Review: The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949; this edition Princeton University Press 1972)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/588138.The_Hero_With_a_Thousand_Faces?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_30

A ‘Bible’ for the student of mythology, religion, literature or psychotherapy

Through a comprehensive analysis of the world’s mythology and folklore, Joseph Campbell outlines the universal motifs of adventure. He examines myth—the basis of religion, literature, psychoanalysis and human culture itself, the ‘secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour in’.
The goal of the Hero is the ’self-achieved submission’ to bring back the union between god and the collective of people. To do so, he must symbolically die and be reborn as ‘universal man’, purged of sin (disobedience to the divine will) and death (identification with the mortal form). Campbell examines ‘archetypes of the collective unconscious’, showing how this formula is followed time and again, from the ancient Sumerian myth of Inanna to examples from modern psychoanalysis.
The universal pattern followed by adventure myths is similar to the five-part structure of novels—beginning with the ‘inciting incident’, followed by several ‘slaps’ and maybe a ‘false victory’. The protagonist (hero) is required to overcome some obstacle to realise that he has been living a lie—the ’dark night of the soul’. To achieve the final goal, he needs to accept a new truth.
The universal formula of myth begins with ‘the call to adventure’, where the hero, sometimes reluctantly, accepts his mission. He is helped by some ‘supernatural aid’ and may be given some magical weapons, ‘crosses the first threshold’ to undergo initiation and overcomes a series of often symbolic trials. He is often challenged by a usually-female temptress or a trickster-god. A crisis point arrives where the hero is close to death or is believed dead—he is swallowed by the unknown, in ‘the belly of the whale’. He may have to go through some form a self-annihilation to be reborn. He ‘meets with the goddess’, a mystical union where a usually-female authority figure intervenes to offer guidance, representing ‘the bliss of infancy regained’. Sometimes he ‘tricks’ the king or the god to obtain the treasure or the princess or vanquish the monster. He reconciles with the Father and returns home bringing the ‘ultimate boon’ to his family or kingdom.
In Part II Campbell reviews the ‘cosmogonic (creation of the universe) cycle’, from psychology to metaphysics. Mythology can be understood as ‘psychology misread as biography, history and cosmology’. The cosmogonic cycle is carried forward by the hero as embodiment of his people’s destiny. The modern hero seeks to ‘bring to light again the lost Atlantis of the co-ordinated soul’. As for religious cult (as contrasted to black magic), it’s all about the community’s ‘submission to the inevitables of destiny’, e.g., not so much beseaching the gods to stave off winter starvation, but rather preparing the people for a period of hardship.
Enormously erudite, peppered with quotes from Freud, Heraclitus, Euripides, Ovid. I found if I read more than 50 pages in one sitting, I got a headache. Almost half the text is in the footnotes, most of which, I admit, I didn’t read, even though they were probably all fascinating. The complexity is probably inevitable—he tackled a huge subject and he drew from every corner of the earth and from every historical period in his illustrative examples.
For the student of mythology, this book is one of a triad of must-reads—including The White Goddess by Robert Graves and The Golden Bough by James Frazer. Although I have to give 5 stars because it’s a ‘great work’, I didn’t enjoy reading this one. Perhaps it’s because the material is not so new to me at time of reading.