The Hero with a Thousand Faces

When a hero says no to the call to adventure, he inverts the myth and thwarts his destiny. In refusing a call, the hero acts against his own interests, just as King Minos does when he fails to sacrifice the bull. The hero who refuses will never meet the divine within unless he accepts the call.

Campbell illustrates this with the myth of Daphne and Apollo, as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Daphne flees Apollo’s lustful pursuit through a forest and, growing weary, she asks her father to help her. Her father, the river Peneus, transforms Daphne into a laurel tree. Campbell likens the “unrewarding” ending (62) with the Oedipally confined adult who cannot detach from parental protection to enter a new phase of life. Likewise, Grimm’s story of Briar-rose depicts the girl’s entire world shadowed in sleep until a prince rescues them all with his kiss. In this example, a controlling parent figure confines the young woman until an outside force liberates her.

Others who refused the call include a Persian city turned to stone, Lot’s wife who was turned into a pillar of salt, and the Wandering Jew who stays on earth until the Day of Judgment. These figures were enchanted and even cursed for their refusals, whereas other mythical characters receive second chances, sometimes prompted by the refusal itself. The one who refuses and isolates herself may become trapped in childhood issues or might find freedom in asceticism.

Campbell tells the tale of Prince Kamar al-Zaman and Princess Budur from The Arabian Nights. The king asks Prince Kamar al-Zaman over and over to take a wife, but the prince refuses. The king’s advisors tell him to bring the prince before the royal court and then ask him to take a wife, assuming Prince Kamar al-Zaman will be forced to acquiesce. However, the prince publicly repeats his refusal in court. The king, shocked and ashamed, locks the prince in prison. At the same time, a beautiful Chinese princess named Princess Budur refuses her father’s pleas to marry one of her many suitors. After the king’s many requests, the princess threatens to kill herself if he asks her again to take a husband. The king locks his daughter inside a house in response.

For the willing hero, aid comes in the form of a magical protector who often takes the form of an elderly person. A myth of the Wachaga tribe in East Africa tells of a poor man named Kyazimba, embarking on a long journey. An old woman comes to him and, learning of his quest, takes him flying to the place where the sun rises at noon. Kyazimba enjoys wealth for the rest of his life.

Similarly, Spider Woman is an elderly figure from Southwest Native American folklore. In one Navaho legend, the Twin War Gods happen upon the Spider Woman, who assists them in their journey to find their father. She gives them a divine feather and instructs them in a ritual with pollen in order to reach their father unscathed.

In addition to crones and fairy godmothers, supernatural aid might also come from the Virgin, such as the Virgin Mary in Christian mythology or Ariadne from the story of the Minotaur. These figures represent the memory of the infant womb, a future rest in Paradise, and a symbol of all-surpassing protection throughout the journey.

Other guardians might be male, such as a wizard, elderly man, teacher, or messenger. Faust’s guardian is Mephistopheles, whereas Dante’s is the poet Virgil in The Divine Comedy. Each presents a duality of safety and danger, familiarity and strangeness to the hero.

Campbell resumes the story of Prince Kamar al-Zaman and Princess Budur. A female demon named Maymunah views the prince sleeping in his prison cell and falls in love with him. Maymunah flies away and encounters another demon named Dahnash. He tells her of Princess Budur, claiming she is the most beautiful person he has ever seen. Maymunah protests that her Prince Kamar al-Zaman is lovelier than the princess. The demons decide to place the sleeping Princess Budur beside the prince in his bed to compare their looks. The myth resolves, then, by placing the refusing prince in the line of destiny without his knowledge.

On his journey, the hero will encounter another guardian at “the zone of magnified power” (77). This is the step that separates him from ordinary people who fear the dangers of the unknown. Campbell cites figures of Hottentot legends, such as a fearsome ogre that guards the dunes and the Hai-uri, a dangerous “half-man.”

The mysterious lands of myth provide ample opportunity for manifesting unconscious desires—Oedipal violence and lust among them. Mythical Russian “Wild Women” (79), for example, live in the mountains on their own. They kill intruders but also marry human men. There is also the “Russian ‘Water Grandfather’” (80) who drowns people and seduces women from local villages. Likewise, the god Pan beckons humans into a mystical world from his place beyond the town borders. He inspires both panic and fascination, giving wisdom and ecstasy to his followers.

The fear of the supernatural guardian at the threshold is well justified, for the new realm will threaten the hero’s life. However, the hero must face this danger with courage to continue the adventure.

In a Buddhist story from the Jataka, a man from Benares, India, must lead a caravan of 500 through a threatening wasteland. He fills many of the carts with water. A conniving ogre disguises himself and drives a cart coming in the opposite direction. He fills the cart with demons that are dripping wet and holding lotuses. The ogre stops to speak with the other caravan leader and tells him there is a rainy forest ahead of him, so he does not need so much water in his carts. The man pours out all his water and finds that the ogre has lied. In the middle of the desert, the parched men are besieged by ogres and slaughtered.

The story of Prince Five-weapons, also from the Jataka, follows a young man who has recently finished military training. On his journey, he enters the forest of an ogre named Sticky-hair. Despite warnings of Sticky-hair’s murderous ways, Prince Five-weapons enters the forest and attempts to fight Sticky-hair with each of his five weapons. However, each weapon sticks to the ogre. Each of the prince’s limbs stick to the ogre as he continues fighting. Sticky-hair asks the prince why he is not afraid, and the young man replies that a thunderbolt resides in his stomach and will kill the ogre if he eats the prince. The prince is the Future Buddha, who, relinquished by the ogre, instructs him in wisdom—for his thunderbolt is the “Weapon of Knowledge” (87)—and leaves the forest unscathed.

The threshold presents duality and, indeed, opposites. At this boundary dividing the known from the unknowable, the hero meets both life and death, safety and danger, good and evil. Many worldwide myths portray the threshold as two rocks that threaten to crush the hero. However, he will pass through and continue toward destiny.

Once across the threshold, the hero enters a womb-like space that appears to annihilate him. This is the belly of the whale. Indigenous Arctic people describe a character named Raven who finds himself inside the stomach of a whale-cow. In Zulu tradition, an elephant swallows a mother and her children, and in the elephant’s stomach is a whole civilization. Many myths portray similar imagery, such as the Greek story of Herakles descending into the belly of a sea monster and cutting his way out with a sword.

Campbell states, “the passage of the threshold is a form of self-annihilation” (91). It is an inward quest in which the hero experiences rebirth. Campbell likens this experience to entering a religious temple guarded by dragons or gargoyles who ward off the fearful. Inside the belly the hero will experience a spiritual and/or physical death. The Egyptian story of Osiris sees him killed twice by his brother, his pieces scattered everywhere, while the Twin Heroes of the Navaho encounter life-threatening trials on the way to their father.

The selfless hero, annihilated in the womb, passes across this dangerous threshold readily, and indeed his fearlessness in the new world empowers his ability to save others. In some myths, the scattering of the hero’s flesh symbolizes his redemption of others. A Day of Blood marks the death and resurrection of Attis, a Phrygian hero whose followers cut themselves and place their blood upon the altar. Similarly, a south Indian tale describes a king who performs a public self-dismemberment and suicide.