In a series of interviews he had with Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers asks him, “So why, why the hero with a thousand faces?” and Campbell responds by pointing out that the hero story, though it appears different in its various cultural guises, is actually the one story, which is revised by various cultures, cast in the particulars of those cultures. In it simplest form, this story involves separation from the world, initiation into the mysteries, and a return to the world. And so, Oedipus blinds himself and goes wandering around Greece, an exile from Thebes. Over the years he comes to wisdom, but, as his home was not ready for such wisdom, he retires from the world, disappears into the void. His earlier journey, in which he leaves his supposed home, Corinth, travels to Delphi and to Thebes, solves the Sphinx’ riddle, and marries the queen, appears to fit the hero’s journey pattern, but, as he is blind to his real condition (the son of Laius and Jocasta), what he sees as triumph turns out to be tragedy.
Coming from a psychoanalytic position, Campbell notes that mythology is quite like dream work, that “dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream” (p. 17). And yet, though our dreams can offer the promise and provide clues to a more realized life, it lacks the authority of myth, which is bigger than one person, and provides a stronger link to the source power of the universe. As he notes, “the symbols of mythology are not manufactured, they cannot be ordered, invented or permanently suppressed. They are spontaneous productions of the psyche” (p. 4). Consequently they point us towards a truth which escapes us as we live in the everyday world, and escape (somewhat) the censoring agent (the ego) of our conscious minds.
Campbell does feel that the modern world, which has debunked the myths of the past, and has not yet found its own mythology, is a mess, where each of us has little to guide us in our day to day existence.
In fact, the rituals of primitive society, and the ancient world, which enacted the myth in some way, or imposed some trauma on a young man or young woman, forced them to die and be reborn to their new life. There are tribal groups in Africa and South America, in which the young men, when they reach puberty, are “kidnapped” by the elders of the tribe, taken away from the village where their mothers might hear them, or where they might go for solace, and they are circumcised. This tearing away of the young men from the woman’s world and the intentional wounding mark the young men. They are now ready to be men, and hunt and raise families. Myth allows for a similar tearing away, vicariously at least. The hero is the one who shows us “the place of the breakthrough into abundance.” (p. 43) With such rituals absent (weakened at best – the Confirmation ceremony in the Catholic church involves the bishop slapping the young person desiring to be confirmed, but it’s little more than a tap), people don’t face the threshold guardians and move past them. Lacking a strong mythic sense, as well, modern men and women face life almost rudderless.
The mythic hero does not always succeed. There are plenty of heroes who fail, but their failure may likewise teach us a lesson. Campbell notes that tragedy “celebrates the mystery of dismemberment, which is life in time” (p. 25). Modern romance novels do the same. Viewed from the temporal plane, life is tragic – we all die, we all get sick, and many of us suffer all sorts of losses in our life. Viewed from eternity, which transcends time, time and its incumbent losses are seen all at once. The myths we need, and the heroes we need, move past the tragedy of life as we know it in the field of time and touch the eternal.
Campbell reminds us that the gods are meant as icons, not as ends in themselves. The delight of the story is meant to grab us, and lead us past the stories and their particulars to a deeper truth. This is a point that got my attention – as a literature student (and I include films here too), it is often the particulars, the artistic specifics that I focus on. Though not stuck on the stories as “true” in the way that historical narrative might be judged true, and appreciating the metaphoric nature of language and literature, I find it difficult to get past the particulars to the universal. At one point, Campbell states that “once the hidden profile has been discovered, myth is the penultimate, silence the ultimate word” (p. 355). In other words, once you “get it,” you can get past myth to its reference point – ultimacy itself. This is no doubt what Xenophanes had in mind when he pointed to god beyond all forms and categories that Greek myths sadly clothe in the guise of Apollo and Ares and Athena and Aphrodite and Zeus and the rest. Though I can appreciate that sentiment, and accept it, I find that I am caught up in the story when listening to or reading it. For me to dwell on the transcendent I cannot use myth to help – its details are too enticing and I get stuck on them.
Campbell quotes Ovid’s Metamorphoses:
“Nothing retains its own form; but Nature, the greater renewer, ever makes up forms from forms. Be sure there’s nothing perishes in the whole universe; it does but vary and renew its form” (p. 243 – from Book XV, 252-255).
I have the sense that Ovid, like me, realizes there is something beyond the veil of this world, but that doesn’t keep him from the pure joy he takes in the particular stories he tells, and the particular spin he puts on those stories.
In discussing the hero’s journey, Campbell spends quite a bit of time on that important first step, crossing the threshold. Often, in the story, the threshold is guarded by some ogre, or hag. Those figures mark the threshold as a danger spot. He points out that Pan was such a figure for the Greeks, that Pan was the spirit that represented the world beyond the safety of the village. Once the hero reaches the threshold, faces his fears (all of which represent his ego and its desire to keep the hero on this side of the threshold), and passes the threshold, he is no longer in a safe zone, but in the place where the adventure takes place. Ultimately we all find ourselves facing our threshold demons; unfortunately, we don’t always have the courage to pass through, a necessary stage in our development. If we fail this test (though it’s never just one test), we find ourselves stuck – if this happens repeatedly through life, we may find ourselves old and bitter, moaning about missed opportunities.
Even more interestingly, Campbell speaks of societies and cultures being stuck as well. When a culture has grown old and is dying, there is no saving it. All that can happen for the good is for there to be a rebirth. “There is nothing we can do, except be crucified – and resurrected; dismembered totally, and then reborn.” When we look on change from an historical perspective, it is usually seen as a long, arduous and painful journey. Usually the old guard does not want to change, and the change may come about only through force (consider the French Revolution, or our own, or our Civil War). It’s because change is scary, and though it may promise great things, we find ourselves readier to stay tied to the ghosts and demons we know than risk it on a better tomorrow.
When Joseph Campbell died in 1987, I think the world he saw was one full of hope and promise. In the nearly 20 years since his death, there seems to me to be an ever decreasing desire to face our threshold demons and break through to a better world. We seem more desirous than ever to retrench, and to see so much of the world as our enemy. Campbell would note that when we break through the threshold and see the world from a different perspective, the figures we saw as demons we see again as gods, and the enemy we see we see again as ourselves or our friend. Like never before, in an increasingly polarized world, we need that sort of breakthrough.