The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The goddess of the world may disguise herself, for she not only brings life but death. In Sumero-Babylonian tradition, the goddess changes shape—whether virgin, seductress, the moon’s lover, or “hag of hell” (303)—according to the positions of planet Venus.

In modern-day Zimbabwe, the Wahungwe Makoni tribe tells of several kinds of women in their creation myth. God, or Maori, sets the moon, Mwuetsi, at the bottom of a lake, but Mwuetsi complains that he wants to go to earth. The earth is empty, so Maori grants Mwuetsi a wife, the morning star Massassi. Their first night, the two lie on opposite sides of the fire, but Mwuetsi hops across to touch his wife with ointment. Massassi becomes pregnant and bears all the world’s vegetation.

After two years, Maori takes Massassi away from Mwuetsi. Mwuetsi complains, and Maori gives him Morongo, the evening star, as his wife. At night, Morongo asks Mwuetsi to sleep with her. She gives birth to the world’s animals and humans. Despite Maori’s warning, Mwuetsi sleeps with Morongo again. She bears dangerous animals like snakes and lions. Morongo then urges Mwuetsi to sleep with his daughters instead of her. He does, and they bear people. Mwuetsi returns to his wife, whose new companion is a snake that bites Mwuetsi. All of creation suffers, and Mwuetsi’s children decide to kill him.

Campbell comments on how this story occurs in three acts that each bring a new distinct element into the world (307). Mwuetsi’s insistence leads him to his destiny, embodied in the women of the story. He takes cosmic wives, then human wives, and desires his morning star once more. However, his children take over the narrative, destroying the heavenly father and becoming human rulers of the world.

As time progresses in the cosmogonic myth, humanity’s perspectives darken, and they must manage the world on their own. They search for a sign of the divine, which might come in the form of a virgin. She is the picture of the world goddess, and in her the cosmic power will make new life as it did at the beginning of time. Campbell quotes a biblical passage about Mary, the mother of Jesus, visited by an angel and told she will become pregnant.

A Christian missionary in Colombia sought to explain tribal stories of a virgin birth through crediting the similarities to demons. The writings of priest Fray Pedro Simon tell that a demon arranged for a young woman to become pregnant by the sun to confuse people about the veracity of the Christian incarnation myth. The woman does become pregnant, bears an emerald, and puts it between her breasts until it becomes a child.

In the Hindu text “The Birth of the War God Kumara,” a woman named Parvati seeks to defeat a titan overlord of the world by bearing the only one who can beat him: the son of the god Shiva. Parvati meditates naked in the sun next to fires, and her body suffers. A young man comes to her and asks why she does this, and she answers that she loves Shiva and will win his heart if she matches his intensity of meditation. The man argues against her by listing Shiva’s unattractive qualities, but Parvati lists his virtues. The young man reveals himself as Shiva.

The virgin becomes pregnant through many different means. Buddhist, Aztec, and Greek mythologies all depict various virgin births, such as the Buddha falling into his mother’s womb as a white elephant. The child produced from this miracle may be benign or evil in various myths as well.

Campbell quotes a story from Tonga that outlines the hero story and also features a virgin mother. In the story, a woman gives birth to a clam. The clam attaches to the husk of a coconut and becomes pregnant. The clam births a male child and later also gives birth to another boy. As men, the boys attend the festival of the attractive Sinilau, and their grandmother says Sinilau is their father. Women ogle at the handsome young men at the festival, and Sinilau becomes annoyed with them. He tries to cut them with a knife, but it will not pierce their flesh. The boys say Sinilau is their father, and he embraces them. They fetch their mother the clam and open it to reveal a woman named Hina-at-home-in-the-river. With Sinilau again, they meet his wives and other children, but he commands that they all be thrown in a fire. Only the woman from the clam and her two sons remain at the end.