Joseph Campbell
COMMEMORATIVE
EDITION
THE HERO WITH A
With an Introduction by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.
author of Women Who Run With the Wolves
THE HERO WITH A
T H O U S A N D FACES
Commemorative Edition, with an Introduction
by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.
Joseph Campbell's classic crosscultural study of the hero's journey
has inspired millions and opened up
new areas of research and exploration.
Originally published in 1949, the
book hit the New York Times best
seller list in 1988 when it became the
subject of The Power of Myth, a PBS
television special. Now, this legend
ary volume, re-released in honor of
the 100th anniversary of the author's
birth, promises to capture the imagi
nation of a new generation of readers.
The first popular work to com
bine the spiritual and psychological
insights of modern psychoanalysis
with the archetypes of world mythol
ogy, the book creates a roadmap for
navigating the frustrating path of
contemporary life. Examining heroic
myths in the light of modern psychol
ogy, it considers not only the patterns
and stages of mythology but also its
relevance to our lives today—and to
(continued on back flap)
I
the life of any person seeking a fully
realized existence.
Myth, according to Campbell, is the
projection of a culture's dreams onto
a large screen; Campbell's book, like
Star Wars, the film it helped inspire,
is an exploration of the big-picture
moments from the stage that is our
world. Offered for the first time with
beautifully restored illustrations and
a bibliography of cited works, it pro
vides unparalleled insight into world,
mythology from diverse cultures. It is
a must-have resource for both experi
enced students of mythology and the
explorer just beginning to approach
myth as a source of knowledge.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL ( 1 9 0 4 ^ 1 9 8 7 )
was
an inspiring teacher, popular lec
turer and author, and the editor and
translator of many books on mythol
ogy, including The Mythic Image
(Princeton/Bollingen Paperbacks).
CLARISSA PINKOLA E S T E S is the
au
thor of the national bestseller Women
Who Run with the Wolves.
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A PRINCETON
CLASSIC
EDITION
THE HERO WITH A
THOUSAND FACES
"I have returned to no book more often since leaving college
than this one, and every time I discover new insight into the hu
man journey. Every generation will find in Hero wisdom for the
ages."
— B I L L MOYERS, host of the PBS television series
NOW with BUI Moyen
"In the three decades since I discovered The Hero with a Thou
sand Faces, it has continued to fascinate and inspire me. Joseph
Campbell peers through centuries and shows us that we are all
connected by a basic need to hear stories and understand our
selves. As a book, it is wonderful to read; as illumination into the
human condition, it is a revelation.
—George Lucas, filmmaker, creator of Star Wan
"Campbell's words carry extraordinary weight, not ojjjv amo*£
scholars but among a wide range of other people who fiad h$*
search down mythological pathways relevant to their lives today*
. . . The book for which he is most famous, The Hero with a
Thousand Faces [is] a brilliant examination, through ancient
hero myths, of man's eternal struggle for identity."—TlrtK
Jacket design by Frank Mahood
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
BOLLINGEN
SERIES
XVII
THE HERO W I T H A
THOUSAND
FACES
JOSEPH CAMPBELL
BOLLINGEN
PRINCETON
SERIES
UNIVERSITY
PRINCETON
AND
XVII
PRESS
OXFORD
Copyright
Published
© 2004 by Princeton
by Princeton
University
New Jersey 08540;
Press
Street,
original edition was copyright
Bollingen Foundation,
edition (with revisions)
University
Press, 41 William
and published
copyright
by Pantheon Books;
© 1968 by Princeton
Princeton,
© 1949 by
second
University
Press
All rights reserved
T H I S V O L U M E IS T H E S E V E N T E E N T H IN A SERIES OF BOOKS
S P O N S O R E D BY BOLLINGEN FOUNDATION
First Edition,
Second Edition,
Commemorative
1949
1968
Edition,
2004
T h e Introduction to the 2 0 0 4 edition is copyright © 2 0 0 3 Clarissa Pinkola
Estes, P h . D . All rights reserved
Library
of Congress Control No.
2003066084
I S B N : 0-691-11924-4
T h i s book has been composed in
Princeton University Press Digital Monticello
Printed on acid-free paper. »
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Printed in the U n i t e d States of America
1 3 5 7 9
10
8 6 4 2
TO MT
FATHER
AND
MOTHER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures
xi
List of Plates
xvi
Preface to the 1949 Edition
xxi
Introduction to the 2004 Commemorative
by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.
Edition,
Acknowledgments
lxvi
P R O L O G U E : T h e Monomyth
1.
2.
3.
4.
xxiii
1
Myth and Dream
Tragedy and Comedy
The Hero and the God
The World Navel
3
23
28
37
PART ONE
T h e A d v e n t u r e of t h e H e r o
CHAPTER
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
I: Departure
45
The Call to Adventure
Refusal of the Call
Supernatural Aid
The Crossing of the First Threshold
The Belly of the Whale
II: Initiation
1. The Road of Trials
2. The Meeting with the Goddess
3. Woman as the Temptress
CHAPTER
vii
45
54
63
71
83
89
89
100
111
CONTENTS
4. Atonement with the Father
5. Apotheosis
6. The Ultimate Boon
III: Return
Refusal of the Return
The Magic Flight
Rescue from Without
The Crossing of the Return Threshold
Master of the Two Worlds
Freedom to Live
CHAPTER
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
CHAPTER
IV: T h e Keys
PART TWO
T h e C o s m o g o n i e Cycle
CHAPTER
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
I: Emanations
From Psychology to Metaphysics
The Universal Round
Out of the Void-Space
Within Space—Life
The Breaking of the One into the Manifold
Folk Stories of Creation
II: T h e Virgin Birth
Mother Universe
Matrix of Destiny
Womb of Redemption
Folk Stories of Virgin Motherhood
CHAPTER
1.
2.
3.
4.
III: Transformations of the Hero
The Primordial Hero and the Human
Childhood of the Human Hero
The Hero as Warrior
The Hero as Lover
The Hero as Emperor and as Tyrant
The Hero as World Redeemer
CHAPTER
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
viii
CONTENTS
7. The Hero as Saint
8. Departure of the Hero
327
329
CHAPTER I V :
Dissolutions
1. End of the Microcosm
2. End of the Macrocosm
337
337
345
E P I L O G U E : Myth and Society
1. The Shapeshifter
2. The Function of Myth, Cult, and Meditation
3. The Hero Today
351
353
354
358
Bibliography
363
Index
383
ix
LIST OF FIGURES
Sileni and Maenads. From a black-figure amphora,
ca. 4 5 0 - 5 0 0 B.C., found in a grave at Gela, Sicily.
(Monumenti Antichi, pubblicati per cura della
Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Vol. XVII, Milan,
1907, Plate XXXVII.)
Minotauromachy.
From an Attic red-figure crater,
5th cent. B.C. Here Theseus kills the Minotaur
with a short sword; this is the usual version in the
vase paintings. In the written accounts the hero
uses his bare hands. (Collection des vases grecs de
M. le Comte de Lamberg, expliquée et publiée par
Alexandre de la Borde, Paris, 1813, Plate XXX.)
Osiris in the Form of a Bull Transports His Worshiper
to the Underworld. From an Egyptian coffin in the
British Museum. (E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and
the Egyptian Resurrection,
London, Philip Lee
Warner; N e w York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1911,
Vol. I, p. 13.)
Ulysses and the Sirens. From an Attic polychromefigured white lecythus, 5th cent, B.C., now in the
Central Museum, Athens. (Eugénie Sellers,
"Three Attic Lekythoi from Eretria," Journal of
Hellenic Studies, Vol. XIII, 1892, Plate I.)
The Night-Sea Journey:—Joseph in the Well: Entomb
ment of Christ: Jonah and the Whale. A page from
the fifteenth-century Biblia Pauperum,
German
edition, 1471, showing Old Testament prefigurements of the history of Jesus. Compare Figures 8
and 11. (Edition of the Weimar Gesellschaft der
Bibliophilen, 1906.)
xi
L I S T OF
FIGURES
6. Isis in the Form of a Hawk Joins Osiris in the Under
world. This is the moment of the conception of
Horus, who is to play an important role in the res
urrection of his father. (Compare Fig. 10.) From a
series of bas-reliefs on the walls of the temple of
Osiris at Dendera, illustrating the mysteries per
formed annually in that city in honor of the god.
(E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian
Resurrection, London, Philip Lee Warner; N e w
York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1911, Vol. II, p. 28.)
7. Isis Giving Bread and Water to the Soul. (E. A.
Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian
Resurrec
tion, London, Philip Lee Warner; N e w York,
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1911, Vol. II, p. 134.)
8. The Conquest of the Monster:—David
The Harrowing
of Hell: Samson
(Same source as Fig. 5.)
and Goliath:
and the Lion.
9a. Gorgon-Sister Pursuing Perseus, Who Is Fleeing with
the Head of Medusa. Perseus, armed with a scimi
tar bestowed on him by Hermes, approached the
three Gorgons while they slept, cut off the head of
Medusa, put it in his wallet, and fled on the wings
of his magic sandals. In the literary versions, the
hero departs undiscovered, thanks to a cap of in
visibility; here, however, we see one of the two
surviving Gorgon-Sisters in pursuit. From a redfigure amphora of the 5th cent. B.C. in the collec
tion of the Munich Antiquarium. (Adolf Furtwàngler, Friedrich Hauser, and Karl Reichhold,
Griechische Vasenmalerei, Munich, F. Bruckmann,
1 9 0 4 - 1 9 3 2 , Plate 134.)
9b. Perseus Fleeing with the Head of Medusa in His
Wallet. This figure and the one above appear on
opposite sides of the same amphora. The effect of
the arrangement is amusing and lively. (See
xii
L I S T OF
FIGURES
Furtwàngler, Hauser, and Reichhold, op.
Série III, Text, p. 77, Fig. 39.)
cit.,
188
10. The Resurrection of Osiris. T h e god rises from the
egg; Isis (the Hawk of Fig. 6) protects it with her
wing. Horus (the son conceived in the Sacred Mar
riage of Fig. 6) holds the Ankh, or sign of life,
before his father's face. From a bas-relief at Philae.
(E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Res
urrection, London, Philip Lee Warner; N e w York,
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1911, Vol. II, p. 58.)
194
11. The Reappearance of the Hero:—Samson
with the
Temple-Doors: Christ Arisen: Jonah. (Same source
as Fig. 5.)
203
12. The Return of Jason. This is a view of Jason's adven
ture not represented in the literary tradition. "The
vase-painter seems to have remembered in some
odd haunting way that the dragon-slayer is of the
dragon's seed. He is being born anew from his
jaws" (Jane Harrison, Themis, A Study of the Social
Origins of Greek Religion, Cambridge University
Press, second edition, 1927, p. 435). The Golden
Fleece is hanging on the tree. Athena, patroness of
heroes, is in attendance with her owl. Note the
Gorgoneum on her Aegis (compare Plate XXII).
(From a vase in the Vatican Etruscan Collection.
After a photo by D . Anderson, Rome.)
229
13. Tuamotuan
Creation Chart:—Below:
The Cosmic
Egg. Above: The People Appear, and Shape the Uni
verse. (Kenneth P. Emory, "The Tuamotuan Cre
ation Charts by Paiore," Journal of the Polynesian
Society, Vol. 4 8 , N o . 1, p. 3.)
256
14. The Separation of Sky and Earth. A common figure
on Egyptian coffins and papyri. T h e god ShuHeka separates N u t and Seb. This is the moment
of the creation of the world. (F. Max Muller,
xiii
L I S T OF
FIGURES
Egyptian Mythology, T h e Mythology of All Races,
Vol. XII, Boston, Marshall Jones Company,
1918, p. 4 4 . )
263
15. Khnemu Shapes Pharaoh's Son on the Potter's Wheel,
While Thoth Marks His Span of Life. From a pa
pyrus of the Ptolemaic period. (E. A. Wallis Budge,
The Gods of the Egyptians, London, Methuen and
Co., 1904, Vol. II, p. 50.)
270
16. Nut (the Sky) Gives Birth to the Sun; Its Rays Fall on
Hathor in the Horizon (Love and Life). The sphere
at the mouth of the goddess represents the sun at
evening, about to be swallowed and born anew.
(E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians,
London, Methuen and Co., 1904, Vol. I, p. 101.)
276
17. Paleolithic Petroglyph (Algiers). From a prehistoric
site in the neighborhood of Tiout. T h e catlike ani
mal between the hunter and the ostrich is perhaps
some variety of trained hunting panther, and the
horned beast left behind with the hunter's mother,
a domesticated animal at pasture. (Leo Frobenius
and Hugo Obermaier, Hâdschra Mâktuba, Munich,
K. Wolff, 1925, Vol. II, Plate 78.)
310
18. King Ten (Egypt, First Dynasty,
ca. 3200
B.c.)
Smashes the Head of a Prisoner of War. From an
ivory plaque found at Abydos. "Immediately be
hind the captive is a standard surmounted by a
figure of a jackal, which represents a god, either
Anubis or Apuat, and thus it is clear that the
sacrifice is being made to a god by the king."
(E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Res
urrection, London, Philip Lee Warner; N e w York,
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1911, Vol. I, p. 197; line cut,
p. 207.)
315
19. Osiris, Judge of the Dead. Behind the god stand the
goddesses Isis and Nephthys. Before him is a
lotus, or lily, supporting his grandchildren, the
xiv
L I S T OF
FIGURES
four sons of Horus. Beneath (or beside) him is a
lake of sacred water, the divine source of the Nile
upon earth (the ultimate origin of which is in
heaven). T h e god holds in his left hand the flail or
whip, and in his right the crook. T h e cornice
above is ornamented with a row of twenty-eight
sacred uraei, each of which supports a disk.—
From the Papyrus of Hunefer. (E. A. Wallis Budge,
Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection,
London,.
Philip Lee Warner; N e w York, G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1911, Vol. I, p. 20.)
341
2 0 . The Serpent Kheti in the Underworld,
Consuming
with Fire an Enemy of Osiris. T h e arms of the vic
tim are tied behind him. Seven gods preside. This
is a detail from a scene representing an area of the
Underworld traversed by the Solar Boat in the
eighth hour of the night.—From the so-called
"Book of Pylons." (E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods
of the Egyptians, London, Methuen and Co., 1904,
Vol. I, p. 193.)
342
21. The Doubles of Ani and His Wife Drinking Water in
the Other World. From the Papyrus of Ani. (E. A.
Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian
Resurrec
tion, London, Philip Lee Warner; N e w York,
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1911, Vol. II, p. 130.)
344
xv
LIST OF PLATES
FOLLOWING
PAGE
84
I. The Monster Tamer (Sumer). Shell inlay (perhaps orna
menting a harp) from a royal tomb at Ur, ca. 3 2 0 0 B . c .
T h e central figure is probably Gilgamesh. (Courtesy of
T h e University Museum, Philadelphia.)
II. The Captive Unicorn (France). Detail from tapestry, "The
Hunt of the Unicorn," probably made for Francis I of
France, ca. 1514 A.D. (Courtesy of The Metropolitan Mu
seum of Art, N e w York City.)
III. The Mother of the Gods (Nigeria). Odudua, with the infant
Ogun, god of war and iron, on her knee. The dog is sa
cred to Ogun. An attendant, of human stature, plays the
drum. Painted wood. Lagos, Nigeria. Egba-Yoruba tribe.
(Horniman Museum, London. Photo from Michael E.
Sadler, Arts of West Africa, International Institute of
African Languages and Cultures, Oxford Press, London:
Humphrey Milford, 1935.)
IV. The Deity in War Dress (Bali). The Lord Krishna in his terrify
ing manifestation. (Compare infra, pp. 215-220.) Poly
chromatic wooden statue. (Photo from C. M. Pleyte,
Indonesian Art, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1901.)
V. Sekhmet, The Goddess (Egypt). Diorite statue. Empire Pe
riod. Karnak. (Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, N e w York City.)
VI. Medusa (Ancient Rome). Marble, high relief; from the Rondanini Palace, Rome. Date uncertain. (Collection of
the Glyptothek, Munich. Photo from H. Brunn and
F. Bruckmann, Denkmàler griechischer und rômischer
Sculptur, Verlagsan-stalt fur Kunst und Wissenschaft,
Munich, 1 8 8 8 - 1 9 3 2 . )
xvi
L I S T OF
PLATES
VII. The Sorcerer (Paleolithic Cave Painting, French Pyrenees).
The earliest known portrait of a medicine man, ca. 10,000
B.C. Rock engraving with black paint fill-in, 29.5 inches
high, dominating a series of several hundred mural engravings of animals; in the Aurignacian-Magdalenian
cave known as the "Trois Frères," Ariège, France. (From
a photo by the discoverer, Count Bégouen.)
VIII. The Universal Father, Viracocha, Weeping
(Argen-tina).
Plaque found at Andalgalâ, Catamarca, in northwest
Argentina, tentatively identified as the pre-Incan deity
Viracocha. The head is surmounted by the rayed solar
disk, the hands hold thunderbolts, tears descend from
the eyes. The creatures at the shoulders are perhaps
Imaymana and Tacapu, the two sons and messengers of
Viracocha, in animal form. (Photo from the Proceedings
of the International Congress of Americanists, Vol. XII,
Paris, 1902.)
FOLLOWING
PAGE
180
IX. Shiva, Lord of the Cosmic Dance (South India). See discussion, infra, p. 118, note 4 6 . Bronze, 10th-12th cent A . D .
(Madras Museum. Photo from Auguste Rodin, Ananda
Coomaraswamy, E. B. Havell, Victor Goloubeu, Sculptures Çivaïtes de Vlnde, Ars Asiatica III, Brussels and
Paris: G. van Oest et Cie., 1921.)
X. Androgynous Ancestor (Sudan). W o o d carving from the region of Bandiagara, French Sudan. (Collection of Laura
Harden, N e w York City. Photo by Walker Evans, courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, N e w York City.)
XI. Bodhisattva (China). Kwan Yin. Painted wood. Late Sung
Dynasty ( 9 6 0 - 1 2 7 9 A.D.). (Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, N e w York City).
XII. Bodhisattva (Tibet). The Bodhisattva known as Ushnïshasitâtapatrâ, surrounded by Buddhas and Bodhisattvas,
xvii
L I S T OF
PLATES
and having one hundred and seventeen heads, symboliz
ing her influence in the various spheres of being. The left
hand holds the World Umbrella (axis mundi) and the
right the Wheel of the Law. Beneath the numerous
blessed feet of the Bodhisattva stand the people of the
world who have prayed for Enlightenment, while be
neath the feet of the three "furious" powers at the bottom
of the picture lie those still tortured by lust, resentment,
and delusion. The sun and moon in the upper corners
symbolize the miracle of the marriage, or identity, of
eternity and time, Nirvana and the world (see pp. 156157 ff.). The lamas at the top center represent the ortho
dox line of Tibetan teachers of the doctrine symbolized
in this religious banner-painting. (Courtesy of The
American Museum of Natural History, N e w York City.)
XIII. The Branch of Immortal Life (Assyria). Winged being offer
ing a branch with pomegranates. Alabaster wall panel
from the Palace of Ashur-nasir-apal II ( 8 8 5 - 8 6 0 B . C . ) ,
King of Assyria, at Kalhu (modern Nimrud). (Courtesy
of T h e Metropolitan Museum of Art, N e w York City.)
XIV. Bodhisattva
(Cambodia).
Fragment from the ruins of
Angkor. 12th cent. A . D . The Buddha figure crowning
the head is a characteristic sign of the Bodhisattva
(compare Plates XI and XII; in the latter the Buddha
figure sits atop the pyramid of heads). (Musée Guimet,
Paris. Photo from Angkor, éditions "Tel," Paris, 1935.)
XV. The Return (Ancient Rome). Marble relief found (1887)
in a piece of ground formerly belonging to the Villa
Ludovisi. Perhaps of early Greek workmanship.
(Museo délie Terme, Rome. Photo Antike Denkmàler,
herausgegeben vom Kaiserlich Deutschen Archaeologischen Institut, Berlin: Georg Reimer, Vol. II, 1908.)
XVI. The Cosmic Lion Goddess, Holding the Sun (North India).
From a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century single-leaf
manuscript, from Delhi. (Courtesy of The Pierpont
Morgan Library, N e w York City.)
xviii
L I S T OF
FOLLOWING
PLATES
PAGE
308
XVII. The Fountain of Life (Flanders). Central panel of a trip
tych by Jean Bellegambe (of Douai), ca. 1520. T h e
assisting female figure at the right, with the little
galleon on her head, is Hope; the corresponding figure
at the left, Love. (Courtesy of the Palais des BeauxArts, Lille.)
XVIII. The Moon King and His People (South Rhodesia). Prehis
toric rock painting, at Diana V o w Farm, Rusapi Dis
trict, South Rhodesia, perhaps associated with the
legend of Mwuetsi, the Moon Man (infra, pp.
2 7 9 - 2 8 2 ) . The lifted right hand of the great reclining
figure holds a horn. Tentatively dated by its discov
erer, Leo Frobenius, ca. 1500 B.C. (Courtesy of the
Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt-am-Main.)
XIX. The Mother of the Gods (Mexico). Ixciuna, giving birth to
a deity. Statuette of semi-precious stone (scapolite, 7.5
inches high). (Photo, after Hamy, courtesy of T h e
American Museum of Natural History, N e w York City.)
XX. Tangaroâ, Producing Gods and Men (Rurutu
Island).
Polynesian wood carving from the Tubuai (Austral)
Group of Islands in the South Pacific. (Courtesy of
The British Museum.)
XXI. Chaos Monster and Sun God (Assyria). Alabaster wall
panel from the Palace of Ashur-nasir-apal II ( 8 8 5 8 6 0 B.C.), King of Assyria, at Kalhu (modern Nimrud).
The god is perhaps the national deity, Assur, in the
role played formerly by Marduk of Babylon (see pp.
2 6 3 - 2 6 5 ) and still earlier by Enlil, a Sumerian storm
god. (Photo from an engraving in Austen Henry Layard, Monuments of Nineveh, Second Series, London:
J. Murray, 1853. The original slab, now in The British
Museum, is so damaged that the forms can hardly be
distinguished in a photograph. The style is the same
as that of Plate XIII.)
xix
L I S T OF
PLATES
XXII. The Young Corn God (Honduras). Fragment in lime
stone, from the ancient Mayan city of Copan. (Cour
tesy of T h e American Museum of Natural History,
N e w York City.)
XXIII. The Chariot of the Moon (Cambodia). Relief at Angkor
Vat. 12th cent. A.D. (Photo from Angkor, éditions "Tel,"
Paris, 1935.)
XXIV. Autumn (Alaska). Eskimo dance mask. Painted wood.
From the Kuskokwim River district in southwest
Alaska. (Courtesy of The American Indian Heye Foun
dation, N e w York City.)
XX
PREFACE TO THE 1949 EDITION
contained in religious doctrines are after all so
distorted and systematically disguised," writes Sigmund Freud,
"that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth. T h e
case is similar to what happens when we tell a child that new
born babies are brought by the stork. Here, too, we are telling
the truth in symbolic clothing, for we know what the large bird
signifies. But the child does not know it. He hears only the dis
torted part of what we say, and feels that he has been deceived;
and we know how often his distrust of the grown-ups and his re
fractoriness actually take their start from this impression. W e
have become convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic
disguisings of the truth in what we tell children and not to with
hold from them a knowledge of the true state of affairs commen
surate with their intellectual level."
It is the purpose of the present book to uncover some of the
truths disguised for us under the figures of religion and mythol
ogy by bringing together a multitude of not-too-difficult exam
ples and letting the ancient meaning become apparent of itself.
The old teachers knew what they were saying. Once we have
learned to read again their symbolic language, it requires no
more than the talent of an anthologist to let their teaching be
heard. But first we must learn the grammar of the symbols, and
as a key to this mystery I know of no better modern tool than
psychoanalysis. Without regarding this as the last word on the
subject, one can nevertheless permit it to serve as an approach.
The second step will be then to bring together a host of myths and
folk tales from every corner of the world, and to let the symbols
" T H E TRUTHS
1
1
Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion (translated by James Strachey
et al., Standard Edition, X X I ; London: T h e Hogarth Press, 1961), pp. 4 4 - 4 5
(Orig. 1927.)
xxi
P R E F A C E TO T H E 1949
EDITION
speak for themselves. The parallels will be immediately appar
ent; and these will develop a vast and amazingly constant state
ment of the basic truths by which man has lived throughout the
millenniums of his residence on the planet.
Perhaps it will be objected that in bringing out the correspon
dences I have overlooked the differences between the various
Oriental and Occidental, modern, ancient, and primitive tradi
tions. T h e same objection might be brought, however, against
any textbook or chart of anatomy, where the physiological varia
tions of race are disregarded in the interest of a basic general
understanding of the human physique. There are of course
differences between the numerous mythologies and religions of
mankind, but this is a book about the similarities; and once
these are understood the differences will be found to be much
less great than is popularly (and politically) supposed. My hope
is that a comparative elucidation may contribute to the perhaps
not-quite-desperate cause of those forces that are working in the
present world for unification, not in the name of some ecclesias
tical or political empire, but in the sense of human mutual un
derstanding. As we are told in the Vedas: "Truth is one, the
sages speak of it by many names."
For help in the long task of bringing my materials into read
able form, I wish to thank Mr. Henry Morton Robinson, whose
advice greatly assisted me in the first and final stages of the
work, Mrs. Peter Geiger, Mrs. Margaret W i n g , and Mrs. Helen
McMaster, who went over the manuscripts many times and
offered invaluable suggestions, and my wife, who has worked
with me from first to last, listening, reading, and revising.
J. C.
New York City
June 10, 1948
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COMMEMORATIVE EDITION
What Does the Soul Want?
. . . MYTH IS THE SECRET OPENING THROUGH WHICH THE
INEXHAUSTIBLE ENERGIES OF THE COSMOS POUR INTO
HUMAN CULTURAL MANIFESTATION. . . .
—Joseph Campbell
A
Preamble
I AM H O N O R E D to be invited to write this introduction to the work
of a soul I have regarded in many ways for so long. The context
and substance of Joseph Campbell's lifework is one of the most re
cent diamonds on a long, long necklace of other dazzling gemstones that have been mined by humanity—from the depths, and
often at great cost—since the beginning of time. There is no doubt
that there is strung across the eons—a strong and fiery-wrought
chain of lights, and that each glint and ray represents a great
work, a great wisdom preserved. The lights on this infinite liga
ture have been added to, and continue to be added to, link by link.
A few of the names of those who have added such lights are
still remembered, but the names of those who ignited most of
the lights have been lost in time. However, it can be said that we
are descended from them all. This phenomenon of the necklace
of lights should not be understood as some mere trinket. Its real
ity is that it has acted, since forever, as a swaying, glowing life
line for human souls trying to find their ways through the dark.
Joseph Campbell was born in 1904, and his work continues to
attract the interested reader, the experienced seeker, and the
neophyte as well, for it is written with serious-mindedness and
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such brio, and so little mire. The Hero with a Thousand Faces is
about the heroic journey, but it is not written, as some works on
the subject are, by a mere onlooker. It is not written by one sim
ply hyper-fascinated with mythos, or by one who bowdlerizes
the mythic motifs so that they no longer have any electrical pulse
to them.
N o , this work is authored by a genuinely inspirited person
who himself was once a novice, that is, a beginner who opened
not just the mind, but also the longing heart, all in order to be a
vessel for spiritual realities—ones greater than the conclusions of
the ego alone. Over time, Campbell became to many people an
example of what it means to be a master teacher. While granting
merit to the pragmatic, he also carried the sensibilities of a mod
ern mystic—and even in old age, a time during which many may
feel they have earned the right to be irritable and remote,
Campbell continued to be intensely capable of awe and wonder.
In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, via numerous myths, he
shows how the heroic self seeks an exacting spiritual counte
nance, that is, a higher way of holding and conducting oneself.
This heroic way offers depth of insight and meaning. It is atten
tive to guides along the way, and invigorates creative life. W e
see that the journey of the hero and heroine are most often deep
ened via ongoing perils. These include losing one's way innu
merable times, refusing the first call, thinking it is only one
thing when it really is, in fact, quite another—as well as entangle
ments and confrontations with something of great and often
frightening magnitude. Campbell points out that coming through
such struggles causes the person to be infused with more vision,
and to be strengthened by the spiritual life principle—which,
more than anything else, encourages one to take courage to live
with effrontery and mettle.
Throughout his work too, time and again, he does not offer
pap about the mediocre, timid, or tired ruts of spiritual life. In
stead, he describes the frontiers of spiritual matters as he envi
sions them. One can see in the tales he chooses to tell that he
knows a heroic endeavor draws a person into timeless time.
There, the intents and contents of spirit, soul, and psyche are
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EDITION
not logged according to artificial stops normally assigned to mun
dane time. N o w life is measured instead by the depth of longing
to remember one's own wholeness, and by the crackle of efforts to
find and keep alive the most daring and undiminished heart.
In the oldest myths from Babylonia, Assyria, and other ancient
populations, the storytellers and poets, who pecked with styluses
on stone or etched with pigment on hand-wrought paper or
cloth, beautifully detailed a particular idea about psychic reso
nance—one that modern psychoanalysts, mythologists, theolo
gians, and artists also continue to take up with interest. This
very old idea about mythic reverberation was understood as one
which takes place in a triad between Creator, individual human
being, and the larger culture. Each mysteriously and deeply
affects and inspires the others.
Thus, in a number of ancient Babylonian and Assyrian tales,
the psychological, moral, and spiritual states of the heroic char
acter, of the king or queen, were directly reflected in the health
of the people, the land, the creatures, and the weather. W h e n
the ruler was ethical and whole, the culture was also. W h e n the
king or queen was ill from having broken taboos, or had become
sick with power, greed, hatred, sloth, envy, and other ailments,
then the land fell into a famine. Insects and reptiles rained down
from the skies. People weakened and died. Everyone turned on
one another, and nothing new could be born.
Campbell brings this ancient idea into his work too. Borrow
ing the term monomyth, a word he identifies as one coined by
James Joyce, he puts forth the ancient idea—that the mysterious
energy for inspirations, revelations, and actions in heroic stories
worldwide is also universally found in human beings. People who
find resonant heroic themes of challenges and questing in their
own lives, in their goals, creative outpourings, in their day- and
night-dreams—are being led to a single psychic fact. That is, that
the creative and spiritual lives of individuals influence the outer
world as much as the mythic world influences the individual.
By restating this primordial understanding, Campbell offers
hope that the consciousness of the individual can prompt, prick,
and prod the whole of humankind into more evolution. His thesis,
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like those of the ancients—and as put forth also, but in different
ways, by Freud, Jung, and others—is that by entering and
transforming the personal psyche, the surrounding culture, the
life of the family, one's relational work, and other matters of life
can be transformed too. Since time out of mind, this has been
understood as being best effected by journeying through the
personal, cosmological, and equally vast spiritual realities. By
being challenged via the failings and fortunes one experiences
there, one is marked as belonging to a force far greater, and one
is changed ever after.
Campbell acted as a lighted fire for many. The mythic matters
he resonated to personally also attracted legions of readers and
listeners worldwide. In this way, he gathered together a tribe of
like-minded individuals, thinkers, and creators. His book, The
Hero with a Thousand Faces, continues to be one of the major
rendezvous sites for those who seek the meridians where "what
is purely spirit" and "what is purely human" meet and create a
third edition of a finer selfhood.
What will follow now in the first half of this introduction for
Joseph Campbell's work are specific details about the continuing
importance of mythic stories in current times, the energies that
support such, and how the body of myths and stories can be
come corrupted, undernourished, assaulted, even destroyed—
and yet return again and again in fresh and unusual ways. The
second half of the introduction is devoted to additional commen
tary about Joseph Campbell's work as a thinker and artist of his
time and our time also.
One last word now before we pass through the next portal:
The Hero with a Thousand Faces has shed light for many men
and women since it was first published. The hearts and s.ouls
who are attracted to this work may have lived few years of life or
may have had many years on earth. It does not matter how long
one has lived, for, you see everything begins with inspiration,
and inspiration is ageless—as is the journey. With regard to the
heroic, so much is unpredictable; but there are two matters,
above all, about which a person can be certain—struggle on the
journey is a given, but also there will be splendor.
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The Search for the Highest
EDITION
Treasure
In an ancient story called "The Conference of the Birds," a flock
of a thousand birds, during a time of great upheaval and dark
ness, suddenly glimpse an image of wholeness—an illumined
feather. They thusly feel encouraged to take a long and arduous
journey to find out what amazing bird this illumined feather be
longs to. This narrative in poetic form was written in the eleventh
century by the Persian Sufi mystic Farid ad-Din Attar. It tells
about a remarkable saga with many long episodes that precisely
describe the psyche's perilous journey to seek the Soul of souls.
W h e n the illumined feather floats down from the sky, one
of the wisest of the birds reveals that this feather is in fact a
precognition—a visionary glimpse of the Simorgh, the Great
One. Oh, how the birds are buoyed up then. The birds are of
many different kinds: short-beaked, long-billed, fancy-plumed,
plain-colored, enormous, and tiny. But, regardless of size, shape,
or hue, the birds who have witnessed this sudden and evanes
cent sight of the lighted feather band together. They make thun
der as they rise up into the sky, all in order to seek this radiant
source. They believe this sovereign creature to be so wondrous
that it will be able to light their darkened world once again. And
thus the creatures begin the grueling quest.
There are many old European "fool tales" that begin with
similar motifs. There is one version told in my old country fam
ily, which we called "The Hidden Treasure." T h e story revolves
around a group of brothers who were told by their father the
King that, whosoever could bring back to him the golden trea
sure of "what has great price and yet is priceless," should inherit
his kingdom. T w o of the brothers rush off with their maps and
plans and schemes in hand. They are certain they will reach the
goal first.
But the third brother is portrayed as a fool. He throws a
feather up into the air, where it is taken up by the wind. He fol
lows in the direction the feather leads him. His brothers jeer at
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him and say he will never learn and never be successful. After
all, he is only a fool, and fools inherit nothing but more foolish
ness until the end of their days.
Yet, at the last, the fool does find the treasure, for the wafting
feather has led him to more and more canny insights and oppor
tunities. T h e feather has magical powers that guide the hereto
fore hapless hero to live more soulfully, and in full spirit and
compassion. T h u s he finds a way of being that is "of this earth
and yet not of this earth." There is a "great price" to be paid to
live in such an attitude of wholeness, for it means one must
abandon the old unconscious way of life, including, for the fool,
some of one's former self-indulgent foolishnesses.
At the same time, however, the ability to live while being "of
this earth and yet not of this earth" is "priceless," for such a
stance brings contentment and strength of the finest kinds to the
heart, spirit, and soul. Thusly, having found this truer way of
life to be "of high cost and yet priceless," the former fool lives
free and claims his father's reward.
Meanwhile, the other two brothers are still somewhere out in
the flats, busily calculating where to go next to find the treasure.
But their requirements for finding something of value are un
wise. They maintain that they will try anything and look any
where for the treasure, as long as the ways and means to do so
avoid all difficulty, yet also satisfy their every appetite. In seek
ing to avoid all peril, discomfort, and "all love that might ever
cause us heartache," they thus find and bring to themselves only
the empty assets of self-delusion and an aversion to real life.
In "The Conference of Birds," there are some birds who also
wander off the path and those who flee it. The birds are, in
essence, questing for the fiery phoenix, that which can rise from
its own ashes back up into illumined wholeness again. In the
beginning, the thousand birds set out to enter into and pass
through seven valleys, each one presenting different barriers and
difficult challenges. T h e thousand birds endure increasingly hos
tile conditions, terrible hardships, and torments—including hor
rifying visions, lacerating doubts, nagging regrets. They long
to turn back. They are filled with despair and exhaustion. The
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creatures receive no satisfaction, nor rest, nor reward for a very
long time.
Thus, more and more of the birds make excuses to give up.
The attrition rate continues, until there are only thirty birds left
to continue this harsh flight that they all had begun with such
earnest hearts—all in quest for the essence of Truth and Whole
ness in life—and, beyond that, for that which can light the
dark again.
In the end, the thirty birds realize that their perseverance,
sacrifice, and faithfulness to the path—is the lighted feather, that
this same illumined feather lives in each one's determination,
each one's fitful activity toward the divine. The one who will
light the world again—is deep inside each creature. That fabled
lighted feather's counterpart lies ever hidden in each bird's heart.
At the end of the story, a pun is revealed. It is that Si-Morgh
means thirty birds. The number thirty is considered that which
makes up a full cycle, as in thirty days to the month, during
which the moon moves from a darkened to a lit crescent, to full
open, to ultimate maturity, and thence continues on. T h e point
is that the cycle of seeing, seeking, falling, dying, being reborn
into new sight, has now been completed.
There is one last advice given to anyone else who might
glimpse such a lighted feather during darkness and long to fol
low it to its source. The counsel is presented by the writer of the
story, and in absolute terms—as if to say, there will be no more
shilly-shallying around regarding "Ought I to go where I am
called? or not?" The definitive guidance is this:
Whosoever desires to explore The Way—
Let them set out—for what more is there to say?
These words were written nine hundred years ago. They por
tray a timeless idea about how to journey to the curve around
which one finds one's wholeness waiting. These words of wis
dom have continued to surface over the eons. They point to the
same parallels on the map of spirit, marking the entry points
with big red X's: "Here! Here is the exact place to start, the
exact attitude to take."
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Three hundred years after Farid ad-Din Attar wrote his
"Conference of the Birds," the ancient poetry of Mayan Popul
Vuh was first translated into Spanish. One part of that poetic
saga tells about the great journey four companions are about to
undertake—a journey into a hard battle to recover a stolen trea
sure. T h e y are frightened and say to the ethereal warrior-entity
that leads them, "What if w e die? What if we are defeated?"
And the enormous brute force that guides them—rather than
being aloof and hardened, replies, "Do not grieve. I am here.
D o not be afraid." And they are comforted and strengthened to
go forward. T h e greater force gives no coddling, but rather en
couragement woven through with compassion, which says, in
essence, "You can go forward, for you are not alone; I will not
leave you."
T h e idea to go forward, to seek wholeness without pausing to
reconsider, debate, or procrastinate one more time—this is
found too in the twentieth-century poet Louise Bogan's work.
She writes in the same crisp vein about commencing the mo
mentous journey. Her poem, entitled "The Daemon," refers to
the angel that each person on earth is believed to be born with,
the one who guides the life and destiny of that child on earth.
In the piece, she questions this greater soulful force about going
forward in life. T h e daemon answers her quintessential question
with the ancient answer:
It said, "Why not?"
It said, "Once more. "
These responsories are an echo from twenty-one hundred
years ago, when the venerable first-century-BCE rabbi, Hillel,
encouraged in his mishnah, "If not now, when?" This simple
and powerful encouragement to go on with the journey has been
expressed in different words, at different times, to the yearning
but timid, to the uncertain, the jaded, the hesitant, the dawdlers,
the postponers, the fakers, the foolish, and the wise. Thus, since
the beginning of time, humanity has lurched, walked, crawled,
dragged, and danced itself forward toward the fullest life with
soul possible.
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The journey to the treasure is undertaken with as much valor
and vision as each can muster. Even when one's will or one's un
derstanding wavers, the creative gifts to follow and learn this
larger life are fully present. People may be unprepared, but they
are never unprovisioned. Each person is born with the where
withal fully intact.
What Does the Soul Truly
Want?
If the world of mythos is a universe, I come from a tiny archi
pelago of deeply ethnic families, composed of household after
household of Old World refugees, immigrants, and storytellers
who could not read or write, or did so with grave difficulty. But
they had a rich oral tradition, of which I have been in a long
life's study as a cantadora—that is, a carrier and shelterer of
mythic tales, especially those coming from my own ancestral
Mexicano and Magyar traditions.
My other lifework is that of a post-trauma specialist and
diplomate psychoanalyst. With the aim of helping to repair torn
spirits, I listen to many life dramas and dream narratives. From
repeatedly seeing how the psyche yearns when it is inspired,
confused, injured, or bereft, I find that, above all, the soul
wants stories.
If courage and bravery are the muscles of the spiritual drive
that help a person to become whole, then stories are the bones.
Together, they move the episodes of the life myth forward. W h y
stories? Because the soul's way of communicating is to teach.
And its language is symbols and themes—all of which have been
found, since the beginning of time, in stories. I would even go so
far as to say, the soul needs stories. That radiant center we call
soul is the enormous aspect of psyche which is invisible, but
which can be palpably felt. W h e n in relationship with the soul,
we sense our highest aspirations, our most uncanny knowings,
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our mystical understandings, and our spontaneous inspirations
and unleashings of creative ideas.
W e speak of the soul infusing us with the humane and sacred
qualities of life that gratify longings deep within. Thus, via
dream-images, evocative moments, and story plots—the soul ap
pears to stimulate the psyche's innate yearning to be taught its
greater and lesser parts, to be comforted, lifted, and inspired to
ward the life that is "just a little bit lower than the angels."
There is a "hearing capacity" in the psyche. It loves to listen
to all manner of nourishing, startling, and challenging dramatic
patterns—the very ones found in tales. It matters little how the
stories arrive—whether they take shape in day-time reveries,
night-time dreams, or through the inspired arts, or are told sim
ply by human beings in any number of ways. They are meant to
be conveyed in blood-red wholeness and authentic depth.
In my work of listening to others telling about the many im
ages and ideas that colonize them, stories, regardless of the forms
they are given, are the only medium on earth that can clearly
and easily mirror every aspect of the psyche—the cruel, the cold
and deceptive, the redemptive, salvific, desirous, the tenacious
aspects, and so much more. If one did not know oneself, one
could listen to a dozen profound stories that detail the pathos of
the hero's or heroine's failures and victories. Thence, with some
guidance, a person would soon be far better able to name, in
oneself and others, those critical and resonant elements and facts
that compose a human being.
There was a serious piece of advice given by the very old peo
ple in our family. It was that every child ought to know twelve
complete stories before that child was twelve years old. Those
twelve tales were to be a group of heroic stories that covered a
spectrum—of both the beautiful and the hellacious—from life
long loves and loyalties, to descents, threats, and deaths, with
rebirth ever affirmed. N o matter how much "much" a person
might otherwise possess, they were seen as poor—and worse, as
imperiled—if they did not know stories they could turn to for
advice, throughout and till the very end of life.
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There Must Be a River: Ever and
There Must Be a River
Ever,
In the past two centuries there has been much erosion of the oral
storytelling tradition. Many clans and groups, when too quickly
forced into another culture's ideals, have been de-stabilized eco
nomically and therefore often de-tribalized as well. This can
cause entire groups to become abruptly and painfully un-storied.
Sudden monetary need can cause the young and old to be sepa
rated from one another, as the younger ones travel far away
seeking income. The same occurs when there is massive loss of
hunting, fishing, or farming habitat. People must break family
ties to seek farther and farther from home for their sustenance.
For thousands of years, a solid oral tradition has depended, in
many cases, first of all, on having a close-knit and related group
to tell stories to. There must also be a time and place to tell the
stories, including special times to tell certain stories—such as, in
my foster father's Hungarian farm-village, where love stories
with a certain erotic flavor to them were told in latest winter.
This was to encourage babies to be made then and, it was
hoped, to be delivered before the hard work of first harvest came
in the late summer.
Elena and Nicolae Ceau§escu's murderous regime in late
twentieth-century Romania destroyed hundreds of living, thriv
ing small farm-villages, and disenfranchising the people who
had worked those fertile lands for centuries. T h e two dictators
said they were "modernizing" the peasants—but, in reality, they
were killing them. The Ceausescus were like the Kraken of
Greek mythos, which tries to devour and destroy anything of
beauty, till nothing but its own grotesque hulk is left standing.
Many dear souls I spoke to in Bucharest had been literally
forced from their farmhouses by their own government. They
were driven thence into the city, to live in one of the hundreds of
ugly, drab, cement-block high-rise apartments the Ceau§escus
had ordered to be built. Bucharest was once called "the Paris of
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the Balkans," for it had such gracious ancient villas, beautiful
houses, and buildings made by incredible Old World craftsmen.
T h e despots destroyed over seven thousand villas, homes,
churches, monasteries, synagogues, and a hospital, in order to
put up their dead garden of gray concrete.
I met wild artists, and gracious young and old people, who
were still deeply scarred after the nightmare tyranny of the
Ceausescus had fallen. But the people were still filled with
guarded hope. One group of old women told me that there in the
city, the young girls no longer knew the love stories traditionally
used to draw the interest of suitors. Though the lovely young
girls' physical beauty surely would attract them, how would any
suitor determine whether a girl knew anything about deep life if
she did not know the stories about all the beauties and dead
ends of life? If she were naïve about the challenging themes revealed in stories, how would the girl therefore be able to withstand the ups and downs of marriage?
H o w did the young girls lose their stories? They normally
would have learned them at the river, where village women of all
ages washed clothes together. N o w that their lands had been
confiscated and their villages plowed under and replaced by
huge (and largely inept) "state-run" agricultural cooperatives,
now that the villagers had been "removed" to the city, each tiny
urban apartment had one small sink. This is where the women
were to wash their family's clothes evermore. There was no river
in the projects. N o river: no gathering place. N o gathering place:
no stories.
Yet, since time out of mind, for those souls no longer able or
allowed to live the integral village life, it has been amazing how
faithfully these people have found other ways to "dig" psychic
rivers wherever they are, so that the stories can still flow on. The
need for stories—to engender relationships, and creativity, and
to grow the souls of all—does not ever cease. This mysterious
drive to have the succor of stories remains, even in the midst
of crises.
T h e former farm-women now living in the big Romanian city
no longer had the village river, so they made a story circle in the
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eldest one's tiny home. Her living room became the river. T h e
old women put out the word that all the other women should all
bring their daughters; that they would make them clothes—
modern ones, like those displayed in the store windows. T h e ex
cellent old seamstresses thus sewed and talked and told the old
stories of love and life and death; and the girls, taking delight in
their new clothes and in gratitude for the hands that made them,
were taught, at last, the needed stories. It was a different river
than before, that is true. But the women still knew where in the
heart the headwaters lay—the river that ran through their hearts,
uniting them, was still as deep and clear as it had ever been.
The Story Function
Will Not
Die
One of the most remarkable developments that criss-cross the
world, no matter how urbanized a people may become, no mat
ter how far they are living from family, or how many generations
away they are born from a tight-knit heritage group—people
everywhere nonetheless will form and re-form "talking story"
groups. There appears to be a strong drive in the psyche to be
nourished and taught, but also to nourish and teach the psyches
of as many others as possible, with the best and deepest stories
that can be found.
For those who are able to read, perhaps the hunger for stories
may be partially met through the daily reading of a newspaper,
especially those rare kind of heroic stories to be found in longer
feature articles. These allow the reader to "be with" the story, to
follow the leitmotifs patiently, to give consideration to each part,
to allow thoughts and feeling to arise, and so to speak, to flood
the fertile psychic delta.
When I teach journalists, writers, and filmmakers about au
thentic story, its archetypal parts and powers, and how a story
may become compelling, or may fail to be—I encourage them to
be brave by taking time to tell the whole story, not just story
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simplex as the overculture too often seems to demand. A longer
piece, with archetypal themes intact, invites the psyche to enter
the story, to immerse in the undergirdings and nuances of an
other human being's wild fate.
W h e n stories are shortened to "bytes," all the most profound
symbolic language and themes—and thereby the deeper mean
ings and nourishments—are left out. T h e too-short or superficial
story colludes in supporting a mad culture that insists that
human beings remaining frazzled, ever on the run—rather than
inviting them, by the telling of a compelling story at some
length, to slow down, to know that it is alright to sit down now,
that it is good to take rest, and to listen with one's inner hearing
to something that is energizing, engaging, instructive, and nour
ishing in one way or another.
T o supplement the written word, or as an alternative to it,
many people who are "un-villaged" recreate villages wherever
they go. Thus they gather with others at a crossroads, or at a
certain café, the gyros shop, the bakery, the breakfast-place, at
the curb, or on the street corners—all to "jape and jaw," that is,
to talk long-windedly and jokingly with peers about each one's
latest exploits. And in between the exploits, they tell all the old
personal and mythic stories each can remember. These are all
reassertions of tribal story gatherings. Sometimes, too, people
gather with others around the "central hearth" of a book, and
thereby draw strength and guidance from it and from each other.
Parks across the world are filled every day with adults and
teenagers who share the mundane stories of their days with one
another. T h e themes of great love, and no love, and new love
that they have lived firsthand, form the center of many of the
stories they tell each other. Even when people no longer remem
ber the old stories, they can pick up the great heroic themes
again, as they study their own and other people's lives. Many of
the true stories of human love-life are but echoes of the themes
found in the heroic legends of Abelard and Héloise (lovers who
were driven apart by others), or Eros and Psyche (the big mis
step in love), or Medea and Jason (the jealousy, envy, and re
venge of insanely possessive love).
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In restaurants, there are many chairs reserved in perpetuity
for "The Ladies Club," or "The Outrageous Older Women's
Club," and many other coteries, covens, and circles—the whole
point of which is to tell, trade, make stories. Around the world,
at any given time, there are legions of old men walking to gather
together at their designated story place. It is a pub, a bench out
side or inside a store or arcade, a table—often outdoors, under
trees. M y elderly and vital father-in-law, a former estimator and
installer of burglar-alarms for American District Telegraph,
meets his cronies religiously. Several times a week they gather at
Mickey-D's, which is what MacDonald's chain of restaurant is
called by "da guys" in Chicago.
"The Mickey-D's Good Guys' Club" is the formal name they
have given their gathering. They are a group that includes many
grizzled and handsome old union truck- and tanker-drivers.
Their clan ritual is to bring up every serious, foolish, and noble
story they have heard on the news or read in the newspaper.
They discuss the world's terrible woes in detail then, and sug
gest theoretical—but always heroic—solutions. They agree that
"If only everyone would just take our good advice, the world
would be a much better place by tomorrow morning."
The desire to make, tell, and hear stories is so profound that
groups and clubs are formed for that precise purpose. There are
pods of drinking "regulars," civic meetings, church fellowships,
celebrations, sanctifications, homecomings, reunions, birthday
parties, holiday gatherings, high holy days, porch-stoop sittin's,
readers' groups, therapy groups, news meetings, planning ses
sions, and other occasions are used to call people to be together.
The point of it all certainly includes the stated reason the gath
ering was called, but, underlying it, it is about stories—the ones
that will be traded, hooted out, acted out, suppressed, reveled
in, approached, interpreted, and laughed over—wherever likeminded people come together.
And after such meetings, though gifts might have been ex
changed or door prizes given out, though arguments might have
taken place, alliances begun, ended, or strengthened, learnings
achieved or delayed, what is remembered most—and told over
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and over again—is not the trinkets or the mundane proceedings
so much, as the stories that unfolded there, and often the love
that carried them.
Thus one more link of story-associations is forged so that the
group can be bound together. As the matriarch of my family, it is
my job to lead in many ways. Thus, I often say to my fissioning,
active family, "We have to go somewhere together soon now. W e
have to make new memories together now." By such means, peo
ple all across the world experience continuing new stories to bind
and rebind their self-made clans together. For everyone, from war
veterans to families, from co-workers to classmates, from sur
vivors to activists, religious and artists, and more, the stories they
share together bind them more faithfully, through the heart and
soul, to each other and to the spirit, than almost any other bond.
In E x t r e m i s :
The Story Finds a
Way
T o be in extremis means to be in severe circumstances, to be
near the point of death. This can be the exact condition of the
psyche at certain times, depending on the quality of one's
choices and/or the terrible twists of fate. Then, even if the
means for sharing stories is almost completely disassembled—as
when persons are incarcerated in prison—the human spirit will
still find a way to receive and to convey stories.
I have had a ministry to the imprisoned for many years. People
in penitentiaries can communicate a story in a quick pantomime
passing in the corridors. They will write short stories in letters
that are flushed down one toilet, and retrieved from another toi
let that has been linked with the first. People imprisoned learn to
tell stories in sign language, sticking their arms out through the
cell bars so other people imprisoned in cells further down the line
can see their hands. They then literally spell out letters to the
words in the air and make inventive gestures as well. Pictures
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and paintings are made. These often resemble ex-votos that de
scribe an episode in life or death, and these are often smuggled
from cell to cell. People learn how to tell brief stories of success
and failure by merely letting their eyes do the telling as they
pass by each other.
The story-making and story-receiving functions persevere,
no matter what. There are many egregious events recorded in
history wherein a person or a people have been massacred. In
their last room, on the walls, in the dirt, they drew a picture or
wrote the story of what was happening to them, using anything
they had, including their own blood. People who have fallen and
been fatally injured in the wilderness have been known to man
age to use their own cameras to photograph themselves, or to
write in a journal, or gasp into a tape recorder the story of their
last days. The drive to tell the story is profound.
Secret-keeping is a risky affair for the same reason. There is
something in the psyche that recognizes a wrongful act and wants
to tell the story of how it came about and what action ought be
undertaken to correct it. The tale of "The King with the Ears of
an Ass" is a case in point. It is an interesting story about personal
politics. In the story, the king has committed a wrong. As a re
sult, the long tender ears of a donkey suddenly erupt on his head.
He anxiously begins to let his hair grow to disguise these bo
dacious ears. He allows his barber to trim his hair, but only a
tiny bit, and only if the barber will keep his horrible secret. T h e
barber agrees. Yet, though he is a good man, it is soon killing
him to keep the secret. So, with full desire to remain loyal to his
promise, the barber goes out each night and digs a shallow little
hole in the ground by the river. He leans down to the opening in
the earth and whispers the secret: "Psssst, the king has the ears
of an ass." He then pats the dirt back into the opening, turns,
and goes to his bed greatly unburdened.
However, over a short time, reeds grow up from the openings
he has made in the earth. Shepherds pass by and see these lovely
strong reeds growing there. They cut them for flutes. But the
moment the shepherds put their lips to the newly made flutes,
the flutes must cry out, "The king has the ears of an ass!"
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Thus it goes with the psyche. Story erupts, no matter how
deeply repressed or buried. Whether in night-dreams, or through
one's creative products, or the tics and tocks of neurosis, the story
will find its way up and out again.
Sometimes an entire culture colludes in the gradual destruc
tion of its own panoramic spirit and breadth of its teaching
stories. Purposefully, or without awareness, this is done by fo
cusing almost exclusively only on one or two story themes,
inhibiting or forbidding all others, or only excessively touting a
favorite one or two. Whether these narrowly defined or overly
vaunted stories are predictable and repetitive ones about the
same aspects of sex or violence, over and over again, and little
else, or they are about how sinful or stupid people are, and how
they ought be punished—the effect is the same. The story tradi
tion becomes so narrowed that, like an artery that is clogged, the
heart begins to starve. In physiology, as in culture, this is a lifethreatening symptom.
Then the psyches of individuals may resort to scraps and tat
ters of stories offered them via various channels. And they will
take them, often without question, the same way people who are
starving will eat food that is spoiled or that has no nutritional
value, if none other is available. They might hope to find such
poor food somehow replenishing, even though it can never be
so—and might sicken them to boot. In a barren culture, one or
two fragmentary story-themes play, like a broken record, broad
casting the same notes over and over again. At first it may be
slightly interesting. Then it becomes irritating. Next it becomes
boring and hardly registers at all. Finally it becomes deadening.
T h e spirit and mind and body are made narrower, rather than
radiant and greater, by its presence, as they are meant to be.
Such flattened-out stories, with only one or two themes, are
far different from heroic stories, which have hundreds of themes
and twists and turns. Though heroic stories may also contain
sexual themes and other motifs of death, evil, and extinction,
they are also only one part of a larger universal rondo of stories,
which includes themes of spirit overriding matter, of entropy, of
glory in rebirth, and more. Sex, death, and extinction stories are
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useful in order for the psyche to be taught about the deeper life.
But to be taught the full spectrum of stories, there must be a
plethora of mythic components and episodes that progress and
resolve in many different ways.
It is from innocent children that I learned what happens when
a young soul is held away from the breadth and meaningful nu
ances of stories for too long. Little ones come to earth with a
panoramic ability to hold in mind and heart literally thousands
of ideas and images. The family and culture around them is sup
posed to place in those open channels the most beautiful, useful,
deep and truthful, creative and spiritual ideas we know. But
very many young ones nowadays are exposed almost exclusively
to endless "crash and bash" cartoons and "smack 'em down"
computer games devoid of any other thematic components.
These fragmentary subjects offer the child no extensive depth
of storyline.
When I have taught children as an artist-in-residence in the
schools, I have found that many children were already starved
for deep story before they had reached second grade. They
tended to know only those from sit-com television, and they
often reduced their writings to these drastically narrowed
themes: "A man killed another man." "He killed him again and
again. Period." "They lived, they died. T h e end." Nothing more.
One fine way parents, teachers, and others who cherish the
minds of the young can rebalance and educate modern children's
psyches is to tell them, show them, and involve them in deeper
stories, on a regular basis. They can also begin to interpret daily
life in mythic story terms, pointing out motifs, characters, mo
tives, perils, and the methods of finding one's way. B y these
means and more, the helpers override the immense repetition of
one-point-only stories that so much contemporary media and
culture so harp on ad infinitum. The mythic is as needed as air
and water. The mythic themes not only teach, but also nourish
and, especially, energize the psyche. The vast world of story is
where the child's spirit will find these most consistently. T h e
radical knowledge and amazements found in stories ought to be
every child's daily inheritance.
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Amongst adults, too, the need and desire for story are so
great, that even though storylines in the collective may have de
teriorated, and become obsessive, drilling, and repetitive, or else
corrupted, human beings will find apertures through which to
create fresh and new stories—from underground. From outside
the culture or at its edges, inventive and inspired souls will not
allow the stories to be subverted. They will resurrect the "lost
stories" in new ways that restore their depth and surprise—that
are capable of uplifting, testing, and altering the psyche.
Currently, it is on the internet that gifted "frontier" writers
and artists gather to create stories together. It is in web-zines,
through cyber-art, the fabulae of game design, and in other
wildly inventive never-before-seen forms, that any impoverish
ment to deep story the over-culture has caused is being over
thrown. What an amazement it has been to us mere mortals to
find that the reality now exists for "a voice greater" to be broad
cast via the binary-code blips of ones and zeroes—a process, I
am told, which mirrors the binary code used by the synapses in
the human brain. T h e computer transport system has become
the circuitry for la voz mitologico, the mythic voice, to potentially
address the entire planet within seconds. H o w mythic is that?
Very.
T h e "underground" artists understand how to use this win
dow to psyche, and unleash their stories with an intense under
standing of the motives, successes, failures, and possibilities in
mythic life. They will not be crushed under the boots of the lat
est societal obsession that endarkens. They see that the soul does
not scrimp on images, and they, as creators, must therefore
avoid, whenever possible, casting any images in too tight a way
so that there is no room left for the wind of the holy spirit to
pass through and rearrange everything—sometimes blow it all
away—all in order to bring wonder and meaning. The ones who
can both allow and withstand this rapid-fire process are the new
myth-makers and reformers of the cultures of our times.
It is not too much to say that lack of compelling and unpre
dictable heroic stories can deaden an individual's and a culture's
overall creative life—can pulverize it right down to powder. It is
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not too much to say that an abundance of compelling and unpre
dictable heroic stories can re-enspirit and awaken a drowsing
psyche and culture, filling both with much-needed vitality and
novel vision. From the ancient storytellers to the present, the idea
has always been: As go the souls that lead, so goes the culture.
The Repair
Needed In and For This
World
STORY CAN MEND, AND STORY CAN HEAL.
Certainly, we have hardly ever faced a world in worse shape or
in greater need of the lyrical, mystical, and common-sensical.
There seem to be large and perpetual pockets where fair and
sustaining values are more pale than they should be. But when
we consider Plato, Strabbo, and the apostles Paul and John, and
many others over the centuries, we see that they also wrote
about their times as being likewise devoid of proper "manage
ment and meaning." It appears that "culture at edge of utter cor
ruption" and "world at the edge of utter destruction" are two of
the oldest themes to be found in stories of the human race.
But there are always those too, who have created and written
about last-minute and long-term redemptions. They are the ones
who give out stories that stir—that give succor and bread
enough for the crossing. I think of story-givers like Abraham
Joshua Heschel. The title of one of his books is a story in
itself that says it all: I Asked for Wonder. He wrote that the cul
mination of life carries a more and more clear disposition to
achieve moral virtue. His stories, exegeses, philosophy, and mys
tical views revolve around the idea that life ought to have
poignant incomparables in it. He urged persons to "the ecstasy of
deeds"—that is, "to go beyond oneself, to outdo oneself—and
thence to "go beyond one's own needs, and illumine the world."
Others, including the Persian poet-priest Kabir, tell instruc
tive stories through poetry using themes like this: First thing in
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the morning, do not rush off to work, but take down your musi
cal instrument and play it. Then test your work in the same way.
If there is no music in it, then set it aside, and go find what has
music in it again.
In this way the old teaching stories helped others to remember
the most loved sources of life. Stories told by the Buddha often
contain the message "Harm no life." T h e texts of the Bhagavad
Gita record battlefield discussions wherein the leader reveals
that it is the love in all things that makes up the heart of man
liness and womanliness. All these convey soulful encourage
ment through story. In his lyric hymns, Homer writes that the
mother, Demeter, while seeking her lost child, "tears down her
hair like dark wings" and flies over the surface of the earth in
search of her beloved. She will not rest until she finds her heart
again. These all serve as examples of the kind of guidance for re
discovering the radiant center that is often found in heroic story.
There is a living concept of repair that has called to many in
our lifetime—even seized some of us when we were only chil
dren just walking along one day. This concept embodies the
idea that the world has a soul, and, thereby, if it is the soul that
wants stories, then the world needs stories too—stories of repair,
strength, and insight. If the world has a soul, then story informs
and heals and spiritually grows the cultures, and the peoples
within those cultures, through its universal cache of idioms
and images.
In ancient Hebraic, this concept is known as tikkun olam;
meaning repair of the world soul. This is a living concept, for it
requires endeavor—a daily one, and sometimes even an hourly
one. It is a commitment to a way of right conduct, a form of liv
ing meditation, a kind of contemplative pragmatic. I understand
it this way: Tikkun olam is giving one's attention and resources
to repair that part of the world that is right before you, precisely
within your spiritual, psychological, and physical reach—according
to soul's sight, not ego's alone.
I understand the artful methods of tikkun olam, handed down
generation to generation, to be of the most simple and humble
kind: the spiritual sight that has enough of a glowing heart behind
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it to see beneath the surface of things; to care for others beyond
oneself; to translate suffering into meaning; to find the edges of
hope, and to bring it forward with a plan; a willingness to find
insight through struggle; an ability to stand and withstand what
one sees that is painful; and, in some way, to gentle the flurry; to
take up broken threads as well and tie them off; to re weave and
mend what is torn, to patch what is missing; to try for percep
tion far beyond the ego's too-often miniscule understanding.
All these ways of tikkun olam are recorded in different ways in
stories—in heroic stories about bad roads, poor judgments, dark
nights, dreadful starts, mysterious ghosts, terrible ambushes,
great strengths, mercies, and compassions. All these actions for
repair of the world soul also constitute the growing of one's own
soul: By their acts ye shall know them. B y reaching out to the
world, as a more and more individuated soul, one also repairs
the ravel of oneself—for whatever of the world has gone awry
and can be aided, is sometimes in similar needful condition in
the personal psyche as well. In many ways, we can see the evi
dences that the inner life strengthens the outer life, and vice
versa. And it is stories that can unite these two precious
worlds—one mundane, the other mythic.
The Human
Heroic
Figure
It would appear, were we to follow the long genealogy of heroes
and heroines in mythos, that it is via the soul being stolen, misman
aged, disguised, disrupted, pre-empted or trodden upon, that some
of the purest features of the psyche may rise up and begin to long
for—call for—the return of that radiant companion and counsel.
In stories, the force of soul is conveyed in so many ways.
Sometimes it is represented by such symbols as the darling
princess, the handsome prince, the tiny or wounded creature,
the holy chalice, the cloak of invisibility, the golden fleece, the
answer to the riddle, the seven-league boots, the creature who
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reveals the secret, or the proof that there is yet left in the world
one last honest human being.
Since first daylight, the revelatory actions and lessons found in
the oldest tales are ignited by and revolve around the loss of the
precious thing. And then come the efforts, detours, and inspira
tions that suddenly appear whilst in pursuit of the recovery of
the greatest treasure.
H o w may one do this? The people, the tribes, the groups and the
clans of the world keep heroic mythos alive—keep stories impor
tant to the soul alive—by telling them, and then by trying to live
them out in some way that brings one into more wisdom and ex
perience than one had before. The same is given to us to do on
our life's journeys also—to seek and follow the personal life myth,
to see our worst and best attributes mirrored back to us in stories.
Once embarked, there will be times, as occurred in the life of
the hero Odysseus, when one will have to search one's ways
through crushing life circumstances, and, often enough, have
to start all over again—while at the same time having to resist
seductions that invite one to stray off the path.
On the mythic journey, like Demeter, most human beings will
be called at least once, and perhaps many times in a lifetime, to
set aside passive longing, and instead to fly up to the highest
light, or even into the face of convention—"taking the heat" in
order to find the truth of things, in order to bring one's Beloved
back home.
And counter to Oedipus and the sad motifs found in the
story-play Oedipus Rex, perhaps we will also have reason in life
to resist throwing away the spiritual child self, and instead to
unburden and uncurse what has been misunderstood, and par
ticularly what is innocent. W e may also find good reason to
refuse to blind ourselves, as Oedipus did, to the evils of the
world or our own foibles, and instead to try to live in full disclo
sure and integrity.
In tribal groups, whether stories of the journeys of the heroic
soul end humorously, tragically, or grandly, each kind of termi
nus is still considered an object lesson, a window through which
one can see the broad continuum of how the soul can not only be
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known more and more, but how it can also, through courage and
consciousness, be grown to greater capacity. The soul is not
known or realized less when a tale comes to no good end—only
differently. In tales, as in life, increase can come as much as from
travail and failure as much as when the episode ends with a com
fortable or lovely result.
Most persons who have been through hell of various kinds—
war, massacre, assault, torture, profound sorrows, will tell that,
even though they still feel sick with the weight of it all, and per
haps also ill with regrets of one kind or another—they are never
theless learning how to swim strong to reach the able raft of the
soul. Though there is something to be said for those rare heroes
and heroines who sit on the undisturbed shore enjoying the in
tense beauty of the soulrise, I am more on the side of those who
must swim the torrents while crying out for help. In all, they are
striving hard not to drown before they can reach the safety of
the soul's arms. And most who have been so deeply harmed will
tell you that, all the while they are swimming, they feel their
own soul is rowing toward them with the strongest, deepest of
strokes that can only come from One who loves without limits.
This is the underlayment of mythos, as I understand it: that
there is a soul; that it wishes to be free; that it loves the human
it inhabits; that it will do all it can to shelter the one it loves; and
that it wants to be known, listened to, followed, given an en
larged broadcast range, granted leadership in the quest for expe
rience that carries such worth for the higher self—and that its
language is stories.
The Mythic
Question
Over these many decades of being a keeper of stories, I have
come to see that almost invariably every story, myth, legend,
saga, and folktale begins with a poignant question of one kind or
another. In tales, this premiere query may be spoken—or only
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inferred. But regardless, the poignant question strikes a spark to
the engine that ignites the heart. This starts up the energy of the
story; it rolls the story forward. The mythic tale unfolds in re
sponse to that single igniting question.
Thus Odysseus answers, throughout his entire saga in The
Odyssey, the single mythic question posed at the beginning, the
one which could be phrased as: H o w do I ever find true home
again? Demeter is the Greek Mother Goddess, the essence of
nurturance for earth and for humans. She undertakes a horrible,
grief-stricken journey to seek and retrieve her innocent daughter
who had been snatched down into the dark underworld against
her will. Throughout Demeter's unfolding story, the question is
posed: T o what great lengths can the immortal soul be pressed
and still retrieve the Beloved? The account of Oedipus in the
play by Sophocles, throughout to its end, answers a question
like this: What darkness, dead-zones, and deaths can occur
when secrets are not revealed and truth is not told?
This question at the beginning of a story—or at any point
along one's own life line—grants the seeker a bar to measure
against, to see then which directions to take most profitably in
order to find one's own answers. The transformative question
grants a scale on which to weigh which portion of each learning
one might most fruitfully keep, and which parts or pieces can be
bypassed or left behind as ballast, as one continues on the quest.
Thus Odysseus leaves behind Circe, the Sirens, and Calypso,
all of whom seek to lure and imprison him with their charms.
His question is how to find his way back home to Ithaca, which
symbolizes, along with his wife and children, his true home. His
answer unfolds, as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, would write many cen
turies later, "Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the
mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its
intellectual eye." Odysseus has only to stay to his purpose to find
home. That is the wild answer.
In mythic tales, the soul poses the question, and all things
are measured against the soul's interest. Though sometimes the
answers to one's most unifying and electrifying questions seem
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to come from out of nowhere, more often too, in mythos, the an
swers come only from a hard labor that is kept to day after day.
Thereby, if one is seeking gold, one must go where gold is and
suffer through the travail to get there—and then use all of one's
brawn and wits to mine for it, and to recognize it when one sees it.
The grandmother in "Jack and the Beanstalk" does not real
ize the golden opportunity her grandson has been given, when
she has it right in her hands. In that tale, the land and people are
in a terrible famine. She throws away what she thinks are the
"useless beans" that Jack has brought home, having traded the
family cow for them. Out the window the beans go. But, over
night, they grow into a giant "tree of life" that allows Jack to
bring home a goose, which lays golden eggs, and other riches
that reverse the long famine. The ogre, signifying a coarse and
dominant quality in the psyche, is defeated.
Likewise, in mythos and tales, if one is looking for wood, one
must go to the forest. If one is looking for life, one must go to
the eternal life-giver—and/or the eternal death-dealer—in order
to find the needed understandings to wrest free the answer to
the riddle, all in order to answer the question most dear to one's
soul—the one used to motivate and locomote true consciousness.
Thereby, whatever adventures, misfortunes, detours, and gratifi
cations occur along the road—all are seen as moving the self to
ward learning and transformation. Obstacles and preformed
ogres rise up regularly. They confound and injure the hero and
heroine. Thus the seekers find, at many different levels, a multi
tude of responses to that single question posed at the beginning—
responses that increase their life-giving capacities.
Odysseus finds more answers to his question—where is true
home?—by meeting and outmaneuvering the she-monsters of
the sea, Scylla and Charybdis, which attempt to destroy him
and all his mates. He meets Aeolus, the king of the winds, w h o
gives him a sack filled with a wind that will take him within
sight of home. But Odysseus falls asleep; and his crew thinks
there is booty in the sack, so they pry it open. T h e wind that
rushes out pushes them so far from home that they literally lose
themselves.
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Through these perils and more, he learns the way home is
mazed with hazards that force him to take chances and to make
choices—and he learns to not fall asleep. All that he endures is
also presented to human beings in the same way during times of
duress. One either forgets one's spiritual commitment and is
thereby blown farther from true home, or else one becomes, in
those moments, more determined to fulfill the question, to be
come more expansive, more docile, more fierce—whatever is
required—than one had been just moments before.
Thereby the hero and heroine are made more durable, more
able to enter into mystery, more adept at defeating what is often
seemingly invisible and cloud-like, yet which carries impact
enough to crush us to death, or else blow us off course and away
from our stated goal. These heroes and heroines are often the
ones who—though dragged, drugged, dumped, or seduced into
peril—manage to call to the soul for support and correction of
trajectory. T h e soul will answer, and aim the person toward the
best results that can be managed at the moment.
T h e complications that thwart the hero and heroine of myth
are called complexes in depth psychology. Complexes are to be
met, confronted, evaded, amplified, transformed, contained, or
triumphed over. These blockages appear suddenly in life too.
They erupt from one's own unconscious, in forms resembling
anything from irritating needle-toothed ankle-biters to huge,
bellowing screed-spreaders—or, more subtly, as something we
long for or are easily seduced by, but which is poisonous to us at
its core.
T h e sidestepping of such obstacles is a common motif in
myths. Yet, ironically, it is change of direction that often greatly
furthers the life of the soul. Demeter does so with style. She sees
that she is at a dead end and must give up trying to make a
Demophoon, a mortal child, into an immortal, so as to replace
her own lost immortal child. That desire to "replace" does not
fulfill the soulful need which guides her seeking—which is not
to replace, but to find. Ultimately, she turns toward eliciting an
swers to her daughter's whereabouts, by focusing and extending
her power through enlistment of the aid of another.
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One of her tripartite sisters, Hekate, encourages them to fly up
to the face of Helios, the sun. There they bravely demand, in the
heckle tones of crones, to be told where Demeter's Beloved is
being hidden. And Helios, who sees all, tells them of the young
girl's abduction by Hades, the dark God of the Underworld.
Thence Hekate and Demeter utilize this information to force
those who conspired to steal the daughter to instead return her
to the world again.
Also in mythos, we see the failures to understand that one has
choices. Poor Oedipus finds his tragic answers to the question,
What will be lost if one does not overturn the projections and
pronouncements of others? W h e n he was born, the Oracle
claimed he would be doomed to kill his father and marry his
mother. His parents—attempting to evade the curse for them
selves, but without being willing to risk confrontation or counter
balance—leave him to die in the woods.
But he is rescued by shepherds and, when he is grown, he is
challenged one night by a stranger on a bridge. Both he and the
stranger are astride horses, but neither will yield to let the other
pass first. In the ensuing struggle, Oedipus kills the bold
stranger. Later it is revealed to him that the man murdered was
his own father . . . the father who had been held away from him
for so long, by secret-keeping and other nefarious means.
As the story goes on, Oedipus's incomparable grief over wrong
ful identity and futile relationships causes him to blind himself to
any further sights of the painful truths that swirl around him.
These awful possibilities are also offered to us when we are on the
journey—we may too not, at first, ask the most useful questions
needed. W e might try to lie down in psychological slumber and
ignorance, or give in to the crabbed and destructive expectations
of something, within and outside ourselves as well, that wishes to
block knowledge of our soulful origins. Thence, we may suddenly
be shocked awake to all the ruin that we have become so
swamped by. W e may not ever want to see or feel again. But, of
course, our story goes on—whereas Oedipus's ended. W e will
have another episode, then another, in which there will be oppor
tunity to change course, to see and do differently—and better.
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In many ways the saga of Oedipus is one of being terribly
weakened by believing that fate alone is a greater force than free
will, even though there is indeed something dark and unformed
in the psyche that believes such to be so. However, it is not so,
ultimately. In mythos there are far more resurrections and re
turns than ever there are cinema screens that simply go blank at
the end.
T h e idea, since forever, has been that story is a conveyance, a
vehicle, to use in order to think, to move forward through life.
At the end of a life that has meaning, the point is not that one is
perfected, but that one will still carry a view of self and the
world that is divine—and not just some kind of lazy drift. The
point is to have enough stories that guide—that will allow life's
closing act to end with one's heart still bright, despite the gales
that have passed through it—so that it can be said that one has
lived with spiritual audacity.
The Spirit
and the Academic:
Joseph
Campbell
Let us now speak more about Joseph Campbell, his life and
work. Jung often spoke about essential attitudes needed to sup
port a quality life of the soul. He said a certain kind of spiritedness was needed, as well as a certain kind of resistance to societal
pressures—pressures that might cause a person to become di
vorced from a life of meaning.
In his later years, Joseph Campbell wore his clothes a little like
a coat hook wears the jacket thrown onto it. He walked with a
utilitarian gait that was clearly meant only to carry him from one
side of the room to the other. When he spoke, he often became so
enthused and talked so fast that his words just tumbled out.
Seeing and listening to him over the years, it was easy to note
his genuine love for the essence of the mythic. He particularly
loved the similarities of themes to be found in mythos, calling
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upon these themes to be unifiers of disparate groups rather than
dividers. He managed, throughout his always accessible schol
arly work, to utterly resist putting on the slightest of airs about
it all. Though he occasionally made a small misstep, common to
his time, revealing a' preconception about certain tribal affairs,
he gave no effort to appear low-, high-, middle-, or any other
kind of brow.
Rather, as the lines of mythos are lived out within the spiritual
vessels of closely woven family groups, in traditional clans, and
living tribes, he became a central vessel which poured out to oth
ers too. N o matter where in the world they live, the worldwide
tribe he still teaches, through his published books and films, is
united by their complementary desire to know—to find meaning
that matters—in the interior and the outer worlds, both.
Whether an individual is at the very beginning of life's in
quiry, or in the deadly middle struggle between ego and higher
self, or near the lighted terminus where the soul is more finely
seen and embraced—Campbell was interested in providing sub
stance for the long journey ahead.
He used a language that was easily understood by those he
was speaking to. He kept to all these simple ways of being, even
though he lived in a world that sometimes confuses the messen
ger with the living message. That he resisted those ideologues
and demagogues who consistently attempt to press all things
that once were graceful and filled with love into an artificial and
one-sided shape, is a grace.
I have heard that some thought Campbell sometimes did not
write in a sufficiently high scholarly form. It is true that he con
cerned himself with the activities of spirit and soul, mythos and
fairytales, religious exegesis—the invisible arms that hold up the
world of human spirit. It is true that he pursued these with all
the gusto of a child let out of school, and running toward the
open sea.
Perhaps it was this eagerness and fervor that caused some to
talk—to tsk-tsk—to question his seriousness and mien. But one
must remember that the mythic root of the word intellectual
means to seek to understand, to enter the nature of a thing and
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try to understand it from the inside, not just the outside; and
that academic means, at its heart, to sit "among the groves," to
have a relationship with one's teacher in the midst of beauty and
nature, as was once undertaken in the oldest lyceums; . . . and
that scholarly means "of a school," characteristic of one devoted
to weighing and pondering—just as a young acolyte gives himor herself to study of sacred Tor ah—studying deeply with the
gift of the love of learning fully intact. And all these Campbell
kept to in his own original way. His scholarship embraced all
these facets and more.
It is a fact that he was loved by many for his "everyman" de
meanor. Yet, at times as he spoke on his favored subjects, he
sometimes took on the eerie quality of looking older or younger
than his real age. Anyone who has been in the presence of a
great storyteller has seen this phenomenon. I have experienced
this in great singers, too. Richard Strauss's work, Four Last
Songs, is a composition about people of great age who are re
membering the goodness and fears of life. I have heard several
gifted sopranos sing Strauss's song-cycle. By virtue of the spare
and evocative words, by means of the heart-piercing music, and
the hush of the listeners, the singers may suddenly begin to look
like ancient beings. Something other than the mundane self
seems to have come into them.
Campbell had this quality, too. Sometimes, as he told his work
aloud with such passion, that he looked a thousand years old,
like an ageless being himself, an old man before the fire. Yet at
other times, he looked youthful as he displayed his gentle hu
morist's gift alongside his earnestness. These personifications of
the essences underlying the mythic are seen in tribal groups,
too, wherein the teller gradually seems to take on the appearance
of a child, an old person or a creature, as they tell the deeper and
deeper aspects of the tale.
Some were said to be shocked at his late-in-life interest in and
attendance at a Grateful Dead concert, then one of the preeminent
rock groups of his time. All I could think was, /Andele! Yes, go
on!" T h e Grateful Dead papered the world with posters, books,
album covers, decals, and stickers detailing their much-vaunted
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leitmotif of death in various skeletal forms. Their depictions of
skull and skeleton-images were most often surrounded by sym
bols of living roses, iridescent rainbows, and full-blown color.
"The Dead's" aura was similar to the old Greek stories about
the souls of the dead who somehow became lost on their ways to
their final places of happiness and peace. In the tales, a living
human sees them and takes pity on them, helping to put them
on the right path, for which the ghostly souls are forever grate
ful. In this way, the Grateful Dead's name itself, and their logos,
were similar to those found in ancient and eternal images repre
senting death of the old, and rebirth of new life—all in continu
ous cycle.
But there is this oddity in the deep storytellers isn't there? A
stop at the shores of a Grateful Dead concert is not too much
different than any other episode during a great odyssey. Jason
and the Argonauts made many stops, both at sea and on land,
meeting with any number of mysterious and unusual creatures.
Too, the same was true for Hercules, for Perseus, for Demeter
during her search for her daughter and later her respite under
the mountain to remake herself. Compelling experiences add to
the development of the hero and heroine.
For a living soul following a personal life-myth as Campbell
did, almost everything of interior and exterior life is approached
as though it is an old story just now returned to new life. T h e
riddle of honor being worked out by Falstaff and others in
Shakespeare's Henry IV plays can be seen in many modern
politicians and leaders, who wrestle with the same issues. Every
soul who desires a transformative life has to give time to a regu
lar Herculean clearing of the Augean stables.
Hasn't everyone lived through friendships that play out as if
one were dealing with the God of the Morose in Nahua mythos,
who is guaranteed to infect with his depressive thoughts anyone
he touches? Isn't there also a good deal of life that is like the
crazy, whirling dances of King David and his retinue, on their
way to home? He exhorts everyone to wear their most colorful
clothing, to crash their finger-cymbals loud, to sing at the top of
their lungs, and to raise the dust with their dancing feet—to
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make a joyous noise to show their God how much divine vitality
exists on earth.
T o call up modern versions of the old stories, one has to go
forth and live life. As a result then, one will have the challenge of
not only living the story, taking it all in, but also interpreting it
in whatever ways are useful. So too, one will reap the reward of
telling all about it afterward. One's interest in the world, and in
having experiences, is really an interest in hearing, having, liv
ing one more story, and then one more, then one more story, till
one cannot live them out loud any longer. Perhaps it should be
said that the drive to live out stories is as deep in the psyche,
when awakened, as it is compelling to the psyche to listen to sto
ries and to learn from them.
The Wild Man and the Wild
Woman
Campbell writes about the masculine and feminine archetypes in
his work. Sometimes there has been a confusion regarding mod
ern depth psychology and mythology, and what these gendered
images represent. Recall that an archetype is a representation
of the Irrepresentable. It is a shard of something so enormous
that the greater thing cannot be apprehended by the mundane
mind. But smaller images of the greater—the kinds that are
found in art, mythos, music, dance, and story—can be grasped
by us mere mortals.
Some think that certain symbols stand only for women, and
certain other symbols, especially those found in mythos, stand
only for men. But, at bottom, all represent forces of immense
creative energy within any psyche. Though there have been cer
tain human attributes assigned to "the masculine" and others to
"the feminine," both, and all, actually have their full share of
power, strength, fierceness, receptivity, and creativity.
In mythos, the heroic attributes belong to both feminine
and masculine, both to men and to women, and to children and
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creatures and spirits and sky and earth and the Self as well.
Thus an individual of any gender can become entranced by and...
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