The Hero with a Thousand Faces

by Joseph Campbell

  [128] Bhagavad Gītā, 6:29, 6:31.

  This represents the perfect fulfillment of what Evelyn Underhill termed “the goal of the Mystic Way: the True Unitive Life: the state of Divine Fecundity: Deification” (op. cit., passim). Underhill, however, like Professor Toynbee, makes the popular mistake of supposing that this ideal is peculiar to Christianity. “It is safe to say,” writes Professor Salmony, “that Occidental judgment has been falsified, up to the present, by the need for self-assertion” (Alfred Salmony, “Die Rassenfrage in der Indienforschung,” Sozialistische Monatshefte, 8, Berlin, 1926, p. 534).

  [129] Coomaraswamy, Hinduism and Buddhism, p. 74.

  [130] See E.T.C. Werner, A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology (Shanghai, 1932), p. 163.

  [131] See Okakura Kakuzo, The Book of Tea (New York, 1906). See also Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism (London, 1927), and Lafcadio Hearn, Japan (New York, 1904). [See also Campbell’s exploration of the symbolism of the tea ceremony in Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal, edited by David Kudler (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2003), pp. 133–36. — Ed.]

  [132] Morris Edward Opler, Myths and Tales of the Jicarilla Apache Indians (Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, vol. XXXI, 1938), p. 110.

  [133] Compare to the Chinese concept of yin-yang.

  [134] See above.

  [135] See above.

  [136] See Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, pp. 210–14.

  [137] Compare the drum of creation in the hand of the Hindu Dancing Śiva.

  [138] Curtin, op cit., pp. 106–7.

  [139] See Melanie Klein, The Psycho-Analysis of Children, The International Psycho-Analytical Library, No. 27 (1937).

  [140] Róheim, War, Crime, and the Covenant, pp. 137–38.

  [141] Róheim, The Origin and Function of Culture, p. 50.

  [142] Ibid., pp. 48–50.

  [143] Ibid., p. 50. Compare the indestructibility of the Siberian shaman, drawing coals out of the fire with his bare hands and beating his legs with an ax.

  [144] See Frazer’s discussion of the external soul, op cit., pp. 667–91.

  [145] Ibid., p. 671.

  [146] Pierce, Dreams and Personality, p. 298.

  [147] “The Descent of the Sun,” in F. W. Bain, A Digit of the Moon (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), pp. 213–325.

  [148] Róheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, p. 237. This talisman is the so-called tjurunga (or churinga) of the young man’s totem ancestor. The youth received another tjurunga at the time of his circumcision, representing his maternal totem ancestor. Still earlier, at the time of his birth, a protective tjurunga was placed in his cradle. The bull-roarer is a variety of tjurunga. “The tjurunga,” writes Dr. Róheim, “is a material double, and certain supernatural beings most intimately connected with the tjurunga in Central Australian belief are invisible doubles of the natives....Like the tjurunga, these supernaturals are called the arpuna mborka (other body) of the real human beings whom they protect” (ibid., p. 98).

  [149] Book of Isaiah, 66:10–12.

  [150] Ginzberg, op cit., vol. I, pp. 20, 26–30. See the extensive notes on the Messianic banquet in Ginzberg, vol. V, pp. 43–46.

  [151] Dante, “Paradiso,” II, 1–9. Translation by Norton, op cit., vol. III, p. 10; by permission of the Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers.

  [152] Ramāyāna, I, 45, Mahābhārata, I, 18, Matsya Purāṇa, 249–51, and many other texts. See Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, pp. 105 ff.

  [153] Marco Pallis, Peaks and Lamas (4th edition; London: Cassell and Co., 1946), p. 324.

  [154] Shri-Chakra-Sambhara Tantra, translated from the Tibetan by Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup, edited by Sir John Woodroffe (pseudonym Arthur Avalon), Volume VII of “Tantric Texts” (London, 1919), p. 41. “Should doubts arise as to the divinity of these visualized deities,” the text continues, “one should say, ‘This Goddess is only the recollection of the body,’ and remember that the Deities constitute the Path” (loc. cit.). See Tantra and Tantric Buddhism.

  [155] Compare, e.g., C.G. Jung, “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious” (orig. 1934; Collected Works, vol. 9, part i; New York and London, 1959).

  “There are perhaps many,” writes Dr. J.C. Flügel, “who would still retain the notion of a quasi-anthropomorphic Father-God as an extra-mental reality, even though the purely mental origin of such a God has become apparent” (The Psycho-Analytic Study of the Family, p. 236).

  [156] “Paradiso,” XXXIII, 82 ff.

  [157] See above.

  [158] J.F. Stimson, The Legends of Maui and Tahaki (Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin, No. 127; Honolulu, 1934), pp. 19–21.

  [159] Bruno Meissner, “Ein altbabylonisches Fragment des Gilgamosepos,” Mitteilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, VII, 1; Berlin, 1902, p. 9.

  [160] See, for instance, the Katha Upaniṣad, 1: 21, 23–25.

  [161] The above rendering is based on P. Jensen, Assyrisch-babylonische Mythen und Epen (Kellinschriftliche Bibliothek, VI, I; Berlin, 1900), pp. 116–273. The verses quoted appear on pp. 223, 251, 251–53. Jensen’s version is a line-for-line translation of the principal extant text, an Assyrian version from King Ashurbanipal’s library (668–626 b.c.). Fragments of the very much older Babylonian version and still more ancient Sumerian original (third millennium b.c.) have also been discovered and deciphered.

  [162] Ko Hung (also known as Pao Pu Tzu), Nei P’ien, Chapter VII (translation quoted from Obed Simon Johnson, A Study of Chinese Alchemy, Shanghai, 1928, p. 63).

  Ko Hung evolved several other very interesting receipts, one bestowing a body “buoyant and luxurious,” another the ability to walk on water. For a discussion of the place of Ko Hung in Chinese philosophy, see Alfred Forke, “Ko Hung, der Philosoph und Alchimist,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, XLI, 1–2 (Berlin, 1932), pp. 115–26.

  [163] Herbert A. Giles, A Chinese Biographical Dictionary (London and Shanghai, 1898), p. 372.

  [164] A Tantric aphorism.

  [165] Lao Tze, Tao Teh Ching, 16 (translation by Dwight Goddard, Laotzu’s Tao and Wu Wei, New York, 1919, p. 18). Compare to the concept of Yin-Yang.

  [166] “Paradiso,” XXXIII, 49–57 (translation by Norton, op cit., vol. III, pp. 253–54, by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers).

  [167] Kena Upaniṣad, 1:3 (translation by Swami Sharvananda; Sri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore, Madras, 1932).

  [168] Poetic Edda, “Hovamol,” 139 (translation by Henry Adams Bellows, The American-Scandinavian Foundation, New York, 1923).

  [169] Jataka, Introduction, i, 75 (reprinted by permission of the publishers from Henry Clarke Warren, Buddhism in Translations [Harvard Oriental Series 3], Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1896, pp. 82–83).

  Figure 44. The Return of the Prodigal (oil on canvas, Holland, a.d. 1662)

  CHAPTER III

  Return

  1. Refusal of the Return

  When the hero-quest has been accomplished, through penetration to the source, or through the grace of some male or female, human or animal personification, the adventurer still must return with his life-transmuting trophy. The full round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet, or the ten thousand worlds.

  But the responsibility has been frequently refused. Even the Buddha, after his triumph, doubted whether the message of realization could be communicated, and saints are reported to have passed away while in the supernal ecstasy. Numerous indeed are the heroes fabled to have taken up residence forever in the blessed isle of the unaging Goddess of Immortal Being.

  A moving tale is told of an ancient Hindu warrior-king named Muchukunda. He was born from his father’s left side, the father having swallowed by mistake a fertility potion that the Brahmins had pre
pared for his wife;* and in keeping with the promising symbolism of this miracle, the motherless marvel, fruit of the male womb, grew to be such a king among kings that when the gods, at one period, were suffering defeat in their perpetual contest with the demons, they called upon him for help. He assisted them to a mighty victory, and they, in their divine pleasure, granted him the realization of his highest wish. But what should such a king, himself almost omnipotent, desire? What greatest boon of boons could be conceived of by such a master among men? King Muchukunda, so runs the story, was very tired after his battle: all he asked was that he might be granted sleep without end, and that any person chancing to arouse him should be burned to a crisp by the first glance of his eye.

  The boon was bestowed. In a cavern chamber, deep within the womb of the mountain, King Muchukunda retired to sleep, and there slumbered through the revolving eons. Individuals, peoples, civilizations, world ages, came into being out of the void and dropped back into it again, while the old king, in his state of subconscious bliss, endured. Timeless as the Freudian unconscious beneath the dramatic time world of our fluctuating ego-experience, the old mountain man, the drinker of deep sleep, lived on and on.

  His awakening came — but with a surprising turn that throws into new perspective the whole problem of the hero-circuit, as well as the mystery of the mighty king’s request for sleep as the highest conceivable boon,

  Viṣṇu, the Lord of the World, had become incarnate in the person of a beautiful youth named Kṛṣṇa (Krishna), who having saved the land of India from a tyrannical race of demons, had assumed the throne. And he had been ruling in Utopian peace, when a horde of barbarians suddenly invaded from the northwest. Kṛṣṇa the king went against them, but in keeping with his divine nature, won the victory playfully, by simple ruse. Unarmed and garlanded with lotuses, he came out of his stronghold and tempted the enemy king to pursue and catch him, then dodged into a cave. When the barbarian followed, he discovered someone lying there in the chamber, asleep.

  “Oh!” thought he. “So he has lured me here and now he feigns to be a harmless sleeper.”

  He kicked the figure lying on the ground before him, and it stirred. It was King Muchukunda. The figure rose and the eyes that had been closed for unnumbered cycles of creation, world history, and dissolution, opened slowly to the light. The first glance that went forth struck the enemy king, who burst into a torch of flame and was reduced immediately to a smoking heap of ash. Muchukunda turned and the second glance struck the garlanded, beautiful youth, whom the awakened old king straightway recognized by his radiance as an incarnation of God. And Muchukunda bowed before his savior with the following prayer.

  My Lord God! When I lived and wrought as a man, I lived and wrought — straying restlessly; through many lives, birth after birth, I sought and suffered, nowhere knowing cease or rest. Distress I took for joy. Mirages appearing over the desert I mistook for refreshing waters. Delights I grasped, and what I obtained was misery. Kingly power and earthly possession, riches and might, friends and sons, wife and followers, everything that lures the senses: I wanted them all, because I believed that these would bring me beatitude. But the moment anything was mine it changed its nature, and became as a burning fire.

  Then I found my way into the company of the gods, and they welcomed me as a companion. But where, still, surcease? Where rest? The creatures of this world, gods included, are all tricked, my Lord God, by your playful ruses; that is why they continue in their futile round of birth, life agony, old age, and death. Between lives, they confront the lord of the dead and are forced to endure hells of every degree of pitiless pain. And it all comes from you!

  My Lord God, deluded by your playful ruses, I too was a prey of the world, wandering in a labyrinth of error, netted in the meshes of ego-consciousness. Now, therefore, I take refuge in your Presence — the boundless, the adorable — desiring only freedom from it all.

  When Muchukunda stepped from his cave, he saw that men, since his departure, had become reduced in stature. He was as a giant among them. And so he departed from them again, retreated to the highest mountains, and there dedicated himself to the ascetic practices that should finally release him from his last attachment to the forms of being.[1]

  Muchukunda, in other words, instead of returning, decided to retreat one degree still further from the world. And who shall say that his decision was altogether without reason?

  Figure 45a. Gorgon-Sister Pursuing Perseus, Who Is Fleeing with the Head of Medusa (red-figure amphora, Greece, fifth century b.c.)

  Figure 45b. Perseus Fleeing with the Head of Medusa in His Wallet (red-figure amphora, Greece, fifth century b.c.)

  2. The Magic Flight

  If the hero in his triumph wins the blessing of the goddess or the god and is then explicitly commissioned to return to the world with some elixir for the restoration of society, the final stage of his adventure is supported by all the powers of his supernatural patron. On the other hand, if the trophy has been attained against the opposition of its guardian, or if the hero’s wish to return to the world has been resented by the gods or demons, then the last stage of the mythological round becames a lively, often comical, pursuit. This flight may be complicated by marvels of magical obstruction and evasion.

  The Welsh tell, for instance, of a hero, Gwion Bach, who found himself in the Land Under Waves. Specifically, he was at the bottom of Lake Bala, in Merionethshire, in the north of Wales. And there lived at the bottom of this lake an ancient giant, Tegid the Bald, together with his wife, Caridwen. The latter, in one of her aspects, was a patroness of grain and fertile crops, and in another, a goddess of poetry and letters. She was the owner of an immense kettle and desired to prepare therein a brew of science and inspiration. With the aid of necromantic books she contrived a black concoction which she then set over a fire to brew for a year, at the end of which period three blessed drops should be obtained of the grace of inspiration.

  And she put our hero, Gwion Bach, to stir the cauldron, and a blind man named Morda to keep the fire kindled beneath it, and she charged them that they should not suffer it to cease boiling for the space of a year and a day. And she herself, according to the books of the astronomers, and in planetary hours, gathered every day of all charm-bearing herbs. And one day, towards the end of the year, as Caridwen was culling plants and making incantations, it chanced that three drops of the charmed liquor flew out of the cauldron and fell upon the finger of Gwion Bach. And by reason of their great heat he put his finger in his mouth, and the instant he put those marvel-working drops into his mouth he foresaw everything that was to come, and perceived that his chief care must be to guard against the wiles of Caridwen, for vast was her skill. And in very great fear he fled towards his own land. And the cauldron burst in two, because all the liquor within it except the three charm-bearing drops was poisonous, so that the horses of Gwyddno Garanhir were poisoned by the water of the stream into which the liquor of the cauldron ran, and the confluence of that stream was called the Poison of the Horses of Gwyddno from that time forth.

  Thereupon came in Caridwen and saw all the toil of the whole year lost. And she seized a billet of wood and struck the blind Morda on the head until one of his eyes fell out upon his cheek. And he said, “Wrongfully hast thou disfigured me, for I am innocent. Thy loss was not because of me.” “Thou speakest truth,” said Caridwen, “it was Gwion Bach who robbed me.”

  Figure 46. Caridwen in the Shape of a Greyhound Pursuing Gwion Bach in the Shape of a Hare (lithograph, Britain, a.d. 1877)

  And she went forth after him, running. And he saw her, and changed himself into a hare and fled. But she changed herself into a greyhound and turned him. And he ran towards a river, and became a fish. And she in the form of an otter-bitch chased him under the water, until he was fain to turn himself into a bird of the air. She, as a hawk, followed him and gave him no rest in the sky. And just as she was about to stoop upon him, and he was in fear of death, he espied a heap of winnowed wheat
on the floor of a barn, and he dropped among the wheat, and turned himself into one of the grains. Then she transformed herself into a high-crested black hen, and went to the wheat and scratched it with her feet, and found him out and swallowed him. And, as the story says, she bore him nine months, and when she was delivered of him, she could not find it in her heart to kill him, by reason of his beauty. So she wrapped him in a leathern bag, and cast him into the sea to the mercy of God, on the twenty-ninth day of April.[2]

  The tale of Gwion Bach comes to us through “Taliesin” in The Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh romances translated by Lady Charlotte Guest in four volumes between 1838 and 1849. Taliesin, “Chief of the Bards of the West,” may have been an actual historical personage of the sixth century a.d., contemporary with the chieftain who became the “King Arthur” of later romance. The bard’s legend and poems survive in a thirteenth-century manuscript, “The Book of Taliesin,” which is one of the “Four Ancient Books of Wales.”

  A mabinog (Welsh) is a bard’s apprentice. The term mabinogi, “juvenile instruction,” denotes the traditional material (myths, legends, poems, etc.) taught to a mabinog, and which it was his duty to acquire by heart. Mabinogion, the plural of mabinogi, was the name given by Guest to her translation of eleven romances from the “Ancient Books.”