The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Campbell’s analogy between human consciousness and the world of myth continues: the creation of the universe in mythology is like the waking of the human mind. There is a flow of energy from the ultimate source of power to the created world in stories, just as the unconscious supplies vitality to the waking mind. These ultimate sources, in myth, are often identified as gods, although they too pass away when the universe disintegrates into its power source at the end of time.

The cosmogonic cycle, or the creation and disintegration of the world, recurs within single mythologies, mirroring waking and sleeping. Certain Aztec myth marks the end of each world according to the four elements of creation, whereas Stoic mythology depicts a cosmogonic cycle that ends with total destruction in fire and regenerates itself exactly as it was before.

Jain mythology depicts a past in which humans were two miles tall, born in marital couples, and enjoyed incredibly long life spans. Before this period, people were four miles tall and had every need filled by what The Heart of Jainism terms “‘wish-fulfilling trees’ (kalpa vriksha)” (262). This was preceded by an even more blissful time. Jain imagery depicts these periods as the 12 spokes of a wheel. Each period possesses greater pain and suffering, and the humans decrease in size and lose years from their lifespan. Meanwhile, redeeming Jain saviors and prophets intervene in each era. The contemporary age is the fifth and filled with disease, vice, and death. The sixth age, following this one, will be even worse.

After these six “descending” periods will come six “ascending” periods. Over this time, the world will return gradually to its blissful state, and humans will grow once again into towering, resplendent creatures with every need provided. After the world ascends to this place, the wheel will turn again, and the descent will recur. Hindu teaching similarly pictures four ages of decreasing quality that will end in an apocalyptic destruction and millennia-long void. Campbell remarks on the commonalities among Asian myths or the philosophy.

This general cosmogonic cycle parallels the states of consciousness for a sleeper: wakefulness, dreaming, and unconscious slumber. Before creation, the universe exists as a void akin to deep slumber; the universe emerges as a dream and is brought into full existence like the state of conscious wakefulness. Then, just as it emerged, the universe collapses through dream into the void once more. Campbell connects the three sounds of the holy Hindu syllable AUM with these three states of the cycle (the fourth sound is silence, representing the unknown). The myth is a guide for humankind to find this silence, which permeates all corners of the universe.

In the Zohar, medieval Jewish writers of the Kabbalah tradition figure this silence as “The Aged of the Aged, the Unknown of the Unknown” (267), or “‘The Great Face,’ Makroprosopos” (268), portrayed in profile with a white beard from which the universe emanates. “‘The Little Face,’ Mikroprosopos” (269), rests underneath the beard and is called God. The former is the silent void, the latter the great power source.

All stories of creation are also stories of destruction. The universe will be born, reach its peak, and diminish. This is tragic, but it is also hopeful, since all matter comes from an eternal source that never changes or passes away. In mythology, these stories are inherently confounding, just as dreams are confounding. Indeed, myths necessarily lie outside the bounds of predictable thought, as their images speak to “the unfathomable reach beyond” (270).

Campbell quotes a Maori chant that depicts the emanation of life from the void. Many of the forces evoked are various voids, speaking to the mysterious layers lying behind the visible created world, which might be perceived in meditation. Likewise, The Great Face of Kabbalistic myth creates nine lights, also pictured as a tree turned upside down, in the process of making the world. Ancient Samkhya philosophers saw each primary element rising one from the other: first the void, then space, air, fire, water, and earth. Campbell remarks, “With each element evolves a sense-function capable of perceiving it: hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell respectively” (271-72).

A quoted Chinese creation story from Chinesische Märchen shows the void as a chaotic mist, out of which come “five ancients” that represent the five elements. Each ancient fashions their respective element of creation, giving rise to the earth, bodies of water, sky, outer space, fire, animals, and people.

After the creation myth depicts the creation of the cosmos at large, it moves to the generation of life within the cosmos. This is often pictured as a sexual act between male and female that leads to a birth. Campbell quotes another piece of Maori myth, which depicts the elements of the cosmos coupling and birthing new forms. A Pacific Island leader named Paiore figures the world as a set of three layers that come from “Te Tumu, ‘The Foundation’ (a male), and Te Papa, ‘The Stratum Rock’ (a female)” (274). The sky and earth come from these elements, and their marriage produces humans. The humans break into the second layer of the world (and, later, the third) to fill it with plants, animals, and themselves.

This “cosmic egg” appears in many other myths from around the world, such as in the Hindu Upanishads Campbell quotes. Contemporary scientists also describe matter and biological systems as similar phenomena to the cosmic egg. In mythology, the egg often cracks, and out steps a human form that is the power source of creation. In Tahitian tradition he is called Ta’aroa; he shatters his shell to make the universe. Various other mythologies picture the creator in many ways, including an excerpted Hindu story in which the cosmos begins as a human Self. The Self despises his loneliness, so he grows and rends himself into a male and female. Their union produces mankind, in addition to the animal kingdom.

Campbell notes how the concept of individuality underrides this myth, in addition to many other myths. The Kabbalistic text Zohar states that souls are both male and female before they come into the world and divide themselves between separate bodies. Marriage, then, reconciles what was separated. Indeed, Campbell continues, no created thing is separate, but all are bonded together by the beautiful Imperishable.

As Campbell has illustrated, the universe begins with one substance becoming a multitude of forms. These forms participate in the further cultivation of the world, as in the Pacific Island myth of people holding up the sky; however, the one source, the “Unmoved Mover,” remains the chief architect of all creation.

When myths focus on the creative acts of the Unmoved Mover, the forms of creation emanate freely and in a lively manner. However, when the humans take over the narrative, the created elements resist them. Campbell outlines the two possibilities of the myth from this point of tension. Either the gods keep creating and maintain a hand in what they made, or they abandon or impede the continuation of creation (282).

Campbell selects another Maori myth to illustrate the latter narrative path. In it, the married couple Sky and Earth (Rangi, male, and Papa, female) bear children who cannot escape their mother’s womb because their father obstructs their passage out. They conspire to kill Mother Earth to escape, but one child, Tane-mahuta, recommends separating the parents. Tane-mahuta rises and pushes his father away with his feet, which is the sky, while his head of forests remains on his mother.

The Greek writer Hesiod constructs a similar tale, with Ouranos, Gaia, and Kronos as father, mother, and child whose conflict creates the world. Likewise, ancient Egyptian myth depicts the sky as female, earth as male, and child as Shu, the air god who lifts one from the other. A Sumerian myth tells a similar creation story.

Other traditions also feature murderous children in their creation myths. The created elements hate the power that produced them and massacre it, just as hero tales depict dragon-slayings. An Old Norse Eddic tale focuses on a giant named Ymir who creates during sleep. Ymir is killed by its offspring, and Ymir’s dismembered parts become the elements of nature.

Marduk is the avenging sun god of Babylonian tradition. Campbell quotes the Babylonian myth “The Epic of Creation,” in which Marduk battles with Tiamat, a monstrous being who represents the void. Tiamat surrenders herself for Marduk to slay and dismember her. He splits her in two, arranging her so that her body hems in the sea and the sky. Campbell points out that this conflict might deceive some readers into calling Marduk victorious, but Tiamat still underlies all of creation as the ultimate void and a willing participant in her dismemberment.

This difficult truth mirrors the paradoxes that undergird all mythology. The source of power in any mythology sees a sensible, peaceable cosmogonic cycle, but created beings see chaos and suffering (288). Biblical figures Adam and Eve pass from one perspective to the other in their fall from grace after eating the forbidden fruit.

Campbell turns to the creation stories of “undeveloped folk mythologies” (289) in this final section. They often depict a creator stepping from the void to make the world, which remains unfinished at the end of the tale.

One such creator is Old Man of Blackfeet tribal tradition. Old Man wanders the landscape, whimsically creating animals, plants, and bodies of water. Even rock formations are the product of his nap time and the act of stumbling as he walks. He forms a woman and child from clay, which come to life over a few days. The woman and Old Man wager over the manner of death for human life. Old Man decides that humans will die and not live forever at the sign of a stone sinking in a river.

Campbell observes that the tone of this excerpted myth is curious: It seems the Blackfeet might have told this story as more entertaining fairy tale than foundational myth. Other myths display similar playful qualities, such as the Maoris’ “burlesque of the cosmic egg” (292), the Kamchatkans’ attributing variations in the landscape to God’s snowshoes, and the Kirghiz tale of a giant ox that made lakes by rending the earth with its horns.

Still other folk tales of creation introduce a “clown figure working in continuous opposition to the well-wishing creator” (292). The Melanesians, a native Australian tribe, describe a mysterious creator who draws two men on the ground and places his blood on them so that they come to life. One makes two women by dropping nuts from a coconut tree onto the ground, and the other performs the same act but creates unattractive women. Similarly, the clownish brother creates a shark in an attempt to mirror his brother’s Thum-fish that led a great collection of fish toward shore. The shark eats all the fish.

This myth illustrates the basic principles of good and evil, with the shark-creating brother as the clownish devil. In the folklore of native Siberians, a devil named Erlik tricks a dog commissioned to watch over the souls of humanity. Erlik trades the hairless dog a golden coat in exchange for the people, and Erlik spits on them. God returns and turns the human body inside out, which renders the spittle a permanent stain on the vital organs. Campbell concludes by remarking on the similarities between folk tales of creation and the myths of “higher iconographies” (295).