The Hero with a Thousand Faces

by Joseph Campbell

  Joe would eventually author dozens of articles and numerous other books, including The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (Vol. 1: 1959), Oriental Mythology (Vol. 2: 1962), Occidental Mythology (Vol. 3: 1964), and Creative Mythology (Vol. 4: 1968); The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension (1969); Myths to Live By (1972); The Mythic Image (1974); The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion (1986); and five books in his four-volume, multi-part, unfinished Historical Atlas of World Mythology (1983-87).

  He was also a prolific editor. Over the years, he edited The Portable Arabian Nights (1952) and was general editor of the series Man and Myth (1953-1954), which included major works by Maya Deren ( Divine Horsemen: the Living Gods of Haiti, 1953), Carl Kerenyi ( The Gods of the Greeks, 1954), and Alan Watts ( Myth and Ritual in Christianity, 1954). He also edited The Portable Jung (1972), as well as six volumes of Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks (Bollingen Series XXX): Spirit and Nature (1954), The Mysteries (1955), Man and Time (1957), Spiritual Disciplines (1960), Man and Transformation (1964), and The Mystic Vision (1969).

  But his many publications notwithstanding, it was arguably as a public speaker that Joe had his greatest popular impact. From the time of his first public lecture in 1940 — a talk at the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center entitled “Sri Ramakrishna’s Message to the West” — it was apparent that he was an erudite but accessible lecturer, a gifted storyteller, and a witty raconteur. In the ensuing years, he was asked more and more often to speak at different venues on various topics. In 1956, he was invited to speak at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute; working without notes, he delivered two straight days of lectures. His talks were so well-received, he was invited back annually for the next seventeen years. In the mid-1950s, he also undertook a series of public lectures at the Cooper Union in New York City; these talks drew an ever-larger, increasingly diverse audience, and soon became a regular event.

  Joe first lectured at Esalen Institute in 1965. Each year thereafter, he returned to Big Sur to share his latest thoughts, insights, and stories. And as the years passed, he came to look forward more and more to his annual sojourns to the place he called “paradise on the Pacific Coast.” Although he retired from teaching at Sarah Lawrence in 1972 to devote himself to his writing, he continued to undertake two month-long lecture tours each year.

  In 1985, Joe was awarded the National Arts Club Gold Medal of Honor in Literature. At the award ceremony, James Hillman remarked, “No one in our century — not Freud, not Thomas Mann, not Levi-Strauss — has so brought the mythical sense of the world and its eternal figures back into our everyday consciousness.”

  Joseph Campbell died unexpectedly in 1987 after a brief struggle with cancer. In 1988, millions were introduced to his ideas by the broadcast on PBS of Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, six hours of an electrifying conversation that the two men had videotaped over the course of several years. When he died, Newsweek magazine noted that “Campbell has become one of the rarest of intellectuals in American life: a serious thinker who has been embraced by the popular culture.”

  In his later years, Joe was fond of recalling on how Schopenhauer, in his essay On the Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual, wrote of the curious feeling one can have, of there being an author somewhere writing the novel of our lives, in such a way that through events that seem to us to be chance happenings there is actually a plot unfolding of which we have no knowledge.

  Looking back over Joe’s life, one cannot help but feel that it proves the truth Schopenhauer’s observation.

  Robert Walter

  San Anselmo, California

  March 26, 2004

  For more information on the works of Joseph Campbell, click here.

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This edition was prepared by the Joseph Campbell Foundation (JCF) as part of the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell (Robert Walter, executive editor; David Kudler, managing editor). All notes marked [Ed.] originated with the JCF editors.

  It was derived from the 2008 print Third Edition, published by New World Library. New World Library’s editor was Jason Gardner.

  The bibliography appears courtesy of the Opus Archive and Research Center, which reserves all rights thereto.

  Images of C.G. Jung and Sigmund Freud appear with the permission of HIP/Art Resource, New York.

  Image of Franz Boas (page 13) appears with the permission of the Phoebe E. Hearst Museum and the Regents of the University of California.

  All other images and quotations appear with the permission of their copyright holders, except where they belong to the public domain. See the endnotes and the illustration list for sources.

  Image research assistance was provided by Sabra Moore, by Diana Brown, M.A., and by the associates of the JCF.

  ILLUSTRATIONS LIST

  Figure 1. Medusa (carved marble, Roman, Italy, date uncertain). From the Rondanini Palace, Rome. Collection of the Glyptothek, Munich. Photo from H. Brunn and F. Bruckmann, Denkmäler griechischer und römischer Sculptur, Verlagsanstalt für Kunst und Wissenschaft, Munich, 1888–1932.

  Figure 2. Viṣṇu Dreaming the Universe (carved stone, India, c. a.d. 400–700). Dasavatara Temple (Temple of the Ten Avatars). Deogarh, Central India. Archeological Survey of India, courtesy of Mrs. A.K. Coomaraswamy.

  Figure 3. Sileni and Maenads (black-figure amphora, Hellenic, Sicily, c. 500–450 b.c.). Found in a grave at Gela, Sicily. Monu-menti Antichi, pubblicati per cura della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, vol. XVII, Milan, 1907, plate XXXVII.

  Figure 4. Minotauromachy(red-figure krater, Greece, c. 470 b.c.). Here Theseus kills the Minotaur with a short sword; this is the usual version in the vase paintings. In the written accounts, the hero uses his bare hands. Collection des vases grecs de M. le Comte de Lamberg, expliquée et publiée par Alexandre de la Borde, Paris, 1813, plate XXX.

  Figure 5. Shintō Fire Ritual (photograph by Joseph Campbell, Japan, a.d. 1956). [On May 21, 1956, Campbell attended a ritual in Kyøtø, Japan, conducted by a group of Yamabushi (mountain wizards). For more about this event, see Joseph Campbell, Sake and Satori: Asian Journals — Japan, Novato, CA: New World Library, 2002, pp. 119–126. — Ed.] © Joseph Campbell Foundation (www.jcf.org).

  Figure 6. The Monster Tamer (inlaid shell and lapis lazuli, Sumerian, Iraq, c. 2650–2400 b
.c.). The central figure is probably Gilgamesh. [This is the topmost register from the sounding-box plaque on an ornate lyre, found in the so-called Royal Tombs at Ur by Sir Leonard Woolley. — Ed.] Courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia.

  Figure 7. Śākyamūni Buddha Beneath the Bodhi Tree (carved schist, India, c. late ninth–early tenth century a.d.). Bihar, Gaya District. From the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection. Courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

  Figure 8. Yggdrasil, the World Tree (etching, Scandinavia, early nineteenth century a.d.). Richard Folkard, Plant Lore, Legends and Lyrics (c. 1844), after Finnur Magnusson, “The World Tree of the Edda,” Eddalàeren og dens Oprindelse, book III (1825).

  Figure 9. Omphalos (gold phial, Thracian, Bulgaria, fourth–third century b.c.). Part of the so-called Panagyurishte Treasure. Archaeological Museum, Plovdiv, Bulgaria. © Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

  Figure 10. Psyche Entering Cupid’s Garden (oil on canvas, En-gland, a.d. 1903). John William Waterhouse (1849–1917). © Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, Lancashire, UK. The Bridgeman Art Library.

  Figure 11. Apis in the Form of a Bull Transports the Deceased as Osiris to the Underworld (carved wood, Egypt, c. 700–650 b.c.). From an Egyptian coffin in the British Museum. [In the original edition of this book, Campbell followed Budge in assigning the identity of the bull incorrectly to Osiris. Apis was the son of Hathor and protected the newly deceased on the journey to the afterlife. According to Diana Brown of the University of Edinburgh: “The images at the top symbolize the unification of the Two Lands — the lotus of Upper Egypt and the papyrus of Lower Egypt. The wavy lines at the bottom on which the bull is standing represent water. In ancient Egypt, the sky (Nut) was thought of as a watery expanse. Therefore the Apis bull is carrying the Osiris figure to the sky. The bull is identified with the creative, regenerative force through which the deceased is transfigured into Osiris, a supernatural being.” — Ed.] E.A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, London: Philip Lee Warner; New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911, vol. I, p. 13.

  Figure 12. Isis in the Form of a Hawk Joins Osiris in the Underworld (carved stone, Ptolemaic, Egypt, c. first century a.d.). This is the moment of the conception of Horus, who is to play an important role in the resurrection of his father. (Compare Figure 47.) From a series of bas-reliefs on the walls of the temple of Osiris at Dendera, illustrating the mysteries performed annually in that city in honor of the god. E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, London: Philip Lee Warner; New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911, vol. II, p. 28.

  Figure 13. Apollo and Daphne (carved ivory, Coptic, Egypt, fifth century a.d.). Museo Nazionale, Ravenna, Italy. © Scala/Art Resource, NY.

  Figure 14. The Rocks That Crush, the Reeds That Cut (sand painting, Navaho, North America, a.d. 1943). [Note the magical feather on the left; the tiny black rectangle represents the twins, carried safely through the danger. — Ed.] Reproduction of an original sand painting by Jeff King. From Maude Oakes and Joseph Campbell, Where the Two Came to the Father: A Navaho War Ceremonial, Bollingen Series, Pantheon Books, 1943, plate III.

  Figure 15. Virgil Leading Dante (ink on vellum, Italy, fourteenth century a.d.). Dante and Virgil entering a fortress surmounted by owls, from the “Inferno” by Dante Alighieri (a.d. 1265–1321). © Musée Conde, Chantilly, France. Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

  Figure 16. Odysseus and the Sirens(detail; polychrome-figured white lecythus, Greece, fifth century b.c.). Now in the Central Museum, Athens. Eugénie Sellers, “Three Attic Lekythoi from Eretria,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. XIII, 1892, plate I.

  Figure 17. Baal with Thunderbolt Spear (limestone stele, Assyria, fifteenth–thirteenth century b.c.). Found at the acropolis in Ras Shamra (ancient city of Ugarit). © Musée du Louvre. The Bridgeman Art Library.

  Figure 18. Saturn Swallowing His Children(detail; oil on plaster, mounted on canvas, Spain, a.d. 1819). Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (a.d. 1746–1828). From the “Black Paintings” series. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. © Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

  Figure 19. Threshold Guardians, Bearing Thunderbolts (painted wood, Japan, a.d. 1203), Unkei (d. a.d. 1223). Kongø-rikishi (Sanskrit, Vajrapāṇi, “Thunderbolt Handler”), giant threshold guardians housed at opposite sides of the portal of the Great South Gate before Tødaiji, Temple of the Great Sun Buddha, Mahāvairocana (Japanese, Dainichi-nyorai). Nara, Japan.

  Figure 20. The Return of Jason (red-figure kalyx, Etruscan, Italy, c. 470 b.c.). From a vase found at Cerveteri, attributed to Douris, now in the Vatican Etruscan Collection, Rome. After a photo by D. Anderson. This is a view of Jason’s adventure not represented in the literary tradition. “The vase-painter seems to have remembered in some odd haunting way that the dragon-slayer is of the dragon’s seed. He is being born anew from his jaws” (Jane Harrison, Themis:A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 2nd rev. ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927, p. 435). The Golden Fleece is hanging on the tree. Athena, patroness of heroes, is in attendance with her owl. Note the Gorgoneum on her Aegis (compare Figure1).

  Figure 21. The Temptation of St. Anthony (copperplate engraving, Germany, c. a.d. 1470). Martin Schongauer (c. a.d. 1448–1491). © The Trustees of the British Museum.

  Figure 22. Psyche and Charon (oil on canvas, England, c. a.d. 1873). John Roddam Spencer Stanhope (a.d. 1829–1908). Private collection, Roy Miles Fine Paintings. © The Bridgeman Art Library.

  Figure 23. Mother of the Gods (carved wood, Egba-Yoruba, Nigeria, date uncertain). Odudua, with the infant Ogun, god of war and iron, on her knee. The dog is sacred to Ogun. An attendant, of human stature, plays the drum. Horniman Museum, London. Photo from Michael E. Sadler, Arts of West Africa, International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, Oxford Press, London: Humphrey Milford, 1935.

  Figure 24. Diana and Actaeon (marble metope, Hellenic, Sicily, c. 460 b.c.). Actaeon devoured by his dogs as Diana looks on. Metope from Temple E at Selinus, Sicily. Museo Archeologico, Palermo, Sicily, Italy. © Scala/Art Resource, NY.

  Figure 25. Devouring Kālī (carved wood, Nepal, eighteenth–nineteenth century a.d.). London: Victoria and Albert, India Museum.

  Figure 26. Vierge Ouvrante(Opening Virgin) (polychrome wood, France, fifteenth century a.d.). © Musée National du Moyen Age et des Thermes de Cluny, Paris. Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

  Figure 27. Creation (detail; fresco, Italy, a.d. 1508–1512). Michelangelo Buonarroti (a.d. 1475–1564), Rome, Sistine Chapel: The Creation of the Sun and Moon (post-restoration). Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City, Italy. © Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

  Figure 28. Śiva, Lord of the Cosmic Dance (cast bronze, India, c. tenth–twelfth century a.d.). Madras Museum, Madras, India. Photo from Auguste Rodin, Ananda Coomaraswamy, E. B. Havell, Victor Goloubeu, Sculptures Çivaïtes de l’Inde, Ars Asiatica III. Brussels and Paris: G. van Oest et Cie., 1921.

  Figure 29. The Fall of Phaëthon (ink on parchment, Italy, a.d. 1533). Michelangelo Buonarroti. [Jupiter, above, sits on his eagle and hurls a thunderbolt at Phaëthon, son of Apollo, who had asked to drive the chariot of the sun. To save the earth, Jupiter destroyed Phaëthon. Underneath, his sisters the Heliades, weeping, are changed into poplar trees. The river god Eridanus (the river Po) into whose river Phaëthon fell, lies underneath. From Ovid’s Metamorphoses. — Ed.] © The British Museum.

  Figure 30. The Sorceror (rock engraving with black paint fill-in, Paleolithic, France, c. 10,000 b.c.). The earliest known portrait of a medicine man, c. 10,000 b.c., in the Aurignacian-Magdaleniancave known as the “Trois Frères,” Ariège, France. Drawing by George Armstrong. From Joseph Campbell, The Flight of the Wild Gander. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2002, Fig. 5.

  Figure 31. The Universal Father, Viracocha, Weeping (bronze, pre-Incan, Argentina, c. a.d. 650–750). Plaque found at Andalgalá, Catamarca, in northwest Argentina, tentatively identified a
s the pre-Incan deity Viracocha. The head is surmounted by the rayed solar disk, the hands hold thunderbolts, tears descend from the eyes. The creatures at the shoulders are perhaps Imaymana and Tacapu, the two sons and messengers of Viracocha, in animal form. Photo from The Proceedings of the International Congress of Americanists, vol. XII, Paris, 1902.

  Figure 32. Bodhisattva (temple banner, Tibet, nineteenth century a.d.). The bodhisattva known as Ushnīshasitātapatrā surrounded by buddhas and bodhisattvas, and having one hundred and seventeen heads, symbolizing her influence in the various spheres of being. The left hand holds the World Umbrella (axis mundi) and the right the Wheel of the Law (dharmacakra). Beneath the numerous blessed feet of the Bodhisattva stand the people of the world who have prayed for Enlightenment, while beneath the feet of the three “furious” powers at the bottom of the picture lie those still tortured by lust, resentment, and delusion. The sun and moon in the upper corners symbolize the miracle of the marriage, or identity, of eternity and time, nirvāṇa and the world (see above.) The lamas at the top center represent the orthodox line of Tibetan teachers of the doctrine symbolized in this religious banner-painting. Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History, New York City.