The Hero with a Thousand Faces

by Joseph Campbell

  When the Prince of the Lonesome Island had remained six nights and days on the golden couch with the sleeping Queen of Tubber Tintye, the couch resting on wheels of gold and the wheels turning continually — the couch going round and round, never stopping night or day — on the seventh morning he said, “It is time for me now to leave this place.” So he came down and filled the three bottles with water from the flaming well. In the golden chamber was a table of gold, and on the table a leg of mutton with a loaf of bread; and if all the men of Erin were to eat for a twelvemonth from the table, the mutton and the bread would be in the same form after the eating as before.

  The Prince sat down, ate his fill of the loaf and the leg of mutton, and left them as he had found them. Then he rose up, took his three bottles, put them in his wallet, and was leaving the chamber, when he said to himself: “It would be a shame to go away without leaving something by which the Queen may know who was here while she slept.” So he wrote a letter, saying that the son of the King of Erin and the Queen of the Lonesome Island had spent six days and nights in the golden chamber of Tubber Tintye, had taken away three bottles of water from the flaming well, and had eaten from the table of gold. Putting his letter under the pillow of the Queen, he went out, stood in the open window, sprang on the back of the lean and shaggy little horse, and passed the trees and the river unharmed.[138]

  The ease with which the adventure is here accomplished signifies that the hero is a superior man, a born king. Such ease distinguishes numerous fairy tales and all legends of the deeds of incarnate gods. Where the usual hero would face a test, the elect encounters no delaying obstacle and makes no mistake. The well is the World Navel, its flaming water the indestructible essence of existence, the bed going round and round being the World Axis. The sleeping castle is that ultimate abyss to which the descending consciousness submerges in dream, where the individual life is on the point of dissolving into undifferentiated energy: and it would be death to dissolve; yet death, also, to lack the fire. The motif (derived from an infantile fantasy) of the inexhaustible dish, symbolizing the perpetual life-giving, form-building powers of the universal source, is a fairy-tale counterpart of the mythological image of the cornucopian banquet of the gods. The bringing together of the two great symbols of the meeting with the goddess and the fire theft reveals with simplicity and clarity the status of the anthropomorphic powers in the realm of myth. They are not ends in themselves, but guardians, embodiments, or bestowers, of the liquor, the milk, the food, the fire, the grace, of indestructible life.

  Such imagery can be readily interpreted as primarily, even though perhaps not ultimately, psychological; for it is possible to observe, in the earliest phases of the development of the infant, symptoms of a dawning “mythology” of a state beyond the vicissitudes of time. These appear as reactions to, and spontaneous defenses against, the body-destruction fantasies that assail the child when it is deprived of the mother breast.[139] “The infant reacts with a temper tantrum and the fantasy that goes with the temper tantrum is to tear everything out of the mother’s body....The child then fears retaliation for these impulses, i.e., that everything will be scooped out of its own inside.”[140] Anxieties for the integrity of its body, fantasies of restitution, a silent, deep requirement for indestructibility and protection against the “bad” forces from within and without, begin to direct the shaping psyche; and these remain as determining factors in the later neurotic, and even normal, life activities, spiritual efforts, religious beliefs, and ritual practices of the adult.

  The profession, for example, of the medicine man, this nucleus of all primitive societies, “originates...on the basis of the infantile body-destruction fantasies, by means of a series of defence mechanisms.”[141] In Australia a basic conception is that the spirits have removed the intestines of the medicine man and substituted pebbles, quartz crystals, a quantity of rope, and sometimes also a little snake endowed with power.[142]

  The first formula is abreaction in fantasy (my inside has already been destroyed) followed by reaction-formation (my inside is not something corruptible and full of faeces, but incorruptible, full of quartz crystals). The second is projection: “It is not I who am trying to penetrate into the body but foreign sorcerers who shoot disease-substances into people.” The third formula is restitution: “I am not trying to destroy people’s insides, I am healing them.” At the same time, however, the original fantasy element of the valuable body-contents torn out of the mother returns in the healing technique: to suck, to pull, to rub something out of the patient.[143]

  Another image of indestructibility is represented in the folk idea of the spiritual “double” — an external soul not afflicted by the losses and injuries of the present body, but existing safely in some place removed.[144] “My death,” said a certain ogre, “is far from here and hard to find, on the wide ocean. In that sea is an island, and on the island there grows a green oak, and beneath the oak is an iron chest, and in the chest is a small basket, and in the basket is a hare, and in the hare is a duck, and in the duck is an egg; and he who finds the egg and breaks it, kills me at the same time.”[145] Compare the dream of a successful modern businesswoman:

  I was stranded on a desert island. There was a Catholic priest there also. He had been doing something about putting boards from one island to another so people could pass. We passed to another island and there asked a woman where I’d gone. She replied that I was diving with some divers. Then I went somewhere to the interior of the island where was a body of beautiful water full of gems and jewels and the other “I” was down there in a diving suit. I stood there looking down and watching myself.[146]

  There is a charming Hindu tale of a king’s daughter who would marry only the man that found and awakened her double, in the Land of the Lotus of the Sun, at the bottom of the sea.[147] The initiated Australian, after his marriage, is conducted by his grandfather to a sacred cave and there shown a small slab of wood inscribed with allegorical designs: “This,” he is told, “is your body; this and you are the same. Do not take it to another place or you will feel pain.”[148] The Manicheans and the Gnostic Christians of the first centuries a.d. taught that when the soul of the blessed arrives in heaven it is met by saints and angels bearing its “vesture of light,” which has been preserved for it.

  The supreme boon desired for the Indestructible Body is uninterrupted residence in the Paradise of the Milk That Never Fails:

  Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her: that ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river...then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees.[149]

  Figure 39. Isis Giving Bread and Water to the Soul (Egypt, date uncertain)

  Soul and body food, heart’s ease, is the gift of “All Heal,” the nipple inexhaustible. Mt. Olympus rises to the heavens; gods and heroes banquet there on ambrosia (α, not, βροτός, mortal). In Wotan’s mountain hall, four hundred and thirty-two thousand heroes consume the undiminished flesh of Sachrimnir, the Cosmic Boar, washing it down with a milk that runs from the udders of the she-goat Heidrun: she feeds on the leaves of Yggdrasil, the World Ash. Within the fairy hills of Erin, the deathless Tuatha De Danaan consume the self-renewing pigs of Manannan, drinking copiously of Guibne’s ale. In Persia, the gods in the mountain garden on Mt. Hara Berezaiti drink immortal haoma, distilled from the Gaokerena Tree, the tree of life. The Japanese gods drink sake, the Polynesian ave, the Aztec gods drink the blood of men and maids. And the redeemed of Yahweh, in their roof garden, are served the inexhaustible, delicious flesh of the monsters Behemoth, Leviathan, and Ziz, while drinking the liquors of the four sweet rivers of paradise.[150]

  It is obvious that the infantile fantasies which we all cherish still in the unconscious play continually into myth,
fairy tale, and the teachings of the church, as symbols of indestructible being. This is helpful, for the mind feels at home with the images, and seems to be remembering something already known. But the circumstance is obstructive too, for the feelings come to rest in the symbols and resist passionately every effort to go beyond. The prodigious gulf between those childishly blissful multitudes who fill the world with piety and the truly free breaks open at the line where the symbols give way and are transcended. “O ye,” writes Dante, departing from the Terrestrial Paradise, “O ye who in a little bark, desirous to listen, have followed behind my craft which singing passes on, turn to see again your shores; put not out upon the deep; for haply, losing me, ye would remain astray. The water which I take was never crossed. Minerva breathes, and Apollo guides me, and nine Muses point out to me the Bears.”[151] Here is the line beyond which thinking does not go, beyond which all feeling is truly dead: like the last stop on a mountain railroad from which climbers step away, and to which they return, there to converse with those who love mountain air but cannot risk the heights. The ineffable teaching of the beatitude beyond imagination comes to us clothed, necessarily, in figures reminiscent of the imagined beatitude of infancy; hence the deceptive childishness of the tales. Hence, too, the inadequacy of any merely psychological reading.

  In the published psychoanalytical literature, the dream sources of the symbols are analyzed, as well as their latent meanings for the unconscious, and the effects of their operation upon the psyche; but the further fact that great teachers have employed them consciously as metaphors remains unregarded: the tacit assumption being that the great teachers of the past were neurotics (except, of course, a number of the Greeks and Romans) who mistook their uncriticized fantasies for revelation. In the same spirit, the revelations of psychoanalysis are regarded by many laymen to be productions of the “salacious mind” of Dr. Freud.

  The sophistication of the humor of the infantile imagery, when inflected in a skillful mythological rendition of metaphysical doctrine, emerges magnificently in one of the best known of the great myths of the Oriental world: the Hindu account of the primordial battle between the titans and the gods for the liquor of immortality. An ancient earth being, Kaśyapa, “The Turtle Man,” had married thirteen of the daughters of a still more ancient demiurgic patriarch, Dakṣa, “The Lord of Virtue.” Two of these daughters, Diti and Aditī by name, had given birth respectively to the titans and the gods. In an unending series of family battles, however, many of these sons of Kaśyapa were being slain. But now the high priest of the titans, by great austerities and meditations, gained the favor of Śiva, Lord of the Universe. Śiva bestowed on him a charm to revive the dead. This gave to the titans an advantage which the gods, in the next battle, were quick to perceive. They retired in confusion to consult together, and addressed themselves to the high divinities Brahmā and Viṣṇu.

  Figure 40. Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva with Their Consorts (painted miniature, India, early nineteenth century a.d.)

  Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva, respectively Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, constitute a trinity in Hinduism, as three aspects of the operation of the one creative substance. After the seventh century b.c., Brahmā, declining in importance, became merely the creative agent of Viṣṇu. Thus Hinduism today is divided into two main camps, one devoted primarily to the creator-preserver Viṣṇu, the other to Śiva, the world-destroyer, who unites the soul to the eternal. But these two are ultimately one. In the present myth, it is through their joint operation that the elixir of life is obtained.

  They were advised to conclude with their brother-enemies a temporary truce, during which the titans should be induced to help them churn the Milky Ocean of immortal life for its butter — Amṛta (a not, mṛta, mortal), “the nectar of deathlessness.” Flattered by the invitation, which they regarded as an admission of their superiority, the titans were delighted to participate; and so the epochal cooperative adventure at the beginning of the four ages of the world cycle began. Mount Mandara was selected as the churning stick. Vāsuki, the King of Serpents, consented to become the churning rope with which to twirl it. Viṣṇu himself, in the form of a tortoise, dove into the Milky Ocean to support with his back the base of the mountain. The gods laid hold of one end of the serpent, after it had been wrapped around the mountain, the titans the other. And the company then churned for a thousand years.

  The first thing to arise from the surface of the sea was a black, poisonous smoke, called Kālakuta, “Black Summit,” namely the highest concentration of the power of death. “Drink me,” said Kālakuta; and the operation could not proceed until someone should be found capable of drinking it up. Śiva, sitting aloof and afar, was approached. Magnificently, he relaxed from his position of deeply indrawn meditation and proceeded to the scene of the churning of the Milky Ocean. Taking the tincture of death in a cup, he swallowed it at a gulp, and by his yoga-power held it in his throat. The throat turned blue. Hence Śiva is addressed as “Blue Neck,” Nīlakantha.

  The churning now being resumed, presently there began coming up out of the inexhaustible depths precious forms of concentrated power. Apsarases (nymphs) appeared, Lakṣmī, the goddess of fortune, the milk-white horse named Uccaiḥśravas, “Neighing Aloud,” the pearl of gems, Kaustubha, and other objects to the number of thirteen. Last to appear was the skilled physician of the gods, Dhanvantari, holding in his hand the moon, the cup of the nectar of life.

  Now began immediately a great battle for possession of the invaluable drink. One of the titans, Rāhu, managed to steal a sip, but was beheaded before the liquor passed his throat; his body decayed but the head remained immortal. And this head now goes pursuing the moon forever through the skies, trying again to seize it. When it succeeds, the cup passes easily through its mouth and out again at its throat: that is why we have eclipses of the moon.

  But Viṣṇu, concerned lest the gods should lose the advantage, transformed himself into a beautiful dancing damsel. And while the titans, who were lusty fellows, stood spellbound by the girl’s charm, she took up the moon-cup of Amṛta, teased them with it for a moment, and then suddenly passed it over to the gods. Viṣṇu immediately again transformed himself into a mighty hero, joined the gods against the titans, and helped drive away the enemy to the crags and dark canyons of the world beneath. The gods now dine on the Amṛta forever, in their beautiful palaces on the summit of the central mountain of the world, Mount Sumeru.[152]

  Humor is the touchstone of the truly mythological as distinct from the more literal-minded and sentimental theological mood. The gods as icons are not ends in themselves. Their entertaining myths transport the mind and spirit, not up to, but past them, into the yonder void; from which perspective the more heavily freighted theological dogmas then appear to have been only pedagogical lures: their function, to cart the unadroit intellect away from its concrete clutter of facts and events to a comparatively rarefied zone, where, as a final boon, all existence — whether heavenly, earthly, or infernal — may at last be seen transmuted into the semblance of a lightly passing, recurrent, mere childhood dream of bliss and fright. “From one point of view all those divinities exist,” a Tibetan lama re­cently replied to the question of an understanding Occidental visitor, “from another they are not real.”[153] This is the orthodox teaching of the ancient Tantras: “All of these visualized deities are but symbols representing the various things that occur on the Path”;[154] as well as a doctrine of the contemporary psychoanalytical schools.[155] And the same meta-theological insight seems to be what is suggested in Dante’s final verses, where the illuminated voyager at last is able to lift his courageous eyes beyond the beatific vision of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to the one Eternal Light.[156]

  Figure 41. The Conquest of the Monster: David and Goliath • The Harrowing of Hell • Samson and the Lion (engraving, Germany, a.d. 1471)

  The gods and goddesses then are to be understood as embodiments and custodians of the elixir of Imperishable Being
but not themselves the Ultimate in its primary state. What the hero seeks through his intercourse with them is therefore not finally themselves, but their grace, i.e., the power of their sustaining substance. This miraculous energy-substance and this alone is the Imperishable; the names and forms of the deities who everywhere embody, dispense, and represent it come and go. This is the miraculous energy of the thunderbolts of Zeus, Yahweh, and the Supreme Buddha, the fertility of the rain of Viracocha, the virtue announced by the bell rung in the Mass at the consecration,[157] and the light of the ultimate illumination of the saint and sage. Its guardians dare release it only to the duly proven.

  But the gods may be oversevere, overcautious, in which case the hero must trick them of their treasure. Such was the problem of Prometheus. When in this mood even the highest gods appear as malignant, life-hoarding ogres, and the hero who deceives, slays, or appeases them is honored as the savior of the world.

  Maui of Polynesia went against Mahu-ika, the guardian of fire, to wring from him his treasure and transport it back to mankind. Maui went straight up to the giant Mahu-ika and said to him: “Clear away the brush from this level field of ours so that we may contend together in friendly rivalry.” Maui, it must be told, was a great hero and a master of devices.

  Mahu-ika inquired, “What feat of mutual prowess and emulation shall it be?”

  “The feat of tossing,” Maui replied.

  To this Mahu-ika agreed; then Maui asked, “Who shall begin?”

  Mahu-ika answered, “I shall.”

  Maui signified his consent, so Mahu-ika took hold of Maui and tossed him up in the air; he rose high above and fell right down into Mahu-ika’s hands; again Mahu-ika tossed Maui up, chanting: “Tossing, tossing — up you go!”

  Up went Maui, and then Mahu-ika chanted this incantation: