The Hero with a Thousand Faces

This section concerns a circumstance in which the hero must abscond from the land of enlightenment back to his home. This might occur because the supernatural guardian advised against the attainment of a certain boon, or perhaps due to the gods’ displeasure at the hero’s decision to return.

The Welsh story of Gwion Bach features this hero stirring a magical cauldron at the behest of Tegid the Bald and his wife Caridwen at the bottom of a lake. The cauldron contains a magical potion of Caridwen’s making, and Gwion Bach accidentally tastes it. He receives psychic foreknowledge of the future and escapes the lake, but cruel Caridwen follows him. Both turn into various animals as she pursues Gwion Bach, until she, in the form of a hen, swallows him, in the form of a stalk of wheat. She gives birth to Gwion Bach nine months later and decides to spare his life, casting his infant form to sea.

A traditional tale of the Siberian Buriat foregrounds the community’s first shaman, Morgon-Kara, who outsmarts the High God of Heaven in a test of wits. God obtains the soul of a man and places it in a bottle, covering it with his thumb. Morgon-Kara rises to heaven on his drum, finds the soul in the bottle, and transforms into a wasp in order to sting the High God of Heaven. God removes his thumb from the bottle, and the soul flies out. Once the shaman and the recovered soul reach earth, the High God of Heaven splits Morgon-Kara’s drum down the middle in retaliation.

The next tale presents a variation on the magic flight, in which the hero loses something in the land of the divine as he hurries out. In the tradition of the Maori of New Zealand, a woman swallows her two sons. Her husband enchants the sea so that his wife remains alone on a distant mountain as he takes the children to safety.

A Grimm story pictures a waterhag who captures a young brother and sister and bids them to do onerous chores at her home. The children escape while the hag is out, but the hag pursues them. The children fling a series of objects behind them as they go. The tossed hairbrush, comb, and mirror all transform into great obstructions that delay the hag as the children successfully escape.

Campbell acknowledges that the world beyond the veil is incredibly dangerous. Those who practice yoga, for example, must do so with guided meditation. A Carl Jung quote details the use of pictures and symbols so that humans will not risk direct encounters with a dangerous God.

In his pursuit of the Golden Fleece, the classical hero Jason receives aid from Medea, who is infatuated with him. After Jason wins his great trial with Medea’s help and obtains the Fleece, they escape to his boat, the Argo. Medea’s father, King Aeëtes, flies after them but is waylaid once he sees the dismembered body of his son Apsyrtos, whom Jason killed at Medea’s urging.

The “Records of Ancient Matters” from Japan sees a magic flight by Izanagi and Izanami, who are brother and sister as well as husband and wife. Izanagi travels to the underworld, or the land of the Yellow Stream, to rescue his wife Izanami, who commands him not to look at her when he arrives. Izanagi beholds her decaying body, and the Ugly Female pursues him. He throws down objects that transform into food, distracting the Ugly Female. Izanami deploys a great underworld army after her brother, who tosses peaches from the land of the living at them. Izanami arrives, and Izanagi places a great rock between them so that he cannot view her. The story illustrates the divide between life and death, symbolized by the rock, and how mortals are best kept from knowing what lies in the underworld.

Like the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice, this story speaks to the possibility of recovering a soul from beyond the grave. In both stories, this possibility is shattered by a small incident. In other stories in which this flight of the beloveds proves successful, the ending feels not human but supernatural and, therefore, more difficult to believe.

Another party may need to accompany the hero back to his home, beckoning him from the heightened new world. A hero such as Muchukunda may refuse the summons, whereas others may need to be rescued.

Campbell returns to the folk tale of the Raven who dives into the belly of the whale-cow. Inside the belly is a room with a girl and a lamp. A tube of the whale’s oil runs along the ceiling, which the girl forbids Raven from touching. When she is out of the room, Raven takes a piece of the tube to eat, causing the whale to toss about and perish. He hears men outside studying the whale’s body, and when they cut pieces of its flesh, Raven emerges from the belly but leaves his fire sticks inside. Someone in the crowd finds them, but Raven says they are bad luck and tells everyone to run. He returns to recover his fire sticks and eat the whale by himself.

Another Japanese story from the “Records of Ancient Matters” describes the conflict between the sun goddess Amaterasu and her brother, the storm god Susanowo. Susanowo is a troublemaker who upsets his sister so much that Amaterasu withdraws into a cave, taking the sunshine with her, which sends the world into darkness and chaos. The gods stage a celebration outside the cave full of magical objects, and when the goddess peeks out, one of the gods says a new deity has surpassed Amaterasu. Amaterasu sees the deity, but it is her own image in a mirror. She approaches, bringing the light with her, and the gods block the mouth of the cave so that she cannot reenter. This story explains the sun’s temporary retreat during the evening.

This is one of a handful of mythologies—including those from South Arabia, Germany, Siberia, and North America—casting the sun as a female. This may derive from these cultures’ “certain tenderness toward the lovely gift of light” (213). It also contains symbols (such as a tree, sword, mirror, and rope obstructing the mouth of the cave) that resonate across traditions. Therein Campbell sees the World Axis and pictures of renewal and resurrection.

He returns to the Sumerian story of the goddess Inanna, who stands nude before the judges of the underworld and is turned to a corpse. Her messenger Ninshubur comes to rescue Inanna from the domain of her sister, Ereshkigal, Queen of Death. Ninshubur commissions the god Enki for help, and Enki makes creatures that carry immortal nourishment to Inanna’s body. Inanna arises and leaves the underworld with the dead and demons following her.

In the rescue from without, the supernatural aid continues to assist the hero. The hero, enlightenment and boon intact, must now cross the threshold into the world of the real.

The existence of a threshold assumes a fundamental difference between the mystical world and the hero’s everyday world. However, Campbell identifies how the fantastic realm is merely a symbol of the commonplace, asserting that the two are actually the same. Entrance into the mystical is terrifying because it obliterates the self, but courageous heroes cross that threshold and find the divine.

When the hero brings back his boon, it may seem irrelevant to everyday concerns at home. Humans inevitably mishandle the trophy, necessitating another hero to complete the journey again. The hero faces a difficult task in communicating his enlightenment to the ordinary world, which is governed by binary thinking, limited language, and earthly physics. He runs the risk of being misunderstood, scorned, and made the fool.

Washington Irving’s hero Rip Van Winkle, for example, wakes from a many-year slumber to find himself and the world around him changed. He is older and has a foot-long beard, attracting a curious crowd that follows him through town. They ask his political affiliation, and he blesses the King of England, offending the crowd, which drives him away.

An Irish folk tale follows a man named Oisin through a land of slumber, and he emerges changed. An enchanted princess compels him to marry her to break the spell that changed her head into that of a pig. Oisin agrees, and the couple reigns over the Land of Youth. He travels to see his family back home but cannot dismount his horse and touch the land, or else he will transform into an old man. When he reaches his homeland, Oisin finds a hidden horn in the ground and topples from his horse as he attempts to grab it. He turns into an old man. Many mythologies like this one draw distinctions between time in the world of the gods versus time in the world of humanity. Anyone who experiences both eternity and temporality must bring the serenity of the former into the fleeting pains of the latter.

The tale of Oisin, with his horse as protection, mirrors other myths in which certain people should not touch the ground. These include the Mexican emperor Montezuma, who was carried above the ground; Persian kings who walked on their own special carpets; and Ugandan royals who did not leave their dwellings and were carried on men’s’ shoulders. Certain cultures believe the physical manifestation of enlightenment can vanish if the hero touches the ground or mishandles it. Campbell finds this philosophy in certain kinds of dress that mark certain people in the modern era, such as a priest’s collar or a woman’s wedding ring.

These symbols of protection do serve a purpose in many myths, as shown by the disaster that occurs when they are lost or destroyed. Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the source text of many of Campbell’s examples from Roman mythology, is a vivid reminder of the clash between divine and mundane when the insulating force is removed.

Whereas Rip Van Winkle and Oisin had bitter returns to the real world, Kamar al-Zaman has a happier ending upon his return from deep sleep. The demons Maymunah and Dahnash place Princess Budur in bed with the slumbering prince to compare their looks. Their dispute continues, and Maymunah summons another demon called an Ifrit to judge which young royal is more attractive. The Ifrit says they should wake each person in turn and judge according to which one falls in love with the other. Kamar al-Zaman, when he wakes, is enchanted by the sleeping Princess Budur, but the princess is possessed by a greater desire when she sees the sleeping prince. Maymunah wins, but both royals awake alone in their beds in different countries, desperate to find each other. Each heart “insists on its destiny” (228) and fastens to its romantic revelation from the enchanted world as it awakes in the everyday.

The master is one who can hold the qualities of the eternal mystic world and the world of time in tension with one another. Campbell retells the story of Jesus’s transfiguration as an example of this mastery. On a mountaintop, with three friends as witnesses, Jesus is covered in light and joined by two heavenly figures. The voice of God speaks with pleasure over Jesus, and the disciples cower on the ground. Jesus rouses them, his heavenly aspect vanished. The disciples saw the eternal in a few moments and experience a rapid return to the everyday. Christ occupies the role of supernatural aid, hero, deity, and rescuer. This event not only illustrates a mastery of the two worlds, but “a profounder, very much profounder, penetration of the depths” (230). Campbell adds that the revelation of its narrative content is the focus, not its historical accuracy or lack thereof.

The Hindu Bhagavad Gita contains a similar tale of Prince Arjuna and Krishna, the god Vishnu incarnate. The prince asks to see Vishnu in his heavenly splendor, and Vishnu reveals his incredible celestial image. The prince bows down and says he has seen everything in God and acknowledges Vishnu’s preeminence in the universe. Prince Arjuna, about to begin a battle, returns from this vision with new eyes, seeing his enemies with compassion and denouncing violence. Both armies rush forward, and Vishnu opens his mouth to swallow them all. Arjuna asks Vishnu for mercy on their behalf, but Vishnu urges the prince to take up his sword. Prince Arjuna bows and asks to see Vishnu’s resplendent form again. Vishnu comforts him and transforms into Krishna once more.

Prince Arjuna receives a revelation in the form of the “Cosmic Man” (234). The Cosmic Man typically appears as someone like the beholder, in terms of race, class, and gender.

Campbell repeats that a symbol is not the substance of a story but rather a key to a higher truth. He dissuades placing final significance on the gods of any myth, and quotes Thomas Aquinas to emphasizes his point: “For then alone do we know God truly […] when we believe that He is far above all that man can possibly think of God” (236). Those who witness the master of both worlds, whether Christ or Krishna, are typically devotees, such as Jesus’s disciples or Prince Arjuna. These followers abandon self-interest in pursuit of greater knowledge. They abound throughout mythologies as anonymous figures like sages, wanderers, beggars, bards, and gods in disguise.

Campbell returns to Prince Arjuna and the battlefield from the Bhagavad Gita. The returning hero may withdraw from battle or justify his wrongdoing in light of his supposed exceptionalism. However, the ideal takeaway of these myths is to combine the self with divine knowledge and carry this into the temporal world. The hero must detach from the results of his actions and entrust them to the divine. In so doing, he is its joyous vessel.

Campbell also returns to the story of Gwion Bach, whom the queen Caridwen bears as an infant and tosses into the sea. A fisherman named Elphin finds the baby and places him on his horse. The baby, now called Taliesin, recites a poem and reveals his power of speech in the palace of the king, Elphin’s father. In the king’s court, Taliesin enchants the heralds and bards to mimic his childish, silly song. One of the king’s lords realizes Taliesin’s prank and brings the infant before the king. Taliesin tells of his epic past throughout the history of the world.

This song speaks to the “Imperishable” that ties Taliesin and all his listeners together, a self that exists across time and space. The enlightened hero champions existence and does not fear the changes time brings, nor the vastness of eternity, because all existence is one. Campbell concludes by quoting Grimm’s tale of Sleeping Beauty, who wakes from her slumber to her husband, descends the stairs, and finds the entire palace brought back to life.