The Hero with a Thousand Faces

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The Hero with a Thousand Faces Page 21

by Joseph Campbell


  [2] Knud Leem, Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper (Copenhagen, 1767), pp. 475–78. An English translation will be found in John Pinkerton, A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World (London, 1808), vol. I, pp. 477–78.

  [3] E.J. Jessen, Afhandling om de Norske Finners og Lappers Hedenske Religion, p. 31. This work is included in Leem’s volume, op cit., as an appendix with independent pagination.

  [4] Uno Harva, Die religiösen Vorstellungen der altaischen Völker (“Folklore Fellows Communications,” No. 125, Helsinki, 1938), pp. 558–59; following G.N. Potanin, Očerki ševero-zapodnoy Mongolii (St. Petersburg, 1881), vol. IV, pp. 64–65.

  [5] Géza Róheim, The Origin and Function of Culture (Nervous and Mental Disease Monographs, No. 69), pp. 38–39.

  [6] Ibid., p. 38.

  [7] Ibid., p. 51.

  [8] Underhill, op cit., Part II, Chapter III. Compare above.

  [9] Wilhelm Stekel, Fortschritte und Technik der Traumdeutung, p. 124.

  [10] Svedenborgs Drömmar, 1774, “Jemte andra hans anteckningar efter original-­handskrifter meddelade af G.E. Klemming” (Stockholm, 1859), quoted in Ignaz Ježower, Das Buch der Träume (Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, 1928), p. 97.

  [11] Ježower, op cit., p. 166.

  [12] Plutarch, Themistocles, 26; Ježower, op cit., p. 18.

  [13] Stekel, Fortschritte und Technik der Traumdeutung, p. 150.

  [14] Ibid., p. 153.

  [15] Ibid., p. 45.

  [16] Ibid., p. 208.

  [17] Ibid., p. 216.

  [18] Ibid., p. 224.

  [19] Ibid., p. 159.

  [20] Ibid., p. 21.

  [21] Stekel, Die Sprache des Traumes, p. 200. See also Heinrich Zimmer, The King and the Corpse, ed. J. Campbell (New York: Bollingen Series, 1948), pp. 171–72; also D.L. Coomaraswamy, “The Perilous Bridge of Welfare,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 8.

  [22] Stekel, Die Sprache des Traumes, p. 287.

  [23] Ibid., p. 286.

  [24] Koran, 2:214.

  [25] S. N. Kramer, Sumerian Mythology (American Philosophical Society Memoirs, vol. XXI; Philadelphia, 1944), pp. 86–93. The mythology of Sumer is of especial importance to us of the West; for it was the source of the Babylonian, Assyrian, Phoenician, and Biblical traditions (the last giving rise to Mohammedanism and Christianity), as well as an important influence in the religions of the pagan Celts, Greeks, Romans, Slavs, and Germans.

  [26] Jeremiah Curtin, Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1890), pp. 101–6.

  [27] See above.

  [28] Ovid, Metamorphoses, III, 138–252.

  [29] See J.C. Flügel, The Psycho-Analytic Study of the Family (“The International Psycho-Analytical Library,” No. 3, 4th edition; London: The Hogarth Press, 1931), chapters 12 and 13.

  “There exists,” Professor Flügel observes, “a very general association on the one hand between the notion of mind, spirit or soul and the idea of the father or of masculinity; and on the other hand between the notion of the body or of matter (materia — that which belongs to the mother) and the idea of the mother or of the feminine principle. The repression of the emotions and feelings relating to the mother [in our Judeo-Christian monotheism] has, in virtue of this association, produced a tendency to adopt an attitude of distrust, contempt, disgust or hostility towards the human body, the Earth, and the whole material Universe, with a corresponding tendency to exalt and overemphasize the spiritual elements, whether in man or in the general scheme of things. It seems very probable that a good many of the more pronouncedly idealistic tendencies in philosophy may owe much of their attractiveness in many minds to a sublimation of this reaction against the mother, while the more dogmatic and narrow forms of materialism may perhaps in their turn represent a return of the repressed feelings originally connected with the mother” (ibid., p. 145, note 2).

  [30] The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, translated into English with an introduction by Swami Nikhilananda (New York, 1942), p. 9.

  [31] Ibid., pp. 21–22.

  [32] Standish H. O’Grady, Silva Gadelica (London: Williams and Norgate, 1892), vol. II, pp. 370–72. Variant versions will be found in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, “The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe”; in Gower’s Tale of Florent; in the mid-fifteenth-century poem, The Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell; and in the seventeenth-century ballad, The Marriage of Sir Gawaine. See W.F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster, Sources and Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Chicago, 1941).

  [33] Guido Guinicelli di Magnano (1230–75?), “Of the Gentle Heart,” translation by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Dante and His Circle (London: Ellis and White, edition of 1874), p. 291.

  [34] Antiphons for the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (August 15), at Vespers: from the Roman Missal.

  [35] Hamlet, Act I, scene ii, ll. 129–37.

  [36] Sophocles, Oedipus Coloneus, 1615–17.

  [37] Shankaracharya, Vivekachudamani, pp. 396 and 414, translated by Swami Madhavananda (Mayavati, 1932).

  [38] Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, LXXVI, “Saint Petronilla, Virgin.” (Compare the tale of Daphne, pp. 50–51.) The later Church, unwilling to think of St. Peter as having begotten a child, speaks of Petronilla as his ward.

  [39] Ibid., CXVII.

  [40] Gustave Flaubert, La tentation de Saint Antoine (La reine de Saba).

  [41] Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World (Boston, 1693), p. 63.

  [42] Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Boston, 1742).

  [43] Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Siva (New York, 1917), pp. 56–66.

  [44] Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, pp. 151–75.

  [45] The brahminical thread is a cotton thread worn by the members of the three upper castes (the so-called twice-born) of India. It is passed over the head and right arm, so that it rests on the left shoulder and runs across the body (chest and back) to the right hip. This symbolizes the second birth of the twice-born, the thread itself representing the threshold, or sun door, so that the twice-born is dwelling at once in time and eternity.

  [46] For a discussion of this syllable, see below.

  [47] Matthews, op cit., pp. 110–13.

  [48] Ovid, Metamorphoses, II (adapted from Miller: Loeb Library).

  [49] Kimmins, op cit., p. 22.

  [50] Wood, op cit., pp. 218–19.

  [51] W. Lloyd Warner, A Black Civilization (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1937), pp. 260–85.

  [52] Géza Róheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, pp. 72–73.

  [53] Koran, 4:116, 4:117.

  [54] Sir Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen, The Arunta (London: Macmillan and Co., 1927), vol. I, pp. 201–3.

  [55] Róheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, pp. 49 ff.

  [56] Ibid., p. 75.

  [57] Ibid., p. 227, citing R. and C. Berndt, “A Preliminary Report of Field Work in the Ooldea Region, Western South Australia,” Oceania XII (1942), p. 323.

  [58] Róheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, pp. 227–28, citing D. Bates, The Passing of the Aborigines (1939), pp. 41–43.

  [59] Róheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, p. 231.

  [60] R.H. Mathews, “The Walloonggura Ceremony,” Queensland Geographical Journal, N. S., XV (1899–1900), p. 70; cited by Róheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, p. 232.

  [61] K. Langloh Parker, The Euahlayi Tribe, 1905, pp. 72–73; cited by Róheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, p. 232.

  [62] John Layard, Stone Men of Malekula (London: Chatto and Windus, 1942).

  [63] W.F.J. Knight, in his Cumaean Gates (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1936).

  [64] W.J. Perry, The Children of the Sun (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1923).

  [65] Jane Harrison, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (2nd revised edition; Cambridge University Press, 1927).

  [66] [This was a question to which Campbell would return a number of times, most notab
ly in “Mythogenesis,” an essay published in The Flight of the Wild Gander (third edition; Novato, CA: New World Library, 2001) — Ed.]

  [67] Euripides, The Bacchae, 526 f.

  [68] Aeschylus, Figure 57 (Nauck); cited by Jane Harrison (Themis, p. 61) in her discussion of the role of the bull-roarer in classical and Australian rites of initiation. For an introduction to the subject of the bull-roarer, see Andrew Lang, Custom and Myth (2nd revised edition; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1885), pp. 29­–44.

  [69] All of these are described and discussed at length by Sir James G. Frazer in The Golden Bough.

  [70] Epistles to the Hebrews, 9:13–14.

  [71] Le P.A. Capus des Pères-Blancs, “Contes, chants et proverbes des Basumbwa dans l’Afrique Orientale,” Zeitschrift für afrikanische und oceanische Sprachen. Vol. III (Berlin, 1897), pp. 363–64.

  [72] Koran, 10:31.

  [73] See above.

  [74] See above. The Basumbwa (tale of the Great Chief, Death) and the Wachaga (tale of Kyazimba) are East African peoples; the Yoruba (tale of Edshu) inhabit the West Coast nation of Nigeria.

  [75] Koran, 6:59, 6:60.

  [76] Gospel According to Luke, 2:7.

  [77] Ovid, Metamorphoses, VIII, pp. 618–724.

  [78] Koran, 2:115.

  [79] Katha Upaniṣad, 3:12.

  [80] Gospel According to Thomas, 77.

  [81] Book of Job, 40:7–14.

  [82] Ibid., 42:5–6.

  [83] Ibid., 42:16–17.

  [84] Leon Stein, “Hassidic Music,” The Chicago Jewish Forum, vol. II, No. 1 (Fall 1943), p. 16.

  [85] Pranja-Paramita-Hridaya Sutra; “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. XLIX, Part II, p. 148; also, p. 154.

  [86] Vajracchedika (“The Diamond Cutter”), 17; Ibid., p. 134.

  [87] Compare above.

  [88] Amitayur-Dhyana Sutra, 19; “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. XLIX, Part II, pp. 182–83.

  [89] “To men I am Hermes; to women I appear as Aphrodite: I bear the emblems of both my parents” (Anthologia Graeca ad Fidem Codices, vol. II).

  “One part of him is his sire’s, all else he has of his mother” (Martial, Epigrams, 4, 174; Loeb Library, vol. II, p. 501).

  Ovid’s account of Hermaphroditos appears in the Metamorphoses, IV, pp. 288 ff.

  Many classical images of Hermaphroditos have come down to us. See Hugh Hampton Young, Genital Abnormalities, Hermaphroditism, and Related Adrenal Diseases (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1937), Chapter I, “Hermaphroditism in Literature and Art.”

  [90] Plato, Symposium, 178.

  [91] Book of Genesis, 1:27.

  [92] Midrash, commentary on Genesis, Rabbah 8:1.

  [93] See above.

  [94] See below.

  [95] Compare James Joyce: “In the economy of heaven...there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself” (Ulysses, Modern Library edition, p. 210).

  [96] Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus. See also Ovid, Metamorphoses, III, pp. 324 ff., 511, and 516. For other examples of the hermaphrodite as priest, god, or seer, see Herodotus, 4, 67 (Rawlinson edition, vol. III, pp. 46–47); Theophrastus, Characteres, 16.10–11; and J. Pinkerton’s Voyage and Travels, Chapter 8, p. 427, “A New Account of the East Indies,” by Alexander Hamilton. These are cited by Young, op cit., pp. 2 and 9.

  [97] See Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, Figure 70.

  [98] See Figure 34.

  [99] See B. Spencer and F.J. Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1899), p. 263; Róheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, pp. 164–65. The subincision produces artificially a hypospadias resembling that of a certain class of hermaphrodites. (See the portrait of the hermaphrodite Marie Angé, in Young, op cit., p. 20.)

  [100] Róheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, p. 94.

  [101] Ibid., pp. 218–19.

  [102] Compare the following view of the Bodhisattva Dharmakāra: “Out of his mouth there breathed a sweet and more than heavenly smell of sandalwood. From all the pores of his hair there arose the smell of lotus, and he was pleasing to everybody, gracious and beautiful; endowed with the fulness of the best bright color. As his body was adorned with all the good signs and marks, there arose from the pores of his hair and from the palms of his hands all sorts of precious ornaments in the shape of all kinds of flowers, incense, scents, garlands, ointments, umbrellas, flags, and banners, and in the shape of all kinds of instrumental music. And there appeared also, streaming forth from the palms of his hands, all kinds of viands and drink, food, hard and soft, and sweetmeats, and all kinds of enjoyments and pleasures” (The Larger Sukhavati-Vyuha, 10, “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. XLIX, Part II, pp. 26–27).

  [103] Róheim, War, Crime, and the Covenant, p. 57.

  [104] Ibid., pp. 48–68.

  [105] First Book of Samuel, 17:26.

  [106] Koran, 4:104.

  [107] “For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule” (from the Buddhist Dhammapada, 1:5, “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. X, Part I, p. 5; translation by F. Max Müller).

  [108] Gospel According to Luke, 6:27–36.

  [109] Reprinted by Professor Robert Phillips, American Government and Its Problems, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1941, and by Dr. Karl Menninger, Love Against Hate, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1942, p. 211.

  [110] Gospel According to Matthew, 22:37–40; Mark, 12:28–34; Luke, 10:25–37. Jesus is also reported to have commissioned his apostles to “teach all nations” (Matthew, 28:19), but not to persecute and pillage, or turn over to the “secular arm” those who would not hear. “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” (ibid., 10:16).

  [111] Gospel According to Matthew, 7:1.

  [112] “And as troops of robbers wait for a man, so the company of priests murder in the way of consent....They make the king glad with their wickedness, and the princes with their lies” (Hosea, 6:9; 7:3).

  [113] Menninger, op cit., pp. 195–196.

  [114] Swami Nikhilananda, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, New York, 1941, p. 559.

  [115] Rumi, Mathnawi, 2. 2525.

  [116] “The Hymn of the Final Precepts of the Great Saint and Bodhisattva Milarepa” (c. a.d. 1051–1135), from the Jetsün-Kahbum, or Biographical History of Jetsün-Milarepa, according to Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s English rendering, edited by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, Tibet’s Great Yogi Milarepa (Oxford University Press, 1928), p. 285.

  [117] “The Hymn of the Yogic Precepts of Milarepa,” Ibid., p. 273.

  [118] Evans-Wentz, “Hymn of Milarepa in praise of his teacher,” p. 137.

  [119] The same idea is frequently expressed in the Upaniṣads: viz., “This self gives itself to that self, that self gives itself to this self. Thus they gain each other. In this form he gains yonder world, in that form he experiences this world” (Aitareya Aranyaka, 2. 3. 7). It is known also to the mystics of Islam: “Thirty years the transcendent God was my mirror, now I am my own mirror; i.e., that which I was I am no more, the transcendent God is his own mirror. I say that I am my own mirror; ’tis God that speaks with my tongue, and I have vanished” (Bayazid, as cited in The Legacy of Islam, T.W. Arnold and A. Guillaume, editors, Oxford Press, 1931, p. 216).

  [120] “I came forth from Bayazid-ness as a snake from its skin. Then I looked. I saw that lover, beloved, and love are one, for in the world of unity all can be one” (Bayazid, loc. cit.).

  [121] Book of Hosea, 6:1–3.

  [122] Bṛhadāranyaka Upaniṣad, 1. 4. 3. See below.

  [123] Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Hinduism and Buddhism (New York: The Philosophical Library, no date), p. 63.

  [124] Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (translated by James Strachey; Standard Edition, XVIII; London: The Hogarth Press, 1955). See also Karl Menninger, Love against Hate, p. 262.

  [125] Vajracchedikā Sūtra, 32; see “Sacred Books of the East,” op cit., p. 144
.

  [126] The smaller Prajñāpāramitā Hṛdāya Sūtra; Ibid., p. 153.

  [127] Nagarjuna, Madhyamika Shastra.

  “What is immortal and what is mortal are harmoniously blended, for they are not one, nor are they separate” (Ashvaghosha).

  “This view,” writes Dr. Coomaraswamy, citing these texts, “is expressed with dramatic force in the aphorism Yas klésas so bodhi, yas samsāras tat nirvānum, ‘That which is sin is also Wisdom, the realm of Becoming is also Nirvana’” (Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916, p. 245).

 

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