The Hero with a Thousand Faces

“Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind.” 

Myth and dream share a common symbology and represent the human mind’s basic urges in narrative form. The difference between the two is that myth is public and dream is private.

“Furthermore, 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 had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” 

In his extended analogy about the myth of the Minotaur, Campbell likens Theseus’s journey into the labyrinth with a person battling the personal demons of their unconscious. The one who embarks on this private hero’s journey will gain great rewards despite the dangers they fear.

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

This sentence sums up the narrative pattern of the hero’s journey. Campbell examines the details and variations of the hero myth in ensuing chapters.

“One had better not challenge the watcher of the established bounds. And yet—it is only by advancing beyond those bounds, provoking the destructive other aspect of the same power, that the individual passes, either alive or in death, into a new zone of experience.” 

The hero’s first test in the journey is to cross the threshold from the everyday into a new, magical realm. Often, the hero encounters a threatening guard at this threshold that he must defeat to pursue his destiny.

“There can be no question: the psychological dangers through which earlier generations were guided by the symbols and spiritual exercises of their mythological and religious inheritance, we today (in so far as we are unbelievers, or, if believers, in so far as our inherited beliefs fail to represent the real problems of contemporary life) must face alone, or, at best, with only tentative, impromptu, and not often very effective guidance. This is our problem as modern, ‘enlightened’ individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence.” 

If the hero’s journey represents the trajectory of psychological growth, the contemporary person has no mythological framework by which to pursue this growth. Campbell identifies the psychoanalyst, guiding patients through psychic battles into greater health, as the supernatural helper of modern times.

“Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one who comes to know. As he progresses in the slow initiation which is life, the form of the goddess undergoes for him a series of transfigurations: she can never be greater than himself, though she can always promise more than he is yet capable of comprehending.” 

In the hero myth, Campbell identifies the (typically male) hero as a representative of humanity, whereas the woman often appears as a goddess or seducer, representing ultimate knowledge and spiritual transcendence. Campbell explores the image of women in mythology through a series of examples in this chapter.

“The meaning is that the grace that pours into the universe through the sun door is the same as the energy of the bolt that annihilates and is itself indestructible: the delusion-shattering light of the Imperishable is the same as the light that creates.” 

In the hero’s ultimate trial, he is meant to see through the veil of existence into the oneness of all things. His reconciliation with the divine father offers him enlightenment and access to the Imperishable void, from which all things arise and into which all things dissolve.

“When the envelopment of consciousness has been annihilated, then he becomes free of all fear, beyond the reach of change.” 

Campbell quotes these words from the Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya Sutra. The metaphorical hero’s completed journey will yield enlightenment, freedom, and confidence.

“The full round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess, back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet, or the ten thousand worlds.” 

After the hero faces his ultimate trial and gains his reward, the hero’s journey tale dictates that the character return home and bestow the fruit of his quest upon others. Campbell references specific boons from myths he has quoted previously in the text.

“‘Who having cast off the world,’ we read, ‘would desire to return again? He would be only there.’” 

Often, the hero finds passage out of the mystical world difficult, as expressed in this quote from the Upanishads. Having experienced the divine, the hero must now return to the world of humanity, full of death, disease, and decay.

“Whether rescued from without, driven from within, or gently carried along by the guiding divinities, he has yet to re-enter with his boon the long-forgotten atmosphere where men who are fractions imagine themselves to be complete. He has yet to confront society with his ego-shattering, life-redeeming elixir, and take the return blow of reasonable queries, hard resentment, and good people at a loss to comprehend.” 

Another difficulty the returning hero faces is an uncomprehending public upon which to bestow the gift of his journey. As the total man, the hero now encounters people who have not traveled to the mystical world and may not receive his divine boon with gladness.

“The hero adventures out of the land we know into darkness; there he accomplishes his adventure, or again is simply lost to us, imprisoned, or in danger; and his return is described as a coming back out of that yonder zone. Nevertheless—and here is a great key to the understanding of myth and symbol—the two kingdoms are actually one. The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know.” 

The hero’s destiny is to master both the ordinary and the supernatural worlds. His journey equips him to understand both planes as situated along the spectrum of existence, different in form but equivalent in substance.

“The meaning is very clear; it is the meaning of all religious practice. The individual, through prolonged psychological disciplines, gives up completely all attachment to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears, no longer resists the self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, and so becomes ripe, at last, for the great at-one-ment.” 

The goal of religion, spirituality, and mythology is to guide an individual into spiritual maturity. The hero’s journey mimics that process by depicting trials, reconciliation with the divine, and a great reward. This is the story of all spiritual adventurers who seek detachment from the world and true enlightenment.

“Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved.” 

In Campbell’s view, mythology provides the path to enlightenment. It is not a historical text or set of facts to be studied, which would render it stale and misused. Rather, myth is a model for humanity to understand the mysteries of existence, which can be found within the self.

“With their discovery that the patterns and logic of fairy tale and myth correspond to those of dream, the long discredited chimeras of archaic man have returned dramatically to the foreground of modern consciousness. According to this view it appears that through the wonder tales—which pretend to describe the lives of the legendary heroes, the powers of the divinities of nature, the spirits of the dead, and the totem ancestors of the group—symbolic expression is given to the unconscious desires, fears, and tensions that underlie the conscious patterns of human behavior.” 

Campbell opens Part 2 by reaffirming the connections modern psychologists see between dreams and mythical stories. These connections show how throughout time, humanity has wrestled with a common set of problems and desires that manifest in folk tales, mythology, and dreams.

“The cosmogonic cycle is to be understood as the passage of universal consciousness from the deep sleep zone of the unmanifest, through dream, to the full day of waking; then back again through dream to the timeless dark. As in the actual experience of every living being, so in the grandiose figure of the living cosmos: in the abyss of sleep the energies are refreshed, in the work of the day they are exhausted; the life of the universe runs down and must be renewed.” 

Creation myths depict the world forming into being and later dissolving into destruction. Campbell likens this cyclical process to the stages of emerging from slumber to wakefulness and back again.

“Myth is a directing of the mind and heart, by means of profoundly informed figurations, to that ultimate mystery which fills and surrounds all existences.” 

Campbell states several times that the figures of myth are not ends in themselves, i.e., the gods are not meant to be worshipped. Rather, myth uses metaphorical illustrations to guide human beings into understanding the mysteries of the world and themselves.

“In sum: the child of destiny has to face a long period of obscurity. This is a time of extreme danger, impediment, or disgrace. He is thrown inward to his own depths or outward to the unknown; either way, what he touches is a darkness unexplored.” 

Campbell details how various mythologies describe the hero’s childhood, which often features a separation from home, a period of testing in this isolation, and a return. During this testing, the hero faces frightening challenges and receives thorough education that develops his sense of self and his special abilities.

“For the mythological hero is the champion not of things become but of things becoming; the dragon to be slain by him is precisely the monster of the status quo: Holdfast, the keeper of the past. [...] Briefly: the ogre-tyrant is the champion of the prodigious fact, the hero the champion of creative life.” 

The hero’s opposition takes many forms, but here Campbell discusses an antagonist type that he calls Holdfast. This merciless ruler, maintaining fierce control over his domain, meets his match in the hero, who comes to bring change and renewal.

“Stated in direct terms: the work of the hero is to slay the tenacious aspect of the father (dragon, tester, ogre king) and release from its ban the vital energies that will feed the universe.” 

The hero’s ultimate test is the defeat of a father figure, which can take a pleasant or gruesome form. Once the hero kills this controlling figure, he can access the Source of all things and perhaps take dominion over the father’s kingdom.

“The mighty hero of extraordinary powers—able to lift Mount Govardhan on a finger, and to fill himself with the terrible glory of the universe—is each of us: not the physical self visible in the mirror, but the king within.” 

The hero myth is designed to show the reader her true potential. Campbell argues that all people carry divinity in the depths of their souls, if only they would answer their own calls to adventure.

“Each carries within himself the all; therefore it may be sought and discovered within. The differentiations of sex, age, and occupation are not essential to our character, but mere costumes which we wear for a time on the stage of the world. [...] We think of ourselves as Americans, children of the twentieth century, Occidentals, civilized Christians. We are virtuous or sinful. Yet such designations do not tell what it is to be man [...].” 

Campbell repeatedly argues for the oneness of all things and the ultimate meaninglessness of division and duality; here, he brings that argument to a particular kind of reader. If the hero emerges from the mystical world as a total man, so does every person have a common humanity inside, waiting to be unlocked, no matter the trappings of their earthly identity.

“‘Truth is one,’ we read in the Vedas; ‘the sages call it by many names.’” 

This Hindu proverb illustrates the power of the monomyth. The central story humanity tells itself over and over is a truth that takes many forms but nevertheless possesses a singular purpose.