Reference, Background, and Guide to
The Adventure of the Hero
from The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell
with other supporting material
© Liz Warren 2009
“The whole sense of the ubiquitous myth of the hero’s passage is that it shall serve as a general pattern for men and women, wherever they may stand along the scale. Therefore it is formulated in the broadest terms. The individual has only to discover his own position with reference to this general human formula, and let it then assist him past his restricting walls. Who and where are his ogres? Those are the reflections of the unsolved enigmas of his own humanity. What are his ideals? Those are the symptoms of his grasp of life.” (Campbell 121)
Steps in the Hero’s Journey
Departure:
1. The Call to Adventure
2. Refusal of the Call
3. Supernatural Aid
4. The Crossing of the First Threshold
5. The Belly of the Whale
Initiation:
1. The Road of Trials
2. The Meeting with the Goddess
3. Woman as the Temptress
4. Atonement with the Father
5. Apotheosis
6. The Ultimate Boon
Return:
1. Refusal of the Return
2. The Magic Flight
3. Rescue from Without
4. The Crossing of the Return Threshold
5. Master of the Two Worlds
6. Freedom to Live
Departure:
1. The Call to Adventure
Brief description: The Call to Adventure is the point in a person’s life when they are first given notice that everything is going to change, whether they know it or not.
Pithy quote: “This first stage of the mythological journey – which we have designated the “call to adventure” – signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown. This fateful region of both treasure and danger may be variously represented: as a distant land, a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delight. The hero can go forth of his own volition to accomplish the adventure, as did Theseus when he arrived in his father’s city, Athens, and heard the horrible history of the Minotaur; or he may be carried or sent abroad by some benign or malignant agent as was Odysseus, driven about the Mediterranean by the winds of the angered god, Poseidon. The adventure may begin as a mere blunder . . . or still again, one may be only casually strolling when some passing phenomenon catches the wandering eye and lures one away from the frequented paths of man. Examples might be multiplied, ad infinitum, from every corner of the world.” (p. 58)
Examples of the Call to Adventure from mythology: In Hindu mythology, a battalion of monkeys is asked to rescue a princess who has been taken across a great ocean. Despite their great prowess as warriors, they do not know how they can leap across this ocean. An elderly and learned monkey general tells Hanuman, the great warrior, of his divine origins, and in doing so delivers the call.
“Hanuman, on hearing the story of his origins, felt a marvelous power entering his soul. He gyrated his tail and began to rise. As he was filled with self-recognition, so too did his breath fill with the subtle essence of his father’s potency. The watching monkeys saw Hanuman’s form grow in stature to the size of a mountain. Then, in one magnificent leap, he catapulted himself into the turbulent air above the ocean like an immense, lightning-rapid arrow.
A moment before, he had been bogged down in the silence of self-forgetfulness. Now, in the flood of newly awakened memories, his calling had taken possession of him, and he was on his way to win glory by discovering the hidden Princess Sita, and bringing this new to her beloved Rama.” Retold by D.K.M. Kartha, in Parabola, Spring 1994, p. 38-39.
From the Bible:
“Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.
And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst or a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt
And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. A he said, Here am I.” Exodus 3:1-4.
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh the hero is two-thirds god and one-third man, and is therefore gifted but mortal. Enkidu the wild man, who becomes his best friend, is essentially two-thirds man and one-third animal, and therefore even more vulnerable to mortality. They have many adventures together, but Enkidu’s death is Gilgamesh’s true call. It is this loss that causes him to leave everything he has known and journey to the underworld to seek the answers to the life and death questions he craves.
Star Wars Example: In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker is working for his uncle, unaware of his ancestry and destiny. His uncle buys two “droids”, one of which, R2D2, is on his own journey to find Obi-Wan Kenobie to deliver a holographic message from Princess Leia. Luke sees the hologram of the princess and is captivated by her image. Luke follows the droid, and meets Obi-Wan who asks Luke to come with him to rescue the princess. This is the beginning of Luke’s call.
2. Refusal of the Call
Brief description: Often when the call is given, the future hero refuses to heed it. This may be from a sense of duty or obligation, fear, insecurity, a sense of inadequacy, or any of a range of reasons that work to hold the person in his or her current circumstances.
Pithy quote: “Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or “culture,” the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless – even though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire or renown. Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration.” (Campbell 59)
“The myths and folk tales of the whole world make clear that the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one’s own interest. The future is regarded not in terms of an unremitting series of deaths and births, but as though one’s present system of ideals, virtues, goals, and advantages were to be fixed and made secure. King Minos retained the divine bull, when the sacrifice would have signified submission to the will of the god of his society; for he preferred what he conceived to be his economic advantage. Thus he failed to advance into the life-role that he had assumed – we have seen with what calamitous effect. The divinity itself became his terror; for, obviously, if one is oneself one’s god, then God himself, the will of God, the power that would destroy one’s egocentric system, becomes a monster.” (Campbell 59-60)
Example of TheRefusal from mythology or story: Saint Patrick is a good example of someone who resisted the call. After he was called to teach Christianity to the Irish, he resisted and wandered for eighteen years. He had no desire to go to Ireland, having been a slave there for six years. But he also felt that he was not adequate to the task, that he was not sufficiently educated, and for much of those eighteen years he educated himself and essentially prepared himself for a quest he did not want to take. Eventually the voice of the spirit, the relentless caller, became too much for him and he returned to Ireland.
“The story of Patrick is the story of a man who was called and tried to say no. Patrick resisted the call of the Spirit for eighteen years. He procrastinated,, he wandered around Europe, he protested his inadequacy; in fact, he did everything possible to avoid God’s wish that he preach to the Irish.
In the story of Patrick of Ireland, we see the Caller at his relentless best; for, once the Spirit had decided on Patrick as the saint of the Irish, Patrick’s fate was sealed. The Caller would not permit Patrick to say no.” “Resistance to the Call”, by Juilene Osborne-McKnight, in Parabola, Spring 1994, pages 20-25.
David Adams Leeming in Mythology: The Voyage of the Hero, describes a period of preparation, meditation, and withdrawal that sometimes precedes the actual journey. As examples of this he cites both Jesus and the Buddha. Their withdrawal is a positive act. They are essentially crossing the threshold into themselves to begin the journey of spiritual rebirth. This aspect of withdrawal seems less prevalent in Greek myth, according to Leeming. “Both of these cases [the meditative withdrawal and the refusal of the call] apply to the great Achilles, who sulks in his tent during the Trojan War, and who, as a boy, had been dressed in women’s clothes in order that the ambassadors of Agamemnon might not recognize him during the “draft call” for the same war. Odysseus, too, attempts to avoid the war by trickery. But this ancient draft-dodging is more closely related to the motif which Joseph Campbell call the “refusal of the call,” in which the hero chooses not to take on the task demanded of him. There are traces of it in Moses’ first reactions to God’s call. It is a motif common to many heroes. (125)
In the Grail myths of Percival, his mother tries to refuse the call for him. He is the son of a great night, whose death Percival’s mother still mourns. She orders that he know nothing of his heritage or knights or the chivalric order. She raises him as a country bumpkin. But one day Percival encounters three knights who are riding through his mother’s lands. At first he thinks they are angels. But as soon as he learns what they truly are, knights of King Arthur, he vows to be a knight.
Student example:
Movie example: What does Luke say when Obi-Wan asks to him come along and rescue the princess? He says no! He has responsibilities on the farm and an obligation to his aunt and uncle. Of course those obstacles are removed when they return to the farm and find the aunt and uncle incinerated.
3. Supernatural Aid
Brief description: Once the hero has committed to the quest, consciously or unconsciously, his or her guide and magical helper appears, or becomes known.
Pithy quote: “For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero-journey is with a protective figure (often a little old crone or old man) who provides the adventurer with amulet against the dragon forces he is about to pass.” (Campbell 69) “What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power of destiny. The fantasy is a reassurance – promise that the peace of Paradise, which was know first within the mother womb, is not to be lost; that it supports the present and stands in the future as well as in the past ( is omega as well as alpha); that though omnipotence may seem to be endangered by the threshold passages and life awakenings, protective power is always and every present within or just behind, the unfamiliar features of the world. One has only to know and trust, and the ageless guardians will appear. Having responded to his own call, and continuing to follow courageously as the consequences unfold, the hero finds all the forces of the unconscious at his side. Mother Nature herself supports the mighty task. And in so far as the hero’s act coincides with that for which his society is ready, he seems to ride on the great rhythm of the historical process.” (Campbell 71-72)
Example from mythology or story: In The Tale of Cupid and Psyche, Psyche receives supernatural help and guidance throughout her journey. Many of these helpers are part of the natural landscape and give the sense as Campbell states above that “Mother Nature herself supports the mighty task.” After she learns the identity of her husband against his wishes and is abandoned by him she is intent on suicide and throws herself into a river. “But the kindly river, out of respect for the god whose warm power is felt as much by water-creatures as by beasts and birds, washed her ashore with a gentle wave and laid her high and dry on the flowery turf” (Apuleius 55). Later, when Venus is testing her, the ants sort the piles of grain for her, a green reed tells her how to gather the wool of the golden sheep, and an eagle gathers water from the headwaters from the head of the River Styx.
In Soldier Jack, an Appalachian folk tale, Jack is kind to an old man who rewards him with a sack that will catch anything and a glass vial that, when filled with spring water and peered through, will allow Jack to tell if a sick person is going to live or die. Jack seeks and gains his fortune using these two magical things. Eventually, he catches death in his sack, and no one can die. Jack himself can not die until he releases death and the natural order is restored. (Chase 172-179)
In shamanic religions, it is the shaman who through his initiation goes on a heroic journey. In some cases it is the goal of this initiation to discover the spirit animal who will be the shaman’s guide through out his career.
Star Wars Example: In Star Wars, Obi Wan is Luke’s supernatural helper through out all three movies. Obi Wan is the first to teach him about
“the force” and begins his training as a Jedi knight. Even after Obi Wan has “died” an image of him or his voice will appear at crucial times to help Luke.
Other popular culture examples: Glenda, the good witch in the Wizard of Oz gives Dorothy the ruby slippers as she is preparing to depart on her journey down the yellow brick road.
In Carlos Castaneda’s work, his supernatural aid exists in the form of his mentor/tormentor Don Juan.
Especially if the call is being resisted at some level, a trickster is required to get the person on the path. The trickster then has the role of providing the supernatural aid.
4. The Crossing of the First Threshold
Brief description: This is the point where the person actually crosses into the field of adventure, leaving the known limits of his or her world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are not known.
Pithy quote: “With the personifications of his destiny to guide and aid him, the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the “threshold guardian” at the entrance to the zone of magnified power. Such custodians bound the world in four directions – also up and down – standing for the limits of the hero’s present sphere, or life horizon. Beyond them is darkness, the unknown and danger; just as beyond the parental watch is danger to the infant and beyond the protection of his society danger to the members of the tribe. The usual person is more than content, he is even proud, to remain within the indicated bounds, and popular belief gives him every reason to fear so much as the first step into the unexplored” (Campbell 78).
“The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades” (Campbell 82).
Example from mythology or story:
In The Tale of Cupid and Psyche, Psyche is so beautiful that no man will approach her, much less love her for her true self. To make matters worse, she is said to be more beautiful than Venus herself. To avenge this affront, Venus instructs her son Cupid to cause Psyche to fall in love with the most hideous man alive. But when Cupid sees her he falls in love with her himself. Meanwhile, Psyche’s father consults the oracle who tells him that Psyche must be left on a craggy mountain top to become the bride of a demon. Apollo’s oracle can not be denied, so her family and everyone else accompany her in the bridal/death procession. Psyche alone understands what is happening and welcomes it:
“Now, too late, you at last see the reward that my beauty has earned you; the curse of divine jealousy for the extravagant honours paid me. When the people all over the world celebrated me as the New Venus and offered me sacrifices, then was the time for you to grieve and weep as though I were already dead; I see now, I see it as clearly as daylight that the one cause of all my misery is this blasphemous use of the Goddess’s name. So lead me up to the rock of the oracle. I am looking forward to my lucky bridal night and my marvelous husband. Why should I hesitate? Why should I shrink from him, even if he has been born for the destruction of the whole world?”
She walked resolutely forward. The crowds followed her up to the rock at the top of the hill, where they left her. They returned to their homes in deep dejection, extinguishing the wedding-torches with their tears and throwing them away. Her broken hearted parents shut themselves up in their palace behind closed doors and heavily curtained widows.
Psyche was left alone weeping and trembling at the very top of the hill. . .” (Apuleius 12-13) Suddenly a wind comes around her, billowing her skirts, lifting her and then gently depositing her in a beautiful meadow. Psyche has crossed the threshold and even though she was terrified, she did it willingly.
Star Wars Example: Through the death and destruction of everyone and everything he was known, Luke’s world has come to an end. After Obi Wan secures a pilot, he literally leaves his world to go to the aid of the princess. The famous scene in the bar serves to put Luke on notice that the familiar has come to an end.
5. The Belly of the Whale
Brief description: The Belly of the Whale represents the final separation from the hero’s known world and self. It is sometimes described as the person’s lowest point, but it is actually the point when the person is between or transitioning between worlds and selves. The separation has been made, or is being made, or being fully recognized between the old world and old self and the potential for a new world/self. The experiences that will shape the new world and self will begin shortly, or may be beginning with this experience which is often symbolized by something dark, unknown and frightening. By entering this stage, the person shows their willingness to undergo a metamorphosis, to die to him or herself.
Pithy quote: “The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died” (Campbell 90)
“This popular motif gives emphasis to the lesson that the passage of the threshold is a form of self-annihilation. . .[I]nstead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible world, the hero goes inward, to be born again. The disappearance corresponds to the passing of a worshiper into a temple – where he is to be quickened by the recollection of who and what he is, namely dust and ashes unless immortal. The temple interior, the belly of the whale, and the heavenly land beyond, above, and below the confines of the world, are one and the same. That is why the approaches and entrances to temples are flanked and defended by colossal gargoyles: dragons, lions, devil-slayers with drawn swords, resentful dwarfs, winged bulls. These are the threshold guardians to ward away all incapable of encountering the higher silences within. . .The devotee at the moment of entry into a temple undergoes a metamorphosis. His secular character remains without; he sheds it, as a snake its slough. Once inside he may be said to have died to time and returned to the World Womb, the World Navel, the Earthly Paradise. . .Allegorically, then, the passage into a temple and the hero-dive through the jaws of the whale are identical adventures, both demoting in picture language, the life-centering, life renewing act” (Campbell 91-92)
Example from mythology or story: This stage gets its name from the biblical story of Jonah and the whale. Jonah is called by God to go to Ninevah, but he refuses the call. He sets out on a ship bound for Tarshish to escape God and his call. A great storm comes up, Jonah knows he is to blame for denying God, and asks the sailors to throw him overboard. God ordains that a “great fish should swallow Jonah, and for three days and three nights he remained in its belly.” Jonah prays to God for help and promises to obey. “I will pay my vows; victory is the Lord’s”. When Jonah is spewed out on dry land, God delivers the call again. This time Jonah sets out immediately.
Star Wars Example: In his interviews with Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell identifies this stage in Star Wars as the scene in which Luke, Han and Leia are in the trash compactor in the death star.
Initiation:
1. The Road of Trials
Brief description: The Road of Trials is a series of tests, tasks, or ordeals that the person must undergo to begin the transformation. Often the person fails one or more of these tests, which often occur in threes.
Pithy quote: “Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials. This is a favorite phase of the myth-adventure. It has produced a world literature of miraculous tests and ordeals. The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before his entrance into this region. Or it may be that he here discovers for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage” (Campbell 97).
“The ordeal is a deepening of the problem of the first threshold and the question is still in balance: Can the ego put itself to death? For many headed is this surrounding Hydra; one head cut off, two more appear – unless the right caustic is applied to the mutilated stump. The original departure into the land of trials represented only the beginning of the long and really perilous path of initiatory conquests and moments of illumination. Dragons have now to be slain and surprising barriers passes – again, again, and again. Meanwhile there will be a multitude of preliminary victories, unretainable ecstasies and momentary glimpses of the wonderful land” (Campbell 109)
Example from mythology or story: In comparing Snow White and Psyche, Brother David Steindl-Rast says that they shared the same initial trial: their beauty. “By their beauty both Snow White and Psyche are singled out. That same beauty becomes for both of them the first great obstacle, the initial touchstone of their testing. A surpassing beauty, we have called it. There is something brand new in that beauty, something the old woman can’t match, be she stepmother queen or the jealous mother-goddess Aphrodite. Anima’s (the feminine aspect of the soul) beauty is surpassing because it is something altogether new. But her being beautiful in an unheard-of way surpasses Anima’s own comprehension. And so, her own inner bewilderment becomes the ordeal which her external trials merely make explicit” (Steindl-Rast 35)
In “The Raven”, a Grimm tale, the hero must refuse to take anything to eat or drink in order to break the spell that has turned a king’s daughter into a raven. Three times he tries and each time he fails. After the third time, the raven comes and leaves him some magical objects and a note explaining how to use them if he would still like to save her. He feels terrible that he has failed and sets out to save her. His initial failures lead to wandering and even more tests, but these he manages to pass until he finally does release her from the spell.
When Percival first encounters the Grail Castle and the wounded king, he does so by accident and is completely unprepared for the experience. He fails to ask about the marvelous procession, about the lance dripping blood, and about the grail itself, which is carried by a beauteous and virginal maiden. Most importantly, he fails to ask his host, “Whom does the grail serve?”, which is the question that could have healed the king and the wasteland. He had been told by his mother not to ask any impertinent questions, so even though he is curious he says nothing. This is the third major threshold for Percival after leaving home and being knighted by King Arthur and it represents the beginning of his road of trials. For many years he wanders doing knightly deeds, losing and finding his faith, always seeking the Grail Castle so that he can make things right again.
The twists and turns of the labyrinth are a graphic representation of the road of trials.
Star Wars Example: Luke’s road of trials lasts pretty much through the whole series until he has his atonement with his father. Along the way he suffers a serious wounding, the loss of one of his hands, leaves his training with Yoda too early and has other successes and failures. The point is that the failures are just as important (maybe more) as the successes. They both shape the hero’s destiny.
2. The Meeting with the Goddess
Brief description: The Meeting with the Goddess represents the point in the adventure when the person experiences a love that has the power and significance of the all-powerful, all encompassing, unconditional love that a fortunate infant may experience with his or her mother. It is also known as the “hieros gamos”, or sacred marriage, the union of opposites, and may take place entirely within the person. In other words, the person begins to see him or herself in a non-dualistic way. This is a very important step in the process and is often represented by the person finding the other person that he or she loves most completely. Although Campbell symbolizes this step as a meeting with a goddess, unconditional love and /or self unification does not have to be represented by a woman.
Pithy quote: “The ultimate adventure, when all the barriers and ogres have been overcome, is commonly represented as a mystical marriage . . . of the triumphant hero-soul with the Queen Goddess of the World. This is the crisis at the nadir, the zenith, or at the uttermost edge of the earth, at the central point of the cosmos, in the tabernacle of the temple, or within the darkness of the deepest chamber of the heart” (Campbell 109).
“The meeting with the goddess (who is incarnate in every woman) is the final test of the talent of the hero to win the boon of love (charity: amor fati), which is life itself enjoyed as the encasement of eternity. And when the adventurer, in this context, is not a youth but a maid, she is the one who, by her qualities, her beauty, or her yearning, is fit to become the consort of an immortal. Then the heavenly husband descends to her and conducts her to his bed – whether she will or not. And if she has shunned him, the scales fall from her eyes; if she has sought him, her desire finds its peace.” (Campbell 119).
Example from mythology or story: In Cupid and Psyche, Psyche’s entire journey is about achieving this love, represented by her husband Cupid, the God of Love. Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, is the seemingly cruel teacher/tormenter, who in reality is preparing Psyche through a series of tests to achieve the union with her god/husband. On the surface her final test seems like a failure, when against instructions she takes a peek inside the box filled with Persephone’s beauty. She immediately falls into a deathlike sleep. Being willing to look the sublime beauty of death in the face, and then suffering the consequences, is precisely the thing that allows Cupid to return to her.
About this moment Harriet Eisman writes: “It is, in fact, a most exquisite awakening, a state vast enough and still enough to allow Eros (Cupid) to return at last.
It is not only Psyche who is transformed. Eros, the fiery, flighty spirit who came and went secretly and refused to be seen in the light, has acquired at least the substance of a healed wound. The Eros she knows now is, Plotinus tells us, produced by the Soul’s contemplation of the Divine Mind; it is the medium through which she can finally be present to “that other loveliness.” He is the carrier of divine beauty which must, to become united with psyche and soma, be touched by the pain of earthly life.
Though they go to live among the immortals, this union does not suggest escape from our human existence. Rather it shows the widest and deepest portrayal of the kind of human we can become on the path of love. This is real commitment and hints at the full extent of what Rumi meant when he wrote: “The price of kissing is your life.”” (Eisman 40)
Parzival meets his true love and wife, Condwiramurs, relatively early in his story. Later when the sight of a dead raven and three drops of blood on white snow reminds him of her white skin, black hair, and red cheeks, he falls into a deep love trance which can not be broken even when he is attacked by and defeats several of King Arthur’s knights. It is only when Gawain speaks to him kindly and with love that he responds.
The story of Whitebear Whittington in Richard Chase’s Grandfather Tales has elements of both Beauty and the Beast and Cupid and Psyche. The wife betrays her husband and then must endure a road of trials to be reunited with him.
Star Wars Example: Princess Leia has this role for both Luke and Han: sister to Luke, lover to Han.
Other popular culture examples: In the movie L. A. Confidential, the hero Bud Whyte (symbol alert), begins his transformation when he falls deeply and passionately in love with a Veronica Lake look-alike prostitute. She tells him that he is the first man who has not told her within five minutes of meeting her that she looks like Veronica Lake. He tells her that she looks better. They each allow the other to see behind their public masks and fall deeply, personally in love. They both stumble seriously as the story progresses, but ultimately, this love allows them both to proceed through the remainder of their journeys and to have new and transformed lives.
3. Woman as the Temptress
Brief description: At one level, this step is about those temptations that may lead the hero to abandon or stray from his or her quest, which as with the Meeting with the Goddess does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman. For Campbell, however, this step is about the revulsion that the usually male hero may feel about his own fleshy/earthy nature, and the subsequent attachment or projection of that revulsion to women. Woman is a metaphor for the physical or material temptations of life, since the hero-knight was often tempted by lust from his spiritual journey.
Pithy quote: “The crux of the curious difficulty lies in the fact that our conscious views of what life ought to be seldom correspond to what life really is. Generally we refuse to admit within ourselves, or within our friends, the fullness of that pushing, self-protective, malodorous, carnivorous, lecherous fever which is the very nature of the organic cell. Rather, we tend to perfume, whitewash, and reinterpret; meanwhile imagining that all the flies in the ointment, all the hairs in the soup, are the faults of some unpleasant someone else.
But when it suddenly dawns on us, or is forced to our attention that everything we think or do is necessarily tainted with the odor of the flesh, then, not uncommonly, there is experienced a moment of revulsion: life, the acts of life, the organs of life, woman in particular as the great symbol of life, become intolerable to the pure, the pure, pure soul.
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
So exclaims the great spokesman of this moment, Hamlet:
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t! ah fie! ‘tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
The innocent delight of Oedipus in his first possession of the queen turns to an agony of spirit when he learns who the woman is. Like Hamlet, he is beset by the moral image of the father. Like Hamlet, he turns from the fair features of the world to search the darkness for a higher kingdom than this of the incest and adultery ridden, luxurious and incorrigible mother. The seeker of the life beyond life must press beyond her, surpass the temptations of her call, and soar to the immaculate ether beyond” (Campbell 121-122)
Example from mythology or story:
In Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain has lopped off the Green Knight’s head and must seek out the Green Chapel one year later to have his own head lopped off. He comes to a small cottage in the woods where a hunter and his wife live. They tell him that the Green Chapel is not far, and that he is welcome to stay until the appointed time, three days later. Each day after the hunter leaves, his wife tries to seduce Gawain. He resists, accepting only one kiss from her on the first day, two on the second day, and three kisses and a garter on the third. Each day the hunter brings the game he has caught to Gawain, and Gawain in return faithfully delivers to him the kisses, but not the garter. When Gawain goes to the Green Chapel to meet the Green Knight, it is of course the hunter transformed. He instructs Gawain to stretch out his neck, but instead of chopping off his head just nicks his neck and tells him, “That was for the garter!”
In Jewish folklore, it is Lillith and her daughters who are the temptresses.
In “The Hollow of the Sling”, a story in Howard Schwartz’s Gabriel’s Palace, a yeshivah student has a terrifying encounter with one of Lillith’s daughters on the day of his wedding. The sight of her during the wedding fills him with such passion and desire that she is able to transport him to the Palace of Illusion, also known as the Hollow of the Sling, which was the very pit of hell. He succumbs to her, escapes from her, wanders for 300 years only to come back to her. When he realizes that he has never escaped her at all, the illusion vanishes and he is back under the huppah (bridal canopy) with his true bride. “And that night he clung to his true bride with all of his being, and at last he escaped the Hollow of the Sling.” (Schwartz 169)
Star Wars Example: In Star Wars, both Darth Vader and the Emperor try to tempt Luke to the dark side of the force, but he never succumbs to them.
Other popular culture examples: In L.A. Confidential, Bud believes that the woman he loves has betrayed him by sleeping with his chief rival in the police force. A range of fierce emotions cross his face: rage, betrayal, disgust. In response to this betrayal, he succumbs to the temptation of violence, a deeply ingrained pattern of behavior for him.
In the television series Babylon Five, John Sheridan the captain of the space station has fallen in love with the beautiful Minbari embassador, Delenn. Their relationship is about to take a serious turn when Anna Sheridan, the wife he thought was dead reappears. He knows that she is an agent of their great enemy, the Shadows, nonetheless he accompanies her to their homeworld, Z’hadum. This leads to his spiritual and physical death, but it is his image of and love for Delenn that allows him to be reborn. Anna is his temptress; Delenn is his goddess.
4. Atonement with the Father
Brief description: In this step the person must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his or her life. In many myths and stories this is the father, or a father figure who has life and death power. This is the center point of the journey. All the previous steps have been moving in to this place, all that follow will move out from it. Although this step is most frequently symbolized by an encounter with a male entity, it does not have to be a male; just someone or thing with incredible power. For the transformation to take place, the person as he or she has been must be “killed” so that the new self can come into being. Sometime this killing is literal, and the earthly journey for that character is either over or moves into a different realm.
Pithy quote: “Atonement (at-one-ment) consists in no more that the abandonment of that self-generated double monster – the dragon thought to be God (superego) and the dragon thought to be Sin (repressed id). But this requires an abandonment of the attachment to ego itself, and that is what is difficult. One must have a faith that the father is merciful, and then a reliance on that mercy. Therewith, the center of belief is transferred outside of the bedeviling god’s tight scaly ring, and the dreadful ogres dissolve.
It is in this ordeal that the hero may derive hope and assurance from the helpful female figure, by whose magic (pollen charms or power of intercession) he is protected through all the frightening experiences of the father’s ego-shattering initiation. For if it is impossible to trust the terrifying father-face, then one’s faith must be centered elsewhere (Spider Woman, Blessed Mother); and with that reliance for support, one endures the crisis – only to find, in the end, that the father and mother reflect each other, and are in essence the same” (130-131)
“The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to pen his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands – and the two are atoned” (147)
Example from mythology or story: In many myths, the hero does die, takes a trip to the underworld, and then is reborn or is allowed to return to life under special circumstances. This is what happens for example to Gilgamesh, Persephone, and Tammuz. Osiris is killed and dismembered by his brother, reassembled by Isis (with the exception of his penis which remains in the Nile to insure its fertility), and reborn as the king of the underworld. Psyche must journey to the underworld and look death in the face before she can become the immortal bride of Cupid. About this stage, Leeming writes:
“And this brings us to the immediate meaning of the myth. The hero faces death and dies for us. In so doing he holds out a promise of new life through his sacrifice. He thus also teaches us something of the positive nature of death as the catalyst for a new birth through the spirit. As always, the hero is the symbol of man in search of himself. At this stage in his voyage the hero is man in the later part of life when death becomes increasingly our measuring rod. The hero stands physically annihilated at the edge of the Kingdom of Death. The time of life’s prime has passes; the process of individuation moves away from the deeds of the body back to those of the spirit. The hero stands with man face to face with the unknown. The voyage into that unknown is initiated by death” (Leeming 233).
Star Wars Example: In the Star Wars trilogy, Luke has many dangerous encounters with Darth Vader, who, although he doesn’t know it for most the series, is his father. He survives these encounters, but usually just barely. In the final encounter, Luke prevails. His father is defeated, and when Luke remove the hideous mask and expresses compassion for his father, the two are atoned.
Other popular culture examples: In L.A. Confidential, three of the characters go up against the police captain, who is the father figure in this story. One is killed; one is injured almost to the point of death and undergoes a complete transformation; one is wounded but survives to take the captain/father’s place in the police system. Bud Whyte is the one who almost dies. In the final scene we see him in the back of a car, seriously wounded but alive, being driven off to a new life by the woman he loves.
5. Apotheosis
Brief description: To apotheosize is to deify. When someone dies a physical death, or dies to the self to live in spirit, he or she moves beyond the pairs of opposites to a state of divine knowledge, love, compassion and bliss. This is a god-like state; the person is in heaven and beyond all strife. A more mundane way of looking at this step is that it is a period of rest, peace and fulfillment before the hero begins the return.
Pithy quote: “Those who know, not only that the Everlasting lies in them, but that what they, and all things, really are is the Everlasting, dwell in the groves of the wish fulfilling trees, drink the brew of immortality, and listen everywhere to the unheard music of eternal concord”. (167)
Example from mythology or story: Three knights were said to have achieved the Holy Grail: Galahad, Percival, and Bors. Galahad was so pure that upon the achievement of the grail he was instantly apotheosized; he died and went directly to heaven.
Star Wars Example: In the final scenes of The Return of the Jedi, the evil empire has been defeated and a joyous feast is in process. Luke, Leia, and Han all know who they are and their relationships to each other are resolved. Luke looks up to see a vision of his father, Obi-Wan Kenobie, and Yoda, who have come in spirit form to join the celebration.
6. The Ultimate Boon
Brief description: The Ultimate Boon is the achievement of the goal of the quest. It is what the person went on the journey to get. All the previous steps serve to prepare and purify the person for this step, since in many myths the boon is something transcendent like the elixir of life itself, or a plant that supplies immortality, or the holy grail.
Pithy quote: “The gods and goddesses then are to be understood as embodiments and custodians of the elixir of Imperishable Being but not themselves the Ultimate in its primary state. What the hero seeks through his intercourse with them us therefore not finally themselves, but their grace, i.e., the power of their sustaining substance. This miraculous energy-substance and this alone is the Imperishable; the names and forms of the deities who everywhere embody, dispense, and represent it come and go. This is the miraculous energy of the thunderbolts of Zeus, Yahweh, and the Supreme Buddha, the fertility of the rain of Viracocha, the virtue announced by the bell rung in the Mass at the consecration, and the light of the ultimate illumination of the saint and sage. Its guardians dare release it only to the duly proven” (Campbell 181-2).
Example from mythology or story: In Cupid and Psyche, Psyche achieves her boon, which is a reunion with her husband. So that Venus will not complain, Jupiter makes Psyche an immortal. ““Drink, Psyche, and become an immortal,” he said. “Cupid will now never fly away from your arms, but must remain your lawful husband forever.”” (Apuleius 109-10).
Gilgamesh seeks the secret of immortality from Utnapishtim, the Sumerian Noah, who resides with his wife in the underworld. Utnapishtim challenges him to stay awake for six days and seven nights, and when Gilgamesh fails, suggests that he leave. Utnapishtim’s wife then intervenes on Gilgamesh’s behalf, saying that he has come so far and suffered so much that Utnapishtim ought to do something for him. So Utnapishtim relents:
“Utnapishtim said to him, to Gilgamesh:
“Gilgamesh, you came here; you strained, you toiled.
What can I give you as you return to your land?
Let me uncover for you, Gilgamesh, a secret thing.
A secret of the gods let me tell you.
There is a plant, its roots go deep, like the boxthorn;
Its spike will prick your hand like a bramble.
If you get your hands on that plant, you’ll have everlasting life.””
(Gardner and Maier 249)
Gilgamesh gets the plant, but shortly thereafter a serpent steals it from him. Gilgamesh has no choice but to accept life, and therefore to accept death as a natural consequence. He returns to his people a good and just ruler. This is not the boon that he desired or expected, but it is a boon nonetheless.
Even when more than one person is searching for the same thing, the boon conferred will not necessarily have the same effects for each person. When Galahad, Percival and Bors achieve the grail, Galahad ascends directly to heaven, Percival becomes the grail king, and Bors returns to his wife and family.
Star Wars Example: The ultimate boon for Luke is to know his heritage, his destiny and his power and to be in a relation of harmony with it all. By the end of the series, he appears to be at peace with himself, a boon that many of us would no doubt like to achieve.
Return:
1. Refusal of the Return
Brief description: So why, when all has been achieved, the ambrosia has been drunk, and we have conversed with the gods, why come back to normal life with all its cares and woes?
Pithy quote: “When the hero-quest has been accomplished, through penetration to the source, or through the grace of some male or female, human or animal, personification, the adventurer still must return with his life-transmuting trophy. The full round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess, back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet or the ten thousand worlds.
But the responsibility has been frequently refused. Even the Buddha, after his triumph, doubted whether the message of realization could be communicated, and saints are reported to have passed away while in the supernal ecstasy. Numerous indeed are the heroes fabled to have taken up residence forever in the blessed isle of the unaging Goddess of Immortal Being” (Campbell 192)
2. The Magic Flight
Brief description: Sometimes the hero must escape with the boon, if it is something that the gods have been jealously guarding. It can be just as adventurous and dangerous returning from the journey as it was to go on it.
Pithy quote: “If the hero in his triumph wins the blessing of the goddess of the god and is then explicitly commissioned to return to the world with some elixir for the restoration of society, the final stage of his adventure is supported by all the powers of his supernatural patron. On the other hand, if the trophy has been attained against the opposition of its guardian, or if the hero’s wish to return to the world has been resented by the gods or demons, then the last stage of the mythological round becomes a lively, often comical, pursuit. This flight may be complicated by marvels of magical obstruction and evasion” (Campbell 196-7).
Example from mythology or story: Because the people are freezing, Coyote agrees to steal fire from the skookums. Although they are old, they are very swift runners. Coyote sets up a relay of animals so that as one gets tired the fire can be passed on to the next. After he steals it, it gets passed in turn to Cougar, Fox, Squirrel, Antelope, and Frog who passes it on to Wood. After Wood swallows the fire, the skookums are stumped and go on home. Coyote then shows the people how to get the fire out of wood, and they can cook and keep their houses warm. (Lopez 11-13)
3. Rescue from Without
Brief description: Just as the hero may need guides and assistants to set out on the quest, oftentimes he or she must have powerful guides and rescuers to bring them back to everyday life, especially if the person has been wounded or weakened by the experience. Or perhaps the person doesn’t realize that it is time to return, that they can return, or that others need their boon.
Pithy quote: “The hero may have to be brought back from his supernatural adventure by assistance from without. That is to say, the world may have to come and get him. For the bliss of the deep abode is not lightly abandoned in favor of the self-scattering of the wakened state. “Who having cast off the world,” we read, “would desire to return again? He would be only there.” And yet, in so far as one is alive, life will call. Society is jealous of those who remain away from it, and will come knocking at the door. If the
hero. . . is unwilling, the disturber suffers an ugly shock; but on the other and, if the summoned one is only delayed – sealed in by the beatitude of the state of perfect being (which resembles death) – an apparent rescue is effected, and the adventurer returns” (Campbell 207)
Example from mythology or story: In “Inanna’s Journey to Hell”, Inanna makes a journey to the underworld, the realm of her older sister Ereshkigal. There she is ceremoniously stripped of all her mortal trappings until “her body was corpse that hung on a spike.” (Sandars 142) Fortunately, she has instructed her minister on how to rescue her:
“After three days and nights Ninshubar,
the loyal minister, angel of eloquence who tells
the truth, Ninshubar raised a shout through heaven
for her sake,
scratched his eyes and lacerated his mouth,
put on a ragged shirt and was a beggar
for her sake.
Then all alone he went
to the Bright House of the Mountain,
to Enlil’s home in Nippur, inside the house,
he cried to Enlil,
‘Father Enlil,
do not let your daughter
die in hell,
do not let the dust of hell
bury your bright metal,
nor the lovely lapis lazuli
be ground into rubble
by the stone-breaker,
Nor the sound
box-wood be lath
for the carpenter.
Do not let the young girl Inanna
die in hell.’” (Sandars 142-3)
The minister does finally find someone who will rescue Inanna, but there is a price. Someone must take her place and she settles on the shepherd, Dumuzi. Eventually a deal is cut for Dumuzi as well, who spends only half of each year in the underworld.
4. The Crossing of the Return Threshold
Brief description: The trick in returning is to retain the wisdom gained on the quest, to integrate that wisdom into a human life, and then maybe figure out how to share the wisdom with the rest of the world. This is usually extremely difficult.
Pithy quote: “The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive the impact of the world” (Campbell 225)
“Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausible, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss? As dreams that were momentous by night may seem simply silly in the light of day, so the poet and the prophet can discover themselves playing the idiot before a jury of sober eyes. The easy thing is to commit the whole community to the devil and retire again into the heavenly rock dwelling, close the door, and make it fast. But if some spiritual obstetrician has drawn the shimenawa across the retreat, then the work of representing eternity in time, and perceiving in time eternity, cannot be avoided” (Campbell 218)
Example from mythology or story: Of the three knights who achieved the grail, Bors is the one who returns to everyday life, but we don’t learn how or if he integrates the experience into his life. We read about him in other adventures with other knights. Being one of Lancelot’s cousins, he is with him throughout many other adventures, but the grail is not mentioned in these stories.
Other popular culture examples: This is the point at which many stories end: “And they lived happily ever after.” The implication is that the hero goes on to live a good and productive life, but we usually don’t get too many details on just how that happens. Sometimes, of course, a book or movie is about precisely this step in the cycle; what happens to a person after they have survived a great adventure. In the movie Born in the USA, the hero returns from the war in a wheel chair. His heroism is not recognized, and his reaction to this essentially triggers a whole new cycle of adventure.
5. Master of the Two Worlds
Brief description: In myth, this step is usually represented by a transcendental hero like Jesus or Buddha. For a human hero, it may mean achieving a balance between the material and spiritual. The person has become comfortable and competent in both the inner and outer worlds.
Pithy quote: “Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal deep and back – not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other – is the talent of the master. The Cosmic Dancer, declares Nietzsche, does not rest heavily in a single spot, but gaily, lightly, turns and 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” (Campbell229)
“The meaning is very clear; it is the meaning of all religious practice.; The individual, through prolonged psychological disciplines, gives up completely all attachment to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears, no longer resists the self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, and so becomes ripe, at last, for the great at-one-ment. His personal ambitions being totally dissolved, he no longer tries t live but willingly relaxes to whatever may come to pass in him; he becomes, that is to say, an anonymity. The Law lives in him with his unreserved consent” (Campbell 236-7).
Example from mythology or story: Merlin was a classic master. He was just as comfortable giving political advice as he was dealing with otherworldly matters.
Star Wars Example: In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobie and Yoda are both masters. They can teach the philosophy of the Force just as competently as they can teach swordmanship. Although we do not know the specifics of their heroic journeys, because they are masters we know that they have been through the cycle.
6. Freedom to Live
Brief description: Mastery leads to freedom from the fear of death, which in turn is the freedom to live. This is sometimes referred to as living in the moment, neither anticipating the future nor regretting the past.
Pithy quote: “The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is. “Before Abraham was, I AM.” He does not mistake apparent changelessness in time for the permanence of Being, nor is he fearful of the next moment (or of the “other thing”), as destroying the permanent with its change. “Nothing retains its own form; but Nature, the greater renewer, ever makes up forms from forms. Be sure there’s nothing perishes in the whole universe; it does but vary and renew its form.” Thus the next moment is permitted to come to pass.” (Campbell 243)
Star Wars Example: Obi-Wan knows that Darth Vader will kill him, and he accepts it without fear, in fact allowing it to happen. Death, however does not prevent him from assisting Luke.
Bibliography
Apuleius, Lucius. The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Translated by Robert
Graves. Shambhala, Boston. 1992.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton University
Press, Princeton. 2nd Edition. 1968.
Chase, Richard. The Jack Tales. Houghton Miflin, New York. 1971.
Eisman, Harriet. “That Other Loveliness.” Parabola XX:4. 1995.
Gardner, John and John Maier. Gilgamesh. Vintage Books, New York.
1984.
Leeming, David Adams. Mythology: The Voyage of the Hero. Harper
Collins Publishers, New York. 2nd Edition. 1981.
Lopez, Barry. Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping with his Daughter. Avon
Books, New York. 1977.
Sandars, N.K. Poems of Heaven and Hell from Ancient Mesopotamia.
Penguin Books, London. 1971.
Schwartz, Howard. Gabriel’s Palace: Jewish Mystical Tales. Oxford
University Press, New York. 1993.
Steindl-Rast, Brother David. “Paths of Obedience: Fairy Tales and the
Monk’s Way.” Parabola V:3. 1980.
Zipes, Jack. The complete Fairy Tales of the brothers Grimm. Bantam
Books, New York. 1987.
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