The Hero With a Thousand Faces

The Adventure of the Hero: Call, Departure/Separation, Initiation, Return.

The hero survives a test; more at C.G. Jung in the emphasis on meaning in life because of the inevitability of death.  “The hero is the man of self-achieved submission” (16).

“[…] the first work of the hero is to retreat from the world scene of secondary effects to those causal zones of the psyche where the difficulties really reside […]” (17).

“The hero […] is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms” (20).

“The passage of the mythological hero may be over-ground, incidentally; fundamentally it is inward—into depths where obscure resistances are overcome, and long lost, forgotten powers are revivified, to be made available for the transfiguration of the world.  This deed accomplished, life no longer suffers hopelessly under the terrible mutilations of ubiquitous disaster […]” (29).

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man” (30).

The hero does not necessarily bring back enlightenment “[…] but only the way to Enlightenment” (fn, 33).  Raises questions of hero’s re-integration locally, universally; the hero returns as …?  The hero returns with …?

“The effect of the successful adventure of the hero is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world” (40).

The hero’s call “[…] signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown” (58).

“The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades” (82).

For the hero, “[…] instead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible world, the hero goes inward, to be born again” (91).

“The hero is the one who comes to know” (116).

“Where the usual hero would face a test, the elect encounters no delaying obstacle and makes no mistake” (173).

Concerning the return, “[…] the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom […] back into the kingdom of humanity […]” (193).

“The hero adventures out of the land we know into darkness; there he accomplishes his adventure, or again is simply lost to us, imprisoned, or in danger; and his return is described as a coming back out of that yonder zone.  Nevertheless—and here is a great key to the understanding of myth and symbol—the two kingdoms are actually one.  The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know.  And the exploration of that dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero.  The values and distinctions that in normal life seem important disappear with the terrifying assimilation of the self into what formerly was only otherness” (217).

Dilemma of returning hero.  “Why re-enter such a world?  Why attempt to make plausible, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss” (218).

“The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is” (243).  The hero emerges to face a known test; “[…] the champion not of things become but of things becoming […]” (337).