The Hero With 1000 Faces is a book that challenges everything I thought I knew about the world. Joseph Campbell writes remarkable earthshattering ideas in such a simple, fluid and easy to follow manner that I can’t help but scream to myself “Why didn’t I think of that!” Campbell, however, would argue that we all have already thought of these things, they are in our dreams and in our myths. Campbell spent most of his adult life studying comparative mythology of all the great civilizations, and what he found was startling in its simplicity. All of the myths and fairy tales that cultures have told for millennia are based on a simple coherent and equal structure: the Monomyth. It is such a simple idea, George Lucas used it to create Star Wars, and we all know how that turned out.

“The wonder is that characteristic efficacy to touch and inspire deep creative centers dwells in the smallest nursery fairy tale—the flavor of the ocean is contained in a droplet or the whole mystery of life within the egg of a flea. (Hero, pg.1)”

The names, events and places, might change, but the underlying message is the same. All men and women throughout time face the same problems as everyone else, and there is a simple way to solve your problems: by following the journey of the hero.

Not all men and women become heroes, in fact most do not, but we all have within ourselves to be that hero if we only follow the prescription of the monomyth. Campbell broke this circular progression down for all of us to use if we so choose.

Separation or Departure

• The Call to Adventure
• The Refusal of the Call
• The Supernatural Aid
• The Crossing of the First Threshold
• The Belly of the Whale

Trials and Victories of Initiation

• The Road of Trials
• The Meeting with the Goddess
• Woman as the Temptress
• Atonement with the Father
• Apotheosis
• Ultimate Boon

The Return and Reintegration with Society

• The Refusal of the Return
• The Magic Flight
• The Rescue from Without
• The Crossing of the Return Threshold
• The Master of Two Worlds
• The Freedom to live.

This journey is how we all grow and improve. This series of initiations allows betterment and success. Not all Heroes’ journeys follow every step along the way, but this general circle has shepherded all of the great heroes and legends of civilization.

Following Campbell’s ideology, and studies, leads to a realization that humanity is something shared by all people of all times, and that all are connected to life and death. This is psychedelic thinking to say the least, but it is no less than the tenets espoused in Buddhism, Christianity, Norse Mythology, fairy tales, and more. Accepting this connectedness, one feels a heavy burden to raise humanity and the world up to the standards that have come before. This common DNA though becomes more than a burden but a gift that can be tasted and given generously, if one merely follows the way. But to do this one must raise him/herself up to raise humanity. There is something incredibly freeing about that.

Campbell delves deep into the study of dreams, and the works of eminent psychologists as Freud and Jung. Claiming that “Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. (Hero, pg.14.)” This connection of dreams to mythology has been severed and forgotten, so many fail to grasp the significance of both. Campbell elucidates the problem most coherently by describing the U.S.

In the United States there is even a pathos of inverted emphasis: the goal is not to grow old, but to remain young; not to mature away from Mother, but to cleave to her. And so, while husbands are worshiping at their boyhood shrines, being the lawyers, merchants, or masterminds their parents wanted them to be, their wives, even after fourteen years of marriage and two fine children produced and raised, are still on the search for love—which can come to them only from the centaurs, sileni, satyrs, and other concupiscent incubi of the rout of Pan, either as in [dreams,] or as in our popular, vanilla-frosted temples of the venereal goddess, under the make-up of the latest heroes of the screen (Hero, pg. 7)

It is hard not to see the truths in these words. But the hope is that all can achieve growth and fulfillment in life. To do this however requires the shattering of ego, something most are unable or unwilling to do. Getting rid of the ideas of good and evil in one’s heart and realizing that these come from the same source, and there is no distinction. Becoming a creator of circumstance is tough work, but it is an admirable goal in the journey of life. Living should not be wasted, and there is no surer way to fulfill life than by becoming the Hero of one’s own journey.

The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. “Live,” Nietzche says, “as though the day were here.” It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal—carries the cross of redeemer—not in the bright moments of his tribe’s great victories, but in the silence of his personal despair (Hero, pg. 337.)

My hope is to heed the call of my own journey, and not languish the life that is set before me. I will shatter my ego; embrace the challenges that life and I set before me. The path will be strenuous, but I know that with this blueprint I can achieve beyond my wildest imaginations, and awake the hero within. Will you?

The Hero With 1000 Faces