The Hero with a Thousand Faces

by Joseph Campbell

  After the snake had bitten Mwuetsi, Mwuetsi sickened. The next day it did not rain. The plants withered. The rivers and lakes dried. The animals died. The people began to die. Many people died. Mwuetsi’s children asked: “What can we do?” Mwuetsi’s children said: “We will consult the hakata (sacred dice).” The children consulted the hakata. The hakata said: “Mwuetsi the Mambo is sick and pining. Send Mwuetsi back to the Dsivoa.”

  Thereupon Mwuetsi’s children strangled Mwuetsi and buried him. They buried Morongo with Mwuetsi. Then they chose another man to be Mambo. Morongo, too, had lived for two years in Mwuetsi’s Zimbabwe.[6]*

  It is clear that each of the three stages of procreation represents an epoch in the development of the world. The pattern for the procession was foreknown, almost as something already observed; this is indicated by the warning of the All-Highest. But the Moon Man, the Mighty Living One, would not be denied the realization of his destiny. The conversation at the bottom of the lake is the dialogue of eternity and time, the “Colloquy of the Quick”: “To be, or not to be.” Unquenchable desire is finally given its rope: movement begins.

  The wives and daughters of the Moon Man are the personifications and precipitators of his destiny. With the evolution of his world-creative will the virtues and features of the goddess-mother were metamorphosed. After the birth from the elemental womb, the first two wives were prehuman, suprahuman. But as the cosmogonic round proceeded and the growing moment passed from its primordial to its human-historical forms, the mistresses of the cosmic births withdrew, and the field remained to the women of men. Thereupon the old demiurgic sire in the midst of his community became a metaphysical anachronism. When at last he grew tired of the merely human and yearned back again to the wife of his abundance, the world sickened a moment under the pull of his reaction, but then released itself and ran free. The initiative passed to the community of the children. The symbolic, dream-heavy parental figures subsided into the original abyss. Only man remained on the furnished earth. The cycle had moved on.

  3. Womb of Redemption

  The world of human life is now the problem. Guided by the practical judgment of the kings and the instruction of the priests of the dice of divine revelation (see the hakata of Mwuetsi’s children, p. 263), the field of consciousness so contracts that the grand lines of the human comedy are lost in a welter of cross-purposes. Men’s perspectives become flat, comprehending only the light-reflecting, tangible surfaces of existence. The vista into depth closes over. The significant form of the human agony is lost to view. Society lapses into mistake and disaster. The Little Ego has usurped the judgment seat of the Self.

  This is in myth a perpetual theme, in the voices of the prophets a familiar cry. The people yearn for some personality who, in a world of twisted bodies and souls, will represent again the lines of the incarnate image. We are familiar with the myth from our own tradition. It occurs everywhere, under a variety of guises. When the Herod figure (the extreme symbol of the misgoverning, tenacious ego) has brought mankind to the nadir of spiritual abasement, the occult forces of the cycle begin of themselves to move. In an inconspicuous village the maid is born who will maintain herself undefiled of the fashionable errors of her generation: a miniature in the midst of men of the cosmic woman who was the bride of the wind. Her womb, remaining fallow as the primordial abyss, summons to itself by its very readiness the original power that fertilized the void.

  “Now on a certain day, while Mary stood near the fountain to fill her pitcher, the angel of the Lord appeared unto her, saying, ‘Blessed art thou, Mary, for in thy womb thou hast prepared a habitation for the Lord. Behold, light from heaven shall come and dwell in thee, and through thee shall shine in all the world.’”[7]

  The story is recounted everywhere; and with such striking uniformity of the main contours, that the early Christian missionaries were forced to think that the devil himself must be throwing up mockeries of their teaching wherever they set their hand. Fray Pedro Simón reports, in his Noticias historiales de las conquistas de Tierra Firme en las Indias Occidentales (Cuenca, 1627), that after work had been begun amongst the peoples of Tunja and Sogamozzo in Colombia, South America,

  the demon of that place began giving contrary doctrines. And among other things, he sought to discredit what the priest had been teaching concerning the Incarnation, declaring that it had not yet come to pass; but that presently the Sun would bring it to pass by taking flesh in the womb of a virgin of the village of Guacheta, causing her to conceive by the rays of the sun while she yet remained a virgin. These tidings were proclaimed throughout the region. And it so happened that the head man of the village named had two virgin daughters, each desirous that the miracle should become accomplished in her. These then began going out from their father’s dwellings and garden-enclosure every morning at the first peep of dawn; and mounting one of the numerous hills about the village, in the direction of the sunrise, they disposed themselves in such a way that the first rays of the sun would be free to shine upon them. This going on for a number of days, it was granted the demon by divine permission (whose judgments are incomprehensible) that things should come to pass as he had planned, and in such fashion that one of the daughters became pregnant, as she declared, by the sun. Nine months and she brought into the world a large and valuable hacuata, which in their language is an emerald. The woman took this, and, wrapping it in cotton, placed it between her breasts, where she kept it a number of days, at the end of which time it was transformed into a living creature: all by order of the demon. The child was named Goranchacho, and he was reared in the household of the head man, his grandfather, until he was some twenty-four years of age.

  Then he proceeded in triumphant procession to the capital of the nation, and was celebrated throughout the provinces as the “Child of the Sun.”[8]

  Hindu mythology tells of the maiden Pārvatī, daughter of the mountain king, Himalaya, who retreated into the high hills to practice very severe austerities. A tyrant-titan named Taraka had usurped the mastery of the world, and, according to the prophecy, only a son of the High God Śiva could overthrow him. Śiva, however, was the pattern god of yoga — aloof, alone, indrawn in meditation. It was impossible that Śiva should ever be moved to beget a son.

  Pārvatī determined to change the world situation by matching Śiva in meditation. Aloof, alone, indrawn into her soul, she too fasted naked beneath the blazing sun, even adding to the heat by building four additional great fires, to each of the four quarters. The handsome body shriveled to a brittle construction of bones, the skin became leathery and hard. Her hair stood matted and wild. The soft liquid eyes burned.

  One day a Brahmin youth arrived and asked why anyone so beautiful should be destroying herself with such torture.

  “My desire,” she replied, “is Śiva, the Highest Object. Śiva is a god of solitude and unshakable concentration. I therefore am practicing these austerities to move him from his state of balance and bring him to me in love.”

  “Śiva,” the youth said, “is a god of destruction. Śiva is the World Annihilator. Śiva’s delight is to meditate in burial grounds amidst the reek of corpses; there he beholds the rot of death, and that is congenial to his devastating heart. Śiva’s garlands are of living serpents. Śiva is a pauper, furthermore, and no one knows anything of his birth.”

  The virgin said: “He is beyond the mind of such as you. A pauper, but the fountainhead of wealth; terrifying but the source of grace; snake-garlands or jewel-garlands he can assume or put off at will. How should he have been born, when he is the creator of the uncreated! Śiva is my love.”

  The youth thereupon put away his disguise — and was Śiva.[9]

  Figure 68. Coatlicue of the Serpent-woven Skirt, Earth Mother (carved stone, Aztec, Mexico, late fifteenth century a.d.)

  4. Folk Stories of Virgin Motherhood

  The Buddha descended from heaven to his mother’s womb in the shape of a milk-white elephant. The Aztec Coatlicue, “She of the Serpent-
woven Skirt,” was approached by a god in the form of a ball of feathers. The chapters of Ovid’s Metamorphoses swarm with nymphs beset by gods in sundry masquerades: Jove as a bull, a swan, a shower of gold. Any leaf accidentally swallowed, any nut, or even the breath of a breeze, may be enough to fertilize the ready womb. The procreating power is everywhere. And according to the whim or destiny of the hour, either a hero-savior or a world-annihilating demon may be conceived — one can never know.

  Images of virgin birth abound in the popular tales as well as in myth. One example will suffice: a queer folktale from Tonga, belonging to a little cycle of stories told of the “handsome man,” Sinilau. This tale is of particular interest, not because of its extreme absurdity, but because it clearly announces, in unconscious burlesque, every one of the major motifs of the typical life of the hero: virgin birth, quest for the father, ordeal, atonement with the father, the assumption and coronation of the virgin mother, and finally, the heavenly triumph of the true sons while the pretenders are heated hot.

  There was once a certain man and his wife, and the woman was pregnant. When her time came to be delivered of her child she called her husband to come and lift her, that she might give birth. But she bore a clam, and her husband threw her down in anger. She, however, bade him take the clam, and leave it in Sinilau’s bathing-pool. Now Sinilau came to bathe, and flung the coconut-husk that he had used to wash himself with on the water. The clam slid along and sucked the coconut-husk, and became pregnant.

  One day the woman, the mother of the clam, saw the clam rolling along toward her. She angrily asked the clam why she had come, but the shellfish replied that it was no time for anger, and asked her to curtain off a place in which she could give birth. So a screen was placed, and the clam gave birth to a fine big baby boy. Then she rolled off back to her pool, and the woman cared for the child, who was named Fatai-going-underneath-sandalwood. Time went on, and lo, the clam was again with child, and once more came rolling along to the house that she might give birth there to her child. The performance was repeated and again the clam bore a fine boy, who was named Myrtle-twined-at-random-in-the-fatai. He, too, was left with the woman and her husband to be cared for.

  When the two children had grown up to manhood the woman heard that Sinilau was going to hold a festival, and she determined that her two grandsons should be present. So she called the youths, and bade them prepare, adding that the man to whose festival they were going was their father. When they came to where the festival was being held they were gazed at by all the people. There was not a woman but had her eyes fixed on them. As they went along a group of women called to them to turn aside to them, but the two youths refused, and went on, until they came to where the kava was being drunk. There they served the kava.

  But Sinilau, angry at their disturbing his festival, ordered two bowls to be brought. Then he bade his men seize one of the youths and cut him up. So the bamboo knife was sharpened to cut him, but when its point was placed on his body it just slipped over his skin, and he cried out:

  The knife is placed and slips,

  Do thou but sit and gaze at us

  Whether we are like thee or not.

  Then Sinilau asked what the youth had said, and they repeated the lines to him. So he ordered the two young men to be brought, and asked them who their father was. They replied that he himself was their father. After Sinilau had kissed his newfound sons he told them to go and bring their mother. So they went to the pool and got the clam, and took her to their grandmother, who broke it open, and there stood a lovely woman, named Hina-at-home-in-the-river.

  Then they set out on their return to Sinilau. Each of the youths wore a fringed mat, of the sort called taufohua; but their mother had on one of the very fine mats called tuoua. The two sons went ahead, and Hina followed. When they came to Sinilau they found him sitting with his wives. The youths sat one at each thigh of Sinilau, and Hina sat at his side. Then Sinilau bade the people go and prepare an oven, and heat it hot; and they took the wives and their children, and killed and baked them; but Sinilau was wedded to Hina-at-home-in-the-river.[10]

  * * *

  Footnotes

  * That is, the tenth summer after the breaking of the eggs of the teal.

  * This horn and oil play a conspicuous role in the folklore of South Rhodesia [the modern-day nation of Zimbabwe — Ed.]. The ngona horn is a wonder-working instrument, with the power to create fire and lightning, to impregnate the living, and to resurrect the dead.

  * Zimbabwe means roughly “the royal court.” The enormous prehistoric ruins near Fort Victoria are called “The Great Zimbabwe”; other stone ruins throughout Southern Rhodesia are called “Little Zimbabwe.” [Note by Frobenius and Fox, African Genesis.]

  * * *

  Endnotes

  [1] The version quoted here is from the translation by W.F. Kirby (Everyman’s Library, Nos. 259–60).

  [2] Kalevala, Runo I, pp. 127–36.

  [3] Ibid., pp. 263–80.

  [4] Ibid., pp. 287–328.

  [5] Ibid., pp. 329–44.

  [6] Leo Frobenius and Douglas C. Fox, African Genesis (New York, 1937), pp. 215–20.

  [7] The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Ch. ix.

  [8] Kingsborough, op cit., vol. VIII, pp. 263–64.

  [9] Kalidasa, Kumarasamibhavam (“The Birth of the War God Kumara”). There is an English translation by R. Griffith (2nd ed., London: Trübner and Company, 1897).

  [10] E.E.V. Collocott, Tales and Poems of Tonga (Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin, No. 46, Honolulu, 1928), pp. 32–33.

  Figure 69. The Chariot of the Moon (carved stone, Cambodia, c. a.d. 1113–1150)

  CHAPTER III

  Transformations of the Hero

  1. The Primordial Hero and the Human

  We have come two stages: first, from the immediate emanations of the Uncreated Creating to the fluid yet timeless personages of the mythological age; second, from these Created Creating Ones to the sphere of human history. The emanations have condensed, the field of consciousness constricted. Where formerly causal bodies were visible, now only their secondary effects come to focus in the little hard-fact pupil of the human eye. The cosmogonic cycle is now to be carried forward, therefore, not by the gods, who have become invisible, but by the heroes, more or less human in character, through whom the world destiny is realized. This is the line where creation myths begin to give place to legend — as in the Book of Genesis, following the expulsion from the garden. Metaphysics yields to prehistory, which is dim and vague at first, but becomes gradually precise in detail. The heroes become less and less fabulous, until at last, in the final stages of the various local traditions, legend opens into the common daylight of recorded time.

  Mwuetsi, the Moon Man, was cut loose, like a fouled anchor; the community of the children floated free into the day-world of waking consciousness. But we are told that there existed among them direct sons of the now submarine father, who, like the children of his first begetting, had grown from infancy to manhood in a single day. These special carriers of cosmic power constituted a spiritual and social aristocracy. Filled with a double charge of the creative energy, they were themselves sources of revelation. Such figures appear on the dawn stage of every legendary past. They are the culture heroes, the city founders.

  The Chinese chronicles record that when the earth had solidified and the peoples were settling in the riverlands, Fu Hsi, the “Heavenly Emperor” (2953–2838 b.c.), governed among them. He taught his tribes how to fish with nets, to hunt and to rear domestic animals, divided the people into clans, and instituted matrimony. From a supernatural tablet entrusted to him by a horse-shaped scaly monster out of the waters of the river Meng, he deduced the Eight Diagrams, which remain to this day the fundamental symbols of traditional Chinese thought. He had been born of a miraculous conception, after a gestation of twelve years; his body being that of a serpent, with human arms and the head of an ox.[1]

  Shen Nung, his successor, the “Earthly Emperor”
(r. 2838–2698 b.c.), was eight feet seven inches tall, with a human body but the head of a bull. He had been miraculously conceived through the influence of a dragon. The embarrassed mother had exposed her infant on a mountainside, but the wild beasts protected and nourished it, and when she learned of this she fetched him home. Shen Nung discovered in one day seventy poisonous plants and their antidotes: through a glass covering to his stomach he could observe the digestion of each herb. Then he composed a pharmacopoeia that is still in use. He was the inventor of the plough and a system of barter; he is worshiped by the Chinese peasant as the “prince of cereals.” At the age of one hundred and sixty-eight he was joined to the immortals.[2]

  Such serpent kings and minotaurs tell of a past when the emperor was the carrier of a special world-creating, world-sustaining power, very much greater than that represented in the normal human physique. In those times was accomplished the heavy titan-work, the massive establishment of the foundations of our human civilization. But with the progress of the cycle, a period came when the work to be done was no longer proto- or superhuman; it was the labor specifically of man — control of the passions, exploration of the arts, elaboration of the economic and cultural institutions of the state. Now is required no incarnation of the Moon Bull, no Serpent Wisdom of the Eight Diagrams of Destiny, but a perfect human spirit alert to the needs and hopes of the heart. Accordingly, the cosmogonic cycle yields an emperor in human form who shall stand for all generations to come as the model of man the king.