The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The famous first line of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” (25). In this novel, the heroine undergoes the common trajectory of human life, not a blissful romance but a course of loss and “spiritual dismemberment” (25).

Certain ancient traditions celebrated “katharsis (‘a purification of the community from the taints and poisons of the past year, the old contagion of sin and death’)” (26). Campbell invokes this term to consider the universal flow of life from one person to another and how one might mark death with acceptance and joy rather than fear. He remarks how modern literature takes a clear-eyed look at disappointment, disaster, and death. Folk fairy tales, however, end happily, and various cultures mistakenly apply that ending to suggest the nature of the afterlife. Happy endings, or comedy as a storytelling tradition, surpass “the universal tragedy of man” (28).

Tragedy and comedy are dual forms of life to be taken together and embraced as paired forms of redemption. Heroic tales make concrete the psychic transition from tragedy to comedy. Once the hero conquers the monster, light, glory, joy, and love prevail despite the remaining presence of darkness, danger, and death. “Like happy families,” Campbell concludes, “the myths and the worlds redeemed are all alike” (30).

The “nuclear unit of the monomyth” reflects traditional rites of passage, which are, simply, “separation—initiation—return” (30). The hero passes from the mundane into the fantastic, wars with monsters, and returns victorious to the mundane, equipped to empower others.

The myth of the Buddha, adapted from the Jataka, illustrates this formula. According to the myth, Prince Gautama Sakyamuni leaves his palace and becomes a poor, wandering monk who develops an advanced meditation practice. After he tosses a golden bowl into a river and it floats upstream, the gods anoint his journey with divine fanfare. The Buddha sits beneath the Bo Tree, or Tree of Enlightenment, and the god Kama-Mara arrives to attack and distract him. When the Buddha refuses to move or break his concentration, the gods rejoice, and he is granted perfect enlightenment over the course of that evening. He spends the next several weeks relishing his new revelations. The god Brahma tells him he must share his message with humanity.

Similarly, the biblical Old Testament as well as other Jewish myth tells the story of Moses, who leads the people of Israel out of Egypt and into the wilderness. He ascends Mount Sinai and communes with God amid earthquakes, storms, and the unveiling of God’s throne in heaven surrounded by countless angels. God gives Moses the Ten Commandments and bids him to lead the people to the land of Israel.

These legends, along with many others, demonstrate the recurrence of the themes of separation, initiation, and return. Cultures use these narratives to explain great windfalls such as the introduction of fire to humanity, the founding of Rome, and the gift of Buddha’s Good Law.

Campbell next outlines the ensuing chapters, which track the hero’s journey in sequence and follow the monomyth structure outlined in this section. He notes that the hero often possesses special abilities. The world the hero leaves and ultimately saves might suffer from a variety of ills and might be a large or small community. Though their applications vary, these trends recur throughout myths of all kinds.

Campbell outlines the second part of the book, “The Cosmogonic Cycle” (38), or the birth and death of the world as witnessed by the hero. Through this part of his journey, the hero discovers the divinity that dwells in himself and in others.

Part of the hero’s mission is to unleash new energy upon the world, which flows from a divine source like Buddha’s Immovable Spot. This place, which Campbell calls The World Navel, is the center of creation for the whole world.

Campbell describes a Pawnee ritual during a Hako ceremony, in which the priest draws a circle on the ground to represent the eagle’s nest and the site of life-generation on the horizon. Other circles can be found in world mythologies and spiritual practices, such as the hub of the celestial wheel or the Universal Mother’s womb. These Navels circulate life and nourishment.

Similarly, the site of a hero’s enlightenment often becomes the site of a temple. Muslims around the world honor the hub of their wheel, Mecca, with thrice-daily prayers made while bowing toward the city.

The “ubiquitous” World Navel is also the source of good and evil alike. Not all gods are good or beautiful, and enlightenment surpasses the bounds of strict moral codes. An excerpted Yoruba legend from West Africa illustrates the seemingly amoral tendencies of certain gods. The “trickster-divinity Edshu” (44) wears a four-sided hat painted four different colors. Edshu stands between two men so that each can only observe one of the hat’s colors. The men later argue about the color of the hat and bring their dispute to a public forum. Edshu arrives, revealing his trick. This tale illustrates a “Divine Comedy” orchestrated by an unflinching god who sits above mortals.