Sohaib's Reviews > The Hero With a Thousand Faces

This has been a lengthy study of reading and listening and taking notes. I've summarized this book in a way that accommodates my number one goal: self-development.

Departure

1. The Call to Adventure: the future Hero is wounded, and the cause of his wound is projected outwardly: an obstacle, a blunder, an enemy.
2. Refusal of the Call: the Hero falls back into the comfort and safety of parental figures, dependence and infantilism (male's mother complex).
3. Supernatural Aid: the Hero receives aid in the shape of the wise old man or woman, the Spider Woman, or the Virgin.
4. The Crossing of the First Threshold: the Hero decides to follow his heart's calling and plunges into the unknown.
5. The Belly of the Whale: the Hero delves deep into the unknown and dangerous, a new world of unforeseen challenges.

* The serpent symbolizes the Father. A man dreamed that he is stuck in the land of sheep, that is, the land of unindependence, whereupon he hears a voice calling from within. The voice says, "I must first get away from the father." Soon afterwards, a serpent encircles and entrapps him; the man metamorphoses into a tree (Refusal of the Call). The same man subsequently dreamed of an unknown woman who points the way (Supernatural Aid).

Initiation

1. The Road of Trials: the Hero overcomes numerous obstacles. These trials help him in reconciling opposites within, i.e. in assimilating his shadow personality.
2. The Meeting with the Goddess: the Hero meets a woman who reflects back to him his feminine ideal (anima). He must receive her and redeem her with the eyes of understanding, accept her as she is without undue commotion but with the kindness and assurance she requires. If the Hero marries her, he becomes a potential Father King—she, a potential Mother Queen.
3. Woman as the Temptress: after consummating his meeting with the Goddess and integrating his anima, the Hero experiences the Hamlet-Oedipus Revulsion of the Mother's Realm. The Hero finds it necessary to shun the world of flesh and sensuous desire and not allow his partner to distract him from his mission.
4. Atonement with the Father: the Hero unites with the Temptress only to realize that he and the Father are one. He realizes that at-one-ment with the Father whereupon the Good (superego) and Evil (Id) duality dissolves. This also requires detaching from the ego. The Hero thus starts to see the mysterious connections in things, the oneness that permeates the universe and colors the cosmic dance of all fortune and catastrophe. This stage manifests when the Hero confronts a powerful figure (Father figure, or enemy) who inhibits his freedom and fulfillment.
5. Apotheosis: the Hero, after integrating his anima and shadow, becomes ready to incorporate the Self. This is the phase of enlightenment (Nirvana) where the Hero detaches from the ego and perceives the illusion of duality. Male and female, good and bad, are, in essence, one.
6. The Ultimate Boon: this is the stage where the Hero realizes and lives the Imperishable State of Being—the Still Void beyond thought and body.

Return

1. Refusal of the Call: the enlightened Hero-King refuses to come back to bestow his boons onto the community. The Hero prefers to relish and remain in his blissful state, detached from the world of man.

The King Muchukunda aptly articulates the Hero's dilemma at this point:

“My Lord God! When I lived and wrought as a man, I lived and wrought—straying restlessly; through many lives, birth after birth, I sought and suffered, nowhere knowing cease or rest. Distress I mistook for joy. Mirages appearing over the desert I mistook for refreshing waters. Delights I grasped, and what I obtained was misery. Kingly power and earthly possession, riches and might, friends and sons, wife and followers, everything that lures the senses: I wanted them all, because I believed that these would bring me beatitude. But the moment anything was mine it changed its nature, and became as a burning fire."

2. The Magic Flight: if the Hero obtains the boon by a transgression that angers the god-ogre Father, then he must flee in fear and overcome the obstacles the ogre might put in his way. The Hero, in other instances, has to plant numerous hindrances to delay the monster in this comical pursuit.
3. Rescue from Without: if the Hero is reluctant to return, or is simply stuck in the belly of the whale, the world has to come and bring him back.
4. The Crossing of the Return Threshold: the Hero plunges from the higher realm of the divine into the lower realm of man. The Hero must bear the drastic weight of communicating his transcendent experience in day-to-day language. Traditionally, this feat has been met with great resistance.
5. Master of the Two Worlds: the enlightened Hero loses personal attachments, limitations and fears. He no longer tries to live, but gently "relaxes to whatever may come to pass on him." In practical terms, this is the man who balances between the outer world of work and dealing with others, and his own inner silent world of solitude and dealing with the numinous archetypal voices within.
6. Freedom to Live: the Hero loses all personal attachments and attains The Sublime Freedom.

"Man in the world of action loses his centering in the principle of eternity if he is anxious for the outcome of his deeds, but resting them and their fruits on the knees of the Living God he is released by them, as by a sacrifice, from the bondages of the sea of death."

"Do without attachment the work you have to do ... Surrendering all action to Me, with mind intent on the Self, freeing yourself from longing and selfishness, fight—unperturbed by grief."

"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—When the Prince of Eternity kissed the Princess of the World, her resistance was allayed. 'She opened her eyes, awoke, and looked at him in friendship. Together they came down the stairs, and the king awoke and the queen and the entire courtly estate, and all looked at each other with big eyes. And the horses in the court stood up and shook themselves: the hunting dogs jumped and wagged their tails: the pigeons on the roof drew their little heads out from under their wings, looked around, and flew across the field: the flies on the wall walked again: the fire in the kitchen brightened, flickered, and cooked the dinner: the roast began again to sizzle: and the cook gave the scullery boy a box in the ear that made him yell: and the maid finished plucking the chicken.'"

The Keys: What Happens Beyond the First Threshold in Short:

"Beyond the threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which give magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero’s sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the father creator (father atonement), his own divinization (apotheosis), or again—if the powers have remained unfriendly to him—his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft); intrinsically it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of the return."