The Hero with a Thousand Faces

by Joseph Campbell

  The universe [said Paiore] was like an egg, which contained Te Tumu and Te Papa. It at last burst and produced three layers superposed — one layer below supporting two above. On the lowest layer remained Te Tumu and Te Papa, who created man, animals, and plants.

  The first man was Matata, produced without arms; he died shortly after he had come into being. The second man was Aitu, who came with one arm but without legs; and he died like his elder brother. Finally, the third man was Hoatea (Sky-space), and he was perfectly formed. After this came a woman named Hoatu (Fruitfulness of Earth). She became the wife of Hoatea and from them descended the human race.

  When the lowest layer of earth became filled with creation, the people made an opening in the middle of the layer above, so that they could get upon it also, and there they established themselves, taking with them plants and animals from below. Then they raised the third layer (so that it should form a ceiling to the second)... and ultimately established themselves up there also, so that human beings had three abodes.

  Above the earth were the skies, also superposed, reaching down and supported by their respective horizons, some being attached to those of the earth; and the people continued to work, expanding one sky above another in the same manner, until all were set in order.[24]

  The main portion of Paiore’s illustration shows the people spreading out the world, standing on each other’s shoulders to elevate the skies. On the lowest stratum of this world appear the two original elements, Te Tumu and Te Papa. To the left of them are the plants and animals of their begetting. Over to the right are to be seen the first man, malformed, and the first successful men and women. In the upper sky appears a fire surrounded by four figures, representing an early event in the history of the world: “The creation of the universe was scarcely terminated when Tangaroaā, who delighted in doing evil, set fire to the highest heaven, seeking thus to destroy everything. But fortunately the fire was seen spreading by Tamatua, Oru, and Ruanuku, who quickly ascended from the earth and extinguished the flames.”[25]

  The image of the cosmic egg is known to many mythologies; it appears in the Greek Orphic, Egyptian, Finnish, Buddhistic, and Japanese. “In the beginning this world was merely nonbeing,” we read in a sacred work of the Hindus;

  It was existent. It developed. It turned into an egg. It lay for the period of a year. It was split asunder. One of the two eggshell parts became silver, one gold. That which was of silver is the earth. That which was of gold is the sky. What was the outer membrane is the mountains. What was the inner membrane is cloud and mist. What were the veins are the rivers. What was the fluid within is the ocean. Now, what was born therefrom is yonder sun.[26]

  The shell of the cosmic egg is the world frame of space, while the fertile seed-power within typifies the inexhaustible life dynamism of nature.

  “Space is boundless by re-entrant form, not by great extension. That which is is a shell floating in the infinitude of that which is not.” This succinct formulation by a modern physicist, illustrating the world picture as he saw it in 1928,[27] gives precisely the sense of the mythological cosmic egg. Furthermore, the evolution of life, described by our modern science of biology, is the theme of the early stages of the cosmogonic cycle. Finally, the world destruction, which the physicists tell us must come with the exhaustion of our sun and ultimate running down of the whole cosmos,[28] stands presaged in the scar left by the fire of Tangaroaā: the world-destructive effects of the creator-destroyer will increase gradually until, at last, in the second course of the cosmogonic cycle, all will devolve into the sea of bliss.

  Not uncommonly the cosmic egg bursts to disclose, swelling from within, an awesome figure in human form. This is the anthropomorphic personification of the power of generation, the Mighty Living One, as it is called in the Kabbala. “Mighty Ta’aroa whose curse was death, he is the creator of the world.” Thus we hear from Tahiti, another of the South Sea Isles.*“He was alone. He had no father nor indeed a mother. Ta’aroa simply lived in the void. There was no land, nor sky, nor sea. Land was nebulous: there was no foundation. Ta’aroa then said:

  O space for land, O space for sky,

  Useless world below existing in nebulous state,

  Continuing and continuing from time immemorial,

  Useless world below, extend!

  “The face of Ta’aroa appeared outside. The shell of Ta’aroa fell away and became land. Ta’aroa looked: Land had come into existence, sea had come into existence, sky had come into existence. Ta’aroa lived god-like contemplating his work.”[29]

  An Egyptian myth reveals the demiurge creating the world by an act of masturbation.[30] A Hindu myth displays him in yogic meditation, with the forms of his inner vision breaking forth from him (to his own astonishment) and standing then around him as a pantheon of brilliant gods.[31] And in another account from India the all-father is represented as first splitting into male and female, then procreating all the creatures according to kind:

  In the beginning, this universe was only the Self, in human form. He looked around and saw nothing but himself. Then, at the beginning, he cried out, “I am he.” Whence came the name, I. That is why, even today, when a person is addressed, he first declares, “It is I,” and then announces the other name that he goes by.

  He was afraid. That is why people are afraid to be alone. He thought, “But what am I afraid of? There is nothing but myself.” Whereupon his fear was gone....

  He was unhappy. That is why people are not happy when they are alone. He wanted a mate. He became as big as a woman and man embracing. He divided this body, which was himself, in two parts. From that there came husband and wife....Therefore this human body (before one marries a wife) is like one of the halves of a split pea....He united with her; and from that were born men.

  She considered: “How can he unite with me after producing me from himself? Well then, let me hide myself.” She became a cow; but he became a bull and united with her; from that were born cattle. She became a mare, he a stallion; she became a she-ass, he a he-ass and united with her; from that were born the one-hoofed animals. She became a she-goat, he a he-goat; she became a ewe, he a ram and united with her; from that were born goats and sheep. Thus did he project everything that exists in pairs, down to the ants.

  Then he knew: “Indeed I am myself the creation, for I have projected the entire world.” Whence he was called Creation....[32]

  The enduring substratum of the individual and of the progenitor of the universe are one and the same, according to these mythologies; that is why the demiurge in this myth is called the Self. The Oriental mystic discovers this deep-reposing, enduring presence in its original androgynous state when he plunges in meditation into his own interior.

  Him on whom the sky, the earth, and the atmosphere

  Are woven, and the mind, together with all the life-breaths,

  Him alone know as the one Soul. Other

  Words dismiss. He is the bridge to immortality.[33]

  Thus it appears that though these myths of creation narrate of the remotest past, they speak at the same time of the present origin of the individual. “Each soul and spirit,” we read in the Hebrew Zohar,

  prior to its entering into this world, consists of a male and female united into one being. When it descends on this earth the two parts separate and animate two different bodies. At the time of marriage, the Holy One, blessed be He, who knows all souls and spirits, unites them again as they were before, and they again constitute one body and one soul, forming as it were the right and left of one individual....This union, however, is influenced by the deeds of the man and by the ways in which he walks. If the man is pure and his conduct is pleasing in the sight of God, he is united with that female part of his soul which was his component part prior to his birth.[34]

  This kabbalistic text is a commentary to the scene in Genesis where Adam gives forth Eve. A similar conception appears in Plato’s Symposium. According to this mysticism of sexual love, the ultimate experien
ce of love is a realization that beneath the illusion of two-ness dwells identity: “each is both.” This realization can expand into a discovery that beneath the multitudinous individualities of the whole surrounding universe — human, animal, vegetable, even mineral — dwells identity; whereupon the love experience becomes cosmic, and the beloved who first opened the vision is magnified as the mirror of creation. The man or woman knowing this experience is possessed of what Schopenhauer called “the science of beauty everywhere.” He “goes up and down these worlds, eating what he desires, assuming what forms he desires,” and he sits singing the song of universal unity, which begins: “Oh, wonderful! Oh, wonderful! Oh, wonderful!”[35]

  5. The Breaking of the One into the Manifold

  The forward roll of the cosmogonic round precipitates the One into the many. Herewith a great crisis, a rift, splits the created world into two apparently contradictory planes of being. In Paiore’s chart the people emerge from the lower darknesses and immediately go to work to elevate the sky.[36] They are revealed as moving with an apparent independence. They hold councils, they decide, they plan; they take over the work of arranging the world. Yet we know that behind the scenes the Unmoved Mover is at work, like a puppetmaster.

  In mythology, wherever the Unmoved Mover, the Mighty Living One, holds the center of attention, there is a miraculous spontaneity about the shaping of the universe. The elements condense and move into play of their own accord, or at the Creator’s slightest word; the portions of the self-shattering cosmic egg go to their stations without aid. But when the perspective shifts, to focus on living beings, when the panorama of space and nature is faced from the standpoint of the personages ordained to inhabit it, then a sudden transformation overshadows the cosmic scene. No longer do the forms of the world appear to move in the patterns of a living, growing, harmonious thing, but stand recalcitrant, or at best inert. The props of the universal stage have to be adjusted, even beaten into shape. The earth brings forth thorns and thistles; man eats bread in the sweat of his brow.

  Two modes of myth therefore confront us. According to one, the demiurgic forces continue to operate of themselves; according to the other, they give up the initiative and even set themselves against the further progress of the cosmogonic round. The difficulties represented in this latter form of myth begin even as early as during the long darkness of the original, creature-begetting embrace of the cosmic parents. Let the Maoris introduce us to this terrible theme:

  Rangi (the Sky) lay so close on the belly of Papa (Mother Earth) that the children could not break free from the womb.

  They were in an unstable condition, floating about the world of darkness, and this was their appearance: some were crawling... some were upright with arms held up...some lying on their sides... some on their backs, some were stooping, some with their heads bent down, some with legs drawn up...some kneeling...some feeling about in the dark....They were all within the embrace of Rangi and Papa....

  At last the beings who had been begotten by Heaven and Earth, worn out by the continued darkness, consulted among themselves, saying, “Let us now determine what we should do with Rangi and Papa, whether it would be better to slay them or to rend them apart.” Then spake Tu-matauenga, the fiercest of the children of Heaven and Earth, “It is well, let us slay them.”

  Then spake Tane-mahuta, the father of the forests and of all things that inhabit them, or that are constructed from trees. “Nay, not so. It is better to rend them apart, and to let the heaven stand far above us, and the earth lie under our feet. Let the sky become a stranger to us, but the earth remain close to us as our nursing mother.”

  Several of the brother gods vainly tried to rend apart the heavens and the earth. At last it was Tane-mahuta himself, the father of the forests and of all things that inhabit them, or that are constructed from trees, who succeeded in the titanic project.

  His head is now firmly planted on his mother the earth, his feet he raises up and rests against his father the skies, he strains his back and limbs with mighty effort. Now are rent apart Rangi and Papa, and with cries and groans of woe they shriek aloud.

  “Wherefore slay you thus your parents? Why commit you so dreadful a crime as to slay us, as to rend your parents apart?” But Tane-mahuta pauses not, he regards not their shrieks and cries; far, far beneath him he presses down the earth; far, far above him, he thrusts up the sky....[37]

  Figure 60. The Separation of Sky and Earth (Egypt, date uncertain)

  As known to the Greeks, this story is rendered by Hesiod in his account of the separation of Ouranos (Father Heaven) from Gaia (Mother Earth). According to this variant, the Titan Kronos castrated his father with a sickle and pushed him up out of the way.[38] In Egyptian iconography the position of the cosmic couple is inverted: the sky is the mother, the father is the vitality of the earth;[39] but the pattern of the myth remains: the two were pushed asunder by their child, the air god Shu. Again the image comes to us from the ancient cuneiform texts of the Sumerians, dating from the third and fourth millennia b.c. First was the primeval ocean; the primeval ocean generated the cosmic mountain, which consisted of heaven and earth united; An (the Heaven Father) and Ki (the Earth Mother) produced Enlil (the Air God), who presently separated An from Ki and then himself united with his mother to beget mankind.[40]

  But if these deeds of the desperate children seem violent, they are as nothing compared with the total carving up of the parent power which we discover recorded in the Icelandic Eddas, and in the Babylonian Tablets of Creation. The final insult here is given in the characterization of the demiurgic presence of the abyss as “evil,” “dark,” “obscene.” The bright young warrior-sons, now disdaining the generative source, the personage of the seed-state of deep sleep, summarily slay it, hack it, slice it into lengths, and carpenter it into the structure of the world. This is the pattern for victory of all our later slayings of the dragon, the beginning of the age-long history of the deeds of the hero.

  The Poetic Edda is a collection of thirty-four Old Norse poems treating of the pagan Germanic gods and heroes. The poems were composed by a number of singers and poets (scalds) in various parts of the Viking world (one, at least, in Greenland) during the period a.d. 900–1050. The collection was completed, apparently, in Iceland.

  The Prose Edda is a handbook for young poets, written in Iceland by the Christian master-poet and chieftain, Snorri Sturluson (1178–1241). It summarizes the pagan Germanic myths and reviews the rules of scaldic rhetoric.

  The mythology documented in these texts reveals an earlier, peasant stratum (associated with the thunderer, Thor), a later, aristocratic stratum (that of Wotan-Othin), and a third, distinctly phallic complex (Nyorth, Freya, and Frey). Bardic influences from Ireland mingle with Classical and Oriental themes in this profoundly brooded yet grotesquely humorous world of symbolic forms.

  According to the Eddic account, after the “yawning gap”* had given forth in the north a mist-world of cold and in the south a region of fire, and after the heat from the south had played on the rivers of ice that crowded down from the north, a yeasty venom began to be exuded. From this a drizzle arose, which in turn congealed to rime. The rime melted and dripped; life was quickened from the drippings in the form of a torpid, gigantic, hermaphroditic, horizontal figure named Ymir. The giant slept, and as it slept it sweated; one of its feet begat with the other a son, while under its left hand germinated a man and wife.

  The rime continually melted and dripped, and there condensed from it the cow, Audumla. From her udder flowed four streams of milk, which were drunk for nourishment by Ymir. But the cow, for her own nourishment, licked the iceblocks, which were salty. The evening of the first day she licked, a man’s hair came forth from the blocks; the second day a man’s head; the third, the entire man was there, and his name was Buri. Now Buri had a son (the mother is not known) named Borr, who married one of the giant daughters of the creatures that had sprung from Ymir. She gave birth to the trinity of Othin, Vili, and Ve, and
these then slaughtered sleepful Ymir and carved the body into chunks.

  Figure 61. The Murder of Ymir (lithograph, Denmark, a.d. 1845)

  Of Ymir’s flesh the earth was fashioned,

  And of his sweat the sea;

  Crags of his bones, trees of his hair,

  And of his skull the sky.

  Then of his bones the blithe gods made

  Midgard for sons of men;

  And of his brain the bitter-mooded

  Clouds were all created.[41]

  In the Babylonian version the hero is Marduk, the sun-god; the victim is Tiamat — terrifying, dragon-like, attended by swarms of demons — a female personification of the original abyss itself: chaos as the mother of the gods, but now the menace of the world. With bow and trident, club and net, and a convoy of battle-winds, the god mounted his chariot. The four horses, trained to trample underfoot, were flecked with foam.

  ...But Tiamat turned not her neck,

  With lips that failed not she uttered rebellious words....

  Then the lord raised the thunderbolt, his mighty weapon,

  And against Tiamat, who was raging, thus he sent the word:

  “Thou art become great, thou hast exalted thyself on high,

  And thy heart hath prompted thee to call to battle....

  And against the gods my fathers thou hast contrived thy wicked plan.

  Let then thy host be equipped, let thy weapons be girded on!

  Stand! I and thou, let us join battle!”

  When Tiamat heard these words,

  She was like one possessed, she lost her reason.

  Tiamat uttered wild, piercing cries,

  She trembled and shook to her very foundations.