The Hero With A Thousand Faces

By Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) was an American comparative mythologist, writer, and professor of literature. His theories comparing religions and mythologies across the world were strongly influenced by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, whose and psychoanalytic theories have had a big (possibly the biggest) influence on psychology.

Mythology and religion, whether you believe they are of significance or not, undisputedly contain traces of the human psyche. We can see over time, our roots, our ancient ideas and beliefs echoed in stories we tell. In other words, you don’t have to be religious or a psychologist to see that stories that date a very long time ago might tell us something about what’s truly important to us, regardless of whether the stories are fictional or not.

Mystics and fortune-tellers

One comment I saw online derided Campbell as relying on “psychoanalytic nonsense”. How true is that? Is mythology too simply made-up nonsense? We will probably never truly know why there is repetition and replication across religion and mythology. Perhaps these stories all have the same source, and the Chinese whisper-esque retellings led to distortions, amendments and adaptations. Perhaps the events the hero undergoes in ancient traditions - such as the call to adventure, the belly of the whale, the ultimate boon, apotheosis – speak deeply to the human psyche in a way that transcends day-to-day experience, but informs it and always remain relatable.

Such is the assertion by Campbell, that mythology holds answers to psychology and is not merely historical, mythical or religious. Campbell believed in Bastian’s psychic unity of mankind, the idea that humanity share a basic mental framework and from which Jung believed we act out in various ways through archetypes from a collective unconscious. According to Campbell, mythology is a signpost of these common facets of humanity, retold through stories.

The Monomyth

In this book Campbell traces common themes of the monomyth, the idea that all mythic traditions are variations of a single story. The hero undergoes a journey with common elements across Greek, Norse, Asian, Pacific Island and other traditions. The book goes through these identifiable stages that the hero undergoes during their adventure, eventually reaching a transcendental state of apotheosis, whilst drawing parallels between the different traditions.

For example, each hero goes through a cycle of separation-initiation-return, the tale of the hero leaving the common day to encounter supernatural wonder, then beating off fabulous forces and defeating them, before returning with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man:

Prometheus ascended to the heavens, stole fire from the gods, and descended. Jason sailed through the Clashing Rocks into a sea of marvels, circumvented the dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece, and returned with the fleece and the power to wrest his rightful throne from a usurper. Aeneas went down into the underworld, crossed the dreadful river of the dead, threw a sop to the three-headed watchdog Cerberus, and conversed, at last, with the shade of his dead father. All things were unfolded to him: the destiny of souls, the destiny of Rome, which he was about to found, “and in what wise he might avoid or endure every burden.” He returned through the ivory gate to his work in the world. (Pp.23-24 The Hero With A Thousand Faces)

For each stage, he recounts mythological and religious story and how they fit to the broad monomyth. Critics have argued that Campbell is stretching religious and mythic traditions to fit his idea, rather than the other way around. It could be a valid criticism and yet there do seem to be recurring themes despite myriad retellings and variations.

Perhaps a large part of the attraction of the book is the breadth of Campbell’s mythological research. You’re bound to hear stories you haven’t heard of, and the drawing of parallels as well as outlining of the hero’s tale is riveting even if you hold some scepticism. The copy of the book I am reviewing is The collected works of Joseph Campbell edition, and I loved the inclusion of images of various religious and mythic statues, art and illustrations from various traditions.

Deep into the mind

Such are the depth of the ideas this is not an easy book to read. Although some myths and religions have clear, obvious commonalities, the conjoining across seas, countries and civilizations, psychoanalytic application and tracing of a bigger deeper story is obviously a complex topic. This book requires thinking and paying attention to get the most of it, and it’s the kind of book one can easily read several times.

Although some ideas might seem obvious: the Norse dog Garm guards the entrance to the world of the dead, with obvious parallels to the Greek Cerberus (see above).

But many if not most of the ideas are trickier. For example, one passage mentions the androgyny symptomatic of greater meaning within a chapter about the Apotheosis of the hero:

Male-female gods are not uncommon in the world of myth. They emerge beyond objective experience into a symbolic realm where duality is left behind. (Pp.131 The hero with a thousand faces)

The duality is observable within Oedipus. Tiresias already knows Oedipus’s fate, despite being physically blind, the balance is that his perception goes further than most:

Tiresias, the blinded seer, was both male and female: his eyes were closed to the broken forms of the light-world of the pairs of opposites, yet he saw in his own interior darkness the destiny of Oedipus (pp.132 The hero with a thousand faces)

Final score

Deep, difficult but riveting. This isn’t a book to read if you want to switch off and relax, but everyone should read this to understand religion, the world and themselves a little more. Even if you believe psychoanalysis is overreaching itself, you’re bound to find something interesting here. It just might take some reflection to find it.

9/10