Yes, that would be us then. The hero is portrayed in art, literature and mythology but that’s only because it’s our story. Joseph Campbell’s transcendent, triumphant book explores and elucidates this point.
It’s so richly adorned with wisdom and profoundly illuminated ideas that it’s slow going. I re-read entire passages to get all of it or just to savor the deliciousness of it again. If you would like some essential Joseph Campbell I would suggest the PBS interview series with Bill Moyers available on YouTube: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. It starts out with a quote from The Hero with a Thousand Faces:
“We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we have sought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we have sought to slay another, we will slay ourselves. And where we have thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we are thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”
Good stuff. I totally relate. Slaying the dragon, whether it be gluttony, lust, avarice (I don’t have much of this), sloth or whatever. Finding the hero within and taking up the adventure. Following your own bliss.
My daily bike rides are miniature adventures - out and back again and in between discovering the pearl of great price (the Pearl at Broadway on the Riverwalk) and the Holy Grail (cappuccino) and nymphs (the central courtyard with kids running around), the Elysian fields (maybe the downtown with all its enchantments). It makes sense to me and has meaning. The cars are monsters, damn them. The people I meet are pilgrims or innocent maidens or wise counselors with sage advice (the baristas). There are signs and portends. This foggy morning belongs to a fairy infested field, this searing hot midsummer’s day to the gates of hades, this brilliant blue sky with the golden orb - a portal leading to some kind of heaven. I don’t know how it happened but my mind has been opened to these things.
Actually I do know how it happened. I had to walk thru the dark night of the soul, the valley of the shadow of death and all that shit. It hurt. But I came out with a profound appreciation for music and the ability to write. Something was opened inside me and the creative energy has continued to flow unabated.
This is the story of the hero’s journey documented in Joseph Campbell’s book in great detail and exciting diversity. It is proclaimed with the voice of one who has studied the old myths from all over the world and of all time.
I haven’t finished the book yet, that will take awhile, but I have been transformed and transfixed by it. Buy it and read it for yourself if you are interested in such things. I found an awesome hardcover, like new on Amazon for like $7.98. Or go to your local bookstore and hook it up.
He mentions modern day dealers in myth, Freud and Jung, with their dream analysis and their psychoanalysis, probing the subconscious, the hidden parts of our mind for clues to our neurosis. Lord knows we have enough of that. This in fact is a major feature of modern society. We don’t believe in Ishtar and Ceres and the Cyclops and the Minotaur but we do go to the shrink to learn about our own stories. and our own dreams - adventures that happen while while we are dead asleep, our head on the pillow.
For awhile I was recording my dreams on voice recorder when I woke up so I could calibrate what was happening in my interior world. As it turns out my dreams ranged from frightening nightmares and near death experiences (for real) to being lost or late or confused in some state of anxiety, to these beautiful, ecstatic, joyous and lovely little movies. There’s one I remember where I’m swimming in open water with my best friend and then we’re scuba diving and we decide to swim across the Atlantic ocean underwater and there are all these fantastic, huge fish around!
My dreams seem to have something to do with my lifestyle, what I’ve had to eat and drink and I have concluded that the little people, those trillions of tiny entities that inhabit the nether regions of my digestive system, have a voice in how my dreams manifest.
Check this out. There is a ‘second brain’ that surrounds our entire digestive tract (500 million neurons) and connects via the vagus nerve to the medulla oblongata at the base of our main brain. This is the most primitive region of our brain and the simplest organisms, bacteria and other microbes, are connected and talking to it. They do this by influencing neuroendocrine cells in the wall of our gut which then release neurotransmitters like serotonin that stimulate the vagus nerve. Check it out. I’m not kidding. The most primitive organisms are talking to the most primitive part of our brain. They’re registering their discomfort and their well being. That’s what I think. But if they are actually able to influence my dreams then how do they come up with the story lines?
This was a mystery to me at first but then I realized - they don’t, they just influence the primitive brain in some sort of primitive way and our brain comes up with the elements of the dream - the narrative, the images, even dialogue, from its rich and ancient storehouse of archetypes and archaic images and impulses. This is who we are.
“Very deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless? The deeper we sound, the further down into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves unfathomable.” says Thomas Mann in his 1500 page, four part novel Joseph and His Brothers.
Campbell also quotes the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads and the Koran among many others in the exposition of his position. It’s a literary tour de force and a comprehensive course in world literature. So much fun. Of course I need my phone nearby to look up Osiris and Heraclitus and maenads and naiads and the powerful jinn, but that’s cool. I enjoy that. The joy of discovering new things. This book is rich with that.
He goes thru the whole affair of the hero’s journey step by step. The departure: the call to adventure, meeting the mentor, the guide, gaining the supernatural aid of some deity or other, the boon. The initiation: the trials and tribulations, the discoveries, the attainment, rescuing the princess or slaying the dragon or whatever happens to be. And the return home: bringing the blessing, the wisdom, the Golden Fleece, the Holy Grail, the magic elixir, happiness basically, back to bless the people.
All these themes and sub-themes are woven and spun from stories (myths) found in various cultures and traditions. This is how it happens and how it always has happened and how it always will. With infinite variations the same pattern holds true throughout the ages. We all go through it.
I guess that’s why I liked this book. I could see myself in it and I learned alot. Courage there is, for dragons reside on the misty isle where the prize is found. Singleness of mind is possible, for distractions abound and temptations are many. Allies and accomplices can be found, because we need help. We really do. And that’s a beautiful thing too.
music :: Bedroom Lullaby - Kisses In the Rain
The Hero with a Thousand Faces