,

Her dentist placed a root canal and gold crown on the virtues tooth.

It's actually pretty unusual to have a root canal or crown on a wisdom tooth because it is standard practice to extract wisdoms at the first sign of trouble.

But Helen really wanted to save the tooth and the dentist did a good job despite the difficulties.

The legal battles dragged on,

Requiring Helen to travel back and forth between her new home in the UK and the evolving lawsuit in the US.

Her siblings were fighting to change their mother's will,

Which they saw as unfairly favouring Helen.

The will acknowledged Helen's contribution as steward of the family homestead,

Carer for her mother and guardian of her disabled brother,

But her siblings fought against the will,

Trying to rewrite history in order to take away the extra left to Helen.

Over the years of family legal strife,

Helen gradually fell into a deep and debilitating depression.

By 2023,

She felt like a shadow of herself.

She was estranged from her siblings and heart-breakingly distanced from some of her six children.

Looking back on her life,

She felt like she had bled out her life force through all her service to generations of family and had nothing to show for her own life and no energy to regroup.

Then,

More than 10 years after the root canal,

Helen's virtues tooth started hurting again,

Just as her sister made yet another petty but painfully ugly legal argument against her.

The dentist found a cavity under the crown and recommended an extraction.

That's when Helen decided to consult with me.

Between our first and second coaching session,

The gold crown broke off her virtues tooth during a picnic with her daughter and toddler granddaughter.

There was no pain,

And the whole crown came away intact,

Leaving the root to be extracted.

As we worked together to deliberately and reverently prepare for the extraction procedure as a ritual of release,

Helen spoke to her virtues tooth,

Thanking it for its lessons.

She understood the symptoms to be communicating that her time as the holder of all that family responsibility and trauma was over.

It was urging her to emerge in her own right to heal and nourish herself.

She told the tooth that it was okay to leave now because she would remember its wisdom teachings and carry them forward with gratitude.

By the day of the extraction,

She felt that much of the great weight of her family's ancestral trauma was lifted.

Helen describes the procedure as amazing,

Painless and uncomplicated.

In the days afterwards,

She felt almost exhilarated by the release,

Like light had begun to break through the clouds which had eclipsed her spirit.

Months later,

She still feels unburdened by family legacy,

Overarching responsibility,

Trauma and toxicity,

Although the path to fully recovering her sense of vitality and purpose is still in progress.

Now let's explore some ways you can work with the virtues archetype to support the health and well-being of your upper left wisdom tooth,

Or the space where it would be if you don't have one.

Working with your own virtues archetype may show you the physical effects of denying your inner truth.

This kind of work is often quiet and intimate.

If you know someone else who is struggling with your upper left wisdom tooth,

You can support them by encouraging introspection,

Respecting their privacy and not judging their choices.

For yourself,

You could start by using meditation,

Journaling,

Artistic expression or other self-healing practices to explore your relationship with your intuition through significant personal milestones of your teens and adulthood and your ancestral linear.

You could consider questions like,

Have you felt ambivalent about a role,

Identity or transition that represents adulthood or maturity?

Have you suppressed your innate spiritual beliefs or creative impulses because of family obligations?

Has there been a history of trauma passed down through your lineage?

Have you ever ignored symptoms or physical sensations until a disease or unhealthy situation was very far advanced?

Have you ever felt traumatized by family criticism and attempts to control your body,

Relationships,

Spirituality,

Creative practice,

Sexuality or gender expression?

Do you have any regrets about ignoring a gut feeling about your family,

A relationship,

Home or creative expression?

Have you ever followed a gut feeling but had it turn out badly and now you mistrust your intuition?

The virtues tooth may be asking you to make changes in your outer life within close relationships.

It may feel confronting to reassess your personal moral code,

Evaluating what aligns with your intuition and what are habitual assumptions distorted by historical trauma.

Re-evaluate your moral code to decide what is still relevant now and what no longer supports your highest good.

You can work with tooth archetypes in many kinds of therapy including somatic therapies,

Talking therapies and spiritual practices.

Consider bringing your virtues archetype into family systems or constellation work.

In traditional Chinese medicine,

The wisdom teeth are affected by four meridians.

The heart meridian,

The small intestine meridian,

The triple warmer meridian and the pericardium meridian.

Any meridian based therapy such as acupuncture,

Reflexology,

EFT and so on can support the energy flow to this tooth or the site where the tooth would be.

The four meridians associated with virtues are all fire elements which represent joy,

Love,

Hope,

Openness,

Empathy,

Cooperation,

Generosity,

Mental clarity and decisiveness.

Make space in your life to encourage those kinds of feelings.

Upper wisdom teeth respond well to any kind of ancestor work including releasing vows and healing the witch wound.

Use your imagination or research history to explore your family traditions,

Indigenous heritage or affinity group.

You could visualize your virtues archetype in the guise of a wise ancestor who is worthy of respect.

Ask this elder to help you trust your own inner wisdom.

I'm releasing this talk together with a guided meditation to meet with your virtues archetype,

The essence of your upper left wisdom tooth.

The visualization doesn't assume or force a connection with any particular cultural traditions or even gender.

The way you visualize your virtues archetype is the most meaningful image for you to engage with.

Your personal version of the archetype may change form over time,

Particularly as your wisdom tooth changes.

You may find that your visualization of virtues appears one way when the upper left wisdom tooth is impacted,

Another way once it's erupted and another way if it's extracted.

Or it could show up as the same avatar in different ages,

Roles,

Clothes or settings.

Now here are some suggestions of symbols you can use in ritual or on altars or in any practices where you want to represent your virtues archetype to support your wisdom tooth.

A hearth,

A cooking fire,

A candle or burning incense.

A colour red.

Heart symbols.

Images or objects that represent your ancestors,

Especially on your mother's side or female relatives on either side of the family.

A picture of a wise woman,

Matriarch,

Witch or crone.

Special stones or indigenous herbs to connect you with the land.

Symbols from the local indigenous culture which are ethically acquired and used with respect.

A representation of a fish or another ancient symbol meaningful.

For you or your family.

A traditional god or goddess figure that has meaning for you.

Dr Michelle Kafam associates wisdom teeth with the element of magnesium so you could incorporate magnesium oil into your practices.

She also assigns wisdom teeth the astrological planet of Saturn.

I associate the major arcana tarot cards of moon and world with the upper left wisdom tooth.

I use them to inspire the following conclusion.

The virtues tooth invites you into self-trust.

To heal your relationship with your upper left wisdom tooth,

Nurture your intuition.

Connect with the wisdom of your body and what it tells you about right and wrong,

Yes and no.

Trust the knowing that you feel or sense within your body.

Open yourself to receiving messages from the wise ancestors who dwell within your teeth and your bones.

The path to meet with them is in meditation and mindfulness,

And being present with awareness of your body,

Sensitized to every pulse and breath.

When you are comfortable with your body's intuitive wisdom,

Expand your senses beyond your skin to become aware of energy extending in all directions across time and space.

Let yourself exist in harmony with the whole world.

The wisdom tooth is a reminder that the wisdom of your body cannot be overridden forever.

You were not designed for endless productivity or disassociation.

Tune into the creative power of self-expression.

Let yourself be a channel of divine love and acceptance for your body,

Your dreams,

Your feelings and your thoughts.

Let the tides of your emotions and activities dance with the phases of the moon.

Every new moon is a new beginning.

Every waxing moon supports growth and expansion.

Every full moon offers a pause for harvest,

Assessment and celebration.

Every waning moon is a time for introspection,

Rest and recalibration.

Then you begin again.

At every stage and variation of the life of your upper left wisdom tooth's presence or absence in your mouth,

The virtues archetype can be a valuable partner in your well-being.

Your unique healing story about the virtues archetype,

Reflecting your background,

Your body and inner life,

Matters more than any descriptions I have shared today.

Trust what your intuition says about this tooth.

Use my ideas and suggestions just as much as is helpful to get started in telling your own unique healing story.

Then come and share it in the Secret Lives of Teeth discussion group on Insight Timer.

Because I want to know what you imagine.