The Hero With a Thousand Faces is a journey through the world’s mythological traditions, from the ancient Egyptians, to the Romans, the Hindu and Buddhist legends of the east, and the folk-tales and foundation myths of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Oceania.
It explores the common themes and story elements that define the world’s mythologies—though cultures are separated by vast gulfs of space and time, they all tell their stories in similar ways, using the same essential mythological template: the hero’s journey.
The archetypal myth is that of the hero’s journey, which details the exploits of an exalted figure such as a legendary warrior or king. But the hero can also start out as an obscure figure of humble origins, on the fringes of society. Frequently, this hero is born to lowly circumstances in a remote corner of the world and is the product of immaculate conception and virgin birth. Thus, they start out with some essential element of the gods already inside them.
The hero sets out on a journey to acquire some object or attain some sort of divine wisdom. This can be something material (like Arthur’s quest for the Holy Grail) or something with far greater spiritual weight (like the Buddha’s journey to find ultimate enlightenment). The hero undergoes great trials and tribulations during the course of their quest, undergoes a spiritual (and sometimes literal) death and rebirth, and transforms into an entirely new being. They gain new powers, and with those powers, achieve their goal—they receive the ultimate boon. They then return home to share this heavenly reward with their people—and in doing so, redeem all mankind.
Although the hero’s journey is often filled with daring exploits, the slaying of fantastical monsters, and unions with strange and beautiful goddesses, it is at heart a deeply introspective and inward-looking adventure, one with profound spiritual and psychological implications. Through their arduous trial, the hero learns new things about himself or herself and discovers hidden strengths that were dormant within them the entire time—in fairy tales, this is often made literal by the revelation of the hero to have been “the Chosen One” or “the King’s son.” These new (but latent) powers enable a thorough transformation of the hero’s outward being and psyche.
When viewed this way, mythology is deeply egalitarian. It tells us who we are and the rewards that await us if we would only set aside our focus on the day-to-day humdrum of life and embrace the hero’s journey. The hero, far from being just a literary character of long-dead civilizations, symbolizes the great godly potential within all of us.
The Hero With a Thousand Faces breaks down this mythological template even further and also explores the creation and destruction stories that mankind has told since before the age of recorded history, from cultures all over the world. A few key themes emerge.
The core structure of mythology is called the monomyth. It involves three rites of passage—separation, initiation, and return. From the myths of the ancient Egyptians and the medieval Arthurian legend to the folk-tales of the native Maoris of New Zealand, the pattern of the hero’s journey usually follows this cycle: a separation from the world he or she has always known (embarking on the quest), gaining some spiritual or other-worldly power, and a return in which they share the boon of the new power with humanity.
There are familiar beats throughout world-legend—the call to action; the initial reluctance of the hero; the aid of a supernatural helper; the crossing of the threshold into the world of the unknown; union with the mother-goddess; the slaying of the father-god; the return to the land of the living; and the sharing of the ultimate boon.
Myths also point us to our place in the cosmos, our role in the great movement of the universe. Just as the monomyth shows the death, birth, and transformation of the individual in the form of the hero, so does mythology show the workings of all time and space—the origin story of the universe, and the means by which it will be destroyed and rebuilt. This is often represented as a universe without end, a universal round.
In a version of this cycle told among the Aztecs of pre-Columbian Mexico, each of the four elements—water, earth, air, and fire—in their turn marked the end of an age of the world:
In the cosmogonic cycle of the Jains, eternity is represented as a spoked wheel, with each spoke representing one of the endlessly repeated ages of the universe, continuing in a permanent cycle.
Myths are a society’s outward manifestations of inner conflicts and desires—they represent the expression of unconscious fears and desires. Here are common elements of myths that relate to psychological tensions or needs:
In modern times, this need to express unconscious desires is filled by the psychoanalyst, who analyzes and interprets dreams (a pure expression of the unconscious) and gives them meaning and structure. This is, in fact, a deeply ancient and profoundly mythic function— the psychoanalyst, like the medicine man and bard of old, helps us gain a deeper understanding of ourselves, our world, and our relationship to the cosmos. When we open ourselves up on the therapist’s couch, we are going into the furthest corners of the mind—we are, in effect, undergoing our own hero’s journey.
Unlike the ancients, we do not have the benefit of allegory and mythology to help us make sense of the bubbling up of our subconscious. As a secular, rational society, we increasingly lack the language to process this—psychoanalysis may be the closest thing, but it is not a substitute for the power of mythology and religion. Indeed, we have rationalized and argued our gods away.
With the coming of secularization and rationalization, supernatural elements are often played down or meant to be interpreted simply as allegory or instructive fable. It is easy for this to happen to myths in modern, science-driven society, because it is easy to prove that the myths aren’t literally “true.” As history, biography, and science, mythology is obviously nonsense. But to make this observation is to miss the point about what myths are and what purpose they serve for the human experience. They are about the endless journey of the soul, the adventure into the furthest recesses of the self.
It is only through studying these ancient soothsayers and shamans and the dead gods they once worshipped that we can truly grasp our fullest humanity.
Mythology is still relevant. It binds us closer and provide us with a shared sense of community. Though we may lead atomized lives as husbands, wives, sons, daughters, professionals, and members of this or that nationality, we are bound together through shared myths. The ceremonies that derive from mythology, those of birth, initiation, marriage and death, remind us that we are part of something much larger than ourselves. We are only a cell, an organ of a much larger being. This is as true for us as it was for the ancients. Like Odysseus, like the Buddha, like Cuchulainn, great marvels and unfathomable transformations await the modern hero who heeds the mythic call.
The Hero With a Thousand Faces is an exploration of the power of myth and storytelling, from the ancient world to modern times, and spanning every human culture across the world. All peoples, and indeed, all individuals, make sense of the world they live in and grapple with the experience of living by telling stories. Myths are the foundation of all human physical and intellectual pursuits, be they religious, economic, social, or cultural, because these myths tell us who we are and what destinies we are here to fulfill.
The heroes of mythology, whether it’s King Arthur, Odysseus, the Buddha, the Chinese emperor Huang Ti, or Moses, share similar characteristics.
They are often figures who have unique talents or gifts and hold an exalted position within their society—they are renowned scholars, warriors, or kings. But the opposite can also be true: the archetypal, or composite hero can also start out as an obscure figure of humble origins, on the fringes of society. But whether they start out as prince or pauper, they set out on their journey to address some sort of need, to fill some kind of spiritual void. In simple romance tales or fairy tales, this can be nothing more than obtaining a golden ring or the hand of the fair princess, while in myths with deeper theological undertones (like the story of Christ), the hero sets out to redeem and renew the spiritual life of the entire world and save it from falling into ruin.
When the hero returns with their newly obtained powers (earned through great physical and spiritual trial), we see that this spark of divinity was within the hero the whole time—but it could only be discovered through the journey. We see this in tales where the hero is revealed to have been “the king's son,” and is now ready to assert his powers for the good of the kingdom. This speaks to the inherently introspective nature of the hero’s journey: the hero symbolizes the godly potential within all of us.
Although the settings and plots of myths vary widely across time and space, from the Homeric poems of ancient Greece to the enlightenment of the Buddha in India to the Christian story of the birth and resurrection of Christ, they all share a certain core set of themes, a standard template. This template is the mythological adventure of the hero—someone who sets out on a journey, often with the help of a sage guide and allies along the way, overcomes obstacles, and achieves some sort of transformation which he or she then shares with the world. This can either be the sharing of a literal bounty (bringing abundance and prosperity back to a hungry and impoverished community) or a deeper, more spiritual redemption of a wayward and fallen people.
The point in space and time where divine wisdom is imparted to the physical world is known as the World Navel. It is the center of the universe, the spot from which all life grows: it is the portal between our world and the world of the divine. It is represented in a variety of ways across religious and mythological traditions and throughout time—it is Rome in Catholicism, Mecca in Islam, or the Immovable Spot in the Buddha legend—but the idea is always the same.
This transformation of the hero comes from tapping into a source of deep spiritual wisdom, which is often revealed to have been within the soul or psyche of the hero from the beginning. Thus, the archetypal hero’s journey involves a spiritual awakening, an attainment of some piece of the gods. We see this, for example, in the story of Prometheus, who ascended to heaven and stole fire from the gods, which he then imparted to the world. We also see this in the myth of Jason, who sailed through the Clashing Rocks and defeated a dragon to obtain the Golden Fleece, which enabled him to win back his throne from a usurper.
The essential feature, the basic common denominator of mythology, is the monomyth. It is the core structure of the myths, the journey that all heroes must undergo. It involves three rites of passage—separation, initiation, return. From the myths of the ancient Egyptians and the medieval Arthurian legend to the folk-tales of the native Maoris of New Zealand, the pattern of the hero’s journey usually follows this cycle: a separation from the world he or she has always known (embarking on the quest), gaining some spiritual or other-worldly power, and a return in which they share the boon of the new power with humanity.
Let’s discuss two examples of myths to illustrate the pattern.
In the story of the Struggle of the Buddha, the founding story of Buddhism, we see all three elements of the monomyth. First, we see separation. The prince Gautama Sakyamuni (also known as Siddartha Gautama and the Future Buddha) escapes his ancestral home and cuts off his royal locks. He assumes the costume of a monk, wandering through the world and living a life of extreme austerity and asceticism. During this time, he transcends to the eight stages of meditation.
Next, we witness initiation. One day, he tosses an empty bowl into a river, and sees that the bowl flows upstream. This is the signal that his time of ultimate enlightenment is near at hand. He journeys to the Tree of Enlightenment, where he meets Kama-Mara, the god of love and death. Kama-Mara attempts to dislodge him from the tree, deploying all manner of fearsome monsters and deities at Gautama. But in repelling all of Mara’s onslaughts, the Future Buddha acquires knowledge of his previous existences, the power of omniscience, and a divine understanding of the chain of causation. He becomes Buddha, “The Enlightened One.”
Finally, we see return. After this victory, Buddha initially despairs of being able to communicate his message. But the god Brahma dissuades him from this pessimism and urges him to teach gods and men the path of enlightenment. Thus, Buddha returns to the cities and the hustle and bustle of the world from which he had originally come to share the gift of his knowledge and wisdom with the world.
The cycle also shows itself in a story more familiar to Western audiences, that of Moses in the Old Testament. After the Exodus from Egypt, Moses leads the Israelites through the wilderness of Sinai (departure). Moses ascends Mount Sinai to receive the Tables of the Law from God, who commands Moses to share them with the Israelites, the chosen people (initiation).
When Moses returns to share the word of God with the people, God shakes the bounds of the world, unleashing fire, earthquake, storm, and hail. God appears from all directions, to demonstrate His all-knowing, all-seeing power. The crowd gathers to see the spectacle, but there is room for all—God is one with the people Israel (return).
In ancient times, soothsayers, storytellers, and mystics helped people and societies make sense of the world they inhabited and of major life events by creating allegories and myths. These stories represented the conscious expression of unconscious fears and desires. Thus, myths were the outward manifestations of inner conflicts and desires, with the storyteller bridging the gap between the conscious and the unconscious.
In modern times, this role is played by the psychoanalyst. By analyzing and interpreting our dreams, psychoanalysts help give meaning and structure to our unspoken fears and desires and, in the process, help us gain a deeper—and more spiritual—understanding of ourselves, our world, and our relationship to our fellow human beings and the cosmos.
The journey of the mythological hero, the passage through trial and the entering of a new realm of consciousness, is nothing if not a grand act of introspection. The hero touches the metaphorical (sometimes literal) face of God and is so transformed. Likewise, when we open ourselves up on the therapist’s couch, we are going into the furthest corners of the mind—we are, in effect, undergoing our own hero’s journey. In this way, the power of mythology stretches its reach over the millennia and into our own time and place.
Explore the power of myth and storytelling.
Have you ever undergone a major transformation (either physical, spiritual, or emotional in nature)? Did you pass through any of the three stages (separation, initiation, return) of the hero’s journey? Briefly describe the experience and what it taught you about yourself.
Are there stories or myths from your culture or background that you believe are important to preserve? If so, summarize them here.
With this introduction in place, we’ll discuss each major stage of the monomyth in the hero’s journey.
In the first part of the monomyth, we meet our hero, our “man of destiny,” and witness their call to adventure. The call to adventure can come about through chance, even a mistake or blunder, which introduces the hero to a hidden world of possibility, guided by mysterious forces which the hero will come to understand through the course of their journey.
A frequent device employed in mythology is that of the herald or conjurer, the (often unlikely) figure who reveals the hero’s destiny and spurs them to action. The herald represents our subconscious, wherein all of our darkest fears are hidden. They are forcing us to confront things that we do not want to. As such, the herald is frequently a grotesque or unpleasant-looking figure, like a frog or a beast, or otherwise some veiled, mysterious, or unknown figure.
The hero is fascinated by the arrival of the herald. The herald represents the first conscious manifestation of the world of the subconscious. The world which the hero has known suddenly becomes devoid of value or interest—mimicking the universal experience of growing out of childhood and into the trials and adventures of our adult lives.
Sometimes the herald will reveal that the hero’s ultimate fate is to die, but in other cases the hero might be called upon to live for some higher purpose or reveal for humankind some grand religious awakening. In psychological terms, the hero is summoned to an awakening of the self, in which they will come face-to-face with their most suppressed fears and desires. But the journey will always represent a symbolic death and rebirth of the hero (and in some religious founding myths, like the famous crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, a literal death and rebirth). The hero has outgrown their old ideals and consciousness—these must be shed so that a new awakening can occur and a new threshold can be crossed.
In Arthurian legend, King Arthur encounters a great hart (an archaic Old English term for a deer) in the forest. He gives chase to the animal, vigorously riding his horse until it dies from exhaustion. Arthur then comes to a fountain, where he sets down his dead horse and becomes lost in deep thought.
While he’s sitting at the forest fountain, he hears what sounds like dozens of hounds coming toward him. But, it is not hounds—instead, it is some strange beast, the likes of which the King had never seen before. The noise of 30 hounds barking and snarling emanate from its stomach, although there is no noise while the beast drinks at the fountain. Arthur marvels at this sight: this is his herald, his signal to begin his quest.
We also see the herald motif in a myth from the Arapaho, a Native American people who lived in what is now Colorado and Wyoming. One day, an Arapaho girl sees a porcupine near a tree. Seeking its quills, she tries to attack it, but it runs away, scurrying up the tree. The girl chases the porcupine up to the very top of the tree, but when she reaches the top, the tree lengthens and the porcupine keeps climbing up, out of her reach.
Her friends beg her to come down to safety, but it is too late—the girl is on her quest now, under the influence of the porcupine. She continues to chase the porcupine, high up into the clouds, becoming barely visible to the onlookers below. The chase of the porcupine is the girl’s first step on her adventure.
If we revisit the story of the Buddha, we see one of the world’s most famous calls to action. The young prince Gautama Sakyamuni (Future Buddha) has been shielded from all knowledge of age, sickness, and death since the time of his birth—the father wants his son to assume the duties of the kingdom and not to be distracted by lofty spiritual or philosophical ideas. He wants the prince’s mind to be squarely on the concerns and experiences of the physical world, even granting him three palaces and thousands of concubines to keep his focus on secular matters.
The gods realize that the time has now come for the Future Buddha to begin his enlightenment, so they decide to send him a sign. One day, the prince ventures out and encounters the gods in the form of a decrepit old man, something he’d never been allowed to see before. He returns home, distraught after learning that everyone and everything that lives must eventually grow old. He has the same reaction upon seeing the gods in the form of a sick man one day and a dead man the next. Each time, the king increases the security around his son, trying to censor what he sees.
Finally, one day, the prince sees a well-dressed monk, created and placed there by the gods. The prince’s charioteer tells him that this is someone who has retired from the world. The prince is intrigued by the idea of following this man’s example. Thus, the seeds have been planted for the prince’s spiritual journey and his ultimate transformation—his death and rebirth as the Future Buddha.
A common feature of the monomyth is the hero’s refusal of the call, an initial reluctance to follow the steps of their destiny. In folk tales and myths across the world and throughout history, this refusal amounts to a selfish impulse to give up one’s narrow, immediate interests in the pursuit of spiritual awakening or even the salvation of the universe. In psychoanalytic terms, the refusal represents the clinging to infantile needs for security. Thus, the mother and father are the figures preventing true growth and transformation as the ego fails to develop and embrace the world outside the nursery.
The refusal can have grave consequences, both for the hero and for the wider world.
But there is hope for our reluctant heroes. While some of them, like those we’ve mentioned above, are bound to their fate, others are not. Not everyone who hesitates is forever beyond salvation or has lost their opportunity to fulfill their destiny.
This concept is well illustrated in the Arabian Nights tale of Prince Kamar al-Zaman and Princess Budur. In it, the prince has rejected his father’s demands that he take a wife, citing his desire to commit his life to Allah and avoid the pleasures (and sins) of the flesh.
The sultan is advised to broach the subject with his son in the presence of a great council of state, the rationale being that the prince will surely be goaded into accepting marriage under these conditions of immense social pressure. But Kamar al-Zaman again refuses his father and insults him in front of his great ministers and viziers. Enraged, Kamar al-Zaman’s father has him imprisoned in a decrepit tower, where he is to reflect upon the injury and shame he has brought upon his family.
Simultaneously, in distant China, Princess Budur—the beautiful daughter of the emperor—is similarly refusing marriage to all suitors her father presents to her. She even threatens to kill herself with a sword if he brings up the subject of matrimony again. Like the sultan, the emperor locks his daughter up and appoints ten old women to guard her. He then sends messengers to all the kingdoms of Asia, telling the rulers that Princess Budur has gone mad.
Both the hero and the heroine have taken the negative path and refused the call of destiny. They are a predestined match, but it will take a miracle to bring them together.
Some heroes respond to the call immediately. They are then guided along the path of adventure by a supernatural helper, as part of their first steps along the hero-journey. This helper is the personification of destiny. Often, this figure takes the form of an old man or old woman, like the fairy godmother, wizard, shepherd, smith, or woodsman figures of European fairy tales. But it can also take on other forms, like that of the Virgin Mary in many Christian saints legends from the Middle Ages. In the ancient mythology of Egypt and Greece, this figure was the boatman or ferryman, the conductor of souls to the afterworld—Thoth in Egyptian lore and Hermes-Mercury in Greek legend.
The supernatural helper is a benign, guiding figure who protects the hero and steers them along to meet their destiny. They exist to comfort the hero and assure them that, though the way may be unsure and frightening (as all of our journeys through life will be at one time or another) they will endure and come through their adventure stronger than when they initially set out.
In the mythology of the American Indians of the southwestern United States, there is Spider Woman, a grandmotherly figure. Spider Woman assists the Twin War Gods of the Navajo in their quest to reach their father, the Sun. She warns them that they must pass four places of danger and that their father may be hostile when they reach him (the theme of unconscious desire for the mother and hatred for the father is a common one across the world’s folklore and mythology). Spider Woman gives the Twin Gods an amulet and teaches them a magical formula that will negate their enemies’ anger.
We see the supernatural aid theme as we return to the story of Kamar al-Zaman and Budur. A shape-shifting figure named Maymunah crawls out of an old well in the tower where Kamar al-Zaman has been locked up by the sultan (the well symbolizes the unconscious and Maymunah the flowing up of unconscious thoughts into the realm of the conscious).
Finding the prince sleeping, she is awed by his physical beauty. Flying away, Maymunah encounters another supernatural being called Dahnash, who declares that he has just returned from China, where he has laid eyes on the most beautiful woman in the world—none other than Princess Budur. The two spirits argue about which royal youth is fairer. Each of them brings the other to their preferred candidate’s resting-place, but they cannot decide who is more beautiful unless they see them lying side-by-side.
Thus, these two otherworldly helpers begin the process of uniting the two fated youths, without either the prince or princess exerting any conscious will. The helpers are moving the hand of destiny.
With this aid and guidance in hand, the hero sets off on their adventure until they come to a point where they are further away from the world of comfort and familiarity than they have ever been before. Ahead of them lies the danger of the unknown. On an individual level, this aspect of the heroic monomyth parallels the dangers and uncertainties of growing out of childhood and away from the protection of one’s parents.
It is at this point that the hero meets the guardian of the threshold, who stands between the worlds of the known and the unknown. This guardian is often a fearsome and monstrous figure, who represents our fears of leaving our comfort zone and stepping out into the world beyond. The hero must overcome this obstacle, just as we all must overcome our fears of the unknown if we are to thrive and grow as human beings in the great adventure of life. Only those with competence and courage can overcome the danger.
The Greek god Pan is perhaps the best-known of this type of border guard. He instilled a wild, irrational fear into those who dared to cross into his realm (this is where the word “panic” comes from). To some, Pan would frighten his victims to death. But to those who paid him proper respect and homage, Pan would bestow bounty and wisdom.
A myth from India illustrates the threshold guardian story element. Returning from his military training to the city of his father, Prince Five-Weapons comes to the edge of a great forest, which he is warned not to enter. He is told by local villagers that an ogre named Sticky-Hair, who kills every man he sees, resides within.
The prince ignores these warnings and enters the forest where, sure enough, he encounters the ogre. He vows to slay the beast using his newly learned military skills and his five weapons. But the prince finds that each of the weapons merely sticks to the ogre’s hair (hence the name) when he hurls them. The prince then assaults the ogre with his bare hands and feet, only to find these, too, getting stuck in the ogre’s hair. The ogre is impressed by the prince’s bravery and asks him why he seems to lack any fear of death.
Prince Five-Weapons heartily replies that he has a thunderbolt within his belly as his final weapon—if the ogre eats him, both will perish. This thunderbolt is, in fact, the Weapon of Knowledge and the prince is none other than the Future Buddha in an earlier incarnation. The ogre is persuaded and decides to let him go. The monster has become self-denying—the first step on the path to enlightenment.
Next comes one of the most potent symbols of the hero’s death and rebirth—the common motif of the hero being inside the belly of the whale. This belly symbolizes the womb (also a temple); the darkness within represents death; and the hero’s emergence parallels the act of birth (or rebirth).
As we mentioned above, the hero-story is always one of self-annihilation. This obliteration of the hero’s old form and the transformation into something new is akin to the act of a worshiper entering a temple. When we enter a sacred space—whether church, mosque, Shinto shrine, or pagan grove—we are leaving the confines of the familiar world and undergoing our own metamorphosis. Like the threshold guardians of mythology, entrances to ancient places of worship were often marked by fearsome images of gargoyles, dragons, lions, and bulls.
The Greek hero Heracles sees the city of Troy being sacked by a monster that had been sent by the angry god of the sea, Poseidon. The king ties his daughter to the sea rocks as a sacrificial offering, hoping to appease the angry deity. Heracles agrees to rescue the girl and dives into the monster’s gaping mouth. He is digested, and manages to kill the beast by hacking his way out and emerging from the belly.
Other swallowing-and-reemerging motifs occur in mythological traditions across the world. The Irish hero Finn MacCool is swallowed by a monster known as a peist; in the German fairy tale of Red Ridinghood, the heroine is devoured by a wolf; on the other side of the world, in Polynesia, Maui is consumed by his great-great-grandmother.
These legends are also closely tied to themes of self-sacrifice and torment of the flesh. The hero must sometimes destroy their own flesh in order to renew the world. The motif is probably most famous to Western readers from the story of the suffering of Christ on the cross. It also occurs frequently in other religious and mythological traditions, where they are killed, dismembered, and have their bodies scattered.
The ancient Egyptian hero-god Osiris is drowned in the Nile by his evil brother Set. When Osiris comes back from the dead, Set kills him again, this time dismembering the body into 14 pieces and scattering them all over Egypt.
Take a deep dive through the heroes of mythology.
We’ve identified a lot of heroes from ancient mythology. Identify a modern-day counterpart to the ancient heroes and briefly describe how their adventure cycle fits into the classic hero’s journey template.
Can you think of a time when you were called upon to do something that required you to step out of your comfort zone and face new challenges? Briefly describe what happened below.
Now we move into the main action of the myth, wherein the hero undergoes a series of trials and tests, with the aid of their supernatural helper. The hero might also discover the existence of a benevolent, omnipotent power guiding all things in the universe.
Removed from the confines of their safe and familiar world, the mythological hero now confronts a land of symbolic and allegorical figures—according to the psychoanalysts, the same imagery we see in our dreams. Just as the images are instrumental in helping the hero achieve their transformation, they are also puzzles that each of us must unlock in order to understand what our subconscious is trying to tell us.
Unlike the ancients, we do not have the benefit of allegory and mythology to help us make sense of the bubbling up of our subconscious. As a secular, rational society, we increasingly lack the language to process this—psychoanalysis may be the closest thing, but it’s not a substitute for the power of mythology and religion. Indeed, we have rationalized and argued our gods away. It is only through studying these ancient soothsayers and shamans and the dead gods they once worshipped that we can truly grasp our fullest humanity.
In mythology, the hero’s journey often requires entering the underworld or the land of the dead.
In the ancient Roman novel Metamorphoses, Psyche pleads with the goddess Venus to release her lover Cupid (the goddess’ son) so that the two can be married. Venus beats Psyche and orders her to conduct a series of tasks:
In her final and most fearsome task, Psyche is told to descend into the underworld and bring back a box full of supernatural beauty. Her last supernatural helper, a high tower, instructs her how to safely go down into the underworld and gives her charms and amulets to ward off the demons and hell-hounds she will encounter there. In doing so, she earns the elixir of mortality, which will enable her to live with Cupid forever in Paradise.
The oldest story of descent into the world of death comes from the world’s first civilization—the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq. The goddess Inanna goes down to the underworld, guarded by her sister (and enemy) Ereshkigal. At each of the seven gates of this hell, Inanna is ordered by the gatekeeper to remove a part of her clothing—in due course, she removes her crown, rod, necklace, stones, breastplate, ring, and garments, finally presenting herself naked before the judges of the underworld.
The dual image of the two sisters, Inanna and Ereshkigal, is important. Indeed, duality is a common theme in mythology. The hero often finds the monster to be an aspect of themselves. This is because all journeys are ultimately about identifying and conquering a new aspect of the self. As we’ve seen, this is often done through the act of swallowing or being swallowed.
The ultimate adventure often comes through the marriage of the hero to the goddess. The goddess is the epitome of beauty and represents the feminine ideal in all its aspects—mother, sister, mistress, and bride. She is the ultimate hope for the hero, assuring him that he will be returned to the blissful world he knew before the journey. This is the classic maternal goddess figure, the “good” mother.
But there is also a dark twist on this theme. For there is a “bad” mother figure, a goddess who attempts to either harm the hero, spurn his advances, hamper him in his quest, or tempt him into desire.
Needless to say, these figures are deeply rooted in psychological complexes as we grapple with balancing 1) our need for the love and protection of our parents (especially our mothers) 2) with our concurrent need to grow up and become independent adults.
Sometimes, the goddess assumes both forms—either a decrepit hag who transforms into a beautiful maiden, or vice versa. Only the truly perceptive hero can fully discover the mysterious nature of womankind. The hero who can show her the right type of kindness is the one truly worthy of being king or even reincarnated God.
In an ancient legend of Ireland, five brother princes separately come across an ugly old woman at the bottom of a well. Looking for water to drink, each brother, in turn, asks her if they can drink from her well. She says they may, but only on the condition that they give her a kiss. The first four refuse, remarking that they would rather die of thirst than put their lips to her hideous countenance.
The fifth brother, Niall, consents to the woman’s request and kisses her. After he does so, she transforms into the most beautiful woman in the world. She reveals herself to be the living embodiment of Royal Rule and tells Niall that he has earned the right to his father’s kingdom. He has shown himself willing to embrace the ugly and the beautiful, as a good and noble king should.
In keeping with the Oedipal themes that run so strongly throughout so much mythology, the figure of the father-god is often a fearsome ogre whom the hero must either overcome or reconcile with. This echoes the psychological rivalry and subconscious hatred that Freudian psychoanalysts believe so many children (particularly young men) feel toward their fathers. The father is the archetypal enemy, because he is the original intruder who enters the infant’s life after the serenity and union with the mother (goddess) in utero. In Freudian terms, one cannot live a peaceful and productive emotional life as an adult without resolving these deep-rooted childhood conflicts.
We see the fearsome father figure in the Puritan tradition of early New England. These religious pilgrims to the New World believed in a vengeful, harsh version of the Christian God, who would not hesitate to inflict terrible torments on the unbelieving sinner. Yet they also believed in a vision of God as the redeemer, the figure through whose mercy one could be saved from the fate of eternal damnation and suffering.
The father represents the passage away from the comforting world of the nursery and into the world of adult responsibilities and manhood (he also represents the future husband for the female hero). The father must shepherd this stage of growth. This transformation is illustrated quite graphically in Australian tribal rites of circumcision performed by men on adolescent boys in ceremonies that are meant to mark their passage into manhood (in this case, the literal “liberation” of the penis from the “protection” of the foreskin). Alternatively, there can also be a ceremony in which the young male initiate consumes the flesh or blood of the elder male tribesmen, in order to imbibe their essence. Such rituals are practiced among the Yolngu indigenous people of Australia, but also have echoes in western mythology—perhaps most famously in the Christian rite of communion and the eating of the flesh and blood of Jesus.
Often, it is a protective, nurturing mother-goddess figure who shields the hero from the wrath of the father and provides them with the charms or amulets they need to face the father.
We can see this theme if we return to the Navajo myth of Spider Woman and the Twin Warriors of the Navajo. Recall that these two young men set out to seek their father, the Sun. The supernatural Spider Woman gives them amulets and charms that she promises will subdue their enemies’ anger. In their journey, the twins survive encounters with crushing rocks and boiling sands until they reach the house of the Sun. They use Spider Woman’s spells to get past the fearsome dogs, serpents, winds, and lighting that guard the entrance.
When the Sun emerges, he seizes the twins and hurls them at spikes at the north, south, east, and west corners of his house. But the boys come bouncing right back, thanks to Spider Woman’s protection. He then shuts them up in an overheated sweatlodge, but still the twins survive, with help from the winds. As his last test, the Sun forces the twins to smoke a poison pipe—but a caterpillar gives them something to put in their mouths to block the smoke, enabling the brothers to pass the pipe back and forth harmlessly. At last the Sun relents, and admits that, indeed, he is their father. The Twin Heroes have won his confidence and respect.
But the father must make sure that the son is truly worthy. In one famous Greek tale, Phaethon pleads with his father—the god Phoebus, driver of the solar chariot—to be able to take the reins and drive the chariot himself. Although initially reluctant, warning his impetuous son of the catastrophes that can result from untrained hands riding the chariot, Phoebus ultimately yields to Phaethon’s stubbornness.
This proves to be a grave mistake. Phaethon quickly loses control of the solar chariot, scorching the skies and igniting the earth. Finally, the Almighty Father Jove hurls a thunderbolt at the chariot, killing Phaethon and causing him to crash to the earth like a falling star.
After conquering their fears, the hero at last achieves their long-sought enlightenment. They have shattered the bounds of consciousness and reached a divine state. Mythological and religious traditions throughout history and across the world teach us that this power lives within us all—we achieve it through our own herohood.
In Buddhism, there is the figure of the Bodhisattva, overflowing with sympathy and compassion for the masses of humanity who must endure the suffering of existence. On the cusp of achieving nirvana, ultimate enlightenment, he turned back—vowing instead to bring all creatures to enlightenment first. As such, all of existence is infused with his presence.
In many traditions, this figure of ultimate enlightenment assumes both male and female forms. The Bodhisattva is represented as both masculine Avalokiteshvara and feminine Kwan Yin. The Great Original of ancient Chinese lore similarly embodied both masculine Yang and feminine Yin. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Adam, the original man, also contains the original woman—Eve is created from his rib.
This motif symbolizes the mystery of creation and the division of the original matter into its component parts. All things are one because they come from the same essential elements. The male and female aspects (the essential ingredients of life) are contained in all things. This has real significance for the heroic cycle: this is the moment when the hero comes face-to-face with the awesome majesty of creation.
This moment represents the final shedding of the divisions and boundaries that mark the world he or she has left behind and the recognition that God or the universal spirit resides within the hero—in the Judeo-Christian tradition, we are all made in God’s image; in the Buddhist tradition, we are all reflexes of the image of the Bodhisattva. The hero is freed from the impulses, desires, hostilities, and delusions of the day-to-day world and achieves the state of being summed up by the Buddhist Eightfold Path: “Right Belief, Right Intentions, Right Speech, Right Actions, Right Livelihood, Right Endeavoring, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration.”
It is worth noting that, while myth often represents this desire to bring enlightenment to the world as a supreme act of love and an example of the universal brotherhood of humankind, it has seldom played out that way in the pages of history. In actual human practice, the protection and love of God are only extended to members of the in-group, while those outside of the exalted community are persecuted. Thus, we have the historical irony of European Christian society—whose religion has at its core a doctrine of universal love—tearing itself apart through sectarian warfare and launching brutal wars of colonial expansion against the non-European world.
In this stage of the hero’s journey, the hero achieves their goal and is reborn as a superior being. This is often shown by the ease with which the hero is now able to obtain the things that they seek. In the Irish legend of the Prince of the Lonesome Island, the hero is rewarded by being able to eat from a table with food that automatically replenishes, freeing him from hunger and want—he has achieved limitless bounty, indestructible life, the Ultimate Boon.
This concept has its roots in infantile psychology, where even the newborn child appears to have some vague idea of mythology and an awareness of a state of bliss beyond the distractions of the day-to-day world. We see this when the infant reacts to being torn away from the mother’s breast, or the temper tantrum when she is deprived of the things she wants. These are actually primal urges, fantasies for bodily indestructibility, endless and instant gratification, and protection from malevolent outside forces. These unconscious, infantile fantasies remain with us and live on in the myths, fairy tales, and religious doctrines that humans have created.
Many folk traditions explore this concept of indestructibility through the motif of the spiritual double or doppelganger. This is an external soul of the individual, another part of the self, that exists free from the injuries that the physical body endures. Only by destroying that soul (sometimes represented as a literal object like an egg) can the individual truly be extinguished. Among some Australian aboriginal people, a young man being initiated to the tribe is taken to a cave and shown a slab of wood with carvings on it. He is informed that this object is, in fact, his body and that he should never remove it lest he experience agonizing pain.
The Ultimate Boon is variously represented across mythological traditions—the inexhaustible milk of Jerusalem in the Book of Isiah, the Olympian gods feasting forever on ambrosia, the Japanese gods drinking sake, the Aztec deities of pre-Columbian Mexico consuming the blood of humans. The hero seeks the grace of the gods, their energy substance, their elixir of impenetrable being.
But the gods may also be jealous in guarding the power of this elixir from the hands of the hero. They may only be willing to release it to those who are truly worthy. And sometimes, the hero must resort to trickery to obtain this bounty.
In a Polynesian legend, the hero Maui seeks to wrest fire from the fire god Mahu-ika in order to bestow its powers to mankind (much like the Greek legend of Prometheus). Maui challenges the fire guardian to a competition of feats of strength, the first of which is tossing. Mahu-ika tosses Maui up into the air, chanting an incantation as the hero rises and falls. Maui then does the same to Mahu-ika, chanting the same incantation. But as the fire guardian is falling, Maui calls out magic words that cause Mahu-ika to break his neck upon landing. Maui cuts off the head of the fire god, enabling him to share the boon of fire with the world.
Sometimes, however, this part of the myth is twisted, and the hero instead becomes a tyrannical ogre and usurper, from whom the world must be saved all over again. In the Zoroastrian Persian legend of Jemshid, this Emperor of the Golden Age succumbs to the temptations of the powers he has won through his struggles. He revels in his own glory, declaring himself to be the greatest sovereign that ever lived and that all domestic joy springs from him. But no sooner does he speak these words than the wrath of God descends from the heavens, forcefully reminding Jemshid that he who neglects the worship of the almighty brings only ruin and death upon himself.
But the search for physical immortality, instead of spiritual enlightenment, will always end in failure for the hero, for it is to confuse the meaning of what the hero’s journey is supposed to be all about. As the Japanese proverb says, “The gods only laugh when men pray to them for wealth.”
Still, this desire for earthly glory has led humans to undertake extraordinary journeys: famously, the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon accidentally discovered Florida in the course of pursuing the fabled Fountain of Youth. Sometimes the hero starts out seeking something tangible—weapons to slay his enemies, eternal life, material wealth—but through the struggle of the adventure wins an infinitely greater prize: self-actualization and enlightenment.
In the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (the world’s oldest surviving work of literature), the legendary king Gilgamesh seeks immortality in the form of the plant “Never Grow Old.” He comes to a cave by the sea, where he meets a manifestation of the goddess Ishtar. She urges Gilgamesh to turn back from his quest for immortality and instead accept the pleasures of mortal life, to “Regard the little one who takes thy hand, let thy wife be happy against thy bosom.” But he insists and she guides him to the ferryman Ursanapi (a supernatural helper) who will convey him across the waters of death to the land where Utnapishtim lives (Utnapishtim is the sole survivor of the great flood from the Babylonian creation story and the Babylonian precursor to the better-known Biblical figure of Noah).
Utnapishtim tells Noah that the plant he seeks grows at the bottom of the sea. Gilgamesh thus ties stones to his feet and goes into the sea to descend to the ocean floor. He finds the plant and plucks it from the seabed, though it cuts and mutilates his hand. When he returns to shore, Gilgamesh rests, but the plant is stolen from him by a serpent who instead consumes it and thereby gains the power to shed its skin—thus achieving perpetual youth. Gilgamesh breaks down and weeps at his misfortune.
The Greek fable of King Midas is a neat illustration of the woe that accrues to the hero who seeks mere worldly possessions or wealth from the gods. Midas wins from the god Bacchus the right to request anything he desires. Foolishly, Midas wishes to have everything he touches turn to gold. Bacchus grants this wish, and, sure enough, every twig, apple, and stone Midas touches becomes golden. He orders a magnificent banquet to celebrate what he believes is this glorious bounty, only to realize his folly. When he touches the meat, it becomes inedible gold, as does the wine in his chalice. When his beloved daughter comes to comfort him, she too is transformed into a lifeless golden statue.
Explore the deeper meanings of the hero’s transformation.
What do you think the motif of the mythological descent into the underworld has to say about how we as humans confront our fears?
Have you ever sought after something physical or material, only to find that it wasn’t as fulfilling as you thought it would be? Briefly describe the situation.
How can you avoid pursuing ultimately hollow and unsatisfying material things in the future?
After the completion of the quest, the hero must return home with their bounty, be it Jason’s Golden Fleece, or the Little Briar Rose of German legend. The final piece of the monomyth now requires the hero to share this wisdom, this hard-won prize back to the real world, where it will benefit the hero’s community, and, possibly, the universe.
But sometimes, mythology records a hero unwilling to return to the world. Just as they may have refused the initial call to adventure, so they may refuse their duty to return home and bestow their newfound wisdom upon the rest of humanity. Even the Buddha, after his victory at the Tree of Enlightenment, doubted if it was even possible to bring the joy of true enlightenment to other mortals. It is tempting for the hero to simply turn away from the world and reside forever in Paradise.
In an ancient Hindu legend, King Muchukunda is granted his wish for eternal sleep after helping the gods defeat an army of demons (his Ultimate Boon). He further requests that anyone who attempts to rouse him be burned to a crisp when he lays eyes upon them. He sleeps through the ages as empires and civilizations rise and fall.
After a great period of time, a youth named Krishna (an incarnation of Vishnu, Lord of the World) comes to power. In the course of a battle, Krishna is pursued by an enemy barbarian king into the cave where Muchukunda is enjoying eternal sleep. As Muchukunda awakens, the barbarian is burned alive, as is Krishna. Muchukunda laments what he has done and curses the folly of his worldly pursuits. As he emerges from his cave, he sees that men have become smaller and crueler. Despairing, he retreats back into his cave to live a life of asceticism and self-denial.
If the hero has won the Ultimate Boon through trickery or manipulation of the gods, their return home may be marked by a chase as the gods seek to regain the elixir that has been stolen from them.
In a tale from Siberia, the original shaman, Morgon-Kara, is said to have possessed the power to bring souls back from the dead. The High God decides to challenge Morgon-Kara by getting hold of the soul of a man, putting it in a bottle, and hiding the opening of the bottle with his thumb. The man becomes sick and his family seeks out Morgon-Kara to help heal him. After searching high and low for the missing soul, Morgon-Kara sees that the High God of Heaven is holding the man’s soul hostage in the bottle. Morgon-Kara then transforms into a wasp and stings the High God, causing the latter to jerk and move his thumb from the bottle’s opening, thereby freeing the captive soul. Angry at this ruse, the High God splits the shaman’s drum, limiting his power forever.
Sometimes, the hero will use decoys to delay or confuse the pursuer. In a legend of the Maori people of New Zealand, a fisherman’s wife swallows the couple’s two sons. He uses magic to force her to vomit the boys out, then uses other spells to further hamper his ogre/wife. When she goes to fetch water, he causes the water to retreat away from her. When she calls out for the man and his sons in pursuit of them, he causes the trees and huts of the village to speak back to her, causing great bewilderment on her part. This distraction enables the man and his sons to escape in a canoe.
Sometimes, the hero will require aid from a third party in order to return home from the realm of the supernatural. The hero, indeed, may need to be rescued himself.
The Eskimos tell the story of Raven, who ventured into the belly of a whale with fire-sticks, where he meets a beautiful girl. This girl is, in fact, the soul of the whale. Raven also notices a strange tube running along the backbone of the whale, dripping oil. The oil is delicious, and because he’s impatient for more, he rips off a piece of the tube, killing the whale and causing oil to pour into the belly. The girl never returns—he has extinguished the whale’s soul. The whale washes ashore, where the villagers carve up pieces of it to take home as food and fuel, freeing Raven from his captivity inside the beast. Raven uses his fire-sticks to force his way out of the whale (a symbol of rebirth). The villagers look at him curiously. When they find the fire-sticks he has left behind, Raven tells them that fire-sticks found inside a whale are a deadly omen. The villagers flee, leaving Raven to enjoy all the whale-meat for himself.
In a legend from Japan, the sun goddess Amaterasu retreats into a cave in fear, depriving the world of light. Her fellow gods devise a plan to entice her to come out. They cause roosters to crow, bonfires to be lit, and liturgies to be recited, making Amaterasu think that her retreat into the cave has had no ill effect and that the world is carrying on merrily as before. As she emerges, the gods hold a mirror up to her (symbolic of the world, which is reflected in her light) and tie a rope behind her around the entrance to the cave, telling her that she can retreat into the cave no further than the line of the rope. This is the origin of sunrise and sunset, the daily retreat and emergence of the sun goddess.
If you recall, the Sumerian goddess Inanna descended into the underworld, guarded by her sister/double Ereshkigal. When she goes down, she leaves instructions for her messenger Ninshubur to rescue her if she fails to return. When we left her, she was left to face the seven judges of the underworld, as she stood naked before them. The judges turn Inanna into a snake and then fasten her to a stake, where they leave her for three days and three nights.
Alarmed, Ninshubur puts Inanna’s rescue plan into action. He goes to the god Enki, who creates two sexless creatures who bring the food of life and the water of life to sprinkle over Inanna’s corpse. This causes Inanna to rise up and ascend from the underworld, with an army of demons at her side, with whom she wanders through the streets of all the cities of Sumer.
Now, at last, the hero returns to the ordinary world with their divine boon in hand. The hero’s journey has been an exercise in uniting the world of the unknown with the world of the known—for the two are mirror images, opposite sides of the same coin. The challenge now is to communicate to the ordinary world the wisdom and enlightenment that the hero has learned in their quest to the land of the gods.
One of the hardest things for the hero to accept is the reality of the sorrows and banalities of ordinary human existence. The North American legend of Rip Van Winkle presents an interesting case of the challenges of the returning hero.
Rip Van Winkle falls asleep one night (his own version of the journey to the world of darkness and the realm of the subconscious). When he awakens, he realizes that he has been asleep not for one evening, but instead, for decades. His handy musket which he fell asleep next to has rusted into uselessness; he has grown old and stiff in the joints; he has grown a foot-long beard; and when he approaches his hometown, he recognizes the place, but sees that it is populated by strangers. The townspeople marvel at the spectacle of Rip, with the mayor demanding to know if he is a Federal or a Democrat (it happens to be an election day in the town)—Rip, of course, fell asleep during the days of British colonialism and doesn’t even understand the question, professing instead his loyalty to the British crown. The people pronounce him to be a Tory spy and usher him into the stockades.
Or consider the plight of the Irish hero Oisin on his return journey from his 300-year sojourn with the daughter of the King of the Land of Youth, whom he had rescued from a spell which had transformed her head into that of a pig. He marries her and they dwell in bliss for centuries in the land of Tir na n-Og. Oisin yearns to return to Ireland, but his wife warns him that if he leaves to return to his homeland, he will never return to her and will lose his gift of timelessness, instead becoming a blind old man. Nevertheless, she gives him a steed to carry him on his journey home. When he returns, he shows off his otherworldly powers by lifting an unliftable stone and attempting to blow on the legendary horn of the Fenians (mythological giants in ancient Irish lore). But as he reaches for the horn, his powers suddenly diminish. He loses his legendary protective steed, slips, and becomes a blind old man, as his wife forewarned.
The dangers that face the hero or mythological figure who returns to the secular world are reflected in rites and traditions throughout human history. The Aztec god-king Moctezuma never set foot on the ground, but was instead always carried on the shoulders of his retinue. The divine being can never be sullied by contact with the filthy and un-sacred surfaces of earthly existence, lest they lose their spark of divinity.
The true hero is one who can move seamlessly between the two worlds, without destroying or compromising either. We see this in the Transfiguration of Christ from the New Testament, in which the body of Jesus becomes radiant with the glory and grace of God.
Jesus brings Peter, James, and John to a mountain. He becomes radiant before them and converses with the Old Testament figures of Moses and Elias. God then declares from on high that Jesus is His beloved Son, striking fear into the three men whom Jesus had brought. But Jesus touches them and tells them not to be afraid. Suddenly, Jesus has transformed back again into a man. He has crossed and re-crossed the divine threshold, he is the master of both worlds. Jesus tells the men not to share the vision they have seen with anyone, “until the Son of man be risen again from the dead."
Notably, this vision has only appeared to those who have forsaken worldly pursuits and secular desires. The individual must embrace their own self-annihilation. These figures of ascetic self-denial are represented across the world’s religious traditions, from the wandering mendicants of the East, to the Wandering Jew and itinerant monks of medieval Europe. The manifestations vary, but the concept is universal.
Thus far, we have walked through all of the phases of the monomyth, exploring the mythological template using examples from cultures all over the world and throughout recorded history. For indeed, the variations of the monomyth are endless. Some stories emphasize specific parts of it more than others, sometimes certain elements and motifs are left out entirely, and sometimes the steps happen in a different order than it has been presented in this summary.
Beyond the variation of mythological traditions between cultures, the individual myths themselves transform over time. Regrettably, some of these changes end up removing much of the great aura of mystery from these early myths. With the coming of secularization and rationalization, supernatural elements are often played down or meant to be interpreted simply as allegory or instructive fable: the gods are no longer a living, breathing part of the human experience. In Hellenistic Greece and Imperial Rome (centuries after the mythological, heroic age of The Iliad and The Odyssey), the ancient gods were treated as mere literary characters, with the saga of Mount Olympus reduced to a comic supernatural romance.
Similarly, the overwhelming influence of the Confucian tradition, with its humanistic and moralizing tendencies and its emphasis on social hierarchies and filial piety, has little use for the old mythologies of ancient China. Today, these myths (to the extent that they are shared at all) only serve to buttress the Confucian worldview—becoming anecdotes about provincial officials who are elevated to the status of local deities by a grateful population.
Even the figure of Jesus Christ has come in for this treatment in the western tradition. No longer the World Redeemer, he is seen by many as nothing more than a historical figure who preached a simple, kindly doctrine of peace and goodwill toward one’s neighbors.
It is easy for this to happen to myths in modern, science-driven society, because it is easy to prove that the myths aren’t literally “true.” As history, biography, and science, mythology is obviously nonsense. But to make this observation is to miss the point about what myths are and what purpose they serve for the human experience. They are about the endless journey of the soul, the adventure into the furthest recesses of the self.
Mythology is more than just a common set of story structures that are shared across cultures. The myths of the ancients also point us to our place in the cosmos, our role in the great movement of the universe. Just as the monomyth we’ve explored shows the death, birth, and transformation of the individual in the form of the hero, so does mythology show the workings of all time and space—the origin story of the universe, and the means by which it will be destroyed and rebuilt. This is the cosmogonic cycle.
The cosmogonic cycle can be seen as a macrocosm of the cycle of waking and sleep that all humans experience. First is the state of unconscious deep sleep (the primordial beginnings before the creation of time and space); then there is the conscious waking state (the living, breathing world as we know it); and finally, we have the return to the unconscious (the destruction or end of the world as we know it). We repeat this cycle for all of our days on earth, just as the cosmogonic cycle turns over and over.
The cosmogonic cycle often shows a world without end, the universal round. In a version of this cycle told among the Aztecs of pre-Columbian Mexico, each of the four elements—water, earth, air, and fire—in their turn marked the end of an age of the world: the age of water ended in a flood (flood-myths are a common feature of mythological tradition); the age of earth culminated in an earthquake; the age of air finished with destruction by wind, or hurricane; and the (present) age of fire would be brought to an end by flames.
The Jains of the Indian subcontinent believe in a particularly demonstrative example of the cosmogonic cycle. They see time as an endless cycle, represented by a wheel with twelve spokes. Each spoke represents an age, and the spokes are divided into two sets of six. The first set is called the descending series, during which each age gets progressively worse, with the first age of pure happiness yielding gradually (over millions of years) to the succeeding ages, during which vice and sorrow become slowly mixed in and men and women become physically smaller, live shorter lives, and have declining moral values. The second set is the ascending series, during which the opposite occurs—in each succeeding age during this cycle, happiness gradually increases, people live longer, and they become more virtuous. The wheel spins and the cycle repeats endlessly.
The Hindus believe in a similar cycle of time. The first age is marked by a long period of bliss, lasting 4,800 divine years (a divine year is equal to 360 human years). In the second age, virtue is diminished—this period lasts 3,600 divine years. The third age has virtue and vice in equal proportions, and lasts 2,400 divine years. The fourth age (which Hindus believe we are living through) is one of mounting evil, lasting 1,200 divine years. Once this age ends, there will be a doomsday of fire and flood that will cleanse the earth. After a period of nothingness and void that will last for the whole length of the four ages, the cycle will begin again.
All cultures have their creation myths—the stories that tell us how the earth was formed, how we came to be here, and what we are meant to do with our existence. As with the heroic cycle, there are endless variations of the creation myth, but there are common elements throughout.
The universe is an emanation of some sort of divine will from a supreme creative entity. The creator first establishes the frame of the universe, the setting in which all subsequent action will take place. Next, the creator puts living creatures into the frame—often, these creatures have the capacity for self-reproduction or contain within them both the male and female aspects (like Adam, as we’ve seen, in the Book of Genesis).
The Maori people of New Zealand have their variation on this theme. According to their legend, in the beginning, there were two elements—Te Tumu (the male) and Te Papa (the female). The universe was an egg that contained both. When the egg burst, it created three layers of existence, one on top of the other. Te Mumu and Te Papa were at the lowest level, where they created birds, plants, and fish. After several failed attempts, they also created the first perfectly formed man, Hoatu. Eventually, the lowest level of existence became overcrowded, so the humans burrowed their way into the next two levels, taking with them plants and animals, so that man came to inhabit three dwellings. This idea of the cosmic egg is seen in many other mythological traditions, including Japan, Finland, Egypt, and Greece.
After the creation of the initial being, there is the great division, the creation of many from one. Sometimes, the creator actively supervises this process and directly implements the ordering of the universe. In other myths, living beings themselves direct the shaping of the world. The latter scenario usually entails a harsher, more arduous unfolding of events than the former. Often, the created being will need to war with or even slay their creator-parents in order to begin shaping the world, as in the Greek story of the Olympians overthrowing the Titans, or in the Babylonian myth of the sun-god Marduk slaying Tiamat, the terrifying personification of chaos and the abyss. In yet another Maori legend, the cosmic parents (Rangi, the Sky, and Mother Earth) lay so closely on top of one another that the children are unable to be born and escape Mother Earth’s belly. The children conspire to separate their parents, vaulting the Sky up high while pressing nurturing Mother Earth down to the ground.
Undeveloped folk-myths from non-literate cultures often radically simplify the highly symbolic and suggestive content of the classical creation stories. The Blackfeet of Montana attribute creation to the figure of Old Man, who simply creates the landscape and all the creatures within it in the course of his wanderings. He creates a woman and a child out of clay, who ask him whether they will eventually die or if they shall live forever. The woman decides to throw a stone into a river—if it floats, they will have eternal life; if it sinks, they will die. When the stone sinks, Old Man declares that humanity has made its choice and will be mortal.
Other folk-myths describe a god walking upon the earth and, in so doing, carving out the world’s rivers and mountains; oxen carving out the lakes with their horns; and a bird dropping the primordial egg into the sea, which births the original man, woman, and child. These tales contain thematic echoes of the great origin myths, but are much simplified and highly literal in comparison.
The father-creator hero passes into earthly existence through the medium of a virgin, female figure—the mother of the world.
In Finnish mythology, the virgin daughter floats for centuries in the primordial sea, before a storm awakens life within her and causes her to become pregnant with a son, Vàinàmoinen. She floats for 700 years, unable to give birth. In this state, however, she begins the work of creation, establishing all the physical features of the world through her body. But her son remains unborn, growing into middle age, despairing of his gloomy, dark, and cramped conditions. He escapes his mother’s womb and pours out into the primordial ocean—the act of his birth is thus his own hero’s journey; he is born a hero. He then wanders through the sea for years until he plants his feet on the ground that his mother created.
This mother-figure often gives birth to the world-savior at a time when the world is rife with disaster. The hero is thus a being who will once again represent the divine on earth and lead the world to redemption. The mother of the world leads a life of purity (symbolized by her status as a virgin) and is uncorrupted by the sin and error of the world around her. The most famous such literary figure (to western audiences) is the Virgin Mary, who was told by an angel of God that her fate was to carry Jesus Christ the Savior in her womb through immaculate conception.
The virgin mother concept has wide currency in other mythic traditions. Early Christian missionaries were often surprised to see how easily their non-Christian converts accepted the premise of the Virgin Mary. These converts had little trouble accepting Mary’s virginity because they had their own virgin mother stories. For example, among the indigenous people of what is now Colombia in South America (where 16th-century Spanish Catholic missionaries were active), there was a belief that the sun impregnated a local girl who would then give birth to the rays of the sun, while remaining a virgin.
Eventually, there comes a point where the gods and heroes of mythology must yield to actual historical figures. A step removed from origin stories about the creation of the cosmos, we are now dealing with the phenomenon of culture heroes—the founders who appear at the beginning of a culture’s legendary past. Rather than creating the universe, these figures create cultures.
Such figures are shrouded in mystery and their historicity is much-debated by historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists. Often, these are the kings whom legend tells us were themselves gods or demi-gods and used their divine status to create the great cities and kingdoms that we recognize and see today.
The human hero is the creator of order, a monster-slayer who kills the demons that still lurk in the darkness, holdovers from a more ancient, mythic time. The legends of the culture hero symbolize the transformation of the world out of a chaotic past and into an ordered and well-governed present. The beasts that the hero slays represent the entanglements of former times. It is also the symbolic slaying of the most noxious aspects of the father at the hands of the son (although this figure is sometimes a cruel uncle or usurper, to water down the vivid themes of patricide). In this, we see the heroic theme of transformation coming forth once again.
The Native American Blackfoot tribe tells of Kut-o-yis, who slaughtered the cruel bears and snakes that were tormenting the country (slaying one bear and one snake, each of which was about to become a mother). He then liberated his people from the belly of a sucker-fish and then cunningly defeated a series of evil hags who had been luring people to their deaths.
A story touching on similar themes is the medieval French tale of Saint Martha, who, at the behest of her people, ventures into a forest where a fearsome dragon lives. She finds the creature in the act of eating a man and immediately sprinkles holy water on it while brandishing her crucifix. The monster is pacified and gently emerges from the forest, led by Saint Martha. When they reach the village, the peasants kill the creature with stones and clubs.
In the Chinese tradition, there is the figure of Fu Hsi, the “Heavenly Emperor,” who reigned during the early third millennium BCE. He taught the Chinese people to fish, hunt, and raise domestic animals. He was also born of immaculate conception, with the body of a serpent, human arms, and the head of an ox. Such founding figures perform superhuman work, establishing human civilizations and laying the foundation for the world as we recognize it today.
Eventually, the world no longer needs the culture hero either. Society has been established to a sufficient degree so that now, ordinary men and women can take up the burden of sustaining civilization. The first of this kind is an emperor or king in human form who hereafter stands as the model of good political leadership for the kingdom. This is exemplified by the Chinese figure of Huang Ti, who reigned a few centuries after Fu Hsi. He ascended to the throne at the age of 11 and ruled for over a century, during which the Chinese state enjoyed a golden age of peace and prosperity. He introduced mathematics, shipbuilding, woodworking, money, music, and private property.
These human culture heroes often have a miraculous childhood (despite frequently being born to lowly status) and are endowed with powers from the moment of their birth. Their herohood is predestined, not achieved. They have some special connection to the world of the supernatural, either through dreams or premonitions, and their story is often one of ignominious exile and glorious return. After a childhood where they overcome extraordinary obstacles, they rise out of obscurity and reveal their true character. This is essentially the theme of crucifixion, followed by resurrection.
Sargon of Akkad (founder of the Mesopotamian Akkadian Empire and an undisputed historical figure from around 2300 BCE) was, as his legend tells us, born to an obscure mother and an unknown father. After being set adrift in the Euphrates River on a basket of bulrushes, he was discovered by a shepherd and bestowed with great favor by the goddess Ishtar. This divine blessing, this endorsement from the gods was what enabled him to found the world’s first empire.
Similar origin stories of great historical figures abound, from Chandragupta, the founder of the fourth century BCE Maurya empire in India; to the early medieval pope, Gregory the Great; to the first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne.
The freedom and glory that the hero wins by defeating the monster is often represented in the form of a beautiful woman. This theme shows up through many different stock characters of legend, myth, and fairy tale—the bride abducted by an overweening father (like Princess Budur), the virgin rescued from the unworthy lover. In the triumphant hero-cycles, she reigns side-by-side with the hero as world monarch. This is often shown through an arduous journey that the hero must go through before he can take the maiden to the pleasures of the marital bed.
We see this theme in the Irish legend of Cuchulainn. A glorious and beautiful youth, Cuchulainn is the nephew of Conchobar the king. The barons of the kingdom become worried that Cuchulainn will tempt their wives into infidelity with him, so they conspire to find him a wife of his own. Cuchulainn himself ventures out and finds a beautiful maiden, Emer. Her jealous father Forgall the Wily sends Cuchulainn off to learn supernatural arts from the warrior-woman Scathach, thinking that Cuchulainn will never return. His journey to the distant island where Scathach lives is arduous, but he makes it, thanks to some supernatural aid. After his training, he earns knowledge of the supernatural, marriage with the daughter of Scathach (without having to pay the traditional bride-price), the power of clairvoyance, and even sexual relations with the warrior-woman herself.
When Cuchulainn returns to the realm of Forgall, he finds the jealous father still set against him. But, having successfully come through his hero’s journey, Cuchulainn is now able to simply take Emer and marry her at the court of his uncle the king. He has claimed his prize, received his bounty.
At last, the time comes for the death and departure of the hero. The hero enters his period of sleep, from which he will awaken only at man’s hour of need. Alternatively, the hero walks among ordinary people, but in a concealed form.
In the Old Testament, the spectre of Death reveals himself to Abraham, telling Abraham that he wears the sins of men as a crown upon his head. But the grim visage of Death is no match for Abraham’s righteousness, and Abraham’s soul does not depart from him. Instead, God lifts Abraham’s soul up into Paradise, where he shall be free of want and worry for all time.
The Aztecs told the story of Quetzalcoatl, ruler of the ancient city of Tollan at the height of its power and prosperity. He and his people, however, are eventually defeated by the Aztecs, who wield stronger magic. Quetzalcoatl burns his dwellings and bounties behind him as he flees. Looking back at his ruined city, he weeps, and his tears erode through a rock. He passes through the countryside, creating place-names and physical features of the landscape as he goes, until he departs on a raft of serpents, bund for Tlapâllan, his original home. He has been exiled forever, a hero banished.
The hero’s journey lives on in the rituals surrounding death, during which the living make preparations for the departed to journey safely through to the land of the dead. Like the hero, the deceased is journeying back to the primordial state of divine knowledge and union with the creator.
There is an early example of this idea in the Coffin Texts of Ancient Egypt, in which the dead man proclaims himself to be joined to God, declaring, “I am Atum, I who was alone; I am Re at his first appearance. I am the Great God, self-generator, Who fashioned his names, lord of gods, Whom none approaches among the gods. I was yesterday, I know tomorrow.” The Egyptian Book of the Dead was entombed with the deceased to guide the soul through the perils it would face as it made its way to the afterlife, complete with spells to ward off evil spirits and special incantations to compel the god of the dead, Osiris, to open the gates.
Of course, the ability to make this journey successfully depends upon the quality and character of the life lived by the deceased. The soul’s journey is its own hero’s journey in microcosm, beset with dangers, hardships, and setbacks. These are time-honored elements of the world’s mythic traditions.
The Aztecs prepared the body for its transition and provided it with water and other materials to aid it in the great journey it was about to undertake and overcome the obstacles it would surely face.
Delve into the cosmogonic origin stories.
In a few sentences, explain why you think these stories about the beginning and end of the universe appear across so many cultures and historical periods.
What are your beliefs about how the world was created? In a few sentences, describe these beliefs and how they compare with the creation myths we’ve explored.
There is no one set way to interpret the mythologies of humankind. Although we have traced the universal hero’s journey, the monomyth, and explored how so many cultures across time and space have made sense of the beginnings and ends of the universe, there is an infinite variety of ways that myths are told.
Myths do not reveal themselves automatically to us; they are not self-evident. They will only yield up the answers to the questions that we choose to ask of them. If we look to them as simply stories to entertain or amuse us, they will provide that. If we seek in them mankind’s earliest attempts at science, religion, literature, or moral instruction, they will provide that as well. And if we look to them to provide us with a higher meaning, an idea of where we come from and what we are meant to do with our existence, they can point us there, too. Indeed, the ways in which we can interpret myths are as limitless as the myths themselves.
If we can look to what the function of mythology is for mankind, it is perhaps to bind us closer and provide us with a shared sense of community. Though we may lead atomized lives as husbands, wives, sons, daughters, professionals, and members of this or that nationality, we are bound together through shared myths. The ceremonies that derive from mythology, those of birth, initiation, marriage and death, remind us that we are part of something much larger than ourselves. We are only a cell, an organ of a much larger being. This is as true for us as it was for the ancients. Like Odysseus, like the Buddha, like Cuchulainn, great marvels and unfathomable transformations await the modern hero who heeds the mythic call.
Explore the main takeaways from The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Why do you think mythologies have so much in common, across cultures and across historical eras?
What do you think the journeys of ancient mythological heroes have to teach us about today’s world and the universal human experience?
Briefly compare the transformative journey of the mythological hero with the transformations that we all undergo as we journey through life.
When has a story about a hero’s adventure emboldened you and inspired you to take action? What does this suggest to you about the power of stories?