Joseph Campbell's monomyth, or the hero's journey, is a basic pattern that its proponents argue is found in many narratives from around the world. This widely distributed pattern was described by Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949).^[1] An enthusiast of novelist James Joyce, Campbell borrowed the term monomyth from Joyce's Finnegans Wake.^[2]

Campbell held that numerous myths from disparate times and regions share fundamental structures and stages, which he summarized in The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

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.^[3]

Campbell and other scholars, such as Erich Neumann, describe narratives of Gautama Buddha, Moses, and Christ in terms of the monomyth and Campbell argues that classic myths from many cultures follow this basic pattern.^[4]

A chart outlining the Hero's Journey.

Summary[link]

In a monomyth, the hero begins in the ordinary world, and receives a call to enter an unknown world of strange powers and events. The hero who accepts the call to enter this strange world must face tasks and trials, either alone or with assistance. In the most intense versions of the narrative, the hero must survive a severe challenge, often with help. If the hero survives, he may achieve a great gift or "boon." The hero must then decide whether to return to the ordinary world with this boon. If the hero does decide to return, he or she often faces challenges on the return journey. If the hero returns successfully, the boon or gift may be used to improve the world. The stories of Osiris, Prometheus, Moses, Gautama Buddha, for example, follow this structure closely.^[1]

Campbell describes 17 stages or steps along this journey. Very few myths contain all 17 stages—some myths contain many of the stages, while others contain only a few; some myths may focus on only one of the stages, while other myths may deal with the stages in a somewhat different order. These 17 stages may be organized in a number of ways, including division into three sections: Departure (sometimes called Separation), Initiation, and Return. "Departure" deals with the hero's adventure prior to the quest; "Initiation" deals with the hero's many adventures along the way; and "Return" deals with the hero's return home with knowledge and powers acquired on the journey.

The 17 Stages of the Monomyth[link]

Departure[link]

The Call to Adventure[link]

The hero starts off in a mundane situation of normality from which some information is received that acts as a call to head off into the unknown.

Campbell: "This first stage of the mythological journey—which we have designated the 'call to adventure'—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. This fateful region of both treasure and danger may be variously represented: as a distant land, a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delight. The hero can go forth of his own volition to accomplish the adventure, as did Theseus when he arrived in his father's city, Athens, and heard the horrible history of the Minotaur; or he may be carried or sent abroad by some benign or malignant agent as was Odysseus, driven about the Mediterranean by the winds of the angered god, Poseidon. The adventure may begin as a mere blunder… or still again, one may be only casually strolling when some passing phenomenon catches the wandering eye and lures one away from the frequented paths of man. Examples might be multiplied, ad infinitum, from every corner of the world."

Classic examples: Sometimes the call to adventure happens of the character's own choice. In Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, the titular character becomes weary of his way of life and decides he must venture away from his accustomed life in order to attain spiritual enlightenment. In narratives describing Gautama Buddha's journey, he leaves his ordinary life in pursuit of spiritual awakening after observing three men: an old man, a sick man, and a dead man, and raising the question as to why misery exists in the human world. Other times, the hero is plunged into adventure by unforeseen events. In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus is caught in the terrible winds of the angered god Poseidon and sent off to distant lands.^[5]

Refusal of the Call[link]

Often when the call is given, the future hero first refuses to heed it. This may be from a sense of duty or obligation, fear, insecurity, a sense of inadequacy, or any of a range of reasons that work to hold the person in his or her current circumstances.

Campbell: "Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or 'culture,' the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless—even though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire or renown. Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration." ^[3]

Classic examples: Mythology is rife with examples of what happens to those who refuse the call too long or do not take it seriously. In Judeo-Christian belief, Lot's wife is turned into a pillar of salt for looking back with longing to her old life when she had been summoned forth from her city by Yahweh and is thus prevented from being the "hero". One of the clearest references to the refusal and its consequences comes in the voice of the personified Wisdom in Proverbs 1:24-27 and 32:

Because I have called, and ye refused ... I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. ... For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.

Supernatural Aid[link]

Once the hero has committed to the quest, consciously or unconsciously, his or her guide and magical helper appears, or becomes known. More often than not, this supernatural mentor will present the hero with one or more talismans or artifacts that will aid them later in their quest.

Campbell: "For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero journey is with a protective figure (often a little old crone or old man) who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass. What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power of destiny. The fantasy is a reassurance—promise that the peace of Paradise, which was known first within the mother womb, is not to be lost; that it supports the present and stands in the future as well as in the past (is omega as well as alpha); that though omnipotence may seem to be endangered by the threshold passages and life awakenings, protective power is always and ever present within or just behind the unfamiliar features of the world. One has only to know and trust, and the ageless guardians will appear. Having responded to his own call, and continuing to follow courageously as the consequences unfold, the hero finds all the forces of the unconscious at his side. Mother Nature herself supports the mighty task. And in so far as the hero's act coincides with that for which his society is ready, he seems to ride on the great rhythm of the historical process." ^[4]

Classic example: In Greek mythology, Ariadne gives Theseus a ball of string and a sword before he enters the labyrinth to confront the Minotaur.

Modern Examples: In Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope Obi-wan Kenobi gives Luke Skywalker a lightsaber, an object that later helps him confront his father, Darth Vader. In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Harry Potter buys a magic wand that later helps him fight Voldemort.

The Crossing of the First Threshold[link]

This is the point where the person actually crosses into the field of adventure, leaving the known limits of his or her world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are not known.

Campbell: "With the personifications of his destiny to guide and aid him, the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the 'threshold guardian' at the entrance to the zone of magnified power. Such custodians bound the world in four directions—also up and down—standing for the limits of the hero's present sphere, or life horizon. Beyond them is darkness, the unknown and danger; just as beyond the parental watch is danger to the infant and beyond the protection of his society danger to the members of the tribe. The usual person is more than content, he is even proud, to remain within the indicated bounds, and popular belief gives him every reason to fear so much as the first step into the unexplored. 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." ^[5]

Belly of The Whale[link]

The belly of the whale represents the final separation from the hero's known world and self. By entering this stage, the person shows willingness to undergo a metamorphosis.

Campbell: "The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died. This popular motif gives emphasis to the lesson that the passage of the threshold is a form of self-annihilation. Instead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible world, the hero goes inward, to be born again. The disappearance corresponds to the passing of a worshipper into a temple—where he is to be quickened by the recollection of who and what he is, namely dust and ashes unless immortal. The temple interior, the belly of the whale, and the heavenly land beyond, above, and below the confines of the world, are one and the same. That is why the approaches and entrances to temples are flanked and defended by colossal gargoyles: dragons, lions, devil-slayers with drawn swords, resentful dwarfs, winged bulls. The devotee at the moment of entry into a temple undergoes a metamorphosis. Once inside he may be said to have died to time and returned to the World Womb, the World Navel, the Earthly Paradise. Allegorically, then, the passage into a temple and the hero-dive through the jaws of the whale are identical adventures, both denoting in picture language, the life-centering, life-renewing act." ^[6]

Classical example: In the story of Dionysus, Hera sends hungry titans to devour the infant Dionysus. The Titans tore apart the child and consumed his flesh. However Dionysus's heart is saved by Hestia, goddess of the hearth, allowing Dionysus to be reborn as a god.

Initiation[link]

The Road of Trials[link]

The road of trials is a series of tests, tasks, or ordeals that the person must undergo to begin the transformation. Often the person fails one or more of these tests, which often occur in threes.

Campbell: "Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials. This is a favorite phase of the myth-adventure. It has produced a world literature of miraculous tests and ordeals. The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before his entrance into this region. Or it may be that he here discovers for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage. The original departure into the land of trials represented only the beginning of the long and really perilous path of initiatory conquests and moments of illumination. Dragons have now to be slain and surprising barriers passed—again, again, and again. Meanwhile there will be a multitude of preliminary victories, unretainable ecstasies and momentary glimpses of the wonderful land." ^[7]

Classical Example: "In fitting in the theme of tests often occurring in threes, Jesus is tempted by Satan three times in the desert. Jesus passes each of these three temptations, and the narrative moves more firmly to Jesus' divinity."

The Meeting With the Goddess[link]

This is the point when the person experiences a love that has the power and significance of the all-powerful, all encompassing, unconditional love that a fortunate infant may experience with his or her mother. This is a very important step in the process and is often represented by the person finding the other person that he or she loves most completely.

Campbell: "The ultimate adventure, when all the barriers and ogres have been overcome, is commonly represented as a mystical marriage of the triumphant hero-soul with the Queen Goddess of the World. This is the crisis at the nadir, the zenith, or at the uttermost edge of the earth, at the central point of the cosmos, in the tabernacle of the temple, or within the darkness of the deepest chamber of the heart. The meeting with the goddess (who is incarnate in every woman) is the final test of the talent of the hero to win the boon of love (charity: amor fati), which is life itself enjoyed as the encasement of eternity. And when the adventurer, in this context, is not a youth but a maid, she is the one who, by her qualities, her beauty, or her yearning, is fit to become the consort of an immortal. Then the heavenly husband descends to her and conducts her to his bed—whether she will or not. And if she has shunned him, the scales fall from her eyes; if she has sought him, her desire finds its peace." ^[8]

Woman as Temptress[link]

In this step, the hero faces those temptations, often of a physical or pleasurable nature, that may lead him or her to abandon or stray from his or her quest, which does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman. Woman is a metaphor for the physical or material temptations of life, since the hero-knight was often tempted by lust from his spiritual journey.

Campbell: "The crux of the curious difficulty lies in the fact that our conscious views of what life ought to be seldom correspond to what life really is. Generally we refuse to admit within ourselves, or within our friends, the fullness of that pushing, self-protective, malodorous, carnivorous, lecherous fever which is the very nature of the organic cell. Rather, we tend to perfume, whitewash, and reinterpret; meanwhile imagining that all the flies in the ointment, all the hairs in the soup, are the faults of some unpleasant someone else. But when it suddenly dawns on us, or is forced to our attention that everything we think or do is necessarily tainted with the odor of the flesh, then, not uncommonly, there is experienced a moment of revulsion: life, the acts of life, the organs of life, woman in particular as the great symbol of life, become intolerable to the pure, the pure, pure soul. The seeker of the life beyond life must press beyond (the woman), surpass the temptations of her call, and soar to the immaculate ether beyond." ^[9]

Atonement with the Father[link]

In this step the person must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his or her life. In many myths and stories this is the father, or a father figure who has life and death power. This is the center point of the journey. All the previous steps have been moving in to this place, all that follow will move out from it. Although this step is most frequently symbolized by an encounter with a male entity, it does not have to be a male; just someone or thing with incredible power.

Campbell: "Atonement consists in no more than the abandonment of that self-generated double monster—the dragon thought to be God (superego) and the dragon thought to be Sin (repressed id). But this requires an abandonment of the attachment to ego itself, and that is what is difficult. One must have a faith that the father is merciful, and then a reliance on that mercy. Therewith, the center of belief is transferred outside of the bedeviling god's tight scaly ring, and the dreadful ogres dissolve. It is in this ordeal that the hero may derive hope and assurance from the helpful female figure, by whose magic (pollen charms or power of intercession) he is protected through all the frightening experiences of the father's ego-shattering initiation. For if it is impossible to trust the terrifying father-face, then one's faith must be centered elsewhere (Spider Woman, Blessed Mother); and with that reliance for support, one endures the crisis—only to find, in the end, that the father and mother reflect each other, and are in essence the same. The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands—and the two are atoned." ^[10]

Apotheosis[link]

When someone dies a physical death, or dies to the self to live in spirit, he or she moves beyond the pairs of opposites to a state of divine knowledge, love, compassion and bliss. A more mundane way of looking at this step is that it is a period of rest, peace and fulfillment before the hero begins the return.

Campbell: "Those who know, not only that the Everlasting lies in them, but that what they, and all things, really are is the Everlasting, dwell in the groves of the wish fulfilling trees, drink the brew of immortality, and listen everywhere to the unheard music of eternal concord." ^[11]

The Ultimate Boon[link]

The ultimate boon is the achievement of the goal of the quest. It is what the person went on the journey to get. All the previous steps serve to prepare and purify the person for this step, since in many myths the boon is something transcendent like the elixir of life itself, or a plant that supplies immortality, or the holy grail.

Campbell: "The gods and goddesses then are to be understood as embodiments and custodians of the elixir of Imperishable Being but not themselves the Ultimate in its primary state. What the hero seeks through his intercourse with them is therefore not finally themselves, but their grace, i.e., the power of their sustaining substance. This miraculous energy-substance and this alone is the Imperishable; the names and forms of the deities who everywhere embody, dispense, and represent it come and go. This is the miraculous energy of the thunderbolts of Zeus, Yahweh, and the Supreme Buddha, the fertility of the rain of Viracocha, the virtue announced by the bell rung in the Mass at the consecration, and the light of the ultimate illumination of the saint and sage. Its guardians dare release it only to the duly proven." ^[12]

Return[link]

Refusal of the Return[link]

Having found bliss and enlightenment in the other world, the hero may not want to return to the ordinary world to bestow the boon onto his fellow man.

Campbell: "When the hero-quest has been accomplished, through penetration to the source, or through the grace of some male or female, human or animal, personification, the adventurer still must return with his life-transmuting trophy. The full round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess, back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet or the ten thousand worlds. But the responsibility has been frequently refused. Even Gautama Buddha, after his triumph, doubted whether the message of realization could be communicated, and saints are reported to have died while in the supernal ecstasy. Numerous indeed are the heroes fabled to have taken up residence forever in the blessed isle of the unaging Goddess of Immortal Being." ^[13]

The Magic Flight[link]

Sometimes the hero must escape with the boon, if it is something that the gods have been jealously guarding. It can be just as adventurous and dangerous returning from the journey as it was to go on it.

Campbell: "If the hero in his triumph wins the blessing of the goddess or the god and is then explicitly commissioned to return to the world with some elixir for the restoration of society, the final stage of his adventure is supported by all the powers of his supernatural patron. On the other hand, if the trophy has been attained against the opposition of its guardian, or if the hero's wish to return to the world has been resented by the gods or demons, then the last stage of the mythological round becomes a lively, often comical, pursuit. This flight may be complicated by marvels of magical obstruction and evasion." ^[14]

Classic examples: In many fairy tales and folktales, it is literally a magic flight, such as in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, with the hero or heroine transforming objects to stop the pursuit (The Master Maid, The Water Nixie) or transforming himself and any companions to hide themselves (Farmer Weathersky or Foundling-Bird).

Rescue from Without[link]

Just as the hero may need guides and assistants to set out on the quest, oftentimes he or she must have powerful guides and rescuers to bring them back to everyday life, especially if the person has been wounded or weakened by the experience.

Campbell: "The hero may have to be brought back from his supernatural adventure by assistance from without. That is to say, the world may have to come and get him. For the bliss of the deep abode is not lightly abandoned in favor of the self-scattering of the wakened state. 'Who having cast off the world,' we read, 'would desire to return again? He would be only there.' And yet, in so far as one is alive, life will call. Society is jealous of those who remain away from it, and will come knocking at the door. If the hero. . . is unwilling, the disturber suffers an ugly shock; but on the other hand, if the summoned one is only delayed—sealed in by the beatitude of the state of perfect being (which resembles death)—an apparent rescue is effected, and the adventurer returns." ^[15]

The Crossing of the Return Threshold[link]

The trick in returning is to retain the wisdom gained on the quest, to integrate that wisdom into a human life, and then maybe figure out how to share the wisdom with the rest of the world.

Campbell: "The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive the impact of the world. Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. 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? As dreams that were momentous by night may seem simply silly in the light of day, so the poet and the prophet can discover themselves playing the idiot before a jury of sober eyes. The easy thing is to commit the whole community to the devil and retire again into the heavenly rock dwelling, close the door, and make it fast. But if some spiritual obstetrician has drawn the shimenawa across the retreat, then the work of representing eternity in time, and perceiving in time eternity, cannot be avoided" The hero returns to the world of common day and must accept it as real.^[16]

Master of Two Worlds[link]

This step is usually represented by a transcendental hero like Jesus or Gautama Buddha. For a human hero, it may mean achieving a balance between the material and spiritual. The person has become comfortable and competent in both the inner and outer worlds.

Campbell: "Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal deep and back—not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other—is the talent of the master. The Cosmic Dancer, declares Nietzsche, does not rest heavily in a single spot, but gaily, lightly, turns and leaps from one position to another. It is possible to speak from only one point at a time, but that does not invalidate the insights of the rest. The individual, through prolonged psychological disciplines, gives up completely all attachment to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears, no longer resists the self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, and so becomes ripe, at last, for the great at-one-ment. His personal ambitions being totally dissolved, he no longer tries to live but willingly relaxes to whatever may come to pass in him; he becomes, that is to say, an anonymity."^[17]

Biblical application: In the Christ story, Jesus is able to return to the ordinary world after resurrection.

Freedom to Live[link]

Mastery leads to freedom from the fear of death, which in turn is the freedom to live. This is sometimes referred to as living in the moment, neither anticipating the future nor regretting the past.

Campbell: "The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is. 'Before Abraham was, I AM.' He does not mistake apparent changelessness in time for the permanence of Being, nor is he fearful of the next moment (or of the 'other thing'), as destroying the permanent with its change. 'Nothing retains its own form; but Nature, the greater renewer, ever makes up forms from forms. Be sure there's nothing perishes in the whole universe; it does but vary and renew its form.' Thus the next moment is permitted to come to pass." ^[18]

Biblical application: Christ returns to the ordinary world after his resurrection, but not as an ordinary man. He can seem to be as others are and interact with them, but his body is a "glorified" body, capable of assuming visible and palpable form, but freed from the bonds of space and time. He is now able to give life to others through his own death and resurrection. Other traditional examples of something similar are Elijah, Enoch, and Khidr, the "immortal prophet" of the Sufis.

Other formulations[link]

Campbell's proposed structure has been expanded and modified since its conception. Many modern characterizations of it add in new steps (such as the hero having a miraculous birth) or combine or prune others. For instance, Phil Cousineau, in his book, The Hero's Journey, divides it up into the following eight steps:

1. The Call to Adventure
2. The Road of Trials
3. The Vision Quest
4. The Meeting with the Goddess
5. The Boon
6. The Magic Flight
7. The Return Threshold
8. The Master of Two Worlds^[6]

Another eight-step formulation was given by David Adams Leeming in his book, Mythology: The Voyage of the Hero:

1. Miraculous conception and birth
2. Initiation of the hero-child
3. Withdrawal from family or community for meditation and preparation
4. Trial and Quest
5. Death
6. Descent into the underworld
7. Resurrection and rebirth
8. Ascension, apotheosis, and atonement^[7]

The Hero's Journey[link]

The phrase "the hero's journey," to describe the monomyth, first entered into popular discourse through two documentaries. The first, released in 1987, The Hero's Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell, was accompanied by a 1990 companion book, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work (with Phil Cousineau and Stuart Brown, eds.). The second was Bill Moyers's series of seminal interviews with Campbell, released in 1988 as the documentary (and companion book) The Power of Myth. The phrase was then referenced in the title of a popular guidebook for screenwriters, released in the 1990s, The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers, by Christopher Vogler [19]. Though they used the phrase in their works, Cousineau, Moyers, and Vogler all attribute the phrase and the model of The Hero's Journey to Joseph Campbell.

Influence of the Monomyth[link]

The monomyth has influenced a number of artists, musicians, poets, and filmmakers, including Bob Dylan and George Lucas. Mickey Hart, Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead had long noted Campbell's influence and agreed to participate in a seminar with him in 1986 entitled From Ritual to Rapture.^[8]

Campbell's work has been consciously applied by a wide variety of modern writers and artists, for example, in creating screenplays for movies. The best known is perhaps George Lucas, who has acknowledged a debt to Campbell regarding both the original Star Wars trilogy and its prequels.

J.R.R. Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings can be seen as another contemporary example of the monomyth.^[9]

[edit] George Lucas and Star Wars

George Lucas's deliberate use of Campbell's theory of the monomyth in the making of the Star Wars movies is well documented. In addition to the extensive discussion between Campbell and Bill Moyers broadcast in 1988 on PBS as The Power of Myth (Filmed at "Skywalker Ranch"), on Campbell's influence on the Star Wars films, Lucas, himself, gave an extensive interview for the biography Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind (Larsen and Larsen, 2002, pages 541-543) on this topic. In this interview, Lucas states that in the early 1970s after completing his early film, American Graffiti, "it came to me that there really was no modern use of mythology...so that's when I started doing more strenuous research on fairy tales, folklore and mythology, and I started reading Joe's books. Before that I hadn't read any of Joe's books.... It was very eerie because in reading The Hero with A Thousand Faces I began to realize that my first draft of Star Wars was following classical motifs"(p. 541).

Twelve years after the making of The Power of Myth, Moyers and Lucas met again for the 1999 interview, the Mythology of Star Wars with George Lucas & Bill Moyers, to further discuss the impact of Campbell's work on Lucas's films.^[10] In addition, the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution sponsored an exhibit during the late 1990s called Star Wars: The Magic of Myth which discussed the ways in which Campbell's work shaped the Star Wars films ^[11] A companion guide of the same name was published in 1997.

[edit] Chris Vogler, The Writer's Journey, and Hollywood films

Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood film producer and writer, created a now-famous 7-page company memo, A Practical Guide to The Hero With a Thousand Faces,^[12] based on Campbell's work which inspired films such as Disney's 1994 film, The Lion King/^{[citation needed]} Vogler's memo was later developed into the late 1990s book, The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers. This story structure is evident in a vast number of successful Hollywood films including the Matrix series.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Orson Scott Card and Ender's Game

Michael Collings claims in an article that was initially published in "The Leading Edge: Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy Vol. 16" that in the book, Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card gives a very complete example of the monomyth structure, with the main character, Ender Wiggin, fulfilling all eight of its primary stages (using Leeming's formulation):

• Miraculous Birth — In a world where only two children are normally allowed, Ender is born as the third child by special government decree
• Initiation — Ender shows remarkable intelligence at a young age
• Withdrawal — Ender is removed from his family and sent to Battle School
• Trial and Quest — Ender learns of the threat to humanity from the Buggers
• Death — Ender grows despondent after his unit is broken up, and he is sent back to Earth
• Descent into the underworld — Ender's sister helps him feel like part of humanity once again
• Resurrection and rebirth — Ender refuses to play the simulations anymore, and ends the game by destroying the Buggers' homeworld
• Ascension, apotheosis, and atonement — Ender learns that the simulations were in fact real and has to cope with this.

He says that the narrative structure within Ender's Game doesn't follow this structure in a perfectly linear sense. Many elements of it are actually repeated throughout the book. In his opinion, the latter four steps can also describe the psychological states Ender went through after his realization of what he'd done to the Buggers.^[13]

The men's movement[link]

Poet Robert Bly, Michael J. Meade, and others involved in the men's movement have applied and expanded the concepts of the hero's journey and the monomyth as a metaphor for personal spiritual and psychological growth, particularly in the mythopoetic men's movement.^[14][15]

Characteristic of the mythopoetic men's movement is a tendency to retell fairy tales and engage in their exegesis as a tool for personal insight. Using frequent references to archetypes as drawn from Jungian analytical psychology, the movement focuses on issues of gender role, gender identity and wellness for modern men.^[15] Advocates would often engage in storytelling with music, these acts being seen as a modern extension to a form of "new age shamanism" popularized by Michael Harner at approximately the same time.

Among its most famous advocates were the poet Robert Bly, whose book Iron John: A Book About Men was a best-seller, being an exegesis of the fairy tale "Iron John" by the Brothers Grimm.^[14]

The mythopoetic men's movement spawned a variety of groups and workshops, led by authors such as Bly and Robert L. Moore.^[15] Some serious academic work came out of this movement, including the creation of various magazines and non-profit organizations, such as the Mankind Project.^[14]

Criticism[link]

Scholars have questioned the very validity of the monomyth, its usefulness as a tool for critical investigation and interpretation of narrative, and its male bias. According to Lesley Northup, the theory does not have much support in the mainstream study of mythology, which currently tends to view highly general and universal claims with suspicion.^[16] Donald J. Consentino remarks, "It is just as important to stress differences as similarities, to avoid creating a (Joseph) Campbell soup of myths that loses all local flavor."^[17] Marta Weigle rejects the idea of a "monomyth" in which women appear only exceptionally, and then as indistinguishable from men.^[18] Others have found the categories Campbell works with so vague as to be meaningless, and lacking the support required of scholarly argument: Muriel Crespi, writing in response to Campbell's filmed presentation of his model^[19] characterized it as "...unsatisfying from a social science perspective. Campbell's ethnocentrism will raise objections, and his analytic level is so abstract and devoid of ethnographic context that myth loses the very meanings supposed to be embedded in the "hero." In Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth (1984), editor Alan Dundes dismisses Campbell's work, characterizing him as a popularizer: "like most universalists, he is content to merely assert universality rather than bother to document it. […] If Campbell's generalizations about myth are not substantiated, why should students consider his work?"^[20]

Thoughtless use of monomyth structure is often blamed for lack of originality and clichés in popular culture, especially big-budget Hollywood films.^{[citation needed]} In addition to the popularity of Campbell-influenced guides such as The Writer's Journey, the influential book Screenplay by Syd Field also proposed an ideal three-act structure, which is easily compatible with modern screenwriters' attempts to craft a monomyth.

The novelist David Brin has criticized the monomyth, arguing that it is anti-populist, and was used by kings and priests to justify tyranny. Brin also pointed out that the existence of a monomyth may reflect cross-cultural historical similarities, rather than some deeper "human insight". He points out that, until relatively recently, storytellers were dependent upon the oligarchy for their livelihood and that the aristocracy only recently lost its power to punish irreverence. Once those historical factors disappeared, science fiction emerged—a story-telling mode Brin sees as the antithesis of Campbell's monomyth.^[21]

In a similar vein, American philosopher John Shelton Lawrence and American religious scholar Robert Jewett have discussed an "American Monomyth" in many of their books, The American Monomyth, The Myth of the American Superhero, and Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil: The Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism. They present this as an American reaction to the Campbellian monomyth. The "American Monomyth" storyline is: A community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil; normal institutions fail to contend with this threat; a selfless superhero emerges to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task; aided by fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisiacal condition; the superhero then recedes into obscurity. ^[22]

Some scholars have disagreed with the concept of the "monomyth" because of its oversimplification of different cultures. According to Robert Ellwood, "“A tendency to think in generic terms of people, races... is undoubtedly the profoundest flaw in mythological thinking.” ^[23]

See also[link]

• Comparative mythology
• Hero
• List of monomyths
• Lord Raglan
• Otto Rank
• Spiritual warrior
• Vladimir Propp

Notes[link]

References[link]

Books based upon interviews with Campbell[link]

DVD/Discography[link]

External links[link]

• Monomyth Website, ORIAS, UC Berkeley
• The Monomyth Cycle
• Examples of Each Stage of a Heros Journey in Star Wars and The Matrix
• Hero's Journey
• The Hero's Journey Defined. Anthony Ubelhor for ENG 104: Fairy Tales, Myths, and Other Archetypal Stories

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2011)

Former Winkler residence in Selmer, Tennessee

Matthew Brian Winkler (November 21, 1974 – March 22, 2006) was the victim in a high-profile murder case in 2006.

In the 1990s, Winkler attended college at Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tennessee. Winkler was the pulpit minister at the Fourth Street Church of Christ in Selmer, Tennessee, at the time of his death. Members of his congregation found him dead inside his home after he failed to appear at the church for a Wednesday-night service he was to lead on March 22, 2006. He had been shot in the back.

His wife, Mary Winkler, and the couple's three small daughters were reported missing along with the family's minivan. The state of Tennessee issued an Amber Alert, and Mary and the children were located the next day in Orange Beach, Alabama. Mary would confess to killing her husband and be charged with first-degree murder after extradition to Tennessee. She was released on bond, and her trial began on April 9, 2007. On April 19, 2007, she was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and was subsequently sentenced to 210 days in prison.

External links[link]

• Image of Winkler and family

This United States biographical article related to crime is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience. His philosophy is often summarized by his phrase: "Follow your bliss."^[1]

Life[link]

Early education[link]

American Museum of Natural History

Joseph Campbell was born and raised in White Plains, New York^[2] in an upper middle class Irish Catholic family. As a child Campbell became fascinated with Native American culture after his father took him to see the American Museum of Natural History in New York where he saw on display featured collections of Native American artifacts. He soon became versed in numerous aspects of Native American society, primarily in Native American mythology. This led to Campbell's lifelong passion for myth and to his study and mapping of the cohesive threads in mythology that appeared to exist among even disparate human cultures.

In 1921 he graduated from the Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut.

While at Dartmouth College he studied biology and mathematics, but decided that he preferred the humanities. He transferred to Columbia University, where he received his B.A. in English literature in 1925 and M.A. in Medieval literature in 1927. At Dartmouth he joined Delta Tau Delta. Campbell was also an accomplished athlete, receiving awards in track and field events. For a time, he was among the fastest half-mile runners in the world.^[3]

Europe[link]

Krishnamurti

In 1924 Campbell traveled to Europe with his family. On the ship, during his return trip, he encountered Jiddu Krishnamurti; they discussed Asian philosophy, sparking in Campbell a life-long interest in Hindu and Indian thought. Following this trip, Campbell ceased to be a practicing Catholic.^[4]

In 1927 Campbell received a fellowship provided by Columbia University to study in Europe. Campbell studied Old French, Provençal and Sanskrit at the University of Paris in France and the University of Munich in Germany. He quickly learned to read and speak French and German, mastering them after only a few months of rigorous study. He remained fluent in these languages for the remainder of his life. (Already fluent in Latin, he would go on to add Japanese to his linguistic palette.)

While in Europe, he was highly influenced by the period of the Lost Generation, a time of enormous intellectual and artistic innovation. Campbell often commented of this influence and that of James Joyce in particular.

It was in this climate that Campbell was also introduced to the work of Thomas Mann, who was to prove equally influential upon his life and ideas. Also while in Europe, Campbell was introduced to modern art, becoming particularly enthusiastic about the work of Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso. A new world of exciting ideas opened up to Campbell while studying in Europe as he became familiar with the works and writings of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

Great Depression[link]

John Steinbeck at the White House (1966)

On his return to Columbia in 1929, Campbell expressed his desire to pursue the study of Sanskrit and Modern Art in addition to that of Medieval literature. Lacking faculty approval, Campbell withdrew from the graduate studies. In later life, he was very insistent that he be addressed as Mr. Campbell, not Dr. Campbell.^[5]

A few weeks later with the arrival of the Great Depression Campbell spent the next five years (1929–34) contemplating the next course of his life^[6] while engaged in intensive and rigorous independent study. He later said that he "would divide the day into four four-hour periods, of which I would be reading in three of the four hour periods, and free one of them... I would get nine hours of sheer reading done a day. And this went on for five years straight."^[7]

Campbell traveled to California for a year (1931–32), continuing his independent studies and becoming close friends with the budding writer John Steinbeck and his wife Carol. On the Monterey Peninsula Campbell, like Steinbeck, fell under the spell of marine biologist Ed Ricketts (the model for "Doc" in Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row as well as central characters in several other novels).^[8] Campbell lived for a while next door to Ricketts, participated in professional and social activities at his neighbor's, and accompanied him, along with Xenia and Sasha Kashevaroff, on a 1932 journey to Juneau, Alaska on the Grampus.^[9] Like Steinbeck, Campbell began writing a novel centered on Ricketts as hero, but, unlike Steinbeck, he did not complete his book.^[10]

Bruce Robison writes that "Campbell would refer to those days as a time when everything in his life was taking shape.... Campbell, the great chronicler of the 'hero's journey' in mythology, recognized patterns that paralleled his own thinking in one of Ricketts's unpublished philosophical essays. Echoes of Carl Jung, Robinson Jeffers and James Joyce can be found in the work of Steinbeck and Ricketts as well as Campbell."^[11]

Campbell also maintained his independent reading while teaching for a year in 1933 at the Canterbury School, during which time he also attempted to publish works of fiction.^[12]

Campbell's independent studies led to his greater exploration of the ideas of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, a contemporary and estranged colleague of Sigmund Freud. Campbell edited the first papers from Jung's annual Eranos conferences and helped Mary Mellon found the Bollingen Foundation's Bollingen Series of books on psychology, anthropology and myth. Many of Campbell's books would be published in this series.

Another dissident member of Freud's circle to influence Campbell was Wilhelm Stekel (1868–1939). Stekel pioneered the application of Freud's concepts of dreams, fantasies of the human mind, and the unconscious to anthropology and literature.

Sarah Lawrence College[link]

In 1934 Campbell was offered a position as professor at Sarah Lawrence College (through the efforts of his former Columbia advisor W.W. Laurence).

In 1938 Campbell married one of his former students, dancer-choreographer Jean Erdman. Erdman and Campbell did not have any children. For most of their forty-nine years of marriage they shared a two-room apartment in Greenwich Village in New York City. In the 1980s they also purchased an apartment in Honolulu and divided their time between the two cities.

Early in World War II, Campbell attended a lecture by Indologist Heinrich Zimmer; the two men became good friends. After Zimmer's death, Campbell was given the task of editing and posthumously publishing Zimmer's papers, which he would do over the following decade.

In 1955–56, as the last volume of Zimmer's posthuma (The Art of Indian Asia, its Mythology and Transformations) was finally about to be published, Campbell took a sabbatical from Sarah Lawrence College and traveled, for the first time, to Asia. He spent six months in southern Asia (mostly India) and another six in East Asia (mostly Japan).

This year had a profound influence on his thinking about Asian religion and myth, and also on the necessity for teaching comparative mythology to a larger, non-academic audience.^[13]

In 1972 Campbell retired from Sarah Lawrence College, after having taught there for 38 years.

Public outreach[link]

After he returned from his trip to India and Japan in 1956, Campbell felt that Americans—both the general public and professionals who worked and studied overseas—were woefully uninformed with regard to the world's myths and cultures. He began to work on a number of levels to change this state of affairs. First, he began writing his magnum opus, The Masks of God, which explored the myths of the world's cultures across the millennia and around the globe.

At the same time, he began teaching courses at the US State Department's Foreign Service Institute, lecturing on comparative myth and religion.

Finally, he began to speak publicly on world myth. He would continue to do so—at colleges, churches and lecture halls, on radio and on television—for the rest of his life.^[14]

Death[link]

Bill Moyers

Joseph Campbell died at the age of 83 on October 30, 1987 at his home in Honolulu, Hawaii, from complications of esophageal cancer.^[15][16] Before his death he had completed filming the series of interviews with Bill Moyers that aired the following spring as The Power of Myth.

Campbell's Influences[link]

Art, literature, philosophy[link]

Nietzsche

Campbell often referred to the work of modern writers James Joyce and Thomas Mann in his lectures and writings, as well as to the art of Pablo Picasso. He was introduced to their work during his stay as a graduate student in Paris. Campbell eventually corresponded with Mann.^[17]

The works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche had a profound effect on Campbell's thinking; he quoted their writing frequently, often in his own translations from the original German.

Sinclair Lewis

The "follow your bliss" philosophy attributed to Campbell following the original broadcast of The Power of Myth (see below) derives from the Hindu Upanishads; however, Campbell was possibly also influenced by the 1922 Sinclair Lewis novel Babbitt. In The Power of Myth Campbell quotes from the novel:

Campbell: "Have you ever read Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt?"

Moyers: "Not in a long time."

Campbell: "Remember the last line? 'I have never done a thing that I wanted to do in all my life.' That is a man who never followed his bliss."^[18]

Psychology and anthropology[link]

Frobenius

Frazer

Spengler

Campbell's thinking on universal symbols and stories was deeply influenced by James Frazer (The Golden Bough), Adolf Bastian, and Otto Rank (The Myth of the Birth of the Hero), among others.

Anthropologist Leo Frobenius was important to Campbell’s view of cultural history. Campbell was also influenced by the psychological work of Abraham Maslow and Stanislav Grof.

Campbell's ideas regarding myth and its relation to the human psyche are dependent in part on the pioneering work of Sigmund Freud, but in particular on the work of Carl Jung, whose studies of human psychology, as previously mentioned, greatly influenced Campbell. Campbell's conception of myth is closely related to the Jungian method of dream interpretation, which is heavily reliant on symbolic interpretation.

Jung's insights into archetypes were in turn heavily influenced by the Bardo Thodol (also known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead). In his book The Mythic Image, Campbell quotes Jung's statement about the Bardo Thodol, that it "belongs to that class of writings which not only are of interest to specialists in Mahayana Buddhism, but also, because of their deep humanity and still deeper insight into the secrets of the human psyche, make an especial appeal to the layman seeking to broaden his knowledge of life... For years, ever since it was first published, the Bardo Thodol has been my constant companion, and to it I owe not only many stimulating ideas and discoveries, but also many fundamental insights."^[19]

In 1940 Campbell attended a lecture by Professor Heinrich Zimmer at Columbia University; the two men became friends, and Campbell looked upon Zimmer as a mentor. Zimmer taught Campbell that myth (rather than a guru or spiritual guide) could serve in the role of a personal mentor, in that its stories provide a psychological road map for the finding of oneself in the labyrinth of the complex modern world. Zimmer relied more on the meanings of mythological tales (their symbols, metaphors, imagery, etc.) as a source for psychological realization than upon psychoanalysis itself. Campbell later borrowed from Jung's interpretative techniques and then reshaped them in a fashion that followed Zimmer's beliefs—interpreting directly from world mythology. This is an important distinction, because it serves to explain why Campbell did not directly follow Jung's footsteps in applied psychology.

Comparative mythology and Campbell's theories[link]

Monomyth[link]

Campbell's term monomyth, also referred to as the hero's journey, refers to a basic pattern found in many narratives from around the world. This widely distributed pattern was first fully described in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949).^[20] An enthusiast of novelist James Joyce,^[21] Campbell borrowed the term from Joyce's Finnegans Wake.^[22] As a strong believer in the unity of human consciousness and its poetic expression through mythology, through the monomyth concept Campbell expressed the idea that the whole of the human race could be seen as reciting a single story of great spiritual importance, and in the preface to The Hero with a Thousand Faces he indicated it was his goal to demonstrate similarities between Eastern and Western religions. As time evolves, this story gets broken down into local forms, taking on different guises (masks), depending on the necessities and social structure of the culture that interprets it. Its ultimate meaning relates to humanity's search for the same basic, unknown force from which everything came, within which everything currently exists, and into which everything will return and is considered to be "unknowable" because it existed before words and knowledge. The Story's form, however, has a known structure, which can be classified into the various stages of a hero's adventures like the Call to Adventure, Receiving Supernatural Aid, Meeting with the Goddess/Atonement with the Father and Return. As the ultimate truth cannot be expressed in plain words, spiritual rituals and stories refer to it through the use of "metaphors", a term Campbell used heavily and insisted on its proper meaning: In contrast with comparisons, which use the word like, metaphors pretend to a literal interpretation of what they are referring to, as in the sentence "Jesus is the Son of God" rather than "the relationship of man to God is like that of a son to a father".^[23] According to Campbell, the Genesis myth from the Bible ought not be taken as a literal description of historical events happening in our current understanding of time and space, but as a metaphor for the rise of man's cognitive consciousness as it evolved from a prior animal state.^[24]

Some scholars have disagreed with the concept of the "monomyth" because of its oversimplification of different cultures. According to Robert Ellwood, "“A tendency to think in generic terms of people, races... is undoubtedly the profoundest flaw in mythological thinking.” ^[25]

Campbell made heavy use of Carl Jung's theories on the structure of the human psyche, and he often used terms like "anima/animus" and "ego consciousness".

Function of Myth[link]

Campbell often described mythology as having a fourfold function for human society. These appear at the end of his work The Masks of God: Creative Mythology, as well as various lectures.^[26]

• The Metaphysical Function: Awakening a sense of awe before the mystery of being
  According to Campbell, the absolute mysteries of life cannot be captured directly in words or images. Myths are "being statements"^[26] and the experience of this mystery can be had only through a participation in mythic rituals or the contemplation of mythic symbols that point beyond themselves. "Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of reason and coercion.... The first function of mythology is to reconcile waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of this universe as it is."^[27]
• The Cosmological Function: Explaining the shape of the universe
  Myth also functions as a proto-science, bringing the observable (physical) world into accord with the metaphysical and psychological meanings rendered by the other functions of mythology. Campbell noticed that the modern dilemma between science and religion on matters of truth is actually between science of the ancient world and that of today.
• The Sociological Function: Validate and support the existing social order
  Ancient societies had to conform to an existing social order if they were to survive at all. This is because they evolved under "pressure" from necessities much more intense than the ones encountered in our modern world. Mythology confirmed that order and enforced it by reflecting it into the stories themselves, often describing how the order arrived from divine intervention.
• The Psychological Function: Guide the individual through the stages of life
  As a person goes through life, many psychological challenges will be encountered. Myth may serve as a guide for successful passage through the stages of one's life. For example, most ancient cultures used rites of passage as a youth passed to the adult stage. Later on, a living mythology taught the same person to let go of material possessions and earthly plans as they prepared to die.

Campbell believed that if myths are to continue to fulfill their vital functions in our modern world, they must continually transform and evolve because the older mythologies, untransformed, simply do not address the realities of contemporary life, particularly with regard to the changing cosmological and sociological realities of each new era.

Evolution of Myth[link]

Campbell's view of mythology was by no means static and his books describe in detail how mythologies evolved through time, reflecting the realities in which each society had to adjust.^[28] Various stages of cultural development have different yet identifiable mythological systems. In brief these are:

• The Way of the Animal Powers: Hunting and gathering societies
  At this stage of evolution religion was animistic, as all of nature was seen as being infused with a spirit or divine presence. At center stage was the main hunting animal of that culture, whether the buffalo for Native Americans or the eland for South African tribes, and a large part of religion focused on dealing with the psychological tension that came from the reality of the necessity to kill versus the divinity of the animal. This was done by presenting the animals as springing from an eternal archetypal source and coming to this world as willing victims, with the understanding that their lives would be returned to the soil or to the Mother through a ritual of restoration.^[29] The act of slaughter then becomes a ritual where both parties, animal and mankind, are equal participants. In Mythos and The Power of Myth,^[30] Campbell recounts the story he calls "The Buffalo's Wife" as told by the Blackfoot tribe of North America. The story tells of a time when the buffalos stopped coming to the hunting plains, leaving the tribe to starve. The chief's daughter promises to marry the buffalo chief in return for their reappearance, but is eventually spared and taught the buffalo dance by the animals themselves, through which the spirits of their dead will return to their eternal life source. Indeed, Campbell taught that throughout history mankind has held a belief that all life comes from and returns to another dimension which transcends temporality, but which can be reached through ritual.
• The Way of the Seeded Earth: Early agrarian societies
  Beginning in the fertile grasslands of Europe in the Bronze Age and moving to the Levant and the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia, the practice of agriculture spread along with a new way of understanding mankind's relationship to the world. At this time the earth was seen as the Mother, and the myths focused around Her life-giving powers. The plant and cultivation cycle was mirrored in religious rituals which often included human sacrifice, symbolic or literal.^[31] The main figures of this system were a female Great Goddess, Mother Earth, and her ever-dying and ever-resurrected son/consort, a male God. At this time the focus was to participate in the repetitive rhythm the world moved in expressed as the four seasons, the birth and death of crops and the phases of the moon. At the center of this motion was the Mother Goddess from whom all life springs and to whom all life returns. This often gave Her a dual aspect as both mother and destroyer.
• The Way of the Celestial Lights: The first high civilizations
  As the first agricultural societies evolved into the high civilisations of Mesopotamia and Babylonia, the observation of the stars inspired them with the idea that life on earth must also follow a similar mathematically predetermined pattern in which individual beings are but mere participants in an eternal cosmic play. The king was symbolised by the Sun with the golden crown as its main metaphor, while his court were the orbiting planets. The Mother Goddess remained, but her powers were now fixed within the rigid framework of a clockwork universe.
  However, two barbarian incursions changed that. As the Indo-European (Aryan) people descended from the north and the Semites swept up from the Arabian desert, they carried with them a male dominated mythology with a warrior god whose symbol was the thunder. As they conquered, mainly due to the superior technology of iron smithing, their mythology blended and subjugated the previous system of the Earth Goddess. Many of mythologies of the ancient world such as that of Greece, India, and Persia are a result of that fusion with gods retaining some of their original traits and character but now belonging to a single system. Figures such as Zeus and Indra are thunder gods who now interact with Demeter and Dionysus, whose ritual sacrifice and rebirth, bearing testament to his pre-Indo-European roots, were still enacted in classical Greece. But for the largest part the focus was heavily shifted toward the masculine, with Zeus ascending the throne of the gods and Dionysus demoted to a mere demi-god.
  This demotion was very profound in the case of the Biblical imaginary where the female elements were marginalized to an extreme. Campbell believed that Eve and the snake that tempted her were once fertility gods worshiped in their own rights with the tree of knowledge being the Tree of Life.^[32] He also found the biblical story of Cain and Abel telling, with Cain being a farmer with his agrarian offering not accepted by God while a herder's animal sacrifice is. In the lecture series of Mythos Campbell speaks of the Mysteries of Eleusis in Ancient Greece, where Demeter's journey in the underworld was enacted for young men and women of the time. There he observed that wheat was presented as the ultimate mystery with wine being a symbol of Dionysus, much like in the Christian mysteries where bread and wine are considered to incarnate the body and blood of Jesus. Both religions carry the same "seeded earth" cosmology in different forms while retaining an image of the ever dying ever resurrected God.
• The Way of Man: Medieval mythology, romantic love, and the birth of the modern spirit
  Campbell recognized that the poetic form of courtly love, carried through medieval Europe by the traveling troubadours, contained a complete mythology in its own right.^[33] In The Power of Myth as well as the "Occidental Mythology" volume of The Masks of God, Campbell describes the emergence of a new kind of erotic experience as a "person to person" affair, in contrast with the purely physical definition given to Eros in the ancient world and the communal agape found in the Christian religion. An archetypal story of this kind is the legend of Tristan and Isolde which, apart from its mystical function, shows the transition from an arranged marriage society as practiced in the Middle Ages and sanctified by the church, into the form of marriage by "falling in love" with another person that we recognize today. So what essentially started from a mythological theme has since become a social reality, mainly due to a change in perception brought about by a new mythology.
  Campbell believed that in the modern world the function served by formal, traditional mythological systems has been taken on by individual creators such as artists and philosophers.^[34] In the works of some of his favorites, such as Thomas Mann, Pablo Picasso and James Joyce, he saw mythological themes that could serve the same life-giving purpose that mythology had once played. Accordingly, Campbell believed the religions of the world to be the various culturally influenced “masks” of the same fundamental, transcendent truths. All religions can bring one to an elevated awareness above and beyond a dualistic conception of reality, or idea of “pairs of opposites” such as being and non-being, or right and wrong. Indeed, he quotes from the Rg Veda in the preface to The Hero with a Thousand Faces: "Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names."

Influence[link]

Joseph Campbell Foundation[link]

In 1991, Campbell's widow, choreographer Jean Erdman, worked with Campbell's longtime friend and editor, Robert Walter, to create the Joseph Campbell Foundation. The mission of the foundation is to preserve, protect and perpetuate Campbell's work, as well as supporting work in his field of study.

Initiatives undertaken by the JCF include: The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, a series of books and recordings that aims to pull together Campbell's myriad-minded work; the Erdman Campbell Award; the Mythological RoundTables, a network of local groups around the globe that explore the subjects of comparative mythology, psychology, religion and culture; and the collection of Campbell's library and papers housed at the OPUS Archives and Research Center (see below).^[35]

Joseph Campbell Collection[link]

After Campbell's death, Jean Erdman and the Joseph Campbell Foundation donated his papers, books and other effects to the Center for the Study of Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California. The Center became the OPUS Archives and Research Center ^[36] and is the home of the collection. Campbell had frequently lectured at Pacifica, a private school that supports graduate work in mythology and depth psychology. The founding curator, psychologist Jonathan Young, worked closely with Ms. Erdman to gather the materials from Campbell's homes in Honolulu and Greenwich Village, New York City. The Campbell Collection features approximately 3,000 volumes and covers a broad range of subjects, including anthropology, folklore, religion, literature, and psychology. The collection also includes audio and video tapes of lectures, original manuscripts, research papers, and some personal effects including the ruler he used to underline passages in his books.

Film[link]

George Lucas was the first Hollywood filmmaker to credit Campbell's influence. Lucas stated following the release of the first Star Wars film in 1977 that its story was shaped, in part, by ideas described in The Hero with a Thousand Faces and other works of Campbell's. The linkage between Star Wars and Campbell was further reinforced when later reprints of Campbell's book used the image of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker on the cover.^[37] Lucas discusses this influence at great length in the authorized biography of Joseph Campbell, A Fire in the Mind:

I [Lucas] came to the conclusion after American Graffiti that what's valuable for me is to set standards, not to show people the world the way it is...around the period of this realization...it came to me that there really was no modern use of mythology...The Western was possibly the last generically American fairy tale, telling us about our values. And once the Western disappeared, nothing has ever taken its place. In literature we were going off into science fiction...so that's when I started doing more strenuous research on fairy tales, folklore, and mythology, and I started reading Joe's books. Before that I hadn't read any of Joe's books...It was very eerie because in reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces I began to realize that my first draft of Star Wars was following classic motifs...so I modified my next draft [of Star Wars] according to what I'd been learning about classical motifs and made it a little bit more consistent...I went on to read 'The Masks of God' and many other books.^[38]

It was not until after the completion of the original Star Wars trilogy in 1983, however, that Lucas met Campbell or heard any of his lectures.^[39] The 1988 documentary The Power of Myth was filmed at Lucas' Skywalker Ranch. During his interviews with Bill Moyers, Campbell discusses the way in which Lucas used The Hero's Journey in the Star Wars films (IV, V, and VI) to re-invent the mythology for the contemporary viewer. Moyers and Lucas filmed an interview 12 years later in 1999 called the Mythology of Star Wars with George Lucas & Bill Moyers to further discuss the impact of Campbell's work on Lucas' films.^[40] In addition, the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution sponsored an exhibit during the late 1990s called Star Wars: The Magic of Myth, which discussed the ways in which Campbell's work shaped the Star Wars films.^[41] A companion guide of the same name was published in 1997.

Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood screenwriter, was also highly influenced by Campbell. He created a 7-page company memo based on Campbell's work, A Practical Guide to The Hero With a Thousand Faces,^[42] which led to the development of Disney's 1994 film The Lion King. Vogler's memo was later developed into the late 1990s book The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers.

Many filmmakers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have acknowledged the influence of Campbell's work on their own craft. Among films that many viewers have recognized as closely following the pattern of the monomyth are The Matrix series, the Batman series and the Indiana Jones series.^[43]

The documentary film Finding Joe (2011, 1:20) explores Campbell's studies and their continuing impact on our culture through interviews interspersed with enactments of classic tales by a group of children. The film follows the stages of what Campbell called The Hero's Journey: challenges, fears, dragons, battles, and the return home as a changed person.

Popular Literature[link]

After the explosion of popularity brought on by the Star Wars films and The Power of Myth, creative artists in many media recognized the potential to use Campbell's theories to try to unlock human responses to narrative patterns. Novelists,^[44] songwriters,^[45][46] video game designers^[47] and even amusement park ride designers have studied Campbell's work in order better to understand mythology—in particular, the monomyth—and its impact.

Novelist Richard Adams acknowledges a debt to Campbell's work, and specifically to the concept of the monomyth.^[48] In his best known work, Watership Down, Adams uses extracts from The Hero with a Thousand Faces as chapter epigrams.^[49]

"Follow your bliss"[link]

One of Campbell's most identifiable, most quoted and arguably most misunderstood sayings was his admonition to "follow your bliss." He derived this idea from the Upanishads:

Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence:Sat-Chit-Ananda. The word "Sat" means being. "Chit" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being." I think it worked.^[50]

He saw this not merely as a mantra, but as a helpful guide to the individual along the hero journey that each of us walks through life:

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.^[51]

Campbell began sharing this idea with students during his lectures in the 1970s. By the time that The Power of Myth was aired in 1988, six months following Campbell's death, "Follow your bliss" was a philosophy that resonated deeply with the American public—both religious and secular.^[52]

During his later years, when some students took him to be encouraging hedonism, Campbell is reported to have grumbled, "I should have said, 'Follow your blisters.'"^[53]

Posthumous controversy[link]

In 1989, two years after Joseph Campbell's death, great controversy was created when culture critic Brendan Gill published an article which contained unsupported claims that Joseph Campbell was "anti-Semitic", as well as jokingly accused Campbell of "Satanism" because Campbell looked so healthy at the age of eighty (article: "The Faces of Joseph Campbell" by Brendan Gill, New York Review of Books, vol. 36, issue 14, Sept. 28, 1989, pp. 16–19.). That title of Gill's article ("The Faces of Joseph Campbell") references not only Gill's 1987 book (Many Masks: A life of Frank Lloyd Wright (1987)) but also was a play upon the title of Campbells four volume work The Masks of God (1959-1968). Gill offered no evidence to support his accusation of anti-Semitism, but did say both he and Joseph Campbell attended monthly meetings at the Century Club in New York City. Following Gill's article several people, from various walks of life who knew Campbell personally, disputed Gill's accusations.

Professor of religion Robert Segal countered Gill's accusation of antisemitism in his own article, "Joseph Campbell on Jews and Judaism."^[54] Segal suggests that this view of Campbell stems, at least partly, from his tendency to be blunt at times in critiquing certain aspects of organized religions—which, Campbell stated in his valedictory lecture series Transformations of Myth Through Time, was his job.^[55]

Other scholars disagreed both with Gill's general critiques as well as the accusation of antisemitism. A few months after Gill's article appeared, the New York Review of Books published a series of letters: "Brendan Gill vs. Defenders of Joseph Campbell" (cover title), "Joseph Campbell: An Exchange" (article title).^[56] A number of the letters from former students and colleagues argued against the accusations. In particular, Professors Roberta and Peter Markman state that "we were dismayed because this piece of character assassination was unsupported by any evidence."

Stephen Larsen and Robin Larsen, authors of the biography Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind (2002), also argued against what they referred to as "the so-called anti-Semitic charge". They state: "For the record, Campbell did not belong to any organization that condoned racial or social bias, nor do we know of any other way in which he endorsed such viewpoints. During his lifetime, there was no record of such accusations of public bigotry".^[57]

Works by Campbell[link]

Early Collaborations[link]

The first published work that bore Campbell's name was Where the Two Came to Their Father (1943), a Navajo ceremony that was performed by singer (medicine man) Jeff King and recorded by artist and ethnologist Maud Oakes, recounting the story of two young heroes who go to the hogan of their father, the Sun, and return with the power to destroy the monsters that are plaguing their people. Campbell provided a commentary. He would use this tale through the rest of his career to illustrate both the universal symbols and structures of human myths and the particulars ("folk ideas") of Native American stories.

As noted above, James Joyce was an important influence on Campbell. Campbell's first important book (with Henry Morton Robinson), A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (1944), is a critical analysis of Joyce's final text Finnegans Wake. In addition, Campbell's seminal work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), discusses what Campbell called the monomyth — the cycle of the journey of the hero — a term that he borrowed directly from Joyce's Finnegans Wake.^[58]

[edit] The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Originally titled How to Read a Myth, and based on the introductory class on mythology that he had been teaching at Sarah Lawrence College, The Hero with a Thousand Faces was published in 1949 as Campbell's first foray as a solo author; it established his name outside of scholarly circles and remains, arguably, his most influential work to this day. Not only did it introduce the concept of the hero's journey to popular thinking, but it also began to popularize the very idea of comparative mythology itself—the study of the human impulse to create stories and images that, though they are clothed in the motifs of a particular time and place, draw nonetheless on universal, eternal themes. Campbell asserted:

Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history, mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives becomes dissolved.^[59]

[edit] The Masks of God

Written between 1962 and 1968, Campbell's four-volume work The Masks of God covers mythology from around the world, from ancient to modern. Where The Hero with a Thousand Faces focused on the commonality of mythology (the “elementary ideas”), the Masks of God books focus upon historical and cultural variations the monomyth takes on (the “folk ideas”). In other words, where The Hero with a Thousand Faces draws perhaps more from psychology, the Masks of God books draw more from anthropology and history. The four volumes of Masks of God are as follows: Primitive Mythology, Oriental Mythology, Occidental Mythology, and Creative Mythology. In Occidental Mythology he speculates that Yahweh may have originated as a serpent consort of the Earth Mother goddess Asherah - though this theory is not supported in Ancient Near East scholarship.

[edit] Historical Atlas of World Mythology

At the time of his death, Campbell was in the midst of working upon a large-format, lavishly illustrated series entitled Historical Atlas of World Mythology. This series was to build on Campbell’s idea, first presented in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, that myth evolves over time through four stages:

• The Way of the Animal Powers—the myths of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers which focus on shamanism and animal totems.
• The Way of the Seeded Earth—the myths of Neolithic, agrarian cultures which focus upon a mother goddess and associated fertility rites.
• The Way of the Celestial Lights—the myths of Bronze Age city-states with pantheons of gods ruling from the heavens, led by a masculine god-king.
• The Way of Man—religion and philosophy as it developed after the Axial Age (c. 6th century BC), in which the mythic imagery of previous eras was made consciously metaphorical, reinterpreted as referring to psycho-spiritual, not literal-historical, matters. This transition is evident in the East in Buddhism, Vedanta, and philosophical Taoism; and in the West in the Mystery Cults, Platonism, Christianity and Gnosticism.

Only the first two volumes were completed at the time of Campbell's death. Both of these volumes are now out of print.

[edit] The Power of Myth

Campbell's widest popular recognition followed his collaboration with Bill Moyers on the PBS series The Power of Myth, which was first broadcast in 1988, the year following Campbell's death. The series discusses mythological, religious, and psychological archetypes. A book, The Power of Myth, containing expanded transcripts of their conversations, was released shortly after the original broadcast.

[edit] Posthuma: Collected Works

The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell series is a project initiated by the Joseph Campbell Foundation to release new, authoritative editions of Campbell's published and unpublished writing, as well as audio and video recordings of his lectures. Working with New World Library, Acorn Media UK and Roomful of Sky Records, as of 2009 the project has produced seventeen titles. The series' executive editor is Robert Walter, and the managing editor is David Kudler.

Other books[link]

• Where the Two Came to Their Father: A Navaho War Ceremonial (1943). with Jeff King and Maud Oakes, Old Dominion Foundation
• The Flight of the Wild Gander:Explorations in the Mythological Dimension (1968). Viking Press
• Myths to Live By (1972). Viking Press
• Erotic irony and mythic forms in the art of Thomas Mann (1973; monograph, later included in The Mythic Dimension)
• The Mythic Image^[60] (1974). Princeton University Press
• The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor As Myth and As Religion (1986). Alfred van der Marck Editions
• Transformations of Myth Through Time (1990). Harper and Row
• A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living (1991). editor Diane K. Osbon
• Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: On the Art of James Joyce^[61] (1993). editor Edmund L. Epstein
• The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays (1959–1987)^[62] (1993). editor Anthony Van Couvering
• Baksheesh & Brahman: Indian Journals (1954–1955)^[63] (1995). editors Robin/Stephen Larsen & Anthony Van Couvering
• Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor (2001). editor Eugene Kennedy, New World Library ISBN 1-57731-202-3. first volume in the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell
• The Inner Reaches of Outer Space^[64] (2002)
• Sake & Satori: Asian Journals — Japan^[65] (2002). editor David Kudler
• Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal^[66] (2003). editor David Kudler
• Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation^[67] (2004). editor David Kudler

Interview books[link]

• The Power of Myth (1988). with Bill Moyers and editor Betty Sue Flowers, Doubleday, hardcover: ISBN 0-385-24773-7
• An Open Life: Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michael Toms (1989). editors John Maher and Dennie Briggs, forward by Jean Erdman Campbell. Larson Publications, Harper Perennial 1990 paperback: ISBN 0-06-097295-5
• This business of the gods: Interview with Fraser Boa (1989)
• The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work (1990). editor Phil Cousineau. Harper & Row 1991 paperback: ISBN 0-06-250171-2. Element Books 1999 hardcover: ISBN 1-86204-598-4. New World Library centennial edition with introduction by Phil Cousineau, forward by executive editor Stuart L. Brown: ISBN 1-57731-404-2

Audio tapes[link]

• Mythology and the Individual
• The Power of Myth (With Bill Moyers) (1987)
• Transformation of Myth through Time Volume 1–3 (1989)
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces: The Cosmogonic Cycle (Read by Ralph Blum) (1990)
• The Way of Art (1990—unlicensed)
• The Lost Teachings of Joseph Campbell Volume 1–9 (With Michael Toms) (1993)
• On the Wings of Art: Joseph Campbell; Joseph Campbell on the Art of James Joyce (1995)
• The Wisdom of Joseph Campbell (With Michael Toms) (1997)
• The Collected Lectures of Joseph Campbell:
  • Volume 1: Mythology and the Individual (1997)
  • Volume 2: The Inward Journey (1997)
  • Volume 3: The Eastern Way (1997)
  • Volume 4: Man and Myth (1997)
  • Volume 5: The Myths and Masks of God (1997)
  • Volume 6: The Western Quest (1997)
• Myth and Metaphor in Society (With Jamake Highwater) (abridged)(2002)

Video/DVDs[link]

• The Hero's Journey (film): A Biographical Portrait—This film, made shortly before his death in 1987, follows Campbell's personal quest—a pathless journey of questioning, discovery, and ultimately of delight and joy in a life to which he said, "Yes"
• Sukhavati: A Mythic Journey—This hypnotic and mesmerizing film is a deeply personal, almost spiritual, portrait of Campbell
• Mythos—This series comprises talks that Campbell himself believed summed up his views on "the one great story of mankind."
• Psyche & Symbol (12 part telecourse, Bay Area Open College, 1976)^[68]
• Transformations of Myth Through Time (1989)
• Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth (1988)
• Myth and Metaphor in Society (With Jamake Highwater) (1993)

Books edited by Campbell[link]

• Gupta, Mahendranath. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942) (translation from Bengali by Swami Nikhilananda; Joseph Campbell and Margaret Woodrow Wilson, translation assistants—see preface; foreword by Aldous Huxley)
• Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. Heinrich Zimmer (1946)
• The King and the Corpse: Tales of the Soul's Conquest of Evil. Heinrich Zimmer (1948)
• Philosophies of India. Heinrich Zimmer (1951)
• The Portable Arabian Nights (1951)
• The Art of Indian Asia. Heinrich Zimmer (1955)
• Man and Time: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks. Various authors (1954–1969)
• Man and Transformation: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks. Various authors (1954–1969)
• The Mysteries: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks. Various authors (1954–1969)
• The Mystic Vision: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks. Various authors (1954–1969)
• Spirit and Nature: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks. Various authors (1954–1969)
• Spiritual Disciplines: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks. Various authors (1954–1969)
• Myths, Dreams, Religion. Various authors (1970)
• The Portable Jung. Carl Jung (1971)

See also[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

On life and work[link]

Books

• Segal, Robert. Joseph Campbell an Introduction, (1987)
• Larsen, Stephen and Robin. Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind. (1991)
• Golden, Kenneth L. Uses of Comparative Mythology: Essays on the Work of Joseph Campbell (1992)
• Manganaro, Marc. Myth, Rhetoric, and the Voice of Authority: A Critique of Frazer, Eliot, Frye, and Campbell. (1992)
• Madden, Lawrence. (Editor) The Joseph Campbell Phenomenon: Implications for the Contemporary Church (1992)
• Noel, Daniel C. (Editor) Paths to the Power of Myth (1994)
• Snyder, Tom. Myth Conceptions: Joseph Campbell and the New Age (1995)
• Henderson, Mary. Star Wars: The Magic of Myth (1997)Smithsonian Exhibit
• Vogler, Christopher. The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers. (1998)
• Ellwood, Robert. The Politics of Myth: A Study of C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell (1999)

Articles

• Man and Myth: A Conversation with Joseph Campbell. Sam Keen. Psychology Today, v. 5 (1971)
• Living Myths: A Conversation with Joseph Campbell. Lorraine Kisly. Parabola, v. 1 (1976)
• The Professor with a Thousand Faces. Donald Newlove. Esquire, v. 88 (1977)
• Earthrise: The Dawning of a New Spiritual Awareness. Eugene Kennedy. New York Times Magazine. (April 15, 1979)
• Elders and Guides: A Conversation with Joseph Campbell. Michael McKnight. Parabola, v. 5 (1980)
• The Masks of Joseph Campbell. Florence Sandler and Darrell Reeck. Religion, v. 11 (1981)
• A Primer on Joseph Campbell and the Mythological Dimensions of Consciousness (Obituary). John Lobel. Whole Earth Review, Summer, 1988.
• The faces of Joseph Campbell. Brendan Gill. New York Review of Books, v. 36, number 14 (September 28, 1989)
• Brendan Gill vs Defenders of Joseph Campbell—An Exchange. Various Authors. New York Review of Books, v. 36, number 17 (November 9, 1989)
• Joseph Campbell on Jews and Judaism. Robert Segal. Religion, v. 22 (April 1992)
• “Was Joseph Campbell a Postmodernist?’’ Joseph M. Felser. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, v. 64 (1998)
• Why Joseph Campbell's Psychologizing of Myth Precludes the Holocaust as Touchstone of Reality. Maurice Friedman, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, v. 67 (1998)
• Joseph Campbell as Antisemite and as Theorist of Myth: A Response to Maurice Friedman. Robert A. Segal, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, v. 66 (1999)
• A. M. Bilodeau, "Joseph Campbell: le jeu de l'éternité dans le temps", Religiologiques, 8 (1993), p. 182–203.